Comparing India and China’s Economic Engines

October 13, 2010

The cover for The Economist of October 2 – 8, 2010, is betting on a race that cannot be won by India.


I opened the magazine and read the two pieces that the cover was about.  One is about India’s surprising economic miracle and the second piece was A bumpier but freer road.

On page 11, I read, “many observers think China has done a better job than India of curbing corruption…”

On page 77, a Western banker was quoted saying, “It’s much easier to deal with the well-understood ‘org chart’ of China Inc than the freewheeling chaos of India.”

After reading both pieces comparing China with India, it was obvious that India would never beat China economically.

The Economist wants India to win this race, because it is called a democracy as is the U.S., but what isn’t mentioned is that China is becoming a republic with a Chinese twist, which is what Dr. Sun Yat-sen wanted.

The reason The Economist is wrong about India is because America’s Founding Fathers hated democracy and they had a good reason.

The Live Journal goes into detail on this topic.  To quote the Live Journal, “It would be an understatement to say that the (U.S.) Founding Fathers hated democracy. They warned against it vehemently and relentlessly. They equated it – properly – with mob rule.

“in a democracy, two wolves and a sheep take a majority vote on what’s for supper, while in a constitutional republic (which China is becoming), the wolves are forbidden on voting on what’s for supper and the sheep are well armed.…

“The Founders, who hated democracy, gave us a free country (a republic). Our (meaning many Americans) ignorance of history, which has lead to a love of democracy, is causing us to surrender our freedoms at an alarming rate.”

Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866 – 1925), known as the father of modern China, said he wanted to model China’s government after America but by combining Western thought with Chinese tradition.

When he said this, it was 1910, and America, by definition, was still a republic. Once you read the two pieces in The Economist, you may understand why India’s democracy cannot beat China’s evolving republic.

This topic is continued (with more details and facts) at India Falling Short

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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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15 Comments | business, China, Chinese Culture, economy, government, India | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

A Foul Taste in the Mouth of a Falun Gong Fanatic

October 13, 2010

On October 5, a comment appeared from someone called JJYZ to The Falun Gong Machine , which appeared in June 2010.

JJYZ says, “I leave this discussion with a foul taste in my mouth.” He or she also says, “Lloyd (me) has swallowed CCP propaganda hook, line, and sinker.” (This post is a short version of a reply to JJYZ’s comment)

I have news for JJYZ. My opinions formed from direct interactions with the Falun Gong.

I’ve had Falun Gong members sitting around my kitchen table. I’ve attended a Falun Gong Chinese New Year’s musical production at a theater in San Francisco and discovered that it was propaganda designed to recruit and retain religious cult members

I’ve also written other posts on the topic of Chinese religious cults: The Millennium Cult and The White Lotus Mutation.

JJYZ provides a link to a site called “defend democracy.org”, which doesn’t make much sense unless it is another gear in the Falun Gong running machine.

China has NEVER been a democracy so what is there to defend against. In 1982, the structure of China’s government became a one party republic, which offers more representation than any government in China’s history.

In fact, Chinese culture has never accepted organized religions or cults as a permanent element of the culture as the West and the Middle East have done.

There were four Buddhist persecutions in China carried out between the fifth through the tenth centuries by four Chinese emperors. Source: Four Buddhist Persecutions in China

The most brutal was in 845 AD by Emperor Wuzong of the Tang Dynasty. He decided that the Buddhists were growing too influential and wealthy so he outlawed the religion.

Wuzong also persecuted Christians, Muslims, Jews and other organized religions.

As for the bad taste in JJYZ’s mouth, this symptom may be a side effect of being brainwashed by a religious cult and becoming a fanatic.

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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.

11 Comments | Buddhism, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, cults, history, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Influenced by the Mandate of Heaven

October 13, 2010

Although I wrote on the Mandate of Heaven in April, I didn’t see how deeply that belief was influencing China’s Communist Party.

The epiphany took place soon after reading page 235 in Living With Evolution.

At the same time, I realized that America’s judgment of China’s Communist Party was in part due to half a century of entitlement programs for minorities and the disadvantaged in the U.S. — often rewarding those who were less qualified and punishing those who were successful through merit by holding him or her back.

However, in China after Mao was gone and Deng Xiaoping opened the country to world trade, meritocracy was back with a vengeance.

Meritocracy is a system in which the talented succeed and move ahead based on his or her achievement.

