Four Equals One China—Urban China (Part 3 of 7)

May 15, 2010

In 1949, when Mao came to power, 0.005 kilowatts of electricity were being generated in China.  Most of China did not have electricity or modern roads. In 1950, most of China was the same as it had been for centuries.

Soon after Mao’s death, China entered a transition that isn’t over. There was a period of planning and then the miraculous modernization of China that the world has seen since 1980 began.

China’s first 10, five-year plans focused on modernization and growth in urban areas. Urban China started with about 250 million people. As China became the world’s factory floor, the largest migration in human history took place and 300 hundred million rural Chinese moved to urban China to work in factories. Today, urban China has about 550 million people with more than a hundred cities with populations over a million. Trillions have been spent developing cities like Shanghai, Beijing and others.

To discover more about this modernization transition taking place in China, read Pop-Up Cities: China Builds a Bright Green Metropolis by Douglas McGray.  By 2020, China plans to build four hundred new, modern cities at a rate of 20 each year.

Go to Four Equals One China: Part 4 or Discover After Mao

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Four Equals One China—Communist China Continued (Part 2 of 7)

May 15, 2010

The previous president selected the current president of China. After the selection, the candidate must be approved by the Politburo Standing Committee, which usually has between five and nine members, usually men. They are China’s top leadership. This is where major decisions are made and/or approved. They are the most powerful decision making body in China.

The Great Hall of the People in Beijing

China’s Constitution does not allow anyone to stay a member of the Standing Committee for longer than two, five-year terms and mandatory retirement is sixty-seven. In 2012, all current members will be replaced. Both the national media as well as political watchers abroad closely watch standing Committee members.

Once the candidate for president has been approved, the National People’s Congress votes on the nomination.  The National Congress of China has 2,987 members. Two thousand ninety-nine are members of the Communist party and eight-hundred and eighty-eight do not belong to the Communist Party. They meet in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Go to Four Equals One China: Part 3

Why is China Studying Singapore?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Four Equals One China—Communist China (Part 1 of 7)

May 15, 2010

The four Chinas are Communist China, Urban China, Rural China and Minority China. The Communist Party has more than 70 million members. Then there are the members of the Communist Youth League (another 70+ million), whom are not members of the Communist Party.

The members of these two groups are the ruling class. They have the best health care and probably make up a sizable portion of China’s middle class, which has been estimated at 200 to 400 million people living primarily in urban areas.

President Hu Jintao

Hu Jintao, was elected president of the PRC on March 15, 2003. According to the Chinese Constitution, he may only serve two five-year terms and has to stand for reelection after the first term. There is an article of impeachment in the Chinese constitution that was added after Mao.

Go to Four Equals One China: Part 2

Many in the west consider the president of China a dictator. By definition, that is wrong. See Dictatorship Defined

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Another Opinion about China’s Trade Surplus

May 14, 2010

China has an estimated 2.4 trillion in foreign reserves and recently, there have been accusations from American politicians and in the Western media, that China has been manipulating the exchange rate and costing Americans their jobs.

In a report on Vox (Research-based policy and commentary from leading economists), Zheng Song, Kjetil Storesletten and Fabrizio Zilibotti claim they can prove that China did not gain this huge trade surplus from manipulation of the exchange rate.

Chinese Currency

Instead, they will offer proof from similar economic growth in South Korea and Taiwan that both resulted in large surpluses from trade.

The three economists wrote that in the second half of the 1980s, South Korea saw booming growth and a series of large current account surpluses. In addition, Taiwan experienced large trade surpluses in the 1980s. Since both South Korea and Taiwan are smaller than China, their trade surpluses did not draw as much attention as China’s trade surplus has.

The authors of the study concluded that the call for trade sanctions against China might be unwarranted as well as dangerous.

Read more about America’s Assault on China’s Currency.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

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The Earth was Flat

May 14, 2010

In 1610, Galileo published Sidereus Nuncius, the Starry Messenger, about discoveries he made with his new telescope. He was attacked for his theory because it seemed to contradict Scripture.  Because of this, in 1633, Galileo was tried and convicted of heresy.

Fifteen hundred years prior to Galileo’s discovery that the earth was round and orbited the sun, there is evidence that Chinese mathematicians had calculated the size of the earth on the basis that it must have been spherical (round). However, similar to Galileo, the Chinese people would continue to believe the earth was flat for centuries.  It is possible that when Qin Shi Huangdi (259 – 210 BC), China’s first emperor, had the great book burning, he burned the evidence of earlier Chinese mathematical texts.

Chinese astronomer

In addition, older Chinese creation myths included details that accounted for the tilt of the earth and other astronomical facts.  Several existing, ancient Chinese applied mathematics texts prove the Chinese were the first to use some of the most basic and advanced mathematical principles and concepts utilized in modern times. Two of these texts are the Chou Pei and Chiu Chang.

Learn more about China’s first Emperor Qin Shi Haungdi by reading and watching this nine part series on his life.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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