Masters at Global Bartering, The Dragon’s Gift

July 2, 2010

US businessmen and politicians could learn from China, who learned from Japan.  Instead of debt-ridden countries giving money away as the US does, America could be earning profits.

I read a fascinating piece in the Global Post by Stephanie Hanson that shows us China has elevated the art of barter to Ferengi levels. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay.  I’ve been watching Star Trek, Deep Space 9, and the Ferengi are an alien race who has turned the art of business into a science with a rule book.

While the US gives hundreds of billions of dollars to poor countries as aid, China trades or barters loans with African nations and in return China builds that country’s infrastructure. To understand, Hanson recommends reading “The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa“.

Hanson writes, “In the 1970s, Japan extended aid to China that helped the country build transportation and energy infrastructure. This aid was repaid in barrels of Chinese oil. Now, across the African continent, China is extending concessional loans to African governments for roads, power plants, factories and hydro projects, in many cases using the same kind of financing arrangements it learned about from Japan.”

See Doing Business in China

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Capitalist Revolution (Part 3 of 9)

July 2, 2010

In May 1978, Deng invited President Carter’s National Security Advisor to Beijing. Deng needed a deal with the US but he wanted something in return. The US had to end its friendship with the breakaway republic of Taiwan—an island China considered theirs. America agreed and closed its embassy in Taiwan to open full diplomatic relations in China. A few weeks later, Deng became the first Chinese leader to visit the US.

Deng Xiaoping meets President Carter in the White House and signs the new alliance.  Deng says, “Mr. President, we share the sense of being on a historic mission.  Sino-US relations have reached a new beginning.”

Later in the White House, Carter mentions human rights and says that people in China should have the right to leave if they wanted to. Deng says, “Sure, how many Chinese would you want—forty or fifty million?”  Deng tours the US.

After US diplomats arrive in China, a new cultural revolution starts.  With the Chinese and Americans now the best of friends, Deng opened China to American companies, who would get cheap labor while China would get money to grow an economy.

Return to China’s Capitalist Revolution Part 2 or go to Part 4

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 Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. 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.

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

Driving the Planet

July 1, 2010

CNNMoney’s Global Forum writes about China spreading money globally seeking resources. After all, China has cash reserves and is growing an economy with goals to lift hundreds of millions of Chinese into a middle-class American lifestyle. America, on the other hand, is in debt and spending money that it doesn’t have while its middle class is drowning in credit cards and sub-prime mortgages.

However, what benefits China, may also benefit the globe. Global Forum mentioned that Chinese solar companies are driving costs down so governments, like the US, may not have to offer subsidies as an incentive to get people to invest in renewable energy.

The CEO of China Mobile said people in China’s poorest, rural provinces were buying low priced mobile phones. If mobile phone are that low, why aren’t we seeing those prices in the US?  I priced phones for our daughter, who is on her way to college, and the model I liked was about $100 or 680 yuan—more than most China’s peasants earn in two months.

I wonder if we can buy mobile phones in China and slip our old chip into that new, lower-priced phone.

See China’s Cheap Price Structure

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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. 

Sign up for an RSS Feed for iLook China

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Capitalist Revolution (Part 2 of 9)

July 1, 2010

In 1978, Deng was elected leader of the Communist Party beating the Maoists.  His goal was to have China’s economy catch up with the West within 20 years. “In this new age we will focus our efforts on modernizing industry, agriculture, technology and national defense to transform the country by the end of the century in a Chinese way.”

The first challenge was to grow food for China’s starving peasants. During Mao’s failed programs, millions had died. At the end of 1979, peasants in Anhui had started a private farming system. In one year, food production had increased three fold.

Deng was happy to support whatever worked, but local party bosses resisted change after 30 years of Maoism. There was a saying, “We’d rather have the weeds of socialism than the fruits of capitalism.”

Deng surprised the Maoists by giving his blessing to the farmers of Anhui, and by 1981, Anhui was feeding itself. They said, “We’ve been liberated. It’s not like in the past when peasants were rounded up like an army.”

The next step was to modernize China’s industry and that meant China had to work with the United States. Deng also wanted and ally because of threats from the Soviet Union.

Return to China’s Capitalist Revolution Part 1 or go to Part 3

_________________________

 Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. 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.

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

Sinophobia and the Nation With the Soul of a Church

July 1, 2010

An old friend of mine once wrote in an e-mail that Communism was evil and if China didn’t do what America wanted, the US would spank them. That and his endless born-again preaching bruised about five decades of friendship. Now, we don’t communicate much.

The definition for Sinophobia is one who fears or dislikes China, its people or its culture—in other words, an ignorant, brainwashed bigot (my opinion).

This morning, I finished reading  An Exceptional Obsession by John Lee, which was published in The American Interest. On page 42, Lee wrote, “Above all, Chinese leaders are anxious about having to deal with a society so different from their own, and by different we don’t mean a superficial contrast between communism and capitalism.  China’s is a communal culture; America’s is individualist. China is rooted in its land longer and more deeply than any society on earth. America is an immigrant society and an unprecedentedly mobile one at that. China has never institutionalized the rule of law; America is fundamentally based on it. China has never experienced deistic religions; America, as Chesterton once said is “a nation with the soul of a church.”

Lee’s comparison reminded me of the few shallow Communist haters and Sinophobic people I’ve run into on the Internet, who live in this nation with the soul of a church. Occasionally, one crawls out of the woodpile on a thousand legs.

Discover Power Corrupts

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. 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.

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.

Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, capitalism, China, Chinese Culture, Christianity, Communism, Confucianism, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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