It it hadn’t been for Go Daddy’s CEO, Bob Parsons, shooting an elephant in Zimbabwe and stirring up PETA, a Politically Correct group of animal lovers in the U.S., I might have never been curious to see if China had elephants too.
And I discovered that China offers a safer haven for elephants than most nations that still have pachyderms living in their natural environment.
Elephant Aid says, “Most people associate China and elephants with the demand for ivory but although China only has a small number of elephants it is one of the only range states where numbers are on the rise. China’s elephants can only be found in the extreme south of the Yunnan province bordering Burma and Laos. Their range includes Xishuangbanna (XSNB) and the Nangunhe Nature Reserves.”
BBC – Wild Elephants in China
“The elephant is a protected species in China,” Elephant Aid says, “and the government has taken steps to conserve areas of elephant habitat including moving people out of the reserves in a bid to minimize human-elephant conflict.
“Chinese official have reported that the population is growing through both reproduction and immigration of herds from Laos. This is attributed to the lack of a threat from poachers in China and the abundant availability of fodder.”
According to Elephant.se, there are about 450 captive elephants in the US and less than 4,000 captive elephants globally. China has about 30 captive elephants.
All About Wildlife.com says there are 40 to 50 thousand wild Asian elephants and between 470,000 and 690,000 wild African Elephants.
There are more than two hundred wild elephants that live in China.
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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 lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Ai Weiwei was warned by representatives of the lawful government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to stop his illegal activities (according to Chinese law).
In such cases, it is common to receive an invitation to tea, which may not be refused, where the person responsible for what is considered counter-revolutionary activities (or another crime against the state) is told to stop or face the full might of China’s law. China is not like Hitler’s Germany where the Gestapo showed up without warning and carried citizens off to be roasted or gassed by the millions.
The facts speak for themselves. Ai Weiwei refused to cooperate, and he violated Chinese law, and he was locked up in 2011, but he isn’t locked up now because he was released the same year.
CNN doesn’t mention Ai Weiwei was alleged to have been in violation of the 1982 Chinese Constitution, which says in Article 28, “The state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter-revolutionary activities; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.”
US Marines Marching
The PRC did not hiding anything except where Ai Weiwei was locked up and the details behind his crime. Even in the US, the authorities are often denied the right to talk about an alleged criminal and the facts behind a legal case to the press.
I’ve read in the past where some Western critics say that Chinese law is difficult to interpret and has loopholes that the PRC may use to the Party’s advantage.
Since when was any law in any country easy to understand? If you aren’t an American lawyer, how easy is if to understand the U.S. legal system, and doesn’t the U.S. have loopholes that the wealthy and corporations take advantage of not to pay taxes in America? In fact, President Ronald Reagan didn’t pay any tax one year, and he said loopholes in the law allowed it.
Compare the language of the 1982 Chinese Constitution to the U.S. Constitution and anyone can see the differences.
In addition, Article 53 of the Chinese Constitution says, “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China must abide by the constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property and observe labour discipline and public order and respect social ethics.”
PRC Troops and Flag Ceremony
An amendment to Article 13 was revised to say, “Citizens’ lawful private property is inviolable” and “The State, in accordance with law, protects the rights of citizens to private property and to its inheritance” and “The State may, in the public interest and in accordance with law, expropriate or requisition private property for its use and shall make compensation for the private property expropriated or requisitioned.”
In fact, nowhere in the CNN piece does it explain that no one owns land or houses in China as they do in the U.S. It’s more like a lease with the right to pass that property on to someone else in the family after death.
What happens in the U.S. if the property tax isn’t paid? Does anyone really own the house and land they live on?
China’s flag isn’t red, white and blue. Instead, it is red and gold.
The red of the Chinese flag symbolizes the communist revolution, and it’s also the traditional color of the people. The large gold star represents communism, while the four smaller stars represent the social classes of the people. In addition, the five stars together reflect the importance placed on the number five in Chinese thought and history. Source: World Atlas
Maybe Ai Weiwei forgot which flag flies over his country or is he color blind?
