China: The Roots of Madness – Part 6/8

June 11, 2010

In Part 6, Theodore H. White tells of an incident with Chiang Kai-shek’s troops when an officer tells peasants they were Mao’s men.  When White asks why lie, he’s told the peasants wouldn’t help if they knew the truth. In fact, regardless of the suffering from Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, this loyalty never wavers.

Joseph Stilwell, the commanding US general in China, is not happy with Chiang since he is not fighting Japan. Chiang says he needs his troops to fight the Communists. In 1945, America invites representatives from Chiang’s government  to take part in Japan’s surrender on the battleship Missouri and ignores the Communists.

USS Missouri

An American ambassador urges Mao to join Chiang in a unified government. To bring this about, America offers Mao protection and there are face-to-face negotiations between Mao and Chiang.  Meanwhile, in secret, Chiang moves his troops to launch an assault in Manchuria.

America urges Chiang to win the people by implementing Sun Yat-sen’s promised reforms.  Instead, Chiang’s war causes run-away inflation. Essential good become too expensive. The people want peace, and Mao offers the peasants what they want—land.

Continued in Part 7 & 8, The Roots of Madness or return to Part 5, The Roots of Madness

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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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Walking and Talking Softly the 2nd Time Around

June 11, 2010

You may recall Google shouting in the media about being hacked and then leaving mainland China for Hong Kong after they stopped censoring content as they had agreed when they first went to China. 

Well, although the Chinese have a saying that “Internet multinationals all fail in China, Google was just the last one to go,” China has more people on-line than the population of the US.  The temptation is big. Four hundred million people surfing the Internet is a magnet for Internet businesses.

Sarah Lacy at Tech Crunch writes that China is the only country outside the US that’s given birth to several billion-dollar Internet companies and there’s a lot of growth left. With a market like this in China, US companies are quietly slipping back in to try again. 

The first time around, Yahoo was the only US company to survive, and they did it by buying a 40% share of Alibaba in 2005. Now there are whispers that Alibaba might buy Yahoo.

Remember Who’s Hacking Whom?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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China: The Roots of Madness – Part 5/8

June 11, 2010

In Part 5, Mao’s troops in the hills of Yunnan grows food. His army, dressed in shabby clothing wearing straw sandals, doesn’t look like a fighting force. Mao says the people are the sea and guerrillas are like fish that swim in the sea. Within a year, Mao’s army grows to 200,000.

Meanwhile Chiang Kai-shek’s army loses battles and cities to the Japanese. To continue fighting, his government and army moves to the deep mountain city of Chongqing in Sichuan province. In 1939, the Japanese start bombing Chongqing 24/7. When asked about the Japanese threat, Chiang says that the Japanese are a disease of the skin, but the communists are a disease of the heart.

Then on December 7, 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and America enters the war. War supplies start to trickle to China through India and across the Himalayas to Chiang Kai-shek’s four-million-man army. However, his government is corrupt, his troops are poorly fed and moral is low.

Chiang Kai-shek is accepted as an equal among the West’s leaders while Mao works to keep up the moral of his Communist troops through political training—something Western leaders don’t understand and criticize.

Continued in Part 6, The Roots of Madness or return to Part 4, The Roots of Madness

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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

Circular Thinking and Arrows

June 10, 2010

The school where I taught had students from more than a dozen nationalities. For that reason, I attended in-services to become aware of cultural differences.  I learned that Westerners think as an arrow flies—straight.  However, those from the Middle East and Asia think in circles as in figurative language with possibly more than one meaning.

This means that when someone from the Middle East or Asia says or does one thing, he or she may mean something different.

North Korea Map

Recently, China has been under global pressure to condemn North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean warship on March 26 that killed 46 sailors. The Christian Science Monitor reported on June 8 that China has  blamed North Korea for killing three of its citizens and arrested a North Korean government official for drug trafficking—something unheard of before.

Could this be China’s circular way to pressure North Korea to admit sinking the South Korean ship or to stop threatening war and return to the peace table? North Korea relies on China for food and financial aid and if China has a reason to limit or stop that support, the stability of Kim Jon-il’s government would be threatened.

See China and North Korea

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China: The Roots of Madness – Part 4/8

June 10, 2010

In Part 4, Chiang Kai-shek’s army is not ready when Japan invades Manchuria. He doesn’t have tanks, the artillery is old and the Chinese are learning about airplanes.

Meanwhile, the Communists that Chiang thought he had destroyed are back. Mao knew the peasants lived in horrible poverty. He promised land reforms and by 1932 has millions of supporters.

The language describing Mao is not flattering. Yes, when Mao ruled China, he was a brutal dictator. However, Chiang Kai-shek was also a brutal dictator. But Chiang converted to Christian in 1929, and the West still refers to him as the president of China—not a dictator.

Instead of fighting Japan, Chiang’s army bombs villages that Mao controls killing tens of thousands of noncombatants. Mao takes his ninety thousand troops on the famous thousand-mile Long March. A year later, only a few thousand remain. Mao calls for unity to fight Japan.

One of Chiang’s generals, Zhang Xueliang, forces him to sit down with the Communists where Chiang Kai-shek agrees to fight Japan. As soon as Chiang returns to his capital, he breaks the agreement and throws Zhang in prison.

Continued in The Roots of Madness- Part 5 or return to Part 3

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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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