Liu Xiaobo’s Manifesto, Charter 08 – Part 1/3

December 18, 2010

First, a question — how often in history has an established government stepped aside and allowed another political structure to replace it without a bloody rebellion?

“Charter 08” is Liu Xiaobo’s Manifesto calling for democratic reforms in China that would sweep aside the established political system opening the door to chaos and anarchy — a return to the first half of the twentieth century.

To understand what would happen to China if Liu’s Manifesto for democracy were implemented, it helps to know some history.

I’ll start with the Communist Manifesto.

Online Schools.org says, “The Communist Manifesto is considered one of the most influential political manuscripts ever written…. it was composed by German communist thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto, also known as the Manifesto of the Communist Party, was published on February 21, 1848.

The Communist Manifesto led to the bloody Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions and eventually to the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War. To replace old political structures with what the Communist Manifesto proposed cost tens of millions of lives and much suffering.

Even the American and French Republics were born in the 18th century of bloody revolutions and China has already been through one bloody revolution between the Communist and Nationalist (KMT) parties that lasted from 1925 to 1949 soon after Dr. Sun Yat-sen died. To discover more of this era, learn from The Roots of Madness

I admit that I did not know much about the crime that Liu Xiaobo was guilty of that landed him in a Chinese prison for eleven years. I knew as much as most in the West that he was an advocate for democracy and earned an eleven-year prison sentence for his beliefs.

However, to learn more about why a Chinese court sentenced Liu Xiaobo to eleven years in prison for subversion, Google led me to a New Zealand site where I learned about Liu Xiaobo’s Manifesto.

Since the Western media seldom goes into detail beyond the fact that Liu Xiaobo is an activist for democracy in China, I was ignorant of the history behind Liu’s movement.

If you are interested in seeing the list of the demands Liu Xiaobo’s Manifesto makes, visit Charter 08 at Wikipedia.

In Part two, I will examine how Liu Xiaobo broke China’s laws and earned a prison sentence. Click here to go to Liu Xiaobo’s Manifesto, Charter 08 – Part 2

______________

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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

1 Comment | China, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

US–China Relations as 2010 Ends

December 18, 2010

Al Jazeera English reported on US China Relations saying, China had a good 2009. It marked not only its 60th anniversary as the People’s Republic but managed to avoid a recession that engulfed most of the world.

While America’s economy suffered horribly during the recession, China’s birthday celebrations arrived with its economic engine growing at a steady eight percent, while China did what needed to be done to put its people to work.

All these gains saw China achieve a more equal relationship with the United States.

Then there was the incident over Google threatening to leave China. 

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded, “We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions. We look to the Chinese government for an explanation.”

Then when a Chinese court recently sentenced Liu Xiaobo, a Western style democracy activist, to prison, the US sent a diplomat to the Chinese courthouse to speak in public.

Once there, he said to the media, “The United States government is deeply concerned by the sentence of eleven years in prison announced today in the case of prominent Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo under the charge of inciting subversion of state power.”

Gerald Tan of Al Jazeera concluded with, “These shifting tones signal tougher times ahead for the two world powers.

Note from Blog host:  Al Jazeera should have mentioned other bumps in the road the US has had with China in the past such as the 1999 US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia or the 2001 collision between a US surveillance plane and a Chinese PLA fighter jet near China’s coast.

These incidents were worse and eventually relations improved again between the US and China.

______________

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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Building an Empty City

December 17, 2010

In November 2009, Al Jazeera English reported that part of China’s stimulus plan was to create jobs for Chinese losing work due to the 2008 economic crises (caused by New York’s greedy Wall Street and US banks).

To do this, Beijing pledged $585 (US) billion in stimulus spending.  Some of that money went to encourage social development and domestic spending.

Rural residents received up to 17% in rebates for buying televisions and refrigerators.

However, about $220 billion went into building roads and other public infrastructure. Two hundred billion dollars went into expanding the railway system.

The theory was to keep people working and spending.

For example, China built the empty city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia in just five years for a population of one million.

