Internet Security in China

November 24, 2010

We must be careful not to allow the “free” Western media, which often practices the exaggerations of Yellow Journalism to gain a larger audience share, to turn us into virtual on-line paranoid freaks.

In fact, Americans seldom hear that other nations around the globe also have the same challenges with Internet Security as the US does.

The following newscast from CCTV proves that we are not alone. The Chinese also suffer from virtual viruses and crimes.

It doesn’t take a government-funded agency to create a virus or other Internet threats. Any hacker may do so, and China Internet Watch reported 420 million Chinese Internet users on-line in 2010.

China has a National Computer Network Emergency Response Center. In 2009, the Center said, “Internet security cases have been on the rise in recent years posing severe challenges to information safety (in China).

“Hackers can profit from renting or selling computer information.… This crime has caused over 4.5 billion yuan in losses.”

The Center says, “The number of viruses and assaults launched by hackers number in the tens of thousands and the number of attacks is rising by one-third each year.”

The Ministry of Public Security and State Information Center has launched an exclusive campaign to protect Internet security.

For example, in December 2009, China found eleven guilty in a virus case and sent the defendants to jail for up to three years for their role in creating on-line viruses in east China. This on-line gang reportedly made illegal gains of 646,000 yuan or about 94,600 US dollars.

It was reported that 80 people across China were involved in this crime and more trials were expected.

Learn more from Tom Carter about Crime 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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.


Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 3/3

November 24, 2010

The reputation of the Chinese products that Admiral Zheng He took with him on his voyages brought him considerable honor and made him welcome everywhere he visited.

On his sixth voyage, he reached the African coast and twelve hundred envoys from sixteen African and Asian countries returned to China with Zheng He’s fleet.

In Beijing, the Ming Emperor presented these envoys with 40 thousand roles of silk and brocade.

Even before the Ming Dynasty, China had been sending diplomatic missions overland to the West for centuries and trade had extended as far as east Africa.

However, never before had a government-sponsored mission the size of Zheng He’s fleet been organized.  His voyages were a vivid demonstration of the economic and cultural prosperity of the Ming Dynasty.

 

In 1420, the year the Forbidden City was completed, the Yongle Emperor’s Bell was successfully cast. 

The Forbidden City is a testament to Chinese architecture and engineering while in Europe it was still the Middle Ages.

The Great Wall, which the Ming Dynasty had continued to build and strengthen, stretched from China’s eastern coast to the far northwest.

In 1637, the largest encyclopedia of ancient China was published — a comprehensive book covering science and handicraft technologies.

Another encyclopedia was published on agriculture.

A third described China’s geology in detail.

A fourth was the most comprehensive medical book in Chinese history, the Compendium of Materia Medica.

The greatest of China’s ancient literature was also written and published during the Ming Dynasty.

Return to Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 2/3

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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.


Oprah Times Four in China

November 24, 2010

After doing research for this post, I thought, how could these four Chinese women be compared to Oprah when her US audience is only seven million?

The four women I discovered in China compared to America’s Oprah are Chen Luyu, Yue-sai Khan, Hung Huang, and Yang Lan.

I’ve written about Luyu before at You’ve Come a Long Ways, Babe.

Luyu’s audience in China averages 140 million. Her show is called A Date With Luyu, which tackles issues that traditionally have been censored by Chinese media officials. The show’s guests have included people who are HIV-positive, lesbians and transsexuals.

Of Yue-sai Kan, The Conversation: The Most Famous Woman in China says she is a journalist, television host, entrepreneur and author and has been a key figure in modern Chinese culture for 20 years. About 300 million Chinese watch her show.

People Magazine called Yue-sai Kan the most famous woman in China. Money Magazine described her as a Modern Day Marco Polo.

After Kan hosted a live broadcast from China in 1984 for PBS, China’s government asked her to produce One World, the first television series ever produced and hosted by an American on China’s only national network, CCTV. Source: Women of China

The next Chinese Oprah is Hong Huang, who hosts a TV show called Crossing Over. Huang’s mother was Mao Zedong’s English teacher. She was sent to the U.S. for an education as a teenager and returned to become one of the most influential entrepreneurs in Chinese print media.

