Going to School with Dad on My Back – Part 1/3

December 25, 2011

This post started out as a movie review and a recommendation of Going to School with Dad on My Back (1998), but recent criticism on the Internet and in the media of China’s central government giving twenty-three 35-seat school busses to “tiny Macedonia”—in addition to a school bus accident in China—added a twist to this series of three posts.

In the UK, the Guardian left out crucial information from an Associated Press news release of the accident and focused on the 500,000 comments posted on China’s popular Twitter-like micro-blog Monday criticizing the donation “given the poor quality school buses many Chinese children ride in”.

Yahoo News also used the AP news release and mentioned the 500,000 complaints and then pointed out the deaths of 19 Chinese preschoolers in an unrelated school bus crash two weeks earlier in addition to another bus crash in rural China where a bus rolled over injuring students.

It’s what these two Western media sources do not say that may mislead people’s opinions astray.

Since I have learned that much of what we hear of China in the west often doesn’t tell half the story, I turned to the People’s Daily to discover “Parents of students at the [private] kindergarten said school bus overloading has been a problem for years, despite repeated complaints.”

The school bus that crashed belonged to a private school that had removed most of the seats and safety gear to make room for more kids—I imagine the resulting school bus was sort of like the cattle trucks I was transported in when I served in the United States Marines in the late 1960s, where there was standing room only and no safety gear.

The People’s Daily also reported the owner of the private school had been arrested and would be tried in court for what he/she had done to cut corners and boost profits.

In addition, last year we learn from the “China Daily” that it is not the lack of a standard for school busses in China, but “the rampant use of illegal vehicles” like the van involved in the crash.

In fact, accidents happen to school busses in America too and the laws and safety equipment found in US school busses are because of those early accidents.

For example, the private school bus crash in China that killed preschool children occurred nearly five years to the day of the Nov. 20, 2006 school bus crash in Huntsville, Alabama that killed five high school students after the vehicle plunged off a freeway overpass.

This brings me back to the movie, Going to School with Dad on My Back (1998).

Continued on December 20, 2011 in Going to School with Dad on My Back – Part 2

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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

The two faces of Confucius – Part 5/5

December 24, 2011

Troy Parfitt, the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World – Travels in the Two Chinas says the Analects of Confucius represents only stone-age logic and dictums posing as wisdom that support tyranny. He says the Confucian concept of piety is virtually identical in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macau.

However, Mr. Parfitt does not mention that Confucian philosophy is also practiced in democratic republics such as South Korea, Japan and the Philippians. In fact, people in all of East Asia practice different aspects of Confucian philosophy.

A hallmark of Confucius’ thought is his emphasis on education and study. He disparaged those who have faith in natural understanding or intuition and argued that the only real understanding of a subject comes from long and careful study.

Thus, under Confucianism, teachers and scholars were regarded, like oldest males and fathers, as unquestioned authorities [unless they lose the trust of the people by not doing their job].

In fact, the philosophy of Confucianism is not blind obedience. It is earned obedience. In addition, due to the value placed on eduction and merit, those in positions of power usually earned his or her position through hard work and merit and not popularity as in most liberal democracies.


Religion and Spirituality in Singapore

The face of Confucianism that pertains to tyranny is the political propaganda that governments in East Asia have used for centuries in futile attempts to convince the people to blindly obey.  The only countries this has worked well in so far are Japan and North Korea.

Yet, Japan, with its Confucian dictums that puts loyalty before filial piety became a parliamentary republic and one of its most innovative corporations, Toyota, is the number one global auto manufacturer with GM running second place. If we were to accept Parfitt’s opinion that Confucianism supports tyranny and not innovation, there is no way that Toyota could have been as successful as it has been.

If anyone doubts the power of Confucian loyalty and obedience in Japan, this is what Rutgers University has to say on the subject, “In modern Japanese society one is loyal to one’s immediate group, the “company”, the family, etc., just as previously the emperor, the shogun, or other lords commanded total obedience.”

What Parfitt doesn’t seem to understand is that in the family and in the village, Confucian social philosophy largely revolves around the concept ofren, “compassion” or “loving others” and not on blind obedience to the government.

Subjecting oneself to ritual does not, however, mean suppressing one’s desires but instead learning how to reconcile one’s own desires with the needs of one’s family and community.

If the political face of Confucianism was successful and crippled innovation as Mr. Parfitt preached in our debate, then China would have never invented silk, paper, the printing press, gunpowder, multi-stage rockets, the compass and so much more—centuries before these innovations reached the West.

Instead, the face of Confucianism with the most influence comes through the family—not the government—and in the family, the people learn the meaning behind the Mandate of Heaven and the value of a merit based education.

Return to The two-faces of Confucius – Part 4 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.

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The two faces of Confucius – Part 4/5

December 23, 2011

When comparing the practice of Confucianism in China to Japan, a report by Wai-ming Ng at the Chinese University in Hong Kong says, “The relationship between loyalty and filial piety, two fundamental virtues in Confucianism, has been a subject of concern among Confucian scholars in East Asia for many centuries.

“Many modern Japanese scholars believe that the main difference between Japanese Confucianism and Chinese Confucianism rests with their preference between loyalty and filial piety, suggesting that Japanese Confucianism puts  loyalty [to the government] before filial piety, whereas Chinese Confucianism prefers filial piety [in the family] to loyalty [of the government].”

That difference may be explained by China’s concept of the Mandate of Heaven, which says that heaven would bless the authority of a just ruler, as defined by the Five Confucian Relationships, but would be displeased with a despotic ruler and would withdraw its mandate, leading to the overthrow of that ruler. The Chinese people, of course, would be heaven’s hammer, which does not sound very obedient.

