Nixon in China – Part 2/3

February 5, 2011

When President Nixon went to China, he met with Chairman Mao.  At the time, Mao was already suffering from illnesses. In four years, he would be dead and Nixon would be the only president in US history to resign while in office due to the Watergate Scandal.

After Nixon resigned as the US president, the Chinese offered him a home in China where he would be allowed to live in peace away from his political enemies.

Two months before his meeting with Mao in Beijing, Nixon had approved a bombing operation in North Vietnam.

Many called it the Christmas bombings since it took place over the holidays. It was the first continuous bombing in Vietnam since President Lyndon Johnson had halted bombing in 1968.

Over 20 thousand tons of bombs were dropped during the campaign. That’s forty million pounds of explosives.

Ironically, Nixon ran for election as the “Peace Candidate” in 1968. Can you think of other US politicians that have used similar lies to win elections?

Because of Nixon’s record of being anticommunist, no one would have thought that he would have unexpectedly gone to China to meet with Mao and the Party’s other leaders.

A recent report from AOL News revealed, “Newly released audiotapes and secret documents from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library show a president obsessed with controlling the media and his public persona during the latter stages of his doomed administration.” 

I find it ironic that this comes from a former president of a country that often criticizes China’s control of its media. Is it possible that US politicians are jealous?

Return to Nixon in China – Part 1

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Nixon in China – Part 1/3

February 4, 2011

In 1969, the Soviet Union was planning a nuclear attack on China. The USSR only backed down when President Nixon’s administration warned Moscow that such a move would start World War Three since the US would bomb Russia in retaliation.

The United States, under President Nixon (1969-1974), clearly indicated that China’s interests were closely related to America’s. Source: Free Republic

At the time, I’m sure President Nixon had no idea how close those relations would become.

Thirty-nine years ago this month, in February 1972, President Richard Nixon went to China and changed the course of history a second time. His motives may not have been meant to encourage China to become the economic powerhouse it is today.

However, if it weren’t for Nixon, the odds say the Soviet Union would have bombed China with nuclear weapons and China would have retaliated.

While flying to China, President Nixon made notes. Here are a few.

What they (China) want? Build up their world credentials, Taiwan, and get the U.S. out of Asia (In 1968, Nixon ran for President promising to get the U.S. out of Vietnam).

What we (the US and China) both want? Restraint on USSR

The BBC reporter in the embedded video says that Nixon’s trip to Beijing wasn’t to see if China would help get the US out of Vietnam. Instead, the trip was designed to put pressure on the USSR with a goal to make them agree to strategic arms limitations.

Soon after Nixon’s China trip, the Soviets were forced to negotiate and within three months signed two arms control agreements.

What I find interesting is how often US Presidents (and politicians) have been wrong about China.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy said if China had nuclear bombs, it would swallow Southeast Asia. That never happened and today China has more than three hundred nuclear bombs with the missiles to deliver them to targets thousands of miles distant.

In 1965, China successfully tested its first nuclear bomb. President Lyndon Johnson said it was “the blackest and most tragic day for the free world”.

How was that day the “blackest and most tragic day for the free world”?

After all, China has never used a nuclear weapon on another country as the US did on Japan to end World War II by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing about a quarter million people.

In fact, about 25 American POWs were also killed in the first blast. Most of the Japanese dead were noncombatants—the elderly, women and children.

Di Text.com reports that the US firebombed (with napalm) 67 Japanese cities in World War II.  More than half of Tokyo (one of the 67 cities) was destroyed. Estimates of the number killed in Tokyo range between 80,000 and 200,000.

Robert S. McNamara was reported to have said, “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.”

Question — In modern times, has Communist China inflicted that many casualties on another nation’s civilian population? Don’t forget that Japan killed about 30 million Chinese during World War II.

Discover what it took to survive Mao’s Long March.

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Changing China through its Youth – Part 5/5

February 3, 2011

As PBS’s Frontline started its fourth year of filming in China, the subjects of their documentary were still restless rethinking their lives, their ambitions and values.

One Chinese woman (not identified) talks about a survey called the “Happiness Index”, which is practical.  It has nothing to do with the individual and society. She says, “When Chinese talk about happiness, it’s about affording the things they want to buy, the housing they want, and if they like the work they do…”

Lu Dong, who started an Internet tailoring business, says, “China is a country with no beliefs and there are no role models. All the models are materialistic.”

Although Lu Dong’s opinion may be true for many Chinese in the rising middle class, I disagree that it means everyone in China. There are role models in China’s history, and even today, there are others who will look to them as an example.

He says, “Chinese are very hungry now and hard to satisfy,” which may be a better way of stating the situation today and goes a long way to explain why rural Chinese are willing to sacrifice so much to migrate to cities and work long hours in factories for low pay.

Lu Dong says, “The water is still dirty. What I can do is make the water in my company clean… Although when I deal with the outside world I still have to deal with business the way others do. That’s another reason why I became a Christian.”

Then Ben Wu, who launched the Internet cafe, says he won’t be in the Internet cafe business for the rest of his life. His real passion is renewable energy. His father’s expertise in is solar cells. He wants to start a factory to build this product.

Dr. Zhang Yao works in a large hospital and feels an obligation to do public health work. He thinks residents in large urban hospitals could provide training in rural ones.

Zhang Jingjing is a public interest lawyer. She represented more than a 1,000 families over a power line built for the (2008) Olympics. She wants to protect China’s environment and natural resources. However, she wants to meet the right man too.

Meanwhile, the rapper, Wang Xiaolei, is achieving his dream of becoming a star. He says he has 20,000 fans. He wants to be the head of a record company. He says he firmly believes that if you work hard your dream will come true.

Wow! That sounds like many of the American children I taught during my thirty years in the classroom. How many do you believe actually achieve their dreams?

In conclusion, this PBS Frontline documentary shows us that there are no stereotypes in China. Even in a collective culture such as China, there are individuals.

Return to Changing China through its Youth – Part 4

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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.

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Changing China through its Youth – Part 4/5

February 2, 2011

Back to Wang Xiaolei, the Chinese rapper, who at the end of Part 3 shared a story where he met a Chinese girl on-line and sent her all his money so she could come live with him.  His money vanished and she never arrived but he keeps a poster-sized picture of the girl he never met in person on his wall.

Then Wang Xiaolei says there is a social problem in China. “Many girls only believe in money. They think they have to marry someone rich.”

Well, yea! In the US, we call such girls “gold diggers”. Women like this exist the world over. He just isn’t meeting the right girls.  After all, where does he spend most of his time—in bars/nightclubs singing his rap as a DJ.

Yet, opportunities exist for Wang Xiaolei that did not exist before 1980. Today, he works in a nightclub singing his songs and talks of starting his own record label. Prior to 1980, there weren’t any nightclubs in China and there were no private businesses.

The Internet love story he shared with Frontline embarrasses Wang Xiaolei.

In fact, if Wan Xiaolei had done some research he might have discovered what I did in a few second at What It’s Worth at Comcast.net. “Watch out, says the FTC, for any Lothario who wants to get you out of the safety of the dating site and onto your personal e-mail or IM, who was planning to visit you but then can’t because of some tragic (read: costly) event, who needs your financial help to get back on his feet, or who claims to love you much, much too quickly. And note: Do not wire money. It’s not like a credit card where you have the backing of a big corporation. It’s like cash. Once you do it, it’s gone.”

If you say that maybe Wang Xiaolei couldn’t find this information because of Chinese censors, consider that China has a very active Internet with hundreds of millions of people on-line.

In fact, China has its Google and Baidu, search engines that find topics on Websites and Blogs in China that I’m sure discuss this same topic since the Chinese have more active Bloggers than any other nation.

Since this Internet love scam is alive and working in China (as it is in the US for the naive and gullible), there must have been others who were burned and then Blogged about it.

Return to Changing China through its Youth – Part 3

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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.

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Changing China through its Youth – Part 3/5

February 1, 2011

The PBS Frontline narrator mentions how entrepreneurs that have been away from China must get used to doing business in China, which may include bribes.

In fact, to Chinese there is no clear definition of what is bribery — what the West calls corruption is deeply rooted in China’s culture (and has nothing to do with Communism) and is not seen the same way.

Lu Dong, going into the business of Internet tailoring, says, “If we use Western values to judge a Chinese company’s behavior, I think it is very hard to do business with them.”

Ben Wu, the Internet Cafe owner, says they (Chinese businessmen) have no interest in helping or not helping him, and he cannot figure out how to influence them.

To get help in China, one must make friends and since China is an eating culture that takes money. To learn more, discover the meaning of Guanxi in China.

Ben Wu, who was born in China but educated in the US, says he will not bribe anyone. However, he doesn’t think he can stop his Chinese partner.

One wise quote explains the choices. “There is nothing you can do. A fish has to live in water and if the water isn’t clean you must get used to it.”

Now, for a corruption reality check. Here is a comparison with the US. We know an engineer who stopped working in construction because of the difficulty in finding contractors that are honest.

We also had a bad experience with a contractor we signed on to build an addition to our house. Twenty-eight thousand dollars later without any construction starting, he was still asking for money.

An investigation on my part revealed he hadn’t taken out the construction permit even though he had collected the money months earlier to do so. We cancelled the contract and he filed a lien on our property for about $200,000 US.

Months later, we managed to get about half the 28 thousand back and California forced him to cancel the lien. However, we had to see and pay for a lawyer, file a complaint with a state agency in California and the process was stressful and frustrating.

The fact is that there is corruption in every culture and country. It just wears different clothing.

Return to Changing China through its Youth – Part 2

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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.

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