It’s all About Iron

September 16, 2010

Take a look at China Page.com and see the photos of modern cities in China. Since 1980, China has rebuilt most of its established cities and added hundreds more. 

In 2004, the BBC News said, “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 umparallelled 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 needed.

China is buying iron ore from around the world. In 2009, India exported 106 million tons. 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

See Holding a Vital Key to Humanity’s Future

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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

China’s Chery

September 15, 2010

After you saw the title, I’ll bet you were thinking of something else. Sorry to disappoint you.

Chery Automotive in China builds and develops electric cars.  Chery is working in a joint venture with BenQ, a company in Taiwan, to develop lithium-ion battery technology

Auto Blog Green says Chery’s line of EVs are not strong sellers, yet Chery continues to build and develop electric vehicles anyway. 

Do they know something we don’t? 

After all, China’s central government could announce that all gas and diesel powered cars must be replaced with electric.

Critics in the West would complain but the air in China would be cleaner, which should make environmentalist’s happy.

Chery industries appears to be taking quality and safety seriously too.

Chery’s collision and safety laboratory has been identified as Asia’s largest and can fulfill collision tests at different angles while testing airbag and restraint systems. Source: Chery International

How are the Chinese at building cars?

Sho Minekawa, president of joint venture Guangzhou Honda Automobile Co., says that in-house quality tests show that the China-made Accord is actually superior to the one made in the U.S. Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Look out, Detroit. The Chinese are coming.

See China’s Future Lock on your Next Auto Repair

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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 this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Global Blood Suckers

September 8, 2010

It looks like Goldman Sachs & Co is under attack from the two most powerful countries on the earth.

Recently, the SEC in the United States penalized the Wall Street firm $550 million to settle civil fraud charges.

Meanwhile, in China, a book called the Goldman Sachs Conspiracy has been published and is selling well.

“The nearly 300-page, highly dramatized account covers much of the same ground as a widely cited piece by Matt Taibbi last year in the Rolling Stone magazine that portrayed the Wall Street institution as a ‘a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.’ ” Source: The Huffington Post

The Young Turks reported that Golden Sachs conspired with John Paulson, who made $3.7 billion dollars in profits when the global economy collapsed and bought into Bank of America with some of that money becoming the bank’s fourth largest investor.

According to the Young Turks, Goldman Sachs set up clients, who lost billions while Sachs made billions from the clients’ losses. 

The Young Turks read one email from a Goldman Sachs’s employee, who calls himself the Fabulous Fab. “The whole building is about to collapse anytime now. Only potential survivor, the Fabulous Fab, standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without understanding all the implications of those monstrosities.”

The Young Turks say that there will be more court cases to follow the SEC case. Maybe China will also take a few Sachs employees to court using some of Sun Tzu’s strategies and put that well-known death penalty to use.

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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

Silk – Part 2/2

September 6, 2010

The Roman Empire first sailed ships to India and bought silk, which became very popular in Rome. Silk colored purple was worth its weight in gold.

Eventually the Roman merchants set up trading posts all the way to China and reached Canton then Chang-Cheou near today’s Shanghai.

Until 73 AD, the sea route was the only one open since the caravan routes along the Silk Road were closed at that time.

Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar (31 BC to 14 AD) earned credit for establishing trade between Rome and China.

In 166 AD, Roman travelers arrived at the Court of the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 219 AD). These Romans met powerful representative of the Han Dynasty.

About the same time, Buddhist missionaries arrived in China by ship from India and introduced Buddhism to China.

  • The next paragraph may sound as if history were repeating itself between the U.S. and China.

Romans spent recklessly. Gold left Rome and flowed to the East at such a rate that the government had to restrict imports. After a long period of prosperity in Rome, the empire entered a serious economic crisis. 

Rome was bankrupt from this overspending and couldn’t maintain the hundreds of thousands of troops needed to protect the empire. 

In 312 AD, Constantine moved the Roman capital to Constantinople.  In 395, the Roman Empire was divided between the Western and Eastern Empires. Then the Western Roman Empire collapsed.

See The Han Dynasty

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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

Silk – Part 1/2

September 6, 2010

I was reading an Associated Press piece by Mansur Mirovalev on Silk’s dark side about Uzbek children made to grow cocoons. If you are interested in that story, click the link.

Silkworms in a Chinese silk factory

However, that’s not what this post is about.  I will say this. I didn’t see much that was dark about what was taking place in Uzbekistan. About a century ago, American children once worked in the fields alongside their parents. I see nothing wrong with that. The Uzbek families not being paid is another matter.

Worker makes silk cloth from a silkworm.

I’ve often read about the Silk Road, but I was curious and wanted to know more about the history of silk so I did some virtual hunting.

Silk has a long history in China. In 1984, silk fabric dating back more than 5000 years was found in Henan Province.

How silk is made.

According to legend, Lei Zu, the queen of China’s legendary Yellow Emperor, was drinking a cup of tea beneath a mulberry tree one day when a silkworm cocoon fell into her cup. Further investigation revealed that the unraveling fibers were light and tough, ripe for spinning. Thus China’s silk industry was born.  Source: The History of Silk

What I didn’t know was that merchants from the Roman Empire sent ships by sea to China and traded directly with the Han Dynasty, which I’ll write about in Silk – Part 2.

See A Millennia of History at a Silk Road Oasis

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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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3 Comments | business, China, Chinese history, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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