However, in Japan, the Mandate of Heaven is not practiced the same as in China. While the Chinese may protest and rebel, the Japanese tend to shy away from this behavior.

In The Coming China, Joseph King Goodrich says, “Obedience in China is a word that connotates far more than it does in Japan. It means obedience to the emperor, to the parent, to the family and to the government, although the Japanese have the reputation of being singularly marked with this trait.”


Confucianism = ritual, etiquette and being kind to one another

In China, the difference lies in the mandate to rule, which means that leaders do not tax the people unjustly. They make sure people have sufficient food and live in an orderly and peaceful society.

Confucian political philosophy is also rooted in the belief that a ruler should learn self-discipline, should govern his subjects by his own example, and should treat them with love and concern.

By providing these things, Confucius believed leaders would earn the confidence, trust and obedience of the people. By not providing these things, China’s leaders would lose the trust and obedience of the people.

One element of Confucianism that runs strong throughout East Asia is that Confucianism regards government and education as inseparable. Without a good education, it is considered impossible to find leaders who possess the virtues to run a government.

Confucius asked, “What has one who is not able to govern himself, to do with governing others?”

Continued on December 18, 2011 in The two-faces of Confucius – Part 5 or return to Part 3

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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 two-faces of Confucius – Part 2/5

December 21, 2011

Before we look at the two-faces of Confucius, let us learn something from a New York Times Opinion piece by Eric X. Li, Counterpoint: Debunking Myths About China

Li says there is a common myth that because China does not hold elections that its rulers do not have the consent of the ruled.

However, “According to the Pew Research Center” Li says, “the Chinese government enjoys popular support that is among the highest in the world.The Chinese people’s satisfaction with the direction of their country was at 87% in 2010 and has been consistently above 80 percent in recent years.”

Compare the popularity of China’s government to that of the US government and its people, and we discover that, “Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress receive highly negative job ratings. Just 23% approve of the job Republican congressional leaders are doing, while 67% disapprove. Ratings for Democratic leaders are not much better: 30% approve while 61% disapprove…” Source: Pew Research Center


Common Misconceptions  About China

Li also debunked the myth that China is an authoritarian state in which the party’s political power is concentrated and self-perpetuating.

He then tackled the myth that China’s restriction on freedom of expression stifles innovation. Li says, “Some of the most successful IPO’s of Internet companies on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have been Chinese startups…” and “China’s share of scientific research papers published in recognized international journals went from 4.4 percent in the period between 1999-2003 to 10.2 percent in the period between 2004-2008, now just behind the United States.”

In addition, when it comes to claims that the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule leads to widespread corruption, “By Transparency International’s account [the lower the number the less corruption there is], China (78) ranks higher than India (87), Philippines (134), Indonesia (110), Argentina (105) and many more, and tied with Greece (78), barely below Italy (67) — all electoral democracies.

Apparently, China’s one-party system is less corrupt than many democratic countries.

In conclusion before moving on to the two-faces of Confucius in the next post, David Gosset in Common Misconceptions About the Chinese World says, “The level of individual freedom enjoyed today by its citizens has no equivalent in China’s past, and the effort to establish the rule of law will bring more social, economic and political improvements.”

Continued on December 15, 2011 in The two-faces of Confucius – Part 3 or return to 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.

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The two-faces of Confucius – Part 1/5

December 20, 2011

During our debate, when Troy Parfitt wrote, “The essence of Confucianism is obedience,” and “The strains of despotism in these native [Chinese] ideologies speak to communism’s appeal,” I knew he was wrong.

The complexity of Confucianism is much more than just about obedience.

However, to understand Confucianism, it first helps to discover how wrong many Westerners are about so many things when it comes to China, which may explain Mr. Parfitt’s confusion.

To discover the depth of this ignorance, we will explore a few examples before focusing on the two-faces of Confucianism.

The China Law Blog says, “My mother thinks that people in China still ride around on bicycles wearing those green army suits and green hats with the red star in the middle. While there are still a lot of bicycles, especially in Beijing and Shanghai—where they are proud to wear their silk pajamas while riding their bicycles and smoking at the same time—there are not many people wearing those green outfits.”

Note from Blog host: In 1999, before I first visited China, I thought pretty much the same about the green army suits and green hats with the red star in the middle. Then I arrived in China and discovered there is a reason that Shanghai is called the Paris of Asia, and it has to do with fashion.


Misconceptions about China

At eChinacities.com, Sarah Meik shared, “8 Common Misconceptions about China Debunked“.  If you want the details, click on the link to Sarah’s post. You might learn something.

Then Fred Dintenfass posted, “3 Things I Misunderstood About Chinese People Before I came to China.”

Fred says, “It is way too easy to generalize, to see a Chinese person spit and decide that all Chinese love to hock loogies in the street… I knew the media here was state run. I knew people might be cautious about expressing their political opinions. What I didn’t realize is that young people in the cities are content.”

Then at The Tree of Mamre, we learn from “China Owns Most of the US Debt, and other Misconceptions“.

“Misconception: Most of what Americans spend their money on is made in China.

Fact: Just 2.7% of personal consumption expenditures go to Chinese-made goods and services. 88.5% of U.S. consumer spending is on American-made goods and services …”

“Misconception: The United States owe most of its debt to China.

Fact: China owns 7.8% of U.S. government debt outstanding.

Continued on December 15, 2011 in The two-faces of Confucius – Part 2

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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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