Triumph in Chile Leads to Criticism of China

October 20, 2010

On the “media menu” in America, there is “Hypocrisy” listed near the top of the front page, and it is cheap.

In a New York Times piece of China Cheers Rescue Halfway Around the Word, we learn that the state owned media in China has been covering the rescue operation to save 33 miners in Chile.

How the New York Times turned good news in Chile into a criticism of China is another story.

If you read the entire piece in the Asia Pacific section of the NYT, go to the bottom to see what I’m talking about.


Rush Limbaugh Lies

In the conclusion to the piece, David Barboza, the reporter, quotes someone identified as Mr. Guan, the poet and blogger, who wrote a few lines of verse about Chile’s rescue on the Web, “What the government (of Chile) did warms our hearts. They didn’t suppress the truth, they didn’t secretly pay anyone money, they don’t make irresponsible statements, they don’t forgive those who should be responsible for it. And they don’t laud themselves with clichés.”

If the NYT didn’t make a point that this was aimed at China, anyone could make a case that the same verse is about the media in America.

 


Glen Beck Lies

 

Have you listened to people like Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck or read Ann Coulter or how about lies and deceit in political campaign Ads?

In fact, who is Mr. Guan, the poet and blogger? I used Google Blog Search and Google and came up with zero. Did Barboza fabricate Mr. Guan?

The United States Department of Labor documented 1,546 average deaths for all mining fatalities and 81,341 injuries between 1936 to 1940 in the U.S.  Between 2006 to 2007, they reported 69 deaths and 11,800 injuries.

 


Ann Coulter Lies


Then “In one of the most scandalous crises in workplace safety in the United States, over 10,000 coal miners have died needlessly from black lung disease (from the inhalation of coal dust) in the last decade.” Source: Chesapeake Climate

In addition, the NYT made no effort to mention that there is evidence that China is eager to lower the number of coal mining fatalities as reported by Internet Marketing Strategy for Business.

More research using Google shows that fatalities in mines are a global problem. I found a post in All Africa.com about South Africa’s high mine fatalities.

However, what did David Barboza, the New York Times reporter do? He dug up a poet called Mr. Guan. The truth is that the media in America is free — free to lie.

See more about Unbalanced Reporting 

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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 Mongol Empire & Yuan Dynasty (1279 – 1368 AD) – Part 2/5

October 20, 2010

Kublai Khan’s mother took the time to educate her younger son in the teachings of Confucius. Without renouncing the violent ways of the Mongols, she encouraged the two sides of his nature that would be the key to his success.

In 1236, at the age of twenty-one, Kublai was granted his own land to rule in northern China by his uncle, who was the great khan.

At the time, the bureaucrats and officials heavily taxed the people and the people were often forced to work for the state like road building.

Encouraged by his mother, Kublai Khan decided to change this and brought about reforms.  The peasants of northern China appreciated what he did for them.

However, traditional Mongol ruling families distrusted what he was doing in China.

When his brother Mongke became the great khan in 1251 after his uncle’s death, Kublai Khan was given more land to rule in northeastern China.

It was now time to prove that he was a warrior. To the Mongols, military success was a sign of a strong leader.

His chance came when his older brother decided to go to war with the powerful Southern Sung Dynasty.

Kublai Khan made the first move in 1252. When he was victorious in his first battle, he returned to Northern China and built a new city to rival his brother’s capital.

This led to a family rift that threatened to tear the empire apart, but his strong relationship with Mongke solved the problem.

On the next campaign to conquer the Southern Song Dynasty, Kublai Khan’s older brother became sick and died. The armies were recalled to decide who the next great khan would be.

Continue to Part 3 or return to The Yuan Dynasty – Part 1

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Face of Compassion

October 19, 2010

In August, I wrote China’s Got Talent Too about Liu Wei, the armless pianist who plays the piano with his toes. 

This week, he won the contest and performed by singing, “You Are Beautiful” in English. 