Hung Huang is the chief executive of the China Interactive Media Group and publishes fashion magazines such as I Look, Time Out and Seventeen. Her Blog, which has an audience of about 15 million, is one of China’s most popular and continues to be one of the top five on Sina.com.

The fourth Chinese Oprah I discovered was Yang Lan, who rose to fame as the host of the Zheng Da Variety Show, which often has an audience of 200 million viewers.

In the following YouTube video clip, Yang Lan talks about how Chinese women are making their mark on China’s future.

She says the younger generation in China is turning away from television and using the Internet for entertainment and information.

If you do the math, you will discover that these four Chinese Oprahs reach an audience of about 700 million compared to America’s Oprah with an audience of seven million.

Maybe the US Oprah’s claim to fame is because she was the first Oprah and it has nothing to do with the size of the audience. Did you notice that all of these Chinese Oprahs speak excellent English? I am sure that the US Oprah doesn’t speak Mandarin.

Since the US Oprah is going off the air, you have four choices in China to take her place.

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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.


Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 2/3

November 23, 2010

The Ming Dynasty was the golden age of porcelain making. Each area and/or city in China that produced porcelain had its own specialty.

Most of the porcelain products that Admiral Zheng He took on his voyages were from China’s capital of porcelain in Jingdezhen.

By the time of the Ming Dynasty, there were about 20 kilns in Jingdezhen producing porcelain for the exclusive use of the Imperial family.

However, porcelain was also produced for the common people and for trade.

Again, the process of porcelain production was similar to a modern day assembly line. Sorry, Ford.

Chinese porcelain became famous throughout the world.  Merchants from all of Europe and the Middle East were doing business with China.

For example, the amount of china one nation, the Netherlands, imported came to about 16 million pieces.

While Zheng He was on his voyages, the Forbidden City, the largest palace in the world, was being built in Beijing. Classical Chinese construction involved eight separate tasks, which have changed little in thousands of years.

Jin Hongkui, Deputy Curator of the Palace Museum says, “The golden yellow tiles of the Forbidden City contain many details that might go unnoticed by a less observant eye.

“For instance, each tile on the roof of the Hall of Supreme Harmony has a miniature dragon sculpted on the tile’s head…

“These small details are a sharp contrast to the grand scale of the palace and this highlights the harmony of artistic and architectural effort that went into the Forbidden City.”

At the same time, the Temple of Heaven was being built in another part of Beijing.

Return to Ming Dynasty (1368-1643 AD) – Part 2, 1/3

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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.


Death by Execution or Murder

November 23, 2010

The Huffington Post and other media reported that Ambassador Mark Sedwill, NATO’s Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, said that youngsters living in Afghan’s capital probably are safer than in other big cities like London or New York.

The knee jerk reaction of the virtual mob judged Sedwill wrong without evidence.

However, he was right!

Between 2001 to June of 2010, direct deaths of “all” civilians killed in Afghanistan as a result of insurgent actions was estimated to be 4,949 to 6,499 or an average of 550 to 722 a year.

In the US, total murders 2001 to 2009 were 137,840 people. Forcible rape was about a million. Aggravated assault was about eight million. Source: FBI

About 260,000 children die globally each year in motor vehicle collisions and ten million are injured. That’s more than all the roadside and suicide bombings in both Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars started.

In the US, Child Help reported that 10,432 children died from abuse 2001 to 2007 and over 3 million reports of child abuse are made annually.

That leads me to the Western mob’s criticism of China’s convicted criminal execution rate.

Amnesty International estimated that 1,718 executions took place in 2008 in China.

The big difference is that most people executed in China at least get a trial and a chance to prove innocence before death. In a motor vehicle collision, murder or child abuse, the innocent victim has no chance.

It is wrong that criminals serving life sentences in the US without a chance for parole or execution cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

KPBS did a special on The Cost of Life in Prison. For 2,600 serving life sentences in California, the projected cost was about $6.4 billion.

Criminal Justice says, 140,610 people are serving life sentences in the U.S. and more than 40,000 are serving life without parole.

China’s justice system is doing the right thing. China has executed convicted child molesters. Source: Dream Catchers for Abused Children

Discover The Founding Fathers had it Right about the Death Penalty

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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.