Striking Differences

October 18, 2010

In Psychology Today, I read a post by Christopher Peterson.

I wrote a comment to his post, but addressed it to the wrong person. Since I couldn’t edit the comment, I have no way to fix the mistake.

Peterson writes about how much he enjoyed his recent August trip to China. He said, “I loved the Chinese people I met! We did not talk politics with anyone…”

In fact, I’ve been to China about ten times since 1999 and have never talked politics to anyone there.

There is no reason for that. After all, in China, the government runs the country and doesn’t ask the people for advice.

I sometimes wonder who is running America since there are so many opinions and so much anger.

Peterson also said, “China is not only a highly collectivist culture but also one that takes a very long time perspective on things. We often heard mention of the ‘seven generation’ view, which means that the Chinese take into account the consequences of policies for at least seven future generations.”

Peterson also mentioned, “the Chinese want their people and especially their children to be happy… There are of course cultural differences in what constitutes legitimate happiness.”

Then I read a post in the Democratic Underground, which was striking in its darkness and inferred unhappiness and anger.

The Democratic Underground said, “in the past week or so, at least 29 candidates (running for political office in the U.S. November midterms) have unveiled advertisements suggesting that their opponents have been too sympathetic to China and, as a result, Americans have suffered.”

Evan B. Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising, said that “China has sort of become a straw-man villain in this election” in a way that elicits comparisons to the sentiments toward Japan in the 1980s over car manufacturing and Mexico in the 1990s over the North American Free Trade Agreement. Source: Democratic Underground

It’s common in America for politicians to turn the people’s anger and unhappiness on a scapegoat. It helps win elections.

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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

Unbalanced Reporting from a Dream

October 17, 2010

In Unbalanced China from The Wall Street Journal’s The Source, Alen Mattich lists dire predictions of how an imbalanced Chinese society may crash economically.

Anything is possible.  However, if China crashes, the first sound we hear may be the U.S. hitting the ground.

Alen Mattich lists the possibility of a trade war between the U.S. and China which could “threaten to bankrupt whole swathes of industry” if China doesn’t devalue its currency, the yuan.

Mattich is betting this prediction on other countries joining the U.S. in a trade war with China. Some may join but the odds are many will not.

Recently, the BRIC, Turkey, France, Japan and several oil-rich Middle East countries have sided with China against the shaky dollar, and countries like Brazil that depend on trade with China won’t side with the U.S.

Then Mattich mentioned the possibility of China’s properly bubble bursting. The urban property bubble in China represents about 15% of China’s economy and 40% of that property belongs to China’s newly minted millionaires.

In rural China, most of the land belongs to peasant collectives and the government.

In America, when the property bubble burst in 2008, that represented more than 70% of the U.S. economy.

Then the Chinese save an average of about 40% of earnings so the Chinese are not cash poor as the average American, who carries a lot of credit card debt.

Mattich also mentioned China’s aging population. Since 700 million Chinese work in jobs that are not linked to the export-import sector of the economy, I doubt if that will play much of a factor.

When Mattich mentions the one-child policy, he doesn’t say this only applies to the urban population of about 500 million.

The other 700 million rural Chinese are not bound by the one-child policy, and the 56 minorities in China that number 100 million have no restrictions on the number of children families may have.

The problems with many Western predictions about China’s economic future is that they are based on Western lifestyles and spending habits. China’s formula is different.

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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.

2 Comments | America, business, China, economy | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Building the Rest of China’s Republic

October 15, 2010

I’m looking at a site, American President, An Online Reference Resource, and this site has divided the history of the U.S. into eight eras and lists the presidents of each era.

The Early Republic (1789 – 1829)
The Jacksonian Democracy (1829 – 1854)
Sectional Conflict (1853 – 1881)
Gilded Age (1881 – 1897)
Progressive Era (1897 – 1921)
Depression & World Conflict (1921 – 1961)
Social Change & Soviet Relations (1961 – 1989)
Globalization (1989 – )

In Democracy, Deceit and Mob Rule, the embedded YouTube video mentioned that Woodrow Wilson was the first president to refer to the U.S. as a democracy.

By the time President Johnson left office in 1969, America was no longer a Republic. The transition was complete and the democratic mob ruled leading to Political Correctness, Rush Limbaugh and the Self-esteem Generations.

To avoid becoming a democracy, China should consider adding a lower house of Congress as in the U.S.

All eligible voters, who do not belong to the Communist Party, would elect the representatives in the lower house and the upper house would be the National People’s Congress, which would be elected from within the Communist Party as it is today.

Since legislation in the U.S. must be approved by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the president, this would allow the Communist Party in the upper hosue to kill unpopular or destructive legislation from the lower house and the other way around.

That way, the mob rule of a democracy would be avoided.

Since in a Republic, no mature citizen has to vote as in a democracy, it would be wise if China defined who the eligible voters outside the Party would be.

