A Matter of Distance and Perspective

July 7, 2010

President Obama demonstrates that he does not understand the Chinese thought process in his response to President Hu Jintao of China over how to handle North Korea’s recent sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean naval ship.

The New York Times Asia Pacific section reports that President Obama has accused Beijing of “willful blindness” toward what North Korea has done.  Some American officials say this was an act of war. Obama indicated the way China is handling this would not solve the problem.

There are two voices to pay attention to. Leon E. Panetta and China’s spokesman, Qin Gang. Mr. Qin said, “China is a neighbor of the Korean Peninsula, and on this issue our feelings differ from a country that lies 8.000 kilometers distant. We feel even more direct and serious concerns.”

Leon E. Panetta, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said he believed that the sinking of the Cheonan was part of a succession struggle in North Korea.”

America tends to handle crises of this kind like a bull in a China shop, and what gets broken doesn’t hurt the US homeland. China, on the other hand, will handle this issue like delicate surgery.  One wrong move could end in disaster.  After all, who is closer to that nuclear bullring and how can Obama understand when China’s shoes won’t fit his feet?

See China and North Korea

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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

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.

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

Far from the Facts

June 29, 2010

Due to a China Law Blog post, I spent the better part of an hour hunting for a quote from Sir Robert Hart where he compares China and England’s legal systems in the 19th century. In the quote, which I couldn’t find, Hart points out that the British and Chinese legal systems differ because of culture—one is based on the individual and China’s is not.

Robert Hart's statue in Shanghai (1913 - 1942)

In I Wish All China Could be California Girls, Dan Harris (China Law Blog) mentions a post I wrote, Belching for China, and then he takes the topic further. Harris writes, “I agree with iLooks overall premise, but I am not so sure Hindrey’s article is the right one on which to go off, because it is neither simplistic nor jingoistic…”

To make his point, Harris provides better evidence written by a personal Injury lawyer, William Marler, who feels that China needs a few good lawyers and a legal product liabilty system similar to the US.

That is the last thing China needs. In my “opinion” many of America’s problems stem from a lottery ticket mentality and bumper stickers saying, “Go Ahead and Hit Me and Make My Day.”

Marler writes that executing a top food-safety official in China for taking bribes is not the way to solve problems in food safety. What Marler doesn’t understand is that removing a rotten egg from the carton is sending a message to the Chinese and they get it. The Chinese have punished convicted criminals like this for more than two thousand years—far longer than any Western culture. In fact, today’s China is far less brutal since 1976.

To strengthen his point, Harris uses evidence from Stan Abrams at China Hearsay, another lawyer who chastises Marler for getting his facts wrong.  

What I learned from Harris and Abrams was that people like Marler and Hindrey and their stereotypical “opinions” about China are examples of what many in America believe, which is usually far from the truth.

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Lloyd Lofthouse,
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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1 Comment | American culture, China, crime, cultural differences, history, legal system | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Belching about China

June 20, 2010

I sometimes read opinions about China from individuals who should stay quiet.  Leo Hindery wrote one for The Huffington Post, which  is an example of an American castigating China from a Western cultural point-of-view.

These biased voices bother me and probably bother many Chinese too. Of course, Hindery has a right to voice his opinions, but most Chinese don’t understand that the American government has no control (at least we like to think so) of what appears in the American media.

Xu Xiao-dong, in Zhouzhuang, China, an artist in his shop earning a living without help from the American labor movement.

Since the media in China is the official voice of the government, many in China see the Western media the same way. Hindery says he is eager to see the “American labor movement smartly and creatively provide all the help to China’s workers that it can responsibly offer” to help Chinese workers earn more money along with better benefits. Considering what the American labor movement did for the US auto industry, that is a bad idea.

Due to Western meddling in China  during the 19th century, there were two Opium Wars  forcing British, French and American opium into the country along with Christian missionaries, which led to the Taiping Rebellion started by a Christian convert ending in 20 to 100 million killed. Then there was the Boxer Rebellion, a peasant uprising caused by meddling Christian missionaries, greedy Western businessmen and pompous politicians.

In fact, due to the West forcing China to open its doors, more than two-thousand years of Imperial rule ended leading to four decades of chaos and anarchy between 1913 and 1950 where millions more were killed.

My opinion is to let the Chinese fix China and leave the American labor movement out of it.

See China’s Labor Laws

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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.

16 Comments | American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Christianity, cultural differences, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

See, Hear, Touch No Truth—Just Lies, Please

June 18, 2010

The “Wall Street Journal” published China: Not Intentionally Pursing Trade Surplus With US, and I agree. The American thirst for high wages with benefits and cheap products created this mess.  After all, when you balance global exports and imports for China, they are close to even. China has a small trade surplus with the world—nothing compared with the “HUGE” trade surplus with the US, where far too many people use plastic to live beyond their means. 

However, most Americans don’t know that. Politicians who tell American voters the truth lose elections and the media seldom shows the whole picture—only the American slice. It seems that most Americans are not interested in the truth.

Qin Gang, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, mentioned the problem was with low US savings rates and high levels of borrowing and unemployment.  He should have mentioned Wall Street risk taking too, which caused the current world economic crises and most of the job losses. Even China lost about 20 million jobs thanks to greed in the US.

People who accuse China of taking jobs from US workers don’t take into account that there are about 12 million illegal aliens in the US working low pay jobs most Americans refuse to do. Even Mexico and Canada, because of NATFA, have taken more jobs than China has.

Gang said, “We hope politician in the U.S. will think seriously about how to resolve the structural problems in their own economy, rather than invariably blaming others.”

Right again. Americans and US politicians spend too much time finding scapegoats while disagreeing on how to fix the problems in America. The US Federal deficit is in the trillions, and the average credit card debt per household is $15,519.  Source: CreditCard.com

The personal savings rate in the US as a percent of personal income is about 3%, while in China that rate is more than 30% and the Chinese government saves too—its cultural.  What’s more embarrassing for grumbling Americans is the fact that the Chinese work longer hours for much lower pay and still manage to save.

See Chinese Work Ethic

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning My Splendid Concubine and writes The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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