One reason was to increase GDP by spending more money. Since the more a country builds, the more its economic activity increases and the higher the GDP will be.

Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan reported that most of the residential apartments in Ordos have been sold but remain empty since the buyers bought them as investments.

The reason that Ordos was built in this location of Inner Mongolia was because the region is China’s Texas (oil country), which has created many millionaires.

______________

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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | capitalism, China, Communism, cultural differences, economy, family values | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s PISA Pride

December 17, 2010

When I first visited China in 1999, my wife warned me that the Chinese men I might saw peeing or defecating in public parks (there weren’t many public toilets then—China started building public toilets to get ready for the 2008 Olympics) in Shanghai were peasants from rural China.

In fact, where my wife grew up in Shanghai (in the picturesque French sector), there was one toilet in a three-story house where several families lived and the stove was next to the toilet.

Since then, I learned that China is one country with many cultures and languages. Even rural and urban China is different as the US is to rural Mexico.

Rural China until recently is or was almost a kingdom from the Middle Ages while much of urban China was modern.

However, after the 1980s, hundreds of millions of rural Chinese migrated to the cities to find jobs that paid better than being a peasant still stuck in the Middle Ages.

Unfortunately, these people sometimes called Stick People brought their (uncivilized by Western standards) rural habits with them.

In 1999, I witnessed rural Chinese near Xian living in huts made of straw with dirt floors and no plumbing meaning no toilets.

This is what the Communist Party inherited when it came to power in 1949. The Party did not create this situation. After Mao died, the Communist Party had to rebuild an educational system that had been devastated by the Cultural Revolution and before then there was little or no educational system in rural China.

Most of the schools in China up until 1950s were in the cities and focused on educating the ruling class.

It wasn’t until the 1980s, that the Party Rebuilt China’s education system. Over time, the education system spread from urban to rural China where it is still being developed.

I don’t recall the exact stats I used in previous posts about the literacy level in China when Mao died, but I believe it was about 20% in 1976.

Imagine what the effort must have been for the Party to educate a population that was at least 80 percent illiterate in 1976 to today when randomly selected Chinese students in Shanghai earned the highest scores in the world on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test beating 65 other nations. See: Time

______________

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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, education, family values | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Flaws of Democracy and Humanitarianism – Part 7/7

December 17, 2010

Left Coast Voices posted a piece about Liu Xiabo, a leader of the Chinese democracy movement, who won the latest Nobel Peace Prize. My response turned into a seven part series.

What is the freedom that Liu Xiabo wants for China? 

From today’s Western democratic perspective, it means the individual is king and may do whatever he or she wants even rape children, murder and steal with the knowledge that his or her rights are protected regardless of the crimes and suffering caused.

Then there is the Western, Christian concept that even violent murderers and/or rapists of infants may ask God for forgiveness, and that forgiveness will be granted no matter the crime—no matter the suffering caused in society.

Meanwhile, in China, other than restrictions on political dissent and a limited number of religious choices, the people are free to live any honest lifestyle he or she can afford to support, as is the case in the West.

As for religious freedom in China, that is not important to most Chinese since Religion in China has been characterized by pluralism since the beginning of recorded Chinese history as far back as five thousand years.

Chinese religions are family-oriented and do not demand the exclusive adherence of members.

Generally, the percentages of people who call themselves religious in China have been the lowest in the world. This does not mean that most Chinese do not believe in heaven or God.

They just do not need to belong to organized religions such as Christianity or Islam.

In fact, evidence in the West says that political dissent isn’t an important freedom since about half of the West’s eligible voters don’t vote anyway.

After all, nonvoters in America are too busy enjoying many of the freedoms that are now enjoyed by the citizens of China.

However, I admit that I enjoy my First Amendment rights as a US citizen, or I might not be writing this Blog defending China’s right to decide its political future.

As a US citizen, I do vote and express my political opinions, but I don’t stage public demonstrations as Liu Xiabo did in China. If you study the Chinese Constitution, you will discover that what he did could be considered illegal in China’s collective culture.

Return to The Flaws of Democracy and Humanitarianism – Part 6

______________

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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »