Beijing Must Maintain Tight Control

November 18, 2010

My wife and I went to see Inside Job, and I returned home thinking that China should maintain tight control over its financial sector and continue to keep out disruptive elements such as the Tibetan and Islamic separatists and the Falun Gong Religious Cult.

In addition, China must keep locking up dissidents that want China to become a full-blown, so-called democracy as the US claims to be.

In fact, I suspect the same people (named in the documentary) that produced the 2008 global economic crises want to have their go at China’s money to see how much of that they may legally steal once they change Chinese laws for their purposes.

I seriously question that America is still a democracy or a republic.

Instead, America seems controlled by a few huge US banks and Wall Street. The rest of us peasants are being relegated to the position of modern-day debt serfs who must pay for the greed and mistakes of a few.

Anyone that believes that China is more corrupt than America, think again. I’d rather deal with China’s corruption challenges than the moral and ethical corruption that plagues America’s financial sector.

If you know how much the 2008 economic crisis cost the globe, you will know the extent of that American corruption. Global Issues pegs that global loss at about 62 trillion.


“Inside Job” Trailer

For those who continue to blame China for stealing US jobs, the Pew Economic Policy Group says the 2008 economic crises that started in the US cost 5.5 million Americans their jobs and another 4 million jobs that would have been created.

In China, about 15 million jobs were lost resulting in more than 80,000 demonstrations and riots across the country.

Millions more jobs were lost outside China and the US.

Reuters says, “Inside Job … is a must-see for pretty much everybody.”

“This is not a piece of ragged muckraking or breathless advocacy,” the NY Times says. “It rests its outrage on reason, research and careful argument.”

The sad fact is that this documentary was only in the art house that shows films in our area that do not have the popularity of a “Megamind” or a “Harry Potter” film.

We were part of an audience of five.

It doesn’t matter if US citizens vote Republican or Democratic. It is obvious that President Reagan let the sociopathic foxes into the hen house and both Bushes, Clinton and now President Obama are feeding our chickens to those foxes.

Unfortunately, I agree with the comments I’ve read on the Internet that say no matter how many people see Inside Job nothing will change. This malignant cancer has spread too far.

______________

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.


Meet the Winemaker from Shanxi Province

November 8, 2010

There are about two million private companies operating in China, and women own twenty percent (400,000).

Meet one of those women. Judy Leissner is Chinese and she was 24 when she became the CEO and President of 168-acre Grace Vineyard in Shanxi province, south of Beijing.  

The first grape-vine plantings were in 1997 and the first vintage in 2001.

Judy started the winery because her father liked to drink. Today, Judy produces a quality wine—about 700,000 bottles annually.

Most people do not know that wine is produced in China.

In fact, Judy has competition since there are about 400 wineries in China.

Judy says there is an opportunity in China to make a lot of money in a short period of time, because the country is developing and growing.

The difference between the wine market in China and the rest of the world is that most drinkers in China must drink because they have to.  It’s part of the culture of doing business.

Learn more about Chinese Women in Science & Business

______________

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.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.


Recycling Industry in China

November 4, 2010

There are more than one hundred thousand people working in China’s recycling industry. It is a hard way to make a living.

However, trash and recycling are a big business in China. Some estimate that it is a fourteen billion dollar business for a family driven cottage industry.

Long hours of hard work add up to a living wage for the Chinese involved in this recycling business.

One recycler, Yang Shou Xue, said they start at ten in the morning waiting for the garbage trucks to arrive. Then they work until 1:00 PM before taking a break.  Work continues until 8:00 or 9:00 PM.

The collected recyclable scraps are then taken from the city for a few hour drive to factories where the trash is turned into raw material for a second life.

In fact, the recyclables just don’t come from China’s cities. It comes from all over the world, since China is the world’s largest importer of trash.

Bottles tossed in recycle bins in the US, often show up in China where they are processed then resold as a new product to Western countries.

Learn about Business is a Global War

______________

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.


IKEA Sleepover in Beijing

November 1, 2010

Zach Honig, a former editor at PC Magazine, writes a Blog called Tech, Travel and Tuna.

While in Beijing, Honig remembered a piece he read in the LA Times about Beijing residents loving IKEA but not for shopping. Curious, he visited the IKEA in Beijing and saw how popular IKEA is in a snoozy sort of way.

In fact, I sympathize with the Chinese snoozers.  Have you ever slept on a “hard” Chinese bed?


Love after the first bite.

Honig also mentioned that he ran into China’s Net Nanny since he couldn’t access his WordPress Blog, Twitter or Facebook, which includes anarchists scheming to bring down orderly societies. There is some truth to that.

Meanwhile, the IKEA snoozers have not slowed expansion plans in the Middle Kingdom since IKEA plans to double the number of stores in China to 18 by 2015.

The current eight IKEA stores in China are predicted to draw 27.3 million visitors (or should I saw snoozers) this year. IKEA also owns a 49% share of Inter Ikea Centre Group that builds shopping centers and is planning to spend about 1.5 billion to build more malls in China.  Source: Financial Post 


Bargains at IKEA Shanghai store

 The reason for IKEA’s investment in China is due to retail sales that rose 18% the first eight months of 2010, compared to a sluggish annual increase of 2.5% for retail sales in the US.

Another factor is the Chinese save then pay cash for most of what they buy. It is estimated that Chinese households have accumulated $16.5 trillion (valued in US dollars) in assets.

Don’t forget to drop by Zach Honig’s Blog and see his photos of snoozing IKEA fans in Beijing. The link is at the top of this post.

Discover more about Doing Business in China

______________

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.


Silicone “Juice” in China

October 27, 2010

In You Can’t Build a New Silicon Valley Just Anywhere by Margaret O’Mara, writing for Foreign Policy magazine, she says, “for many of the would-be silicon cities being constructed by the Russias and Chinas of the world; with their long histories of centralized control, they are still convinced they can order up success.”

O’Mara’s theme is that the success we have seen in California’s Silicon Valley is due to the freedom America’s republic—now a democracy—offers along with loads of money from the government and venture capitalists with no strings attached.

If that were true, explain how China (ruled by Emperors under an autocratic imperialistic monarchy) was more technologically advanced than any country on earth for almost two thousand years.


If you don’t speak Chinese, the English subtitles say it all.

After all, the Chinese invented the stirrup for saddles which revolutionized warfare on horseback, gunpowder, the multistage rocket, the compass, paper, the printing press and pasta along with a long list of other innovations, which changed the world.

Without the Chinese, where would the world be today? See Chinese Crossbow and other Inventions

China may not offer the same individual freedoms the West does, but “face”, which is important in Chinese culture, is a strong motivator to improvise and invent so one gains “face” and becomes powerful and wealthy.

Before Deng Xiaoping and the “Getting Rich is Glorious” generation that he gave birth to, I would have agreed with Margaret O’Mara but not now.

In my next series, The Machines of Ancient China, we will discover more about China’s contributions to the world we live in.

To discover the Chinese advantage, learn about Guanxi in China

______________

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.