Playing Politics for Simple Minds

October 30, 2010

Shikha Dalmia writes for Forbes and says, China Bashing is for Losers. My first thought was, who is this sensible person?

After all, China bashing is a popular sport in America and ranks slightly below basketball, baseball and football. Whenever Americans lose jobs or there is a national election, it is China bashing season— before China it was Japan or some other country or race or religion.

I discovered that Dalmia is a senior policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank. She is also a columnist at Forbes and won the first 2009 Bastiat Prize for Online journalism for her column in Forbes and Reason magazines.

What she says about China bashers is true. Since I started writing iLook China, I’ve discovered that most of my critics know little to nothing about China and base their flawed opinions on stereotypes that should have died with Mao in 1976.

Instead, ignorance rules the day and politicians love that because it leads to votes from people who shouldn’t vote.

However, Shikha Dalmia knows what she is talking about. She points out that protectionism doesn’t work.

Dalmia provides evidence to make her point.

She writes that between 2005 and 2008, the yuan rose 21% but the trade divide, instead of going down, went up by $66 billion because while a strong yuan increases the dollar price for Chinese goods, it also lowers the yuan price of foreign raw materials.

She then uses the iPod as an example. The iPod, Dalmia says, is designed in America and its 451 parts are made in dozens of countries. When all those parts arrive in China to be assembled, that adds only $4 to the price if a $150 item.

This means if the US punishes China by erecting trade barriers, people lose jobs all along the manufacturing line, which starts in the US at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters.

Dalmia concludes by stating a truth few know—that Republicans and Democrats are sowing the seeds of their own destruction, which will lead to more suffering when the US economy drops lower. 

I suggest you read Dalmia’s piece at Forbes to understand why global trade is too complex for simple minds to understand.

Learn more about the Chinese Stereotype Alive and Rotten in America

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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. 

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 | America, American culture, China, Communism, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Machines of Ancient China — Part 4/4

October 29, 2010

Qin Shi Huangdi (259 to 210 BC), the first emperor who unified China, summoned 700,000 people to build his tomb. These people probably worked at least ten years or longer.

Modern day workshops that duplicated what it took to create the Terra Cotta warriors used ancient materials and methods. It took twenty days to complete one warrior.  Each warrior used an average of 130 kilos or 286 pounds of clay.

To complete the entire army, more than one thousand tons was needed.

Another Chinese inventor during the Song Dynasty created a machine known as the Cosmic Engine, the ancient world’s astronomical computer.

Su Song was the inventor.  The Cosmic Engine was so complicated that for centuries no one (even Westerners) understood how it worked. Today, few westerners know that it existed.

However, records show that the Cosmic Engine was created in 1092 AD.

The Cosmic Engine calculated time—not just hours and minutes but weeks, months and seasons reflecting how the earth moves around the sun. It also calculated how the earth and planets moved through space.

The Cosmic Engine was five stories tall and its working innards are complex.

Today, we know exactly how this device was created since Su Song left detailed blueprints and directions of exactly how it was built. Song’s Cosmic Engine worked from the eleventh century until enemies of the Song Dynasty destroyed it.

Using Song’s blueprints, the Science and Technology Museum in Beijing built a fully accurate reconstruction. Another reconstruction exists in London.

This ingenious device led to the invention of Western clocks centuries later.

Today, we know that many of the inventions and discoveries the modern world is built on originated in ancient Imperial China.

Return to the Machines of Ancient China – Part 3 or to discover more inventions see China Points the Way

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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. 

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, Chinese history, science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Global Slave to the US Dollar

October 29, 2010

I read an interesting post at Business Insider by Charles Hugh Smith – Here’s Why China loses Whether The Dollar Strengthens or Weakens.

Smith’s opinion is that China cannot win the currency war with the US because the yuan’s value is linked to the dollar and China is trapped.

He says that if the US dollar loses value, China will pay more for the imported commodities needed to fuel its economy—the lower the dollar sinks, the more commodities will cost.

If the dollar strengthens, goods manufactured in China for export will cost more to sell.

If Smith is right, this explains why China wants to replace the dollar with a basket of currencies to compute the value of the yuan for global trade.

This also explains why other nations (such as the BRIC), a few oil rich Middle Eastern kingdoms and several European nations want the same thing China wants.

The world appears to be exhausted by America’s Wild West debt ridden economy and they want to dismount from the dollar and replace that old nag with a herd.

I wonder what Smith thinks would happen if the dollar were replaced as the globe’s master currency.

Learn more about the Sinking Dollar

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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. 

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, economy, politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Machines of Ancient China — Part 3/4

October 29, 2010

More evidence has been discovered that the Chinese had a long history using geared machines.

Beautiful, engraved jade rings were found in tombs dated back to 400 BC. 

After studying the elaborately designed rings, archeologists believe the only way to produce this precision was by using a machine—a device known as a compound machine is one that synchronizes rotational with linear motion.

Over thousands of years, these technological innovations traveled from east to west along the Silk Route.

In fact, there is an archeological site in China that provides solid evidence of the abilities of China’s ancient engineers and craftsmen.

The first emperor of China’s Terra Cotta army is that evidence.

Located near Xian, it is considered by many to be the eighth wonder of the ancient world.

Over eight thousand human sized statues were created by Chinese engineers and craftsmen to protect Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi more than twenty-two hundred years ago.

These Terra Cotta warriors were armed with over ten thousand bronze weapons—the exact weapons used in combat. Amazing as it sounds, these weapons were coated with chromium, which wasn’t developed in the West until the 1930s.

It is believed that these warriors and their weapons were mass-produced in factories that match today’s modern factories.

The most impressive discoveries were the emperor’s full-scale chariots made of gold, silver and bronze. During the Qin Dynasty, the Chinese had established high standards for metallurgy and metal production.

The methods used to build these chariots were highly advanced and are still in use today.

Return to the Machines of Ancient China – Part 2 or to discover more inventions see With or Without Paper

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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. 

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

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Have or Have Nots at the G-20 in South Korea

October 28, 2010

The world appears to be divided between nations that have spent too much and those that save.

In China, people that hold onto money are called “Iron Roosters”. In the US, we call people who save stingy or skin flints or other insulting terms. The average saving rate among Chinese is about 40%, while the average family in the US carries several thousand dollars in credit card debt.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the US is among the ‘Have Nots’. In G-20 Deal to Curb China is Weakened, Evan Ramstad and Bob Davis said that “China, Japan and Germany all have surpluses; the U.S. has a deficit.”

However, the US is not alone. “Australia, Canada, Britain and France, all of which have current-account deficits, lined up with the US” to pressure China to let the value of the yuan rise.

The US and other Western nations that have overspent need to export more products to other countries and import less.  For this to happen, the US dollar must be worth less than the Chinese yuan to pressure U.S. consumers to stop buying products made in China when prices for those products become higher than what is manufactured in America.

This means that countries with money in the bank want to rely less on exports for growth and more on homegrown demand instead of buying more products from the debt-ridden nations.

Germany’s current account surplus is about 6%, Japan’s 3% and China is at 4.7%. The U.S. is running a 3.2% deficit, which should be no surprise.

It appears that China won this round and will not loosen controls on the value of the yuan yet.  The US went into the G-20 summit in South Korea wanting to punish China for US consumer appetites to buy cheap foreign made goods.

Instead, little was accomplished.

It’s all about the national interest of each nation, and China and America have opposing interests.

If America wins, China loses.

In fact, whoever, wins this global currency war will be the stronger for it. The question is, Will the Iron Rooster win or the Buy Now Pay Later nation?

See Democracy’s Economic Roller Coaster

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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. 

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, cultural differences, economy | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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