China’s Long History with Burma/Myanmar – Part 3/4

September 26, 2010

What is a democracy? A democracy is where the numerical majority of an organized group makes decisions binding on the whole group. A Republic, on the other hand, does not allow majority rule.

China is not a Western democracy or has a Christian majority, never has and probably never will.


When you hear the estimated number of Christians in China, do not forget that China has more than 1.3 billion people.

Today, China, by definition, is a Republic and has one political party with two recognized factions.

In November 2005, Cheng Li, the Director of Research for the John L. Thornton China Center, presented a paper at a Conference on “Chinese Leadership, Politics, and Policy” at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In One Party, Two Factions: Chinese Bipartisanship in the Making, Cheng Li makes a case that there are two informal and almost equally powerful coalitions within China’s central government.

Li calls one of the coalitions the “elitists” led by former Party Chief Jiang Zemin and now largely led by Vice President of the PRC Zeng Qinghong.

He identified the other coalition as the “populists” led by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. The core faction of the “populists” is the Chinese Communist Youth League.

Li also says it is unlikely that China will have a multi-party political system in the near future.

See Christianity in China or return to China’s Long History with Burma/Myanmar – Part 2

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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 Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD) – Part 4/4

September 25, 2010

The Tang Dynasty did not discriminate against ethnic groups.  All were treated the same, and people from minority groups held positions of great importance.

In fact, minorities became prime ministers, generals and members of the imperial garrison.

The mother’s of several Tang emperors were not from the Han majority.

Tang Emperor Taizong handled relationships with ethnic minorities skillfully.

One motto of his was, “In the past, Chinese emperors emphasized the Han people at the expense of minority groups, but I believe they are all from one family so they support me.”

The ethnic minorities in northwest China revered Emperor Taizong and called him Tian Kehan.

Kehan means “emperor” and Tian Kehan means “the son of Heaven“.

In 755 AD, people in the Tang capital sang and danced to celebrate the 70th birthday of Emperor Taizong.

In October 1970, archeologists discovered more than a thousand Tang artifacts. One was a silver kettle featuring dancing horses with cups in their mouths, which matched the historical record for Emperor Taizong’s seventieth birthday.

Poetry flourished. Although the Tang Dynasty lasted less than 300 years, more than 50,000 poems had been produced— all of them published today in one collection of Tang poems.

Return to The Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD) – Part 3 or start with Part 1

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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. 

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Long History with Burma/Myanmar – Part 2/4

September 25, 2010

Until this piece, most of what I read about China in The Economist has been educational but this one was stilted and biased – another example of China bashing.

What does the Beijing based unnamed critic writing in The Economist expect – that China will adopt America’s evangelical, neo-conservative role to spread “democracy” and “Christianity” to the world through nation building?

Wait, stop the presses!

Did I hear that right? Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the critic from The Economist suggest that he or she expects China to spread “democracy” to countries like Burma and North Korea, which are by definition dictatorships, which the U.S. has a long history of supporting. See Cold War Origins of the CIA Holocaust to learn more.

Why do critics in America want dictatorships like Burma and North Korea to be democracies when America is a Republic, according to the Founding Fathers and the Constitution of the United States?

See Two Republics to learn more or return to China’s Long History with Burma/Myanmar – Part 1

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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 Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD) – Part 3/4

September 25, 2010

Later, after the first Tang emperor, Taoism was removed as the national religion and all religions were treated equal.

This benefitted Buddhism.

In 1987, archeologists discovered an underground temple/palace below the Famen Temple that had been built and sealed during the Tang Dynasty and found a solid-gold pagoda and inside was a finger bone of the founder of Buddhism, Sakyamuni.

The seventeen-hundred year-old Famen Temple was built during the Eastern Han Dynasty. To date, this is the largest underground Buddhist palace/temple in China.

Although China is known as the home of tea, it wasn’t until the Tang Dynasty that drinking tea became part of the culture when the Chinese also invented noodles.

Chang’an, known as Xian when it was the capital of China’s first emperor, had an east and west market that sold goods from around the known world.

A popular past time for both men and women during the dynasty was playing polo, which had been introduced from Persia.

Art, music and dance flourished in the Tang capital.  The political flexibility of the Tang Dynasty promoted social tolerance leading to stability.

Continued in Tang Dynasty – Part 4 or return to The Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD) – Part 2

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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. 

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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China’s Long History with Burma/Myanmar – Part 1/4

September 24, 2010

The Economist (September 9, 2010) published a critical piece about China’s relationship with Myanmar – Welcome, Neighbor – China hosts another tinpot dictator from next door. 

“Tinpot dictator” are the two key words in the title of this opinion piece, as if the United States has never hosted “tinpot” dictators.

A well-written criticism of the U.S. government from Sri Lanka sets the record straight.

“I wish the spokesman of the (U.S.) State Department … would explain how Washington’s concern for democracy in Sri Lanka squares with US support for repressive regimes such as the one in Uzbekistan or the autocratic rule in Saudi Arabia, both countries in which the U.S. has military facilities.

“In post-World War II period, Washington has militarily propped up such dictators including several in South Korea, Ferdinand Marcos who was ousted by the Filipino people, Indonesia’s Suharto also thrown out by the people, Vietnam’s Dinh Diem, various military governments in Thailand, Singapore’s autocrat Lee Kwan Yew, the military dictators in Pakistan from Ayub Khan to Pervez Musharraf, all of them from our part of the world…” Source: The Ugly Americans Once More (Lankaweb, Sri Lanaka’s first Social Media website)

The Economist only mentions a half century of history between China and Burma/Myanmar.

Yet China’s history with Burma/Myanmar goes back about two thousand years.

The opinion piece also does not mention that China, since 1982, has not been into nation building as the U.S. has since 9/11, when President G.W. Bush launched wars against Iraq and Afghanistan with threats toward Iran and North Korea. 

See In the National Interest

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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

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