History’s Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 1/5

October 14, 2010

China was the last of the great civilizations to develop independently in the old world — a thousand years after the first civilization in Iraq.

However, the Chinese concept of civilization differed completely from that of the West. For the Chinese, the goal was a moral order on earth sustained by virtue, ritual and reverence of ancestors.

These ancient ideas permeated all aspects of Chinese life even to this day. 

Even the Communist revolution to the crushing of the so-called democracy movement in 1989, played out against these deeper forces, which have shaped China for thousands of years.

The discovery of the origins of Chinese history took place in 1899, when a Chinese scholar found a few (dragon) bones with engravings on them. 

His search for the source of the bones took him to the site of the ancient capital of the Shang Dynasty (1766 – 1122 B.C.).

 

Chinese civilization first arose on the banks of the unpredictable Yellow River, which has destroyed cities and killed millions.

Along the banks of this river, unlike Western civilizations, the source of political power did not lie in control of nature but in control of the past.

In the strange markings on the dragon bones, the Chinese scholar found the beginning of the I-Ching, the great Chinese book of wisdom.

Then there was Confucius.

The teachings of Confucius (551 – 470 B.C.) were the ideal of Chinese government for two thousand years, and Confucius was not concerned with God or the afterlife or heaven as those in the West were and still are today.

Instead, Confucius wanted to build a just and stable society. He believed that goodness was most important, and if people were taught goodness, they would regulate themselves.

For the rulers, to ignore this meant risking losing the Mandate of Heaven, which even the Communist Party that rules China today has discovered.

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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

A Foul Taste in the Mouth of a Falun Gong Fanatic

October 13, 2010

On October 5, a comment appeared from someone called JJYZ to The Falun Gong Machine , which appeared in June 2010.

JJYZ says, “I leave this discussion with a foul taste in my mouth.” He or she also says, “Lloyd (me) has swallowed CCP propaganda hook, line, and sinker.” (This post is a short version of a reply to JJYZ’s comment)

I have news for JJYZ. My opinions formed from direct interactions with the Falun Gong.

I’ve had Falun Gong members sitting around my kitchen table. I’ve attended a Falun Gong Chinese New Year’s musical production at a theater in San Francisco and discovered that it was propaganda designed to recruit and retain religious cult members

I’ve also written other posts on the topic of Chinese religious cults: The Millennium Cult and The White Lotus Mutation.

JJYZ provides a link to a site called “defend democracy.org”, which doesn’t make much sense unless it is another gear in the Falun Gong running machine.

China has NEVER been a democracy so what is there to defend against. In 1982, the structure of China’s government became a one party republic, which offers more representation than any government in China’s history.

In fact, Chinese culture has never accepted organized religions or cults as a permanent element of the culture as the West and the Middle East have done.

There were four Buddhist persecutions in China carried out between the fifth through the tenth centuries by four Chinese emperors. Source: Four Buddhist Persecutions in China

The most brutal was in 845 AD by Emperor Wuzong of the Tang Dynasty. He decided that the Buddhists were growing too influential and wealthy so he outlawed the religion.

Wuzong also persecuted Christians, Muslims, Jews and other organized religions.

As for the bad taste in JJYZ’s mouth, this symptom may be a side effect of being brainwashed by a religious cult and becoming a fanatic.

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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.

11 Comments | Buddhism, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, cults, history, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Influenced by the Mandate of Heaven

October 13, 2010

Although I wrote on the Mandate of Heaven in April, I didn’t see how deeply that belief was influencing China’s Communist Party.

The epiphany took place soon after reading page 235 in Living With Evolution.

At the same time, I realized that America’s judgment of China’s Communist Party was in part due to half a century of entitlement programs for minorities and the disadvantaged in the U.S. — often rewarding those who were less qualified and punishing those who were successful through merit by holding him or her back.

However, in China after Mao was gone and Deng Xiaoping opened the country to world trade, meritocracy was back with a vengeance.

Meritocracy is a system in which the talented succeed and move ahead based on his or her achievement.

The Chinese for almost four thousand years believed that humans were responsible for how events unfolded on earth with human actions subject to the approval or disapproval of heaven.

