I hope China is NOT Learning from the U.S. Playbook

October 13, 2015

I laughed when I finished reading China Takes a Page from U.S. Playbook on The Heritage Foundation Blog.

It seems that China has launched a PR campaign similar to Voice of America, and The Heritage Foundation was bothered by the size of China’s effort.

The Voice of America, according to The Heritage Foundation, broadcasts in 32 languages from short-wave radio stations on 200 frequencies, while China Radio International now broadcasts in 45 languages using 284 frequencies.

The Heritage Foundation said the problem is China’s authoritarianism with a capitalist economic overlay, which reminded me of imperial governments such as the British Empire during the 19th and early 20th century.

What if America were an authoritarian state too? The facts make a strong case that the U.S. is a global authoritarian power.

I’ve always believed that if you want to learn what a person or nation is really like, pay attention to what they do and not what they say.

THE FACTS

  • The United States has the most people in prison – about 751 for every 100,000 people, while China has 119 per 100,000 with more than four times the population of the U.S.
  • Of 218 nations, China was 115 on the list and the U.S. was number one. Source: List of countries by incarceration rate
  • The US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases worldwide in about 63 countries, while China has no military bases outside of China. Source: Global Research
  • China has about 1,900 combat aircraft and 760 naval ships compared to the U.S. that has about 18,000 combat aircraft and more than 1,500 naval ships.
  • China has about 240 nuclear warheads, while the U.S. that has more than 5,000. Source: Global Fire Power

The PRC was founded in 1949 and the United States in 1776. How many wars has each nation fought since achieving independence?

China’s Wars
(I did not list China’s problems with Tibetan and Islamic separatists or the Falun Gong)

  • Korean War (1950-53) China entered the war in support of North Korea
  • Sino-Indian War (1962) The cause of this war was a dispute over the sovereignty of a border region. In 1959, India sent troops and border patrols into the disputed areas. This created both skirmishes and deteriorating relations between India and China. After the war started, when Chinese troops reached the border that China claimed, the PLA stopped advancing, and China declared a unilateral cease-fire.  India still has border disputes with China, Pakistan and Nepal that have not been resolved. Source: International Boundary Consultants
  • A border-war with Vietnam (1979), which I covered in another post.

America’s Wars
(This list represents only wars. I left out the military operations that were not considered wars because there were too many to list)

  • Second Cherokee War (1776-1777)
  • Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794)
  • Northwest Indian Wars (1785-1795)
    Note: The complete list of wars against Native Americans was too long to list.
  • Shay’s Rebellion (1786-1787)
    Note: Most of Shays’ compatriots were poor farmers angered by crushing debt and taxes. Failure to repay such debts often resulted in imprisonment in debtor’s prisons or the claiming of property by the government.
  • A Quasi-War with France (1798-1800)
  • First Barbary War (1801-1805) Tripoli declared war on the United States
  • The War of 1812 (lasted two years – the U.S. Declared War on Great Britain)
  • Second Barbary War, which is also known as the Algerian War (1815)
  • First Seminole War (1816-1818) The U.S. started it.
  • Mexican American War (1846-1848) Mexico attacked after the U.S. annexed Texas in 1845.
  • Utah War (1857-1858)
  • American Civil War (1861-1865)
  • An American led revolution in the Kingdom of Hawaii (1888-1889)
  • The Spanish-American War (1898) The U.S. declared war on Spain
  • The Second Samoan Civil War (1898-1899)
  • Philippine-American War (1899-1913)
  • World War I (1917-1918) the United States Declared War on Germany
  • World War II (1941-1945) Japan attacked the United States
  • The Korean War (1953-1953) The U.S. responded to a North Korean invasion of South Korea, which was also ruled by a dictator.
  • The Vietnam War (1959-1975) The United States declared war to protect the freedom of South Vietnam, which was ruled by a dictator
  • Persian Gulf War – Operation Desert Storm (1991) Started by the U.S.
  • War in Afghanistan & the war on terror (2001 – ) The U.S. invaded in response to 9/11
  • Invasion of Iraq (2003 – ) The U.S. invaded due to suspicions of WMD that were never found.
    – Timeline of United States Military Operations

What happens if China does copy the U.S. in all things global?
Do you really want that to happen?

__________________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

99 Cent Graphic for Promomtion OCT 2015

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Sales of China’s Electric Vehicles Accelerating while Gas and Diesel Sputters

September 23, 2015

China has its own brands of domestic cars. For instance, the Chery, a government owned corporation, (the pinyin transcription of its Chinese name is Qirui).

