The Founding Fathers had it Right about the Death Penalty

September 27, 2010

Moans and groans abound in the West about the hidden numbers behind China’s death penalties. 

I’m often baffled how anyone who claims to be a caring person could fight to keep murderers, drug dealers, child molesters and rapists from getting a swift death penalty.

The Death Penalty Information Center says that when the Constitution was written, the time between sentencing and execution could be measured in days or weeks (as it is in China today).

Today, the typical death row inmate in America spends a decade awaiting execution. Some have been on death row for over 20 years. In California, keeping him or her alive that long would cost about one million and that does not include court costs. The only ones who win are the lawyers.

I read a post at error bank.com that offers concerns about the death penalty.

One issue raised was of innocent people found guilty in court then years or decades later, he or she is found innocent but by then it is too late. However, I’m sure more criminal types are executed than innocent victims. Many times, the so-called innocent victim was also a career criminal with a long arrest record.

As for the cost, Amnesty USA, while arguing against the death penalty, makes a case to return to the time of the U.S. Founding Fathers.

Amnesty said that in Kansas the cost of a death penalty case was 70% higher than the cost of comparable non-death penalty cases. 

However, Amnesty doesn’t mention that it costs more because of all the appeals that drag cases out for years.

The median cost for a death penalty case in Kansas was $1.26 million.

In Maryland, a death penalty case costs 3 times as much as Kansas, and in California, it costs $11.5 million for each case.

K.D. Koratsky touched on this topic in Living With Evolution. On page 182, he says this of career criminals, “Over time, by consistently eliminating those who could not get along with others, populations were eventually left largely with the genes that promoted non-kin biocultural coevolution. … nations with the strict codes of law enforced by strong state apparatuses (like China) tended to prosper over others, all else being equal.”

Although a few innocents might die, China may be getting it right be ridding its population of serious criminal types who reproduce leading to more violent crimes by his or her progeny.

Murder of “innocent” people is cruel and inhuman!

Rape is cruel and inhuman!

Child molesters are cruel and inhuman!

Selling hard, illegal drugs for profit is cruel and inhuman!

Destroying lives for profit is also cruel and inhuman!

See Cultural Differences and China’s Changing 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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SONG DYNASTY (960 – 1279 AD) – Part 2/6

September 27, 2010

I’ve read many criticisms that the Chinese today cannot innovate without the level of freedom that exists in America and other Western republics and democracies.

If that were true, explain how the Chinese were so far ahead of the West for two thousand years while being ruled by autocratic, imperial governments where the law was often swift and harsh under legalism.

For example, during the Song Dynasty in 1092 AD, Su Song was the inventor of a hydraulic water powered astronomical clock tower. He was also known as a statesman, calligrapher and botanist.

In addition, fifteen hundred years ago, famous mathematician Zu Chongzhi calculated that the approximate value of pie was 3.1415926.

It would take a thousand years for a foreigner to break that record. In fact, China led the world in astronomy for more than a thousand years.

The world’s largest and earliest star chart is carved on a stele in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. Today’s astronomers find it incredible because it is so accurate and detailed.

During the Song Dynasty, a calendar was created that was as accurate as the Gregorian calendar used today—four centuries before the Gregorian calendar.

During the Song Dynasty, a new type of canal lock was invented. Four hundred years later in 1373 AD, a similar lock was invented in Europe.

Astronomical observations were used to help agriculture. Due to this, the Song Dynasty grain yield was ten to twenty times that of Medieval Europe.

Return to the Song Dynasty – 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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Cultural Differences and China’s Changing Laws

September 27, 2010

A colleague and friend sent me a link to a post about a Chinese blind activist lawyer released from prison. Isolda Morillo, for the Associated Press, wrote the post that appeared on CBS.com.

Chen Guangcheng was the blind lawyer. In 2006, he was sent to jail after documenting forced late-term abortions and sterilizations and other abuses in his rural east China community.

Morillo wrote that Guangcheng was an “inspirational figure to others in China”.

According to the AP reporter, Guangcheng is under house arrest and, along with his family, is watched closely.  The piece points out how horrible he was treated by Chinese authorities.

One fact stood out, “He expanded his activism after hearing complaints from people living in nearby villages that family planning officials were forcing women to have late-term abortions and sterilizations to enforce the government’s one-child policy.”

I’m sure there will be people who will see me supporting China’s government when I do not condemn China for how Guangcheng was treated.

With more than 1.3 billion people and only 16% of the land capable of growing food crops and a looming shortage of fresh water, China is facing a possible melt down in a few decades that could dismantle all the progress made since the 1982 Constitution.

To understand China better, it would help to learn that China’s legal system is reinventing itself.

Up until 1911 when the Qing Dynasty collapsed, Chinese law leaned heavily toward Legalism influenced by Confucianism.

Near the end of the Qing Dynasty, efforts were made to reform the law by mainly importing German codes with slight modifications.

