Opposites Attract

November 1, 2010

If the old saying that opposites attract is true, China and the US are perfect for each other.

The Huffington Post’s Robert Lenzner writes that China Needs to Hit the Brakes; US Needs to Step on the Gas.

Lenzner explains that China’s economic goals are to avoid what happened in the US when subprime mortgages burst the real estate bubble and almost brought down the West’s house of cards.

To succeed, China is attempting to slow its economic growth and smother inflation.

However, in the US, the opposite it happening as the US wants to add to the national debt to avoid deflation and stimulate the economy at the same time.

Lenzner points out why China has everything to lose if this doesn’t work. China’s current 12th five-year economic plan is concentrating on the rural poor, and it is about time.

In fact, smaller cities are being built for some of the rural poor while extending electricity to remote villages across China.

At the same time, China is expanding the rail system and building more roads to reach people that haven’t been touched by China’s economic progress.

To avoid unrest, China’s future depends on improving the lifestyles of about 700 million rural Chinese.

Learn more at Volting all of China into the 21st Century

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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

GM Volt in China Soon

October 31, 2010

Bertel Schmitt writes in The Truth about Cars that GM will introduce the battery powered VOLT in China in the second half of 2011.

According to the Schmitt, GM has already conceded the Volt will be a failure in China because Chinese consumers are buying mostly gasoline and diesel powered cars and trucks.

There is one advantage China has over America and most of the world. The centeral government may decide to require taxis then the rest of China’s car owners to buy electric or hybrid and set a deadline.

Imagine how that would succeed in the US. In fact, China is doing something the US is having trouble getting started.

China is building wind farms off its coasts and replacing out-of-date coal burning power plants with modern, cleaner coal powered generating plants.

In fact, China has a long way to go to clean up its environment but it is moving in that direction.

Meanwhile, in the US, the top ten selling cars for 2010 are all gasoline powered as they are in China. Source: Good Car Bad Car

Even with polluted air, gasoline power remains king. I drive a hybrid and walk whenever possible. However, many people who live in the same town drive huge, gas guzzling SUVs.

Statistics tell us that the Chinese middle-class consumer isn’t that different from similar people in the US.

Learn more from Cornering the Plug-In Hybrid all Electric Car

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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

Fear of Famine

October 31, 2010

One thing China has been proud of is the ability to produce enough food to feed its people.

For millennia, China has managed to avoid widespread famine except during Mao’s Great Leap Forward when millions starved to death due to “bad” political decisions based on ideology instead of reason. After Mao died, Deng Xiaoping would return the country to reason.

To deal with the threat of widespread drought and famine, China’s Emperors started construction of the Grand Canal around 500 BC. 

Other emperors improved methods of agriculture and added to the canal.

Today the fear of famine has returned. Although China currently has more than enough food to feed its growing population, for the first time in history, China has to import some foods from Europe, Africa, Australia, South America and the United States.

In fact, Freakonomics says, “China gave up any pretense of being self-sufficient in soybean production a long time ago and is now the world’s largest soybean importer.”

China is largely sufficient in growing grain, so it is a net exporter of grains. However, it has to import other products like sugar, oil seeds and vegetable oil.

Some high quality convenience food items such as butter and cheese are also imported in small quantities.

In 2008, China Daily (Xinhua) reported that imported foods to China would total 1 trillion yuan or 147 million US dollars in the next five years.

As China’s population continues to grow and food demand outpaces domestic food production, the fear of famine and political blackmail from countries that import food to China will grow.

Since China’s centeral government does not want to depend on other nations, this is a sensitive area.

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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 » | China, Chinese food, environment, food | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Global Ignorance of Innovation

October 31, 2010

Many who live in Western democracies love patting themselves on the back and feeling superior to the rest of the world.

In The Economist for October 16, I found Innovation in China — Patents, yes; ideas, maybe, which demonstrates how ignorant some are about China. 

Since The Economist’s home office is in London, the magazine represents more than the American media—it represents the Western media and this piece was written in Hong Kong.

This isn’t the first time I’ve read about China’s reputation for trampling intellectual-property rights and that an authoritarian government couldn’t possibly compete with a democracy when it comes to innovation.

However, the conclusion points out that China is becoming more innovative and is starting to be serious about protecting intellectual property rights through China’s changing legal system.

What The Economist piece misses is that democracies do not hold a patent on innovation. For more than two millennia, innovations were rampant in an authoritarian China ruled by emperors without much of a legal system. The usual form of punishment was decapitation.

In fact, the list of innovations from ancient China is long and historians are starting to revise the textbooks to show that most of what we have today came from an authoritarian China.

To learn more about the innovations that originated in Imperial China then found a way to the West centuries later, I suggest reading Paper, Printing, Gunpowder, Crossbow and other Inventions, Machines of China, and China Points the Way.

I’m sure there are those who will deny the West “borrowed” these innovations from China and claim that the West reinvented them, but the evidence shows that these ideas traveled West along both the north and south Silk Roads as early as the Roman Empire more than two millennia ago. It just took time for the West to learn how to copy what the Chinese invented then claim it was the West that came up with the ideas.

Too bad that the patent laws, lawyers and courts of today didn’t exist then. Imagine the settlements over these ancient Chinese innovations, which revolutionized the world we live in today.

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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 » | China, Chinese history, history, legal system, media, science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Chinese Drums

October 30, 2010

The earliest evidence of the use of drums in China was found in Oracle inscriptions from the Shang Dynasty (1783-1123 BC).

Drums were used to motivate troops, set a marching pace and for sending orders or announcements.

The drum had a purpose in almost all elements of Chinese life. Copper drums come from southern China and date to almost a thousand years before Christ.  The copper drum was also called the war drum.

The Han Dynasty used copper drums for war too.

The Fengyang Drum Dance originated in Anhui Province and was used by traveling musicians and dancers in the streets of villages and towns. In time, it would represent poverty.

Tibetan drums are part of the Sholdon (Yogurt) Festival, which occurs in late August.

Drums are also used for the traditional Chinese New Year’s Lion Dance.

Learn more about Chinese music — The Ancient Yue – 9,000 Years Old

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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 » | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese history | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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