China’s Automobile Dealer Association reported that there were 25 Chinese sedan brands available in January, but they expect that number to eventually reach five domestic brands, because of government restrictions and increased costs of licenses for gas and diesel vehicles, in addition to competition from foreign automakers. The fact that China eliminated the 10% vehicle tax on Chinese electric vehicles might have also played an important part. – Fortune.com

It doesn’t help that Chinese cities are seriously restricting the number of new license plates for gas and diesel to reduce traffic and pollution. And that might explain why “China is now one of the largest electric car markets in the world.” While sales of traditional gas/diesel powered cars are dropping, sales of electric cars “appear to have more than tripled as compared to the previous year …” – Clean Technica

“(China’s) Government data shows that local-brand passenger vehicles accounted for 38% of China’s domestic market in 2014, down from 46% in 2010. For sedans, local brands’ share fell to 22% from 31%.” – The Wall Street Journal  “But during the last four months of 2014, China’s electric vehicle sales skyrocketed, In December alone, monthly sales of passenger and commercial electric vehicles hit 27,000. … If this growth continues, China may surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest market for electric vehicles in 2015.” – Fortune.com

Look out, Tesla, the Chinese are coming, and they are serious.  If you don’t believe me, visit China and breathe the air in most if not all of its major cities. After you stop gasping and wheezing, you will then be a believer of why the Chinese are going to go electric in a big way.

______________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

#1 - Joanna Daneman review posted June 19 2014

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China’s Concrete and Steel Miracle

September 9, 2015

About 3000 BC, the northern Chinese used a form of cement in boat-building and in building the Great Wall. A key ingredient in the mortar used in the Great Wall was glutenous, sticky rice, and some of these structures have resisted even modern efforts at demolition. – The History of Concrete

As for steel, The first famous metallurgist in ancient China was Qiwu Huaiwen of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386－557 AD), who invented the process of using wrought iron and cast iron to make steel. – china.org.cn

Once steel is produced it becomes a permanent resource for society – as long as it is recovered at the end of each product life cycle – because it is 100% recyclable without loss of quality and has a potentially endless life cycle. Its combination of strength, recyclability, availability, versatility and affordability makes steel unique. – worldsteel.org

In 1980 when China first opened its doors to world trade, it produced 37.1 million metric tons of modern crude steel–5.17% of global production that year. For a comparison, the U.S. produced 101.4 million metric tons, Japan produced 111.4 million, and the European Union produced 208 million metric tons.

Thirty-four years later in 2014, China’s share of global crude steel product reached 49.1% or 822.698 million metric tons to the 88.174 million metric tons produced in the United States that year.

What caused this dramatic change? The answer is easy, the growth of China’s middle class. China has more than four times the population of the United States and almost twice the population of Europe.

And that’s why Business Insider says, “China’s rising middle class will create opportunism the world has never seen before.”

About 30 years ago, China started to modernize and in those thirty years, it has achieved what it took Europe and the North America more than two hundred years. China’s goal is to end up with the same urban to rural population ratio found in Europe and North America, and it is nearing that goal. Imagine compressing more than two hundred years of pollution from the West’s industrial revolution into thirty years in China.

To understand this spectacle, in 2004 the BBC News reported that, “The biggest mass migration in the history of the world is under way in China, and it is creating what some are calling the second industrial revolution.… A massive building boom unparalleled anywhere is taking place ­– last year, half the concrete used in construction around the world was poured into China’s cities.”

Concrete isn’t the only product China needs.  Iron and steel are also necessary.

China hunger for iron has been epic. In 2009, India exported 106 million tons of iron to China. A July 2010 Reuters piece says, “Chinese steel producers are increasingly turning to Australia’s magnetite iron ore sector, pouring in funds to explore and develop mines once considered uneconomic…”

In 2006, China was the number one producer with 820 million metric tons of iron ore and still imported 52% from other countries like Australia (470 metric tons), India (150) and Brazil (250).  Source: Wikipedia

Now that China is nearing its goal—in about 15 years China’s middle class will outnumber the entire population of the United States—it has an excess of steel and is exporting that excess at lower prices to other countries creating stiff competition across the globe. For instance, the ISSB reports that from 2013 to 2014 China increased its steel exports by 53% from 57.9 million to 88.6 million tonnes while the United States saw a 5% drop in its steel exports.

With the United States so obsessed to be #1 in everything—except for reducing the poverty rate—its capitalist oligarchs must be obsessively stressed out and worried that they are going to lose their Imperial crowns.

______________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

#1 - Joanna Daneman review posted June 19 2014

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The Return of China’s Concubines or should we call them Independent Escorts?

August 19, 2015

A friend of mine sent me a link to an interesting post of China’s Second Wives (concubines). “A 2008 estimate says that Second Wives account for a third of the country’s consumption of luxury products.”

The area Director of JWT North Asia, Tom Doctoroff, answered questions for the piece. He said, “When I ask people how much it costs to maintain a second wife – a trophy concubine – the average I’m told is 50,000RMB (about $7,600US). This isn’t just a girlfriend, this is someone who is kept. And she is displayed as somebody that’s a result of this guy’s power and influence, and access to funds.

However, it wasn’t like that for several decades.

When the Communist Party won China’s Civil War (1927 – 1949 with a break during WWII) and drove Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists from China, Mao announced that women held up half the sky; the practice of bound feet ended and women were considered equal to men for the first time in China’s history.

For thousands of years, the wealthy and powerful in China often had more than one wife and several concubines. The emperor had thousands of concubines.

