Two Republics – Part 4/4

September 24, 2010

Mao Zedong ruled China from 1949 to 1976 when he died.  For a brief period between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Mao was forced to retire.  However, when he launched the Cultural Revolution, the people of China returned Mao to power.

Today, China has a one party system and there is a “small” body of citizens entitled to vote for the top leaders who then rule China. 

China has a Constitution but the language of that Constitution is different from the Constitution of the United States and that Constitution is still being Amended as in the U.S.

China does not have a monarch or a hereditary head of state. The fact that China has both term and  an age limit for holding political positions in the government is proof that China is not a dictatorship, which is a popular opinion held around the world.

Under Mao, who ruled for 27 years and who was known by some as “China’s Modern Emperor”, it would be safe to say a dictator ruled China.

Many may not agree with China’s legal system or laws, but that legal system and those laws were written and adopted by the elected representatives who rule China – not by a dictator or a monarch and they are still subject to change through future amendments as is the United States.

The United States and China are both Republics, and the evidence suggests that China is modeling their Republic after America, but  with a Constitution to fit Chinese culture as the elected leaders of China interpret the document that is China’s law of the land.

Dr. Sun Yat-Sen – China’s Democratic Revolutionary wrote that he wanted to model China’s government after America but by combining Western thought with Chinese tradition.

It appears that is exactly what is happening.

If America had more than two centuries to amend the U.S. Constitution, what will China’s Constitution look like one-hundred-and-seventy-two years from now?

What if China is the real republic transitioning from a socialist state while the US was becoming a socialist democracy.

Return to Two Republics – Part 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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Two Republics – Part 3/4

September 23, 2010

In Part 2, we learned what being a Republic means, which proved that for decades, China has been a Republic.

The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China was adopted on December 4, 1982 and has been amended four times.

The first Amendment to China’s Constitution was approved on April 12, 1988. The second was approved on March 29, 1993. The third was approved on March 15, 1999, and the fourth on March 14, 2004. Source: People Daily.com

In comparison, The First Amendment to the United States Constitution was The Bill of Rights (Amendments 1 to 10), and it was ratified by three-fourths of the States on December 15, 1791.

In fact, there have been over 10,000 constitutional amendments introduced in Congress since 1789.

However, only twenty-six have been approved.

The Eleventh Amendment was approved in 1795.

The last Amendment, which limits congressional pay raises, was approved in 1992. Source: Wikipedia.org

It took the United States more than two centuries to amend the Constitution of the United States to the rule of law that guides America today.  China has only had a Constitution for twenty-eight years between 1982 and 2010.

Return to Two Republics – Part 2

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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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Two Republics – Part 2/4

September 23, 2010

Soon after the Revolution and the formation of the United States of America “white, male property owners twenty-one or older could vote. Some colonists not only accepted these restrictions but also opposed broadening the franchise.”

Duke University professor Alexander Keyssar wrote in The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States: “At its birth, the United States was not a democratic nation—far from it. The very word “democracy” had pejorative overtones, summoning up images of disorder, government by the unfit, even mob rule. In practice, moreover, relatively few of the nation’s inhabitants were able to participate in elections: among the excluded were most African Americans, Native Americans, women, men who had not attained their majority, and white males who did not own land.”  Source: Voting in Early America

Correct me if I’m wrong, but nowhere in Article 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which is about “The Legislative Branch”, does it say that the Republic requires more than one political party to compete for “The Legislature” and “The House”. Source: USConstitution.net/Article 1

This means that political parties like the Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States do not have to exist for the United States to be a Republic.

In fact, the U.S. could have one political party as China does and still be a Republic.

Return to Two Republics – Part 1

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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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Two Republics – Part 1/4

September 23, 2010

America and China are both Republics. In this four part series, evidence will prove this to be a fact.

The Declaration of Independence makes no mention of the United States being a Democracy or a Republic.

The Constitution of the United States, the law of the land, says a “Republican Form of Government” rules America and nowhere does the Constitution mention that the United States is a Democracy.

Here is the exact language of Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States.

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion…” Source: USConstitution.net

What is a Republic?

republic n 1: a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and is usually a president; also: a nation or other political unit having such a government

2: a government in which supreme power is held by the citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives governing according to law; also: a nation or other political unit having such a form of government. Source: USConstitution.net/REPUBLIC

Today, many citizens in the United States take for granted that they may vote for elected representatives during elections at the state and federal level.

That may be true but it wasn’t always the case, as you will learn in Part 2. Early in the Republic of the United States, the number of people given the right to vote was extremely limited.

See Dictatorship Defined

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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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Journalists and Jail Time

September 22, 2010

China isn’t the only country where reporters go to jail.

In September 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that two Chronicle reporters were sent to prison for as long as a year and a half for not revealing their sources.

In July 2005, Judith Miller, a Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, who worked for the New York Times at the time, was jailed for contempt of court for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury.

In fact, the First Amendment Center has a list of U.S. reporters who have gone to jail. 

The first case was in 1848 when a Senate committee confined John Nugent, a correspondent for the New York Herald.


An example of how one law is different around the world.

Then between 1848 and 1897, there were five more cases.

Starting in 1911 and through the 20th century, the “free” press in America had more than 30 collisions with the law.  

I stopped counting at thirty.

When I started to research the China side of this topic, I learned that Yahoo’s Hong Kong office helped China catch journalist Shi Tao for “divulging state secrets”.  Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Source: BBC

In fact, The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that in 2008, 125 journalists went to prison around the globe. Twenty-eight were in China.

 China’s laws and sentences tend to be longer and harsher, but China does not have America’s legal system or Constitution, which were designed to protect American citizens from the government and criminals in the U.S. – not China.

Every country has different penalties for crimes.  For example, what is the worst that could happen if you were caught in Turkey with illegal drugs?  Up to 20 years in prison.

However, in Singapore and Thailand, there is a death penalty for this crime. Source: Drug laws abroad

See Growing China’s Legal System

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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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