Masters at Global Bartering, The Dragon’s Gift

July 2, 2010

US businessmen and politicians could learn from China, who learned from Japan.  Instead of debt-ridden countries giving money away as the US does, America could be earning profits.

I read a fascinating piece in the Global Post by Stephanie Hanson that shows us China has elevated the art of barter to Ferengi levels. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay.  I’ve been watching Star Trek, Deep Space 9, and the Ferengi are an alien race who has turned the art of business into a science with a rule book.

While the US gives hundreds of billions of dollars to poor countries as aid, China trades or barters loans with African nations and in return China builds that country’s infrastructure. To understand, Hanson recommends reading “The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa“.

Hanson writes, “In the 1970s, Japan extended aid to China that helped the country build transportation and energy infrastructure. This aid was repaid in barrels of Chinese oil. Now, across the African continent, China is extending concessional loans to African governments for roads, power plants, factories and hydro projects, in many cases using the same kind of financing arrangements it learned about from Japan.”

See Doing Business in China

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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 Capitalist Revolution (Part 3 of 9)

July 2, 2010

In May 1978, Deng invited President Carter’s National Security Advisor to Beijing. Deng needed a deal with the US but he wanted something in return. The US had to end its friendship with the breakaway republic of Taiwan—an island China considered theirs. America agreed and closed its embassy in Taiwan to open full diplomatic relations in China. A few weeks later, Deng became the first Chinese leader to visit the US.

Deng Xiaoping meets President Carter in the White House and signs the new alliance.  Deng says, “Mr. President, we share the sense of being on a historic mission.  Sino-US relations have reached a new beginning.”

Later in the White House, Carter mentions human rights and says that people in China should have the right to leave if they wanted to. Deng says, “Sure, how many Chinese would you want—forty or fifty million?”  Deng tours the US.

After US diplomats arrive in China, a new cultural revolution starts.  With the Chinese and Americans now the best of friends, Deng opened China to American companies, who would get cheap labor while China would get money to grow an economy.

Return to China’s Capitalist Revolution Part 2 or go to Part 4

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Driving the Planet

July 1, 2010

CNNMoney’s Global Forum writes about China spreading money globally seeking resources. After all, China has cash reserves and is growing an economy with goals to lift hundreds of millions of Chinese into a middle-class American lifestyle. America, on the other hand, is in debt and spending money that it doesn’t have while its middle class is drowning in credit cards and sub-prime mortgages.

However, what benefits China, may also benefit the globe. Global Forum mentioned that Chinese solar companies are driving costs down so governments, like the US, may not have to offer subsidies as an incentive to get people to invest in renewable energy.

The CEO of China Mobile said people in China’s poorest, rural provinces were buying low priced mobile phones. If mobile phone are that low, why aren’t we seeing those prices in the US?  I priced phones for our daughter, who is on her way to college, and the model I liked was about $100 or 680 yuan—more than most China’s peasants earn in two months.

I wonder if we can buy mobile phones in China and slip our old chip into that new, lower-priced phone.

See China’s Cheap Price Structure

_________________________

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

Stuck on a Name

June 30, 2010

Dave left this comment for a post on the China Law Blog: “The country (China) is ruled by an organization called “The Communist Party” claiming fealty to the teachings of the German Karl Marx and organizationally based on the teachings of the Russian Lenin.” Source of comment: China Law Blog

Think again, Dave. After Mao died and Deng Xiaoping declared, “Getting rich was glorious”, Marxism and Lenin went in the trash with Maoism. In fact, China is a mixture of capitalism and socialism and the socialism is shrinking.

Check out medical care in China. Soon after Mao died, the cradle to grave socialist system of medicine went into the rubbish. It’s cash, baby, or have a nice death. Along with the state-run hospitals, a growing and very expense private medical system caters to rich expatriates and wealthy Chinese.

In fact, in 2004, there were almost 2 million privately owned enterprises in China. The number of individually owned businesses stood at more than 39 million primarily concentrated in such areas as wholesale and retail, manufacturing and industrial, transport, personal services, and lodging and restaurants. Source: Research Institute of Economy, Trade & Industry, IAA

Soon after 1976, China’s government revised the Chinese Constitution imposing term limits (2 five-year terms) for public office and an age limit (67), something we don’t have in the US. Granted, China still has a one party system but regional governments don’t always listen to Beijing. China is a “Communist” nation in word only.

See Dictatorship Defined

_________________________

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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Making China the Goat Again

June 29, 2010

China’s currency policies continue to ruffle feathers.  Robert E. Scott writes in the Huffington Post that US lawmakers must force China to raise the value of the yuan by 40% so jobs will materialize in America.  He claims that China is responsible for 1 million displaced jobs and must be punished economically with high tariffs if they don’t comply.

What he doesn’t mention are the jobs lost to the subprime mortgage crises, which almost sunk GM and Chrysler along with plummeting real estate prices, a storm of bankruptcies and endless foreclosures—not counting the trillions added to the national debt to bail out banks. 

He doesn’t mention that more than 10 million US jobs go to illegal immigrants who flood across America’s southern border to work for low wages.  He doesn’t mention NAFTA, which took another three million US jobs to Mexico and Canada.

He also doesn’t mention the 20 to 40 million Chinese who lost their jobs and tens of thousands of Chinese factories that closed due to the same subprime mortgage crises that was caused by US Wall Street banking greed and lax government oversight when G. W. Bush was president.

My question is, “Mr. Scott, why are you making China the lone goat for America’s debt crises and job losses?” 

Why not mention all the other low wage countries that manufacture products sold in the US—the list is long. I bought something made in Haiti recently, and it wasn’t art. Does that mean someone in Haiti took a job from someone in the US?

Why not ask Americans to stop buying iPods, iPads, Macintosh, Dell, and HP since most of these products are assembled or manufactured in China or other low wage countries.

Why not ask Americans to stop buying from the likes of Wal-Mart or mention how many Americans have jobs because of high-end American products that Chinese consumers buy.

See A Stable Basket of Cash

_________________________

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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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