Between 1949 and 1976, Mao’s goal was to change China by ending the old ways and building a new China that would be stronger and more capable of defending itself from invasions. Mao denounced Confucianism and literally waged a war against Buddhism (and all religions) in China. Mao ended the practice of having concubines too.

The goal to lead China away from its ancient cultural heritage ended after Mao’s death and recently the party had a statue of Confucius erected in Tiananmen Square in an effort to bring back some of the old ways.

Now that China is a hybrid capitalist nation, powerful and wealthy men are collecting concubines (those second wives) again. In fact, “A survey in the 2000s revealed that 60 percent of respondents said they had an affair at some point during their marriage, compared to 15 percent in the 1980s. Many sociologists believe the number is increasing all the time as rising standards of living make it more feasible economically to have affairs.” – Facts and Details.com

However, there is a difference. The legal system in China sees women as equals so women cannot be legally bought and sold. This time, women have a choice to be a concubine or wife.

In the embedded YouTube video of the Young Turks, it is mentioned that some wealthy and powerful men in America have concubines too, but in the US, those women are called swingers or escorts. To learn more, read this post at The Honest Courtesan-frank commentary from an unretired call girl in the U.S.

In fact, if a Chinese wife doesn’t approve of her husband having concubines, she now has the freedom to divorce him, and divorce is on the rise in China.

______________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

IMAGE with Blurbs and Awards to use on Twitter

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The CIA-KMT Heroin-Cocaine Pipeline to the United States

August 18, 2015

The CIA, in an alliance with the Nationalist Chinese (KMT), addicted millions of Americans on drugs such as heroin and cocaine to finance a covert war against the spread of Communism.

The KMT’s leader was the brutal, authoritarian dictator Chiang Kai-shek of Taiwan that the US still supports, and Chiang Kai-shek ruled Taiwan with an iron fist until his death in 1976.

However, it wouldn’t be until the 2000 presidential election in Taiwan that the KMT’s dictatorial hold on power ended.

I first learned of the KMT-CIA drug pipeline into the US in the early 1980s when I read of Congressional hearings leading to the closing of Air America, a covert airline owned by the CIA that was one of the methods used to move illegal drugs out of Southeast Asia and into the hands of US citizens.

After the Chinese Communists under Mao won China’s long Civil War (1927-1949), a large force of KMT troops in southern China fled to the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, which is located in Laos, Thailand and Burma. That’s when the KMT became involved in the drug trade with the CIA, and former KMT Chinese generals operating out of Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle cooperated with the CIA during the Vietnam War to supply American troops in Vietnam and drug addicts in the US with heroin and cocaine in trade for weapons. The drugs were sold to U.S. troops and citizens back home and that money paid for the weapons that were traded for the drugs.

For reminding me of this dark chapter of America’s history (which evidence says is still an open book), I thank 21st Century Marco Polo, a committed and experienced human rights and legal education professional with a history of working internationally throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

In addition, Kevin Ryan writing for 911 Blogger.com reviewed American War Machine written by Peter Dale Scott.

Ryan writes, “This book examines a wide-ranging number of covert US operations since World War II, and, among other things, demonstrates that many of these operations were intimately connected with, and dependent on, illicit drug trafficking …”

The Senophobic, American capitalist obsession with everything Communist led the US down this dark path that introduced an expressway of  heroin and cocaine into the US in what may contribute to the eventual failure of the most successful and powerful democracy in the history of humanity.

The following embedded videos are a four part series of an audio transcript of a 60 Minutes broadcast about the CIA controlled drug trade.


60 Minutes on CIA Drug Smuggling – Part 1


60 Minutes on CIA Drug Smuggling – Part 2


60 Minutes on CIA Drug Smuggling – Part 3


60 Minutes on CIA Drug Smuggling – Part 4

To understand the impact on US society, Drug Rehabs.org says, “The trafficking of illicit drugs burdens various components of domestic financial sectors as individuals and organizations frequently engage in illegal activates to generate income in order to purchase drugs or finance drug trafficking operations. Mortgage fraud (think 2008 financial crises which originated in New York), counterfeiting, shoplifting, insurance fraud, ransom kidnapping, identity theft, home invasion, personal property theft, and many other criminal activates often are undertaken by drug users and distributers to support drug addictions …”

Did you know that Mao, after winning the Chinese Civil War (1926 to 1949) between the Communists and Nationalists, ended drug trafficking and drug use in China in about 24 hours?

Illegal drugs wouldn’t return to China until after Mao’s death when China joined the WTO in 2001, and opened its doors to world trade and capitalism dominated by neoliberal Milton Friedman economics that thinks “Greed is Good!”

Today, there are over 900,000 registered drug addicts in China, but the Government recognizes that the actual number of users is far higher. Some unofficial estimates range as high as 12 million. Of the registered drug addicts, 83.7 percent are male and 73.9 percent are under the age of 35.

But it’s a lot worse in the United States where it is estimated that 23.5-million Americans are addicted to alcohol and drugs. That’s approximately one in every 10 Americans over the age of 12 – roughly equal to the entire population of Texas, and only 11 percent of those with an addiction receive treatment in the U.S.

______________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

IMAGE with Blurbs and Awards to use on Twitter

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