I suggest people only be allowed to vote if they have a high comprehension level that helps understand the issues.

As has been seen in the U.S., with its falling literacy rate, many in the population cannot understand the political issues and don’t vote or use misleading information from politically biased people like Rush Limbaugh to decide for them.

Of course, a democracy ruled by the mob would cry foul, but a republic is ruled by the elected officials—not by the majority as in the U.S.

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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

Democracy, Deceit and Mob Rule

October 14, 2010

In 1999, I had no idea that I was about to begin a journey of discovery that would lead to China.

It all started when my wife said, “You might be interested in Robert Hart, an Irishman who went to China in 1854.  He worked for the emperor.”

Since my ancestors were Irish, I was curious.

I learned about Robert Hart through his letters and journals and more than a decade later, I’m still learning about China’s history and culture.

In 1999, I was a member of the ignorant democratic American mob in a country that was born as a republic in 1776 with slavery while women and children were considered chattel.

The slaves would be free eighty-nine years later after a bloody Civil War.  The women and children would have to wait longer for their freedom.

While writing about China, I learned that America’s Founding Fathers built a republic because they despised democracies with good reason. The following You Tube video offers an explanation.

Before 1999, like those Americans who have called me a “Panda Lover” and “Pro China”, I believed China was an evil place with a horrible dictatorship and everyone was brainwashed, miserable and Godless.

Little did I know that the Chinese were closer to heaven and God than most Christians and Muslims were, since these Western and Middle Eastern religions act as the intermediary telling people how to think, act, worship and who to kill when it comes time to convert the heathens and non-believers.

In 19th century America, racial prejudice was so strong that sayings like, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” were taken seriously. See: Counter Currents

Substitute “Chinese” for the word “Indian” and that was another slogan that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Many European immigrants to the Americas worked hard to make those slogans true.

Once finished with the North American natives, those people moved on to Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan and China where the killing continued.

See: An American Genocide

In 1999, I knew nothing about the 19th century Opium Wars where Western Imperial powers, including Americans, went to war with China so the West could sell opium to the Chinese people. 

After China lost the Opium Wars, the treaties also forced China to allow Christian missionaries to enter China and go wherever they wanted to save the savage even if it meant more death.

A once proud people with a long history were humbled and crushed as their two thousand year old civilization was torn apart by Western greed and religions.

Then I learned about the Taiping Rebellion fought by Chinese Christian converts. When that rebellion ended, another twenty million Chinese had been killed in the name of the West’s God.

There were also Muslim led rebellions where millions died following a prophet shouting the word of God.

Growing up, the Hollywood movies I watched about China supported the stereotypes. The men were either coolies pulling rickshaws, or owned a Chinese restaurant or laundry and the woman were all concubines or whores.

Thanks to Robert Hart, I learned that the stereotypes about China I was fed as a child were wrong.

I’ve learned that China is recovering its position (one held for more than two thousand years) as a world power.

At the same time, the West continues making the same mistakes that led to the collapse of the Roman Empire — the same mistakes that led to wars in Europe where Christians killed Christians and then Christians invaded the Middle East to fight with Islam where the West is still fighting.

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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.

2 Comments | America, China, Chinese history, Christianity, government, history, Islam, politics, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Influenced by the Mandate of Heaven

October 13, 2010

Although I wrote on the Mandate of Heaven in April, I didn’t see how deeply that belief was influencing China’s Communist Party.

The epiphany took place soon after reading page 235 in Living With Evolution.

At the same time, I realized that America’s judgment of China’s Communist Party was in part due to half a century of entitlement programs for minorities and the disadvantaged in the U.S. — often rewarding those who were less qualified and punishing those who were successful through merit by holding him or her back.

However, in China after Mao was gone and Deng Xiaoping opened the country to world trade, meritocracy was back with a vengeance.

Meritocracy is a system in which the talented succeed and move ahead based on his or her achievement.

The Chinese for almost four thousand years believed that humans were responsible for how events unfolded on earth with human actions subject to the approval or disapproval of heaven.

Successful actions were held to be those that heaven approved of and unsuccessful actions were held to be those heaven did not approve of.

What this means is that anyone, regardless of his or her social status could challenge the elite and rise to the top on the claim that it was legitimate according to the Mandate of Heaven — a concept that was also quintessentially meritocratic.

This explains why China’s central government treats political and/or religious activists, who challenge the status quo, so harshly. 

If the Communist Party allows the Falun Gong, Tibetan and Islamic separatists or Western style human rights activists to have the kind of freedom of expression that is allowed in the West, most Chinese, including the Communist Party, may see this as a sign of weakness.

In fact, the Dalai Lama’s popularity in the West is seen as a challenge to the Party’s mandate to rule. The same could be said about the rival government in Taiwan.

To have a better understanding of what this mean, you may want to start reading the Living With Evolution Blog

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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, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, cultural differences | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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