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 lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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The world’s most popular sport is Soccer with an estimated 3.5 billion fans. In America the number one sport is Football (NFL) with less than 156 million fans. The CIA’s World Factbook lists every country by its government type. In fact, click this link from Maps of the World, and explore all the different types of governments on the planet by just moving your curser over the map. There are 196 countries in the world, roughly 4,200 religions, and eight major ethnic groups and each of those groups can be broken up into smaller ethnic factions. There are 24 full democracies in the world and 51 authoritarian regimes similar to China. Can you subtract 196 from 24, and if so, once you have the answer, then tell me why the U.S. seems to only want to change China?
The last time I looked the U.S. flag was red, white and blue with 50 stars and 13 stripes, and 70.6 percent of its citizens identify themselves as Christians. – pewforum.org
The Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the U.S. Constitution were written by a group of white men influenced by Western republican/democratic governments dating back to the Greeks before the birth of Christ. In fact, Athenian statesman and member of the exiled Alcmaeonidae aristocracy, Cleisthenes is considered the father of democracy. Before his rise around 510 B.C., Athenian governance was left to aristocratic families who represented the wealthy. There is no similar figure in Asia.
Important historical figures in China were Confucius and Sun Tzu, who wrote the Art of War. From India, we get Buddha and Indira Gandhi. In the Middle East there was the Islamic prophet Muhammad. If you want a better idea of the diversity of the world, just scroll through Current World Population.
At this point someone who is ignorant might pop up and shout, “The Dalai Lama,” is from Asia and he promotes democracy, but no Dalai Lama has ever promoted a democracy similar to the United States or other European Republics. When the Tibetans ruled themselves, they were first ruled by kings and then by a theocracy, and the Dalai Lama is still Tibet’s living god for life. Is there another country on the planet with a living god?
Tibet has never been a republic or a democracy, and its government in exile—even though they have sham elections and claim to have been a democracy since September 2, 1960—is headed by the 14th Dalai Lama and Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay. There are no political groups and no term limits. There are about 150,000 Tibetans living in exile and 7.5 million living in the Tibet Autonomous Region in China. Yes, there are elections in China too but there is only one political party—not much different than the 14th Dalai Lama’s government in exile, except the Chinese change their leaders every 5 to 10 years.
If you are an American, do you have a copy of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? I do. Have you read it, and if you have, how much do you remember besides the Pursuit of Happiness, the right to own a firearm and the freedom to say just about anything without fear of being tossed in prison?
China may start with the letter “C” as California does, but it is not part of the U.S., and its founding fathers were men such as Sun Yat-sen, Mao, and Deng Xiaoping, and less than 3% of Chinese are Christians while more than 87% are not religious or do not belong to any organized religion.
In April, 2011, CNN ran a piece on its CNN Wire service of a Chinese artist and citizen of the People’s Republic of China, (PRC). His name is Ai Weiwei. The title of the piece was, “China says Ai Weiwei is being held for economic crimes“.
If you read the entire CNN piece, you will discover that the artist was taken into custody in route to Hong Kong. The piece quotes his wife and mother, who both believe he is innocent and that he was arrested and locked up because he refused to listen to warnings that he should stop his “reckless collision against China’s basic political framework and ignorance of China’s judicial sovereignty to exaggerate a specific case …”
Ai Weiwei is also one of China’s best-known artists. He helped design the Bird’s Nest stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Ai Weiwei is more than an artist. He is also a democracy activist and a critic of his government.
Sure, the US Constitution protects U.S. citizens when they criticize the government. However, the Chinese Constitution does not offer the same protections. In fact, most countries don’t. In Saudi Arabia, woman cannot work or drive and criminals are often executed by beheading—a practice once common in China but no more.
And China is not the only country in the world with an autocratic government. Scroll back to the top and you will discover China is only one of 51.