The Chinese for almost four thousand years believed that humans were responsible for how events unfolded on earth with human actions subject to the approval or disapproval of heaven.

Successful actions were held to be those that heaven approved of and unsuccessful actions were held to be those heaven did not approve of.

What this means is that anyone, regardless of his or her social status could challenge the elite and rise to the top on the claim that it was legitimate according to the Mandate of Heaven — a concept that was also quintessentially meritocratic.

This explains why China’s central government treats political and/or religious activists, who challenge the status quo, so harshly. 

If the Communist Party allows the Falun Gong, Tibetan and Islamic separatists or Western style human rights activists to have the kind of freedom of expression that is allowed in the West, most Chinese, including the Communist Party, may see this as a sign of weakness.

In fact, the Dalai Lama’s popularity in the West is seen as a challenge to the Party’s mandate to rule. The same could be said about the rival government in Taiwan.

To have a better understanding of what this mean, you may want to start reading the Living With Evolution Blog

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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

Bamboo

October 12, 2010

Chinese culture considers Bamboo lucky because Bamboo is the Chinese symbol for strength.

Bamboo demonstrates strength by growing fast and adapting to new environments. Because of this, many in China see Bamboo as a symbol of luck, which explains why Bamboo is often given as a gift.


Bamboo Flute Music & Beautiful China

In fact, Bamboo is the most popular plant in China.  Most Chinese, even in high-rise apartments, have Bamboo plants around in small pots.

Bamboo represents the spirit of summer, simplicity and humility, and respect for elders among other things.

Painting Bamboo goes back centuries. Musical instruments have been made of Bamboo.

China’s first cannons were made of Bamboo.


Painting Chinese Bamboo

My wife has planted Bamboo in the yards of every house we’ve lived in.  When my father-in-law visits from China, he has his picture taken in front of the healthiest, tallest stand of Bamboo in the yard.

In Feng Shui, Bamboo is a symbol of strength, fortitude, and rapid growth. When given as a gift, Lucky Bamboo is said to be at its luckiest.

Chinese tradition also gives meaning to the number of stalks given as a gift. Two stalks is a symbol for love, three or six represent happiness while five or seven impart health.  The more stalks there are, the more luck there will be.

Sources: The Feng Shui meanings of lucky Bamboo and Living Arts Originals

Discover Fifteen Facts that will Blow Your Mind about China

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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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The Hollywood Reporter Takes a Dump on China

October 12, 2010

There is a lot I don’t know about China and the Chinese, but I know enough to recognize when someone is taking a sly dump on China’s government. 

That’s what Peter Brunette does in a film review of Mao’s Last Dancer in The Hollywood Reporter.

However, my review of the film paints a different picture.

When Brunette writes “what the aspiring, ‘Rocky’-like, against-all-odds dancer is escaping is not working-class ignorance and poverty, but hard line Chinese communist officials,” he is wrong.

The Communists who ruled China in 1979 inherited that world, and we see what they have done with it in the last thirty years in China’s Capitalist Revolution.

In fact, life was that way when the Qing Dynasty ruled China (1644-1911), and after the Dynasty collapsed, the situation in China became worse—chaos, anarchy, famine, starvation, warlords fighting each other, then a rebellion between the Nationalists and Communists, interrupted by the Japanese invasion of China during World War II followed by Mao’s Great Leap Forward and The Cultural Revolution, which ended abruptly when Mao died.

China’s descent into “Madness” didn’t start with the Communists. It stared in 1835 when the British Empire, and France (among others) launched the Opium Wars to force China to accept opium as a legal import.

With all that happening, when did China have time to become as glitzy and soft as the US? Even the US didn’t change that fast or against those odds.

The transformation of China that we see today had not started by 1979 when the eighteen year old dancer was one of the first students from the Beijing Dance Academy to come to the United States or in 1981 when Li Cunxin decided to stay in America and embarrass his family, friends and country.

Instead, he married an American woman he was having an affair with and claimed he wanted to stay with his wife. Soon after the event, they were divorced.

The fact that the Chinese embassy let him go shows that China was struggling to change the way things had been under Mao. Under Mao, there would have been no trip to the U.S. for the dancer.

Brunette was right about one thing when he says the director knew exactly what he was doing every moment, which was playing to a Western audience that sees China through a red-colored lens that blurs the picture.

Mao’s Last Dancer is a good movie. I recommend seeing it, but take off the rose-colored glasses first.

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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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