Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 6/7

October 24, 2010

In parts 1 through 5, I provided evidence showing that China is building a republic that may last for centuries.

What is happening on the Internet offers more evidence that China is moving toward a more open society. In China, there are more Blogs than any nation and a free exchange of ideas via e-mails.

In fact, in China there are more people logging onto the Internet than America’s entire population.

China could have limited all Internet use as North Korea has, but China hooked up to the World Wide Web instead.

What are the real reasons China struggles to censor parts of the international internet like pornography, WordPress, Facebook and Blogger? 

Is it possible that China is doing this because they do not have the confidence that most of their people are sophisticated enough to deal with all the crazy ideas floating around in international cyberspace.

Instead, China is opening to the world like a slow blooming flower allowing the people to adapt instead of being overwhelmed, which might lead to a meltdown and a return to chaos and anarchy.

However, anyone who wants to sneak past China’s Net Nanny may do so.

I’ve known people in China who have slipped past the Net Nanny, which is more like a leaky dam getting ready to burst, and it isn’t that hard. It just takes some time. See Tech Crunch for more information about Internet use in China.

Deng Xiaoping was right. If China had the political gridlock and partisieanship that exists in America today, would the Chinese have achieved the goals to modernize that they have? 

Return to Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 5

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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

Entitlement – One of the Cancers that Kills Empires

October 11, 2010

Although Deng Xiaoping was misquoted by the Western media for saying, “Getting Rich is Glorious”, he should have the credit anyway.

By opening China to capitalism and world trade and introducing competition at all levels of society and ending the Communist, socialist economic model, Deng Xiaoping saved China.

A return to the socialist economic model means China will fall into step behind America, which is on the fast track to failure “in part” due to entitlement programs for the disadvantaged that were launched during President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which was designed to reduce poverty.

The government should not have played a role in lifting people out of poverty. Those who live in poverty should accomplish that for themselves.

After reading, editing and revising Escaping the Trap, K. D. Koratsky’s guest post, I believe I understand what he meant by following evolutionary principals to compete.


President Lyndon Johnson wanted to do something for everyone and America is still paying the price.

Although many in America blame China for lost jobs in the U.S., the fault belongs in America partially because of government programs like President Johnson’s Great Society.

Creating entitlements (preferences and favoritism) to minorities, single mothers or the handicapped was one of the mistakes that contributed to America losing its competitive edge in the global-market place.

Once discrimination is removed, socialist programs that create entitlements for individuals who cannot compete and win were wrong. 

The best qualified should win – not the other way around.

However, there is nothing wrong with a social-safety net designed to train individuals who lost jobs due to changes in the workplace so he or she may reenter society as a productive citizen, but only if he or she can compete without favoritism.

Evolution means competition at all levels where those who are the best qualified wins.

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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

The Growing BRICs

October 7, 2010

Until recently, I didn’t know what the BRIC was.  Now, because I spend so much time researching topics about China, I often run into the BRIC.

The BRIC is Brazil, Russia, India and China. In the next few decades, these countries could become the wealthiest nations on the globe alongside America.

Jim O’Neill, who works for Goldman Sachs, talks about the BRIC in the embedded video.

In fact, O’Neill is the one who thought up the acronym for BRIC.

When he stepped into his position at Goldman Sacs, he wanted to know how the world might change economically by 2050.

They discovered that China would become the world’s largest economy before 2050 possibly reaching 45 trillion dollars–twenty times larger than today, and the rest of the BRIC economies would have a much larger share of the global economy too.

Projections also show that India, Russia and Brazil would become larger than the current G7 bypassing Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom.

Only the US would remain in the top five.

If you are a doubter, consider that the BRIC economies are already having a huge influence on the world, and the potential growth of the middle class in the BRICs could explode four hundred percent in the next decade, which would increase demand for cars, energy and oil.

See Business is a Global War

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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

China’s Continued Growth

October 6, 2010

The Economist for September 25, 2010, mentions China a number of times proving that China’s growth as a world power is not ending soon. 

In Valuable Vale, we learn that China has transformed a Brazilian iron-ore company from a small fry to a giant in a decade with more to come.

“China has propelled (Vale) from insignificance…to a market capitalization of $147 billion.  It is now the second-largest miner (on the globe).”

Then some of the yuan that went to Vale to buy iron ore flowed back to China when Vale ordered a fleet of enormous ships from China.

In A Mao in every pocket we discover that China struggles to continue “managing” the value of the yuan since China’s central government still fears the unpredictability of global markets.

However, the way China manages the yuan may be changing since recent currency reforms allowed exporters to price their good in yuan, rather than dollars.  Yet, some controls are still in place since “yuan flowed out of China only if goods or services flow the other way.”

In the meantime, pandering to voters, the U.S. Congress is looking for ways to punish China over the way the yuan is managed but only if the proposed bills comply with WTO (World Trade Organization) rules.

Wild is the wind shows that continued growth in the green-energy industry also depend on China. The Economist says that “installations (wind turbines) this year in America could be little more than half what they were last year” and that “the only market that continues to grow is China.”

The evidence shows that China is still crucial to the world’s recovery from the Wall Street, U.S. sub-prime mortgage induced economic meltdown of 2008.

Learn more as China Moves Toward Orbit and Beyond

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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

Charity and Philanthropy Sprouting in China

October 5, 2010

Now that China is the 2nd largest economy on the planet, the responsibility of helping the needy has come of age.

Today, China has about 875,000 multi-millionaires – 55,000 are billionaires, the highest number after the United States.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are visiting Beijing to have dinner with China’s wealthy and share their passion for giving.

So far, two of China’s super rich have accepted the invitation and the central government is encouraging others to attend requesting that all of China’s billionaires donate at least one million yuan annually to charity. Source: Wall Street Journal

It is estimated that there are more than 1,800 charitable foundations across China but most are not very transparent and this breeds suspicion and distrust.

To solve that problem, Actor Jet Li’s charity is one of the co-founding organizations behind a new China Foundation Center with goals to increase the transparency of Chinese charitable groups.

The Chinese may turn to the U.S. to see how America deals with charity theft, which has been a big problem with smaller charities.  Although larger charities are closely watched by the U.S. government, smaller charities often lack the financial controls to prevent theft. Source: MSNBC.com

It isn’t that the Chinese are unwilling to give. The China Daily reported that China’s top 100 philanthropists have donated $3.3 billion dollars since 2005.

After the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, individuals donated $8.9 billion, the highest level in China’s history.

The China Law Blog also had a post that said in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake, so many in China donated blood that there wasn’t enough room to store it all showing the world that when China’s government cannot handle a crises, the Chinese people will step in.

See When the Generals Laughed to discover what Chinese military did soon after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

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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

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