China Ends July with another First

August 7, 2010

China already leads the world in high-speed rail, solar power and wind turbine manufacturing.

Now, Spencer Swartz and Shai Oster report in the Wall Street Journal that “China has passed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest energy consumer, according to new data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), a milestone that reflects both China’s decades-long burst of economic growth and its rapidly expanding influence as an industrial giant.”

China disagrees with the IEA’s announcement but that doesn’t matter.

Even if China were correct, it wouldn’t be long before China did pass the US in energy consumption since the latest five-year plan is extending the electrical grid into rural China to send electricity to 700 million more people.

In fact, as China modernizes and catches up with the US and Europe, more energy will be required to power all those rural homes. Even if the Chinese do not consume as much as those in the US, that is still a lot of electricity.

This begs an answer for the question the Slate asks with How Communist is China? After all, General Motors sold more cars in China than in the US in the first half of 2010. And let’s not mention the Golden Arches, KFC, Pizza Hut and Starbucks.

Since China abandoned Maoism and Marxism, the Middle Kingdom has been rewriting the rules for capitalist growth. The irony is that politically, China is ruled by a single political party with an unpopular name in the West—a name that doesn’t fit any longer.

Maybe China’s government should call itself the People’s Collective Party.

See 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. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Oil Spills

August 6, 2010

America has more in common with China than most think—oil spills. 

MSNBC reports about the Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. After an April explosion that killed eleven workers, BP’s deep water well spilled as much as 184 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Fishing industries and tourism has been devastated while oil washes ashore turning beaches black with goo.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that China is struggling to recover from their worst oil spill ever.

China is new to this type of disaster and yet, they quickly mobilized an army of volunteers and anglers to help clean the pollution from the area around the port of Dalian, one of China’s most important strategic oil reserves.

China’s oil spill came from an explosion in an oil pipeline.  Witnesses report that China may have responded faster than the US did for the British Petroleum spill in the Gulf of Mexico. 

The pipeline that exploded belonged to China National Petroleum Corporation, Asia’s biggest oil and gas producer by volume.  Source: Uncoverage.net

This is the price for being a modern nation where so many depend on oil for electricity and transportation.

See China’s Oil Hunger Grows

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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. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Ruling the Waves Again

August 6, 2010

 John Pomfret writes in the Washington Post that China claims “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea. World leaders protest but China says it will honor international law regarding shipping.

I know a few American’s who will bridle at China’s claim. After all, the world’s oceans have been America’s bathtub since World War II, and before World War II, the British Empire ruled the waves.

It’s about time the West awakes and sees that China is serious about regaining its political position in the world. In the 18th century, China had the largest global economy and was more powerful than the Roman or British Empire for more than two millennia.

Remember Admiral Zheng He and China’s 15th century naval armada?  China had an opportunity to bully the world but didn’t. Instead, in the 19th century, the West arrived to bully China. See China: The Roots of Madness

It seems that the Chinese may be serious about building a navy to rival America. Automation Technology and Industry reports that by 2013, China will become the largest shipbuilder. China is already the world’s second biggest economy and may surpass the US in more than a decade to become number one.

Remember America’s Monroe Doctrine where in 1823, an upstart US announced to the world that any interference in Western hemispheric affairs would be seen as a threat to its security. 

China hasn’t gone that far yet, but they are learning fast.

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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. 

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Confucius with Chow Yun Fat

August 6, 2010

When my wife and daughter made their annual summer pilgrimage to China, I asked them to bring back a DVD of the new Confucius with Chow Yun Fat. Unfortunately, the copy they brought would not play on any of the American DVD players we have at home. The world is divided into regions and each region has its own DVDs that won’t play in other regions.

Determined, I resorted to e-bay to find a DVD for the US and Canada.  It cost me about $10 plus postage. The above link will take you to Amazon where you may order one.

The movie’s visuals are stunning and Chow Yun Fat does an incredibly convincing job of playing Confucius, who, no matter how much he was abused by the rulers of his homeland, he still honored them.

If you don’t speak Mandarin and must rely on the English subtitles, be warned that most of the subtitles are mangled and do not stay on screen long enough.  The challenge is to read the subtitle while keeping an eye on the stunning visuals.

This movie is an epic equal to Cleopatra, Moses and Spartacus.  However, if you expect a potboiler, you won’t get one most of the time. Yet, the battle scenes were amazing no matter how brief they were.

It’s obvious that this movie was filmed for a Chinese/Asian audience and their tastes are not as shallow as what most Americans prefer. I’m sure the Chinese didn’t want to ruin the movie by letting Hollywood get hold of it.

Confucius with his students

The DVD I bought and watched had a photo of Confucius with a beautiful woman on the cover. They must have added her to the cover for that Hollywood sexy touch to appeal to an American audience. In the movie, she plays a minor role and is assassinated for wanting power in a violent world dominated by men busy killing each other.

From what I know of Confucius, the movie showed him close to who he must have been—an honorable man wanting to bring peace to a war-torn land and end the people’s suffering.  He spends more than a decade homeless wondering the land in search of someone who will listen besides the rag-tag band of students who stuck to him like glue.

If anything, we could learn something about dedication and loyalty from this band and their master.

At the bottom of the DVD box, it says, “His teachings were banned under Mao Zedong, who oversaw the destruction of his family home during the Cultural Revolution.”

Ironic, considering that Mao stayed in power his last decade because of what Confucius taught the Chinese about piety.

Discover more about The Life of Confucius

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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

Defector / Traitor (4/4)

August 5, 2010

We have a friend who came from China to the US to study in the 1980s. She thought about defecting but didn’t. She loved her family and friends too much to hurt them, so she went back to China. Years later, she returned to the US legally and become an American citizen without defecting, and no village in China suffered for her act.

In China, every defection is considered a loss of face by the government.  In a collective society like China, the individual is not the only one to carry the burden of guilt.  The family, friends and comrades left behind also carry that burden.


Defecting is a two-way street Joe Dresnok – U.S. Army Defector one nation’s defector/hero is another nation’s deserter/traitor

When defectors from China arrive in the US, they are often treated as heroes and the media splashes the defector’s story on TV, newspapers and magazines. Many defectors are rewarded and they prosper in their new country. In fact, until 1988, Taiwan paid defectors a handsome sum in gold.

However, whatever the reason for defecting, in the ideological war between the “isms” (Communism versus Capitalism), those left behind often become collateral damage. See Media Slugfest Using Taiwan

Merriam-Webster’s Online dictionary defines “traitor” as one who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty

Return to Defector/Traitor – Part 3 or start with 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.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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