After 1911, the Nationalists continued this effort. When Mao and the Communists came to power in 1949, the ranks of intellectuals and legal professionals was devastated during the purges. A Soviet-style legal system was then adopted but that system suffered due to political turmoil that ended with the Cultural Revolution.

It wouldn’t be until 1982, that the idea of individual rights would reemerge as a signify influence on Chinese Law. Even then, business law developed much faster than civil law, which is the laws of a state or nation that deals with the rights of private citizens.

In an interview with James Zimmerman, about China’s Changing Legal System, Megan Rhodes wrote, “China is transforming its legal system at an amazing rate.” 

When Rhodes asked Zimmerman if foreign law has influenced Chinese law, he answered “Yes, absolutely.”

At the end of the interview, Zimmerman says, “China is going through remarkable times, and should be proud of its ongoing judicial and legislative reforms. It has developed—and continues to develop—a legal system from scratch in just over 30 years.”

American law also evolved and reading Law and History: The Evolution of the American Legal System might give you a better understanding of what is going on in China. 

In 1783, America signed a peace treaty with the British Empire and the U.S. officially became a nation state. However, slavery wouldn’t be abolished for eighty-two years in 1865, after the bloody American Civil War.

In addition, women in America even after the Civil War, were still second-class citizens. Source: Women’s history in America

Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American History. In fact, it wasn’t until 1938 that the US had, for the first time, Federal regulations for minimum ages of employment and hours of work for children. Source: Child Labor in U.S. History

Then Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

China has had about thirty years to change since 1982 while America took 182 years to cover the same ground. However, there may be another reason why the American media and so many Americans condemn China so often, and that can be explained by the history of Discrimination Against the Chinese in America. Maybe that discrimination is not dead yet.

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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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Tang Dynasty Poetry

September 26, 2010

The Tang Dynasty (618 to 907 A.D.) is regarded as one of the most prosperous times in China’s long history.

It was also the golden age of Chinese art and literature.

Crossing the Han River
Song Zhi-wen (656 – 712 A.D.)

No news, no letters – all winter, all spring —
     Beyond the mountains.
With every homeward step more timid still
I dare not even inquire of passerby.

Song Zhi-wen, the poet, was found guilty of accepting bribes and executed. He had good reason to fear returning home from exile.


In this video is a famous Tang poem.

The classical form of Chinese poetry developed in the late Han Dynasty and reached its peak during the Tang Dynasty.

Most Tang poems have four or eight lines, with five and seven Chinese characters in each line following certain rules.

Another example of Tang Dynasty poetry is Spring Perspective by Du Fu (712 – 770 A.D.).

When the post of prime minister was awarded to a cousin of the imperial concubine, there was the military rebellion of An Lu–shan in 755 A.D.

The nation has fallen, the land endures
Spring trees and grasses flourish in the town.
Troubled by the times — flowers bring tears;
Dreading parting — birds startle the soul.

With turmoil of battle three months on end,
A letter from home is worth a fortune in gold.
As it is, they can barely hold a pin.

This poem demonstrates what happens when the Chinese people get tired of nepotism and corruption, which should be heeded as a warning today to crack down on corruption in Communist China.

The next poem is one of many that Yuan Zhen (779 – 831 A.D.) wrote for his dead wife, who he married when he was poor. She did not live long enough to share his fame and fortune.

In former years, we chatted carelessly of death and what it means
     to die.
Since then, it’s passed before my very eyes.
I’ve given almost all your clothes away
But cannot bear to move your sewing things.
Remembering your past attachments, I’ve been kind to maids you
     loved.
I’ve met your soul in dreams and ordered sutras sung.
Certainly, I know this sorrow comes to all
But to poor and lowly couples, everything life brings is sad.

See Mao Zedong, the Poet

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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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The Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD) – Part 4/4

September 25, 2010

The Tang Dynasty did not discriminate against ethnic groups.  All were treated the same, and people from minority groups held positions of great importance.

In fact, minorities became prime ministers, generals and members of the imperial garrison.

The mother’s of several Tang emperors were not from the Han majority.

Tang Emperor Taizong handled relationships with ethnic minorities skillfully.

One motto of his was, “In the past, Chinese emperors emphasized the Han people at the expense of minority groups, but I believe they are all from one family so they support me.”

The ethnic minorities in northwest China revered Emperor Taizong and called him Tian Kehan.

Kehan means “emperor” and Tian Kehan means “the son of Heaven“.

In 755 AD, people in the Tang capital sang and danced to celebrate the 70th birthday of Emperor Taizong.

In October 1970, archeologists discovered more than a thousand Tang artifacts. One was a silver kettle featuring dancing horses with cups in their mouths, which matched the historical record for Emperor Taizong’s seventieth birthday.

Poetry flourished. Although the Tang Dynasty lasted less than 300 years, more than 50,000 poems had been produced— all of them published today in one collection of Tang poems.

Return to The Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD) – Part 3 or start with 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. 

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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