David – (Discovering that The World is a Global Market)

September 30, 2010

Guest post by Bob Grant
First published at Speak Without Interruption on September 22, 2010. Republished here with permission.

 The world is a global market – those businesses that don’t believe this, or embrace it, will go by the wayside.

In 2002, I was an independent manufacturer’s rep and one of my customers said that I should look at branching out – representing products “outside” of the U.S.

I thought this was good advice, so I first started looking in Europe.  For many reasons – after trying many companies and products – I decided that Europe was not for me. 

I then looked and visited Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China. 

I settled on China because I felt that was a country that could best provide me with the products I needed to succeed. 

Once I settled on a product category, I then knew that I needed one key person inside China to make it all come together and become successful. 

It took me a year to find that person and his name is David.  Without David, I would not be where I am today and I am forever indebted to this young man.

Bob Grant with David’s family in China.

David and I had some very productive years together. 

Then like most things that are successful – there was a down turn.  This was due to the world economy and actions taken by both the Chinese and U.S. Governments. 

Through no fault of our own our business died. However, David has stuck with me and I with him.  We are now working on new projects that we both hope – and feel – will get us back some of the volume we have had in the past.

I never had a son and David became that son to me.  He and his family have also adopted me as part of their own. 

It saddens me when I read statements about China and its people that just are not true.  I can only testify to my own experiences and connections inside China but I would not trade the relationships I have made for anything. 

David and his family are a key part of my life and forever will be – regardless of what the governments of our respective countries might say and do.

See more of Bob Grant’s guest posts – start with Not All Factories in China are Sweat Shops

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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 Sinophobia Epidemic

September 29, 2010

After being called “Pro China” and a “Panda Lover”, along with a few other tags, I wondered how many people in America have the mental illness called Sinophobia.

The Ramblings of a Political Psychology Major provided an answer. “There is a majority opinion in the US that China is a country we should be concerned with. In a February 2010 Gallup poll, 53% of Americans rated China as being unfavorable or very unfavorable.”

Sinophobia is especially common in Japan. If you don’t believe me, read what Japan did to the Chinese during World War II.

After that, check out what the British, French, Americans and a few others did to China in the 19th century during the Opium Wars.


Do you detect anger in this video?

The notion of “yellow peril” manifested itself in government policy with the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which reduced Chinese immigration from 30,000 annually to 105.

Jack London’s 1914 story, The Unparalleled Invasion, takes place in a fictional 1975, and describes a China with an ever-increasing population taking over and colonizing its neighbors with the intention of eventually taking over the Earth. 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that was Hitler’s German Nazis who wanted to do that.

Fili’s World provides an example of Sinophobia in the Israeli media. “You know something is wrong when you hear everyone in the media quoting the exact same clichés, even if they sound so moral and enlightened.… The Chinese have no way of winning the PR battle. If they perform well, they’re described as machine-like and cold. If they mess things up a bit, they are described as losing control. If they tighten up security, they’re violating human rights. If they’re loosening it up a bit, then it’s a sign that China is breaking apart. If they’re on time, they’re fascists. If they’re late, they’re incompetent.”

The Glittering Eye says, “I think I could devote an entire Blog to Sinophobia rather than just to an occasional post seen in the news media.”

Most Chinese Americans I know say they are afraid to speak out about this illness, because a white-faced, round-eyed, big nosed Sinophobe will tell them to go home.

Sinophobia is so serious, it even appears on the Phobia List.

If 53% of Americans have this illness, it should qualify as an epidemic. Along with the annual flu shot, there should be an anti-Sinophobia injection.

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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.

3 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese history, cultural differences, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Democracy Equals Freedom – Think Again

September 28, 2010

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Source: US Constitution

I find it interesting that I had to read in the Guardian about a respected Mexican newspaper (across the border from the US) asking the drug cartels for guidance on how not to offend them so the drug cartels would stop killing newspaper reporters and photographers.

Freedom House’s annual survey of media independence in 195 countries and territories show that only 17% of the earth’s population lives in what is considered “Free”. 

Forty-two percent of the planet’s people live in “Not Free” and 41% in “Partly Free” countries, and Mexico, which is billed as a democracy is listed with the “Partly Free”.

Watch the video then visit Freedom House.org to discover that countries considered “Free” mostly have colonial links to Europe.

Although the video shows most of the world’s countries are democracies today, the results at Freedom House say it isn’t true.

 Even India, which is billed as the largest “democracy” on the planet is “partly free”.

China is listed as “not free”, which is among the planet’s majority, according to Freedom House, and China makes no attempt to hide that fact.

America and the rest of the “free” 17% of the world would be better off if the “free press” were required to tell the truth and nothing but the truth without exaggerations. Unfortunately, America’s Founding Fathers forgot that sentence.

The U.S. First Amendment also doesn’t protect freedom of the press from corporate CEOs or gangsters, and foreign companies own four of American’s six-largest media empires.

See Media Slugfest Using Taiwan

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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 Founding Fathers had it Right about the Death Penalty

September 27, 2010

Moans and groans abound in the West about the hidden numbers behind China’s death penalties. 