Lui Wei’s motto is, “I have two options – I can die as fast as possible, or I can live a brilliant life, and I chose the latter.”

Another one of Liu Wei’s quotes is, “To me, there are three things that cannot be missed in life – air, water and music.”


If you watch his winning performance in the embedded video and don’t speak Chinese, be patient. Eventually you will get to hear Liu Wei perform.

Liu Wei was 10 years old when he lost his arms after touching a high-voltage wire during a game of hide-and seek. In America, the standard current is 110 V.  In China, the standard electric current is 220 V.

If you travel the globe, you may want to know about the World Electric Guide so I included this link and visit Electric Shock to discover a few tips to avoid that jolt.

I also read a piece in the People’s Daily Online asking, Do Chinese people lack compassion? After reading the piece, I’m sure most animal lovers in America would say that the Chinese lack compassion. 

However, I would disagree. Most Chinese have a lot of compassion but it isn’t the same as showing compassion in the West, which usually means donating money or time to an animal shelter.

In China, compassion helped Liu Wei win China’s Got Talent and he became a national celebrity and an example to every child in China showing what it means to never give up regardless of the odds.

Liu Wei earned that compassion by not allowing his handicap to get in his way – not because he lost his arms in an accident.

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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 Mongol Empire & Yuan Dynasty (1279 – 1368 AD) – Part 1/5

October 19, 2010

Kublai Khan was the first significant non-Chinese to rule over the entire Chinese empire. He also had a goal to rule the entire world.

Like his grandfather, Genghis Khan, he defeated and crushed his enemies with brutal force.

However, after the conquest, he ruled his empire peacefully setting up governments and creating systems of taxation while promoting culture and commerce.

He also made Beijing the capital of the biggest empire the world has ever seen.

Kublai Khan’s empire stretched from the East China Sea to the Danube River in Europe – more than five thousand miles or eight thousand kilometers from east to west.

His military career started late in his life but his skills as a conqueror were the best.

In addition, throughout his reign, he courted the most sophisticated, intellectual, scientific and artistic minds of the day.

The Mongols were a nomadic people and Kublai Khan’s skills as a military leader would eventually lead to the conquest of the Song Dynasty of Southern China.

One of greatest influences over Kublai Khan while he was a child was his mother.  Mongol women often fought beside their men and ruled tribes and territories. She insisted that he be educated in Chinese culture.

Continued in the Yuan Dynasty – Part 2

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Japan’s War of Lies about Atrocities in China

October 19, 2010

Adolf Hitler said, “If you tell a big lie enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.…”

That’s what Japan has been doing since 1945—telling a big lie about the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in Nanking, China during World War II.

It is estimated that about 17 million Chinese civilians died due to Japan’s invasion of China along with 2 million Chinese troops.

Several hundred thousand civilians were murdered in Nanking.

Eamonn Fingleton is an Irish journalist and author who refused to allow this lie about Nanking to become truth.

Fingleton is a former editor for Forbes and the Financial Times. His books deal with global economics and globalism. He has written on East Asian and global issues for The Atlantic Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Harvard Business Review.

Fingleton writes that Iris Chang’s book, The Rape of Nanking, broke a half-century of silence on Japanese war crimes in China.

He says of American scholars, The self-censorship was all such a sharp contrast with the dedication with which American scholars had pored over the horrors of Auschwitz and Treblinka (and indeed of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Why had Nanking been forgotten by most of the world?

The answer, Fingleton says, is that the highest government officials in Tokyo wanted it forgotten and they got their way until Iris Chang wrote The Rape of Nanking.

In an attempt to revive the decades old lies, the rightist Japanese-language magazine Sapio in the summer of 1998, said that Chang’s book was not “serious history”.

The magazine portrayed Chang’s book as having been spawned by a Sino-American conspiracy against Japan.

To learn more about The Rape of Nanking and Iris Chang see The Rape of Nanking with Iris Chang

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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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