In fact, the American CIA has taken advantage of foreign laws such as those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt when terrorists have been sent for torture and questioning without the due process of law as guaranteed in the U.S. (not outside of it).
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 lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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I’ve been in the Number One Shanghai department store off Nanjing road and seen Chinese consumers taking TV’s from the box to insure they work.
Recently, a friend who was visiting us from China was up early in the morning walking to the Apple Store, a thirty-minute walk from our house.
To buy an iPad or iPhone in America, she was willing to get up that early and wait in line for several hours until the store opened to buy this new Apple product. And she didn’t buy just one. Her coworkers and friends in China gave her enough money to buy several Apple products that were all assembled in China but sold in the U.S.
When I asked her why not buy the iPad at one of the official Apple Stores in Beijing or Shanghai, she said if you buy something in the U.S. even if it’s made in China, the buyer can be assured of the quality.
There is some truth to that. My father-in-law’s wife arrived several years ago with a new camera she bought in China, and it stopped working the first week she was here so she bought an expensive Sony at Costco and loved it because it worked just as promised and kept on working.
It would seem that Chinese manufacturers have a long way to go to earn the trust of the Chinese consumer.
Meanwhile, 109 million Chinese tourists left China in 2014 and many bought “Made in China” outside of China and spend more than any other foreign travelers at an average of $7,200 each visit to the U.S. They also buy “Made in the USA” and products made in other countries.
Don’t believe me? Well, Bloomberg.com reported recently that “they (Chinese tourists) are the most prolific spenders in the world.”
Don’t let this blow your mind, but last week I saw a busload of Chinese tourists shopping at the Costco closest to our house. It seems that even Costco is a tourist destination and Chinese tourists buy everything even filling up shopping carts with vitamins.
Next time you hear an ignorant American complaining about China stealing jobs from the U.S., tell them how many jobs they are generating in the U.S. and how much money they are spending here, and that the U.S. is now issuing more visas for Chinese citizens for longer periods of time.
Whitehouse.gov says, “In 2013, 1.8 million Chinese travelers visited the United States, contributing $21.1 billion to the U.S. economy and supporting more than 109,000 American jobs.” And it is estimated that by 2021, Chinese travelers to the U.S. will be supporting 440,000 U.S. jobs.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition], a historical fiction novel with a unique love story that is set in 19th century China. His latest book, a suspense thriller set in the world that Lloyd worked in as a maitre d’ in the early 1980s, is going on sale for $0.99, a savings of 75% below regular price.
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Worldwatch Institute reported, “Chinese purchases of high-end items—including designer handbags, perfumes, and watches—will grow by 25 percent annually over the next four years, and that by 2015 China will be the world’s largest luxury brand consumer, with a 29 percent global share.”
In addition, CNN Money says that America is the new destination for rich Chinese shoppers. Why? “Renee Hartmann, of China Luxury Advisors, said luxury merchandise in the U.S. tends to be around 35% cheaper than in China.”
There is another reason why many Chinese tourists buy “Made in China” in other countries.
While my Chinese father-in-law and his wife were visiting in the U.S. I learned why Chinese buy here — quality.
If you read the China Law Blog, you may know that in China there are several levels of quality that do not exist in the U.S. When buying anything in China, there is always a risk you might end up buying a fake or the real thing but of a lower quality. In fact, there is no way to tell what level of quality you are buying when in China.
That doesn’t mean “Made in China” is always of a poor quality. The language of the contract between the foreign buyer such as Apple and the Chinese manufacturer is important. If the contract between a U.S. corporation and a Chinese manufacturer specifics the quality, that’s what’s usually delivered to be shipped to the U.S. If the product is of a poor quality, then blame it on the contract the CEO of a U.S. corporation signed.
And most of the products Apple sells globally are assembled in China and many are manufactured there too (Apple has manufacturing facilities spread around the world but assembles most of its expensive electronic items such as the iPad in China).
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 lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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