I’m often baffled how anyone who claims to be a caring person could fight to keep murderers, drug dealers, child molesters and rapists from getting a swift death penalty.

The Death Penalty Information Center says that when the Constitution was written, the time between sentencing and execution could be measured in days or weeks (as it is in China today).

Today, the typical death row inmate in America spends a decade awaiting execution. Some have been on death row for over 20 years. In California, keeping him or her alive that long would cost about one million and that does not include court costs. The only ones who win are the lawyers.

I read a post at error bank.com that offers concerns about the death penalty.

One issue raised was of innocent people found guilty in court then years or decades later, he or she is found innocent but by then it is too late. However, I’m sure more criminal types are executed than innocent victims. Many times, the so-called innocent victim was also a career criminal with a long arrest record.

As for the cost, Amnesty USA, while arguing against the death penalty, makes a case to return to the time of the U.S. Founding Fathers.

Amnesty said that in Kansas the cost of a death penalty case was 70% higher than the cost of comparable non-death penalty cases. 

However, Amnesty doesn’t mention that it costs more because of all the appeals that drag cases out for years.

The median cost for a death penalty case in Kansas was $1.26 million.

In Maryland, a death penalty case costs 3 times as much as Kansas, and in California, it costs $11.5 million for each case.

K.D. Koratsky touched on this topic in Living With Evolution. On page 182, he says this of career criminals, “Over time, by consistently eliminating those who could not get along with others, populations were eventually left largely with the genes that promoted non-kin biocultural coevolution. … nations with the strict codes of law enforced by strong state apparatuses (like China) tended to prosper over others, all else being equal.”

Although a few innocents might die, China may be getting it right be ridding its population of serious criminal types who reproduce leading to more violent crimes by his or her progeny.

Murder of “innocent” people is cruel and inhuman!

Rape is cruel and inhuman!

Child molesters are cruel and inhuman!

Selling hard, illegal drugs for profit is cruel and inhuman!

Destroying lives for profit is also cruel and inhuman!

See Cultural Differences and China’s Changing Legal System

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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

Cultural Differences and China’s Changing Laws

September 27, 2010

A colleague and friend sent me a link to a post about a Chinese blind activist lawyer released from prison. Isolda Morillo, for the Associated Press, wrote the post that appeared on CBS.com.

Chen Guangcheng was the blind lawyer. In 2006, he was sent to jail after documenting forced late-term abortions and sterilizations and other abuses in his rural east China community.

Morillo wrote that Guangcheng was an “inspirational figure to others in China”.

According to the AP reporter, Guangcheng is under house arrest and, along with his family, is watched closely.  The piece points out how horrible he was treated by Chinese authorities.

One fact stood out, “He expanded his activism after hearing complaints from people living in nearby villages that family planning officials were forcing women to have late-term abortions and sterilizations to enforce the government’s one-child policy.”

I’m sure there will be people who will see me supporting China’s government when I do not condemn China for how Guangcheng was treated.

With more than 1.3 billion people and only 16% of the land capable of growing food crops and a looming shortage of fresh water, China is facing a possible melt down in a few decades that could dismantle all the progress made since the 1982 Constitution.

To understand China better, it would help to learn that China’s legal system is reinventing itself.

Up until 1911 when the Qing Dynasty collapsed, Chinese law leaned heavily toward Legalism influenced by Confucianism.

Near the end of the Qing Dynasty, efforts were made to reform the law by mainly importing German codes with slight modifications.

After 1911, the Nationalists continued this effort. When Mao and the Communists came to power in 1949, the ranks of intellectuals and legal professionals was devastated during the purges. A Soviet-style legal system was then adopted but that system suffered due to political turmoil that ended with the Cultural Revolution.

It wouldn’t be until 1982, that the idea of individual rights would reemerge as a signify influence on Chinese Law. Even then, business law developed much faster than civil law, which is the laws of a state or nation that deals with the rights of private citizens.

In an interview with James Zimmerman, about China’s Changing Legal System, Megan Rhodes wrote, “China is transforming its legal system at an amazing rate.” 

When Rhodes asked Zimmerman if foreign law has influenced Chinese law, he answered “Yes, absolutely.”

At the end of the interview, Zimmerman says, “China is going through remarkable times, and should be proud of its ongoing judicial and legislative reforms. It has developed—and continues to develop—a legal system from scratch in just over 30 years.”

American law also evolved and reading Law and History: The Evolution of the American Legal System might give you a better understanding of what is going on in China. 

In 1783, America signed a peace treaty with the British Empire and the U.S. officially became a nation state. However, slavery wouldn’t be abolished for eighty-two years in 1865, after the bloody American Civil War.

In addition, women in America even after the Civil War, were still second-class citizens. Source: Women’s history in America

Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American History. In fact, it wasn’t until 1938 that the US had, for the first time, Federal regulations for minimum ages of employment and hours of work for children. Source: Child Labor in U.S. History

Then Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

China has had about thirty years to change since 1982 while America took 182 years to cover the same ground. However, there may be another reason why the American media and so many Americans condemn China so often, and that can be explained by the history of Discrimination Against the Chinese in America. Maybe that discrimination is not dead yet.

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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, Confucianism, cultural differences, history, legal system | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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