From the Bottom Up

March 29, 2010

America may be learning something from China’s stimulus plan—spending hundreds of billions of dollars from its cash reserves to keep people working. This is called bottom-up economic growth and the gap between the rich and working poor shrinks instead of expands. The opposite is trickle-down economics from the Reagan era where the gap widens.

Chinese jobs

China’s bottom-up plan makes sense. After all, how much can one rich person consume compared to hundreds of millions of people—a little spending from each person at the bottom adds up and is better for long-term economic survival instead of short-term corporate profits. Who cares if the wealthy grow their fortunes slower? Well, the rich do. I’m sure they love having that money filling Wall Street vaults.

It appears that President Obama has the same idea. During the presidential campaign, he said.  “The project of the next president  is figuring out how you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth.” It seems that with the passing of the health care bill (that has upset so many of the trickle-down people), President Obama is putting his words into action and following China’s example.

To learn more about China’s economy see “Why China is Studying Singapore” http://wp.me/pN4pY-2z

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Super Power Dawn

March 29, 2010

Alan Caruba writes about Super Power China at “Speak Without Interruption”. “As the sun begins to set on an America whose dollar set the standard and whose capacity for manufacturing was unchallenged, a new superpower is emerging and it is China.”

Two notable individuals from history predicted more than a century ago what is taking place in China—the first was a young Irishman from Belfast who arrived in China in 1854 and left in 1908.  His name was Robert Hart and to historians, he’s known as the Godfather of China’s modernization.

Hart wrote near the end of the 19th century that in a hundred years China would be a superpower again. Jack London, who visited China and wrote about it, made the same prediction.

The way the government has decentralized power in China is not new. Imperial China did the same. The Emperor appointed the governors to the provinces based on who earned the highest scores in the Imperial exams and they ruled like kings. 

As for a market economy, China may have invented this on a national scale more than a millennia ago proving that it doesn’t take a democracy or republic to prosper.

If you spend time in China, you will discover that the Chinese are born entrepreneurs, who find ways to get around government restrictions to make money. Sadly, this has led to the pollution in China today—something the central government is struggling to deal with as they transition to green power.

As for long term planning, consider that the top men in China’s government are engineers or scientists compared to America’s leaders who are mostly lawyers. After Mao, China implemented term and age limits for government positions, something America does not have.

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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, business, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, government, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Blaming the Jews—Again!

March 28, 2010

Hitler blamed the Jews and killed millions. Christians blame today’s Jews for the crucifixion that happened almost two thousand years ago. Many in Islam want to destroy them.

Now, the Mathaba News Network is doing it—blaming the Jews for the world’s financial crisis. Look at the headline Mathaba splashed across a page on their Website about “Currency Wars“, a best seller in China about the current world economic crises, and the picture they use. Both are biased and misleading . Are the writers and editors at Mathaba racists and anti-Semitic?

Cover for "Currency Wars"

“The book’s author, Song Hongbing, claims that behind world-changing events like the battle of Waterloo, Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, President Kennedy’s assassination, and the deep recession in Asia during the 1990s stood an intricate conspiracy aimed at increasing Jews’ wealth and influence.”  Huh—the Jewish people are responsible for Hitler’s rise to power?

Reading further, I discovered that the Rothschild family is mentioned as the prime villain. Since when does one Jewish family represent thirteen million people?

I’m not Jewish, but I have Jewish friends, who are not part of a global conspiracy to control the world’s currencies—two of my friends are teachers, another runs a non-profit, and a fourth is a designer, but according to Mathaba’s headline, they are guilty because they are Jews. Who owns Mathaba? Iran.

I’ll tell you the real reasons why “Currency Wars” is a bestseller in China. China hasn’t suffered from the economic crises, and they control their currency. The Chinese want to know how the “masters” did it and learn from their mistakes.

See Deep Family Roots

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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 | business, China, Christianity, economy, Islam, media, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Walking Barefoot on a Double Edged Blade

March 27, 2010

From what I’ve learned, when Mao died, many Chinese were tired of the Communists because of  the Cultural Revolution. If Deng Xiaoping hadn’t introduced a market economy resulting in decades of growth and prosperity, China may have fallen into chaos to emerge with a dictator similar to what they had with the Kuomintang.

Nichols Kristof

Nicholas Kristof wrote, China & Google (New York Times, March 24, 2010), an opinion piece that gets closer to the truth about China. Kristof seems to know what he is talking about when he said, “They (ordinary Chinese) don’t gripe  a lot about the regime imprisoning dissidents, who mostly have a negligible following around the country.”

It’s probably true that many in China want to have free access to the Internet, but I doubt it is serious enough to cause concern. The biggest concern is raising the standard of living for the 800 million rural Chinese who have not cashed in on the prosperity.

When there are accusations from Washington that China isn’t playing fair with currency control, China has a choice. Give in and wait for hundreds of millions of unhappy Chinese to rebel or stand firm and continue to grow the economy.

As far as Google is concerned, China has Baidu (with more than 60% of the market) and shedding Google probably feels like passing gas in public.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Transporting Goods by Road in China

March 26, 2010

Originally Published (see more photos here) at Speak Without Interruption on February 19, 2010 by Bob Grant—publisher/editor for Speak Without Interruption. Posted on iLook China, 3/26/10 at 08:00

About any time, day or night, in major Chinese cities you can see any type of vehicle transporting all imaginable products on the roads. There are trucks carrying ocean containers and Mercedes carrying people. I have traveled to England, Ireland, Holland, Italy, Canada, Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, and China. I would not call myself a “world traveler” but, of all the countries in which I have traveled, I found China to be the most diverse in terms of the types of vehicles that transported goods on their roads.

Regardless of where my travels took me in China—rural or city—there were always a lot of people transporting goods in any type of vehicle that could move on its own, by animal, or under human power. The fact that people were busy working was not of particular note. It was the diversity of their means of transportation within a single view that was of interest to me. Also, they all seemed to move with purpose—whether carrying large or small items. I suppose that is really not so different than any other parts of the world—for some reason it just struck me as another admirable quality of the Chinese people.

Photo from original post on Speak Without Interruption

Most of the smaller commercial trucks are blue—I have no idea why? I asked a couple of times but really did not receive an answer. Maybe there was a sale on blue paint? I am certain there is a reason, but since I don’t know it, I can’t share it with you—rather just make reference to it.

I will say that with all those vehicles on the road it did add to the air pollution. In most states in the U.S., vehicles have to pass safety inspections before they can be licensed. I am not certain this is a rule in China—if it can move it is road ready. 

In my travels inside China for business, I found the Chinese to be very capitalistic in nature—certainly contrary to how I viewed the Chinese people prior to me actually visiting the country. The diversity in the means of transporting their goods is just one example of this fact at least in my mind.

Read more of Bob Grant’s guest posts at http://wp.me/pN4pY-gJ

 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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