One of the greatest atrocities in history was the rape of Nanking. All humans are capable of great evil and this is an example. Thousand were murdered and tossed into the Yangtze River. There were so many bodies, the water turned red. Others were buried alive after digging their own graves.
For her book, Iris Chang went to China and interviewed the few hundred survivors still living to document the horrible crimes the Japanese committed. She talked to one man who, as a child, watched his mother and little brothers being murdered.
Another witness tells Chang how she found her dead grandparents, mother and little sisters naked and raped.
There is a scene showing Chang transcribing taped interviews and it is mentioned that she had nightmares from this project. Chang said, someone had to listen, to record and validate the experience of the survivors and make it public.
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.
Warning, the video linked to this post may be disturbing.
Although China and Nanking suffered from internal war and strife, China never invaded another nation in its four-thousand year history. China had always been self-sufficient and never needed anything from other countries. To wage war on its neighbors was not part of the Chinese character.
Nanking was the capital of China from the third to the 6th century. In the 14th century, the first Ming Emperor made Nanking the capital again. To protect the capital, the largest city wall in the world was built. It was fifty -feet high, forty-feet wide and more than twenty-five miles long.
On July 1937, Japan attacked China. Chiang Kai-shek made himself the commander of China’s army and navy. The battle for Shanghai came first. Tens of thousands of innocent Chinese were killed while 300 thousand Chinese troops died. After losing Shanghai, the Chinese army retreated to Nanking.
The Japanese soldiers were ordered to burn all, steal all, and kill all as they advanced through the countryside toward Nanking. It is estimated that 300 thousand innocent Chinese were murdered.
For over one-hundred days, Japanese bombers bombed Nanking, while Chinese troops fought fiercely defending the city. Eventually, Chang Kai-shek fled with most of his generals and government officials, but ordered one general to stay behind with the army and fight.
As Nanking fell to the Japanese, mostly women, children and the elderly were killed by the tens of thousands.
Part 2 continues the Rape of Nanking and it is so shocking and disturbing, you must go to YouTube and sign in showing that you are at least 18. If you do not wish to watch Part 2, the next post will continue to report about the Rape of Nanking, and it will not be as disturbing.
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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I find it interesting and amusing to read this obsession in the West about China’s labor practices. Most of what I read in the media and comments to Blog posts have a superior tone as if these people come from a culture that is paradigm of virtue.
No one in the West has earned a seat to sainthood. In an Associated Press piece by Elaine Kurtenbach, we see Western corporate greed dripping dollar signs from hungry vampire fangs in these quotes about China, “Many companies are striving to stay profitable by shifting factories to cheaper areas farther inland or to other developing countries, and a few are even resuming production in the West.… I have 15 major clients. My job is to give the best advice I can give. I tell it like it is. I tell them, put your helmet on, it’s going to get ugly,” said Goodwin…”
From BindApple.com comes this statement as if no one else in the world works these hours, “Foxconn and Inventec are two powerful brands that not many of you heard of. When Apple signed a partnership with these manufacturers, the average worker, lived and worked in the factory, doing more than 60 hours of work in a week.”
America and most Western nations are not paradigms of virtue. Labor in the West didn’t get where it is today without a struggle. All one has to do is look at history to discover what it took to earn more for less hours and be treated with “some” respect in the workplace.
If you spend time at the AFL-CIA’s Labor History Timeline in America, you will discover that in 1791, the first labor strike in the building trades took place in Philadelphia demanding a 10-hour workday bill of rights. In 1835, there was a general strike for a 10-hour workday in the same city.
When there was a national uprising of railroad workers in 1877, ten Irish coal miners were hanged in Pennsylvania and later nine more were hanged. Then in 1914, there was the Ludlow Massacre of 13 women and children and 7 men in a Colorado coal miners’ strike. In 1934, during the Great Depression, there was an upsurge in strikes, including a national textile strike, which failed.
Click on the Child Labor Public Education Project and you will learn that “Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American history.” In fact, “(American) factory owners viewed them (children) as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike.”
This situation in the US didn’t change until, “Child labor began to decline as the labor and reform movements grew and labor standards in general began improving, increasing the political power of working people and other social reformers to demand legislation regulating child labor.” Even then, it wasn’t until 1938 that child labor laws were enacted to protect America’s children from exploitation.
So, if you are one of those paradigms of virtue who feels the need to criticize what is going on in China today, consider America’s labor history before you open your mouth or finger dance your computer keyboard.
It took more than two-hundred years for the US to reach the place it is today with a standard 40-hour workweek with benefits and overtime pay for many workers, while removing child labor from the workplace.
China didn’t start until 1950, when Mao created laws that made women equal to men. Progress stopped during Mao’sGreat Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution, which went on for almost thirty years.
Since 1980, China has had about thirty years to evolve, while in America the income gap between the rich and poor widens as if the US is taking backward steps while union membership shrinks.
In fact, Chinese manufactures may be building plants in the US to take advantage of cheaper labor. After all, Japanese companies like Toyota and Honda have already done that.
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 evidence says that America doesn’t want to share its global “Super Power” status with anyone. In U.S. Missiles Deployed Near China Send a Message, Time shows that the US mindset concerning the military and war stays strong.
However, it must be confusing to Americans when the Feds continue to justify spending heavily on defense at the same time that China cuts its defense spending in half, and Time asks Why Is China Slowing its Military Spending?
China has one aircraft carrier.
In fact, Time says, “China’s 2010 military budget, which is awaiting legislative approval, will be $78 billion. That would make it second only to the United States, which for 2010 has a total budget of $663.8 billion. U.S. spending is equivalent to 4.7% of the nation’s GDP, while China’s defense outlay equals about 1.5% of its estimated 2010 GDP.”
What’s wrong with the Chinese? Don’t they know America’s military industrial partnership “needs” a bad cop to scare the American people to justify maintaining the most expensive and powerful military on the earth?
Too bad most Americans still don’t live on farms. When America was rural, the people were not as warlike. Before Pearl Harbor was bombed, most Americans didn’t want anything to do with war. The same situation happened in World War I when almost half of the people lived on farms and in small communities, which is sort of like China today with 700 million living in rural areas.
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.
Yves at naked capitalism provided a perfect example of Sinophobic comments when writing about doing business in China. In GE CEO Immelt Gets Pissy About China, Obama, I agreed with Yves when he pointed out the hypocrisy of a US corporate executive complaining about how Chinese officialdom is not supportive of GE’s business goals.
However, Yves then quotes “Poorly Made in China: An Insider’s Account of the Tactics Behind China’s Production” and selected quotes like “Chinese manufacturers cut corners wherever they can, from product quality to factory equipment and maintenance…” Before you believe everything Yves writes about doing business in China, I suggest you check out what China Law Blog says on the subject.
I have met Westerners doing business in China, and those who are carless get burned and others, who do their homework and know what they are getting into, have few if any complaints. When a careless, lazy deal with a Chinese manufacturer turns sour, a careful examination often shows that the fault lies with the foreigner—not the Chinese. Understanding China’s culture and laws is the key to success.
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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