Successful actions were held to be those that heaven approved of and unsuccessful actions were held to be those heaven did not approve of.

What this means is that anyone, regardless of his or her social status could challenge the elite and rise to the top on the claim that it was legitimate according to the Mandate of Heaven — a concept that was also quintessentially meritocratic.

This explains why China’s central government treats political and/or religious activists, who challenge the status quo, so harshly. 

If the Communist Party allows the Falun Gong, Tibetan and Islamic separatists or Western style human rights activists to have the kind of freedom of expression that is allowed in the West, most Chinese, including the Communist Party, may see this as a sign of weakness.

In fact, the Dalai Lama’s popularity in the West is seen as a challenge to the Party’s mandate to rule. The same could be said about the rival government in Taiwan.

To have a better understanding of what this mean, you may want to start reading the Living With Evolution Blog

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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 Hollywood Reporter Takes a Dump on China

October 12, 2010

There is a lot I don’t know about China and the Chinese, but I know enough to recognize when someone is taking a sly dump on China’s government. 

That’s what Peter Brunette does in a film review of Mao’s Last Dancer in The Hollywood Reporter.

However, my review of the film paints a different picture.

When Brunette writes “what the aspiring, ‘Rocky’-like, against-all-odds dancer is escaping is not working-class ignorance and poverty, but hard line Chinese communist officials,” he is wrong.

The Communists who ruled China in 1979 inherited that world, and we see what they have done with it in the last thirty years in China’s Capitalist Revolution.

In fact, life was that way when the Qing Dynasty ruled China (1644-1911), and after the Dynasty collapsed, the situation in China became worse—chaos, anarchy, famine, starvation, warlords fighting each other, then a rebellion between the Nationalists and Communists, interrupted by the Japanese invasion of China during World War II followed by Mao’s Great Leap Forward and The Cultural Revolution, which ended abruptly when Mao died.

China’s descent into “Madness” didn’t start with the Communists. It stared in 1835 when the British Empire, and France (among others) launched the Opium Wars to force China to accept opium as a legal import.

With all that happening, when did China have time to become as glitzy and soft as the US? Even the US didn’t change that fast or against those odds.

The transformation of China that we see today had not started by 1979 when the eighteen year old dancer was one of the first students from the Beijing Dance Academy to come to the United States or in 1981 when Li Cunxin decided to stay in America and embarrass his family, friends and country.

Instead, he married an American woman he was having an affair with and claimed he wanted to stay with his wife. Soon after the event, they were divorced.

The fact that the Chinese embassy let him go shows that China was struggling to change the way things had been under Mao. Under Mao, there would have been no trip to the U.S. for the dancer.

Brunette was right about one thing when he says the director knew exactly what he was doing every moment, which was playing to a Western audience that sees China through a red-colored lens that blurs the picture.

Mao’s Last Dancer is a good movie. I recommend seeing it, but take off the rose-colored glasses first.

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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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India-China Border Dispute in 2009 – Part 4/4

October 12, 2010

Since the 1962 war, China and India have continued to argue about the disputed area that was created by British Explorer McMahon in the 19th century.

Parts of the frontier are still in dispute, including a portion of Kashmir and the eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

The area in dispute now is Ladakh. For centuries, Ladakh was an independent kingdom but is now part of India. There are obvious cultural links with China.

In this area, no one knows where India ends and China begins.  China and India still share the biggest stretch of disputed border in the world divided by Nepal and Bhutan from Arunachal Pradesh in the south to Kashmir in the north.


Al Jazerra English – Renewed Tension Over India-China Border

P. Chidambaram, India’s Interior Minister says that it is a disputed border area.  He says that violations have taken place and are resolved by talking to each other (China with India).

India says the border violations were probably a mistake, but China says they never happened.

Diplomatic letters that Al Jazeera managed to get hold of show that both India and China are not telling the truth.  Indian nomads wondered into Chinese occupied territory and were warned to leave or face the consequences.

The diplomatic letters also show that China does not accept that the area is disputed.  Instead, China says it is their territory.

The Indian army had a heavy military presence on India’s side of the border. The Al Jazeera reporters could not visit the Chinese side.

Return to Part 3 of China and India at War in 1962 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”, there is a “Subscribe” window at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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