Poverty and China’s Peasant farmers – Part 3/3

September 12, 2010

In rural China, the peasants do not earn much money.  They live in what the West calls poverty, but they have a home and a roof over their heads.  They are not homeless and seldom are hungry as the poor in India, which is touted as the largest democracy on the earth.

The peasant farmers in China grow most of the food they eat and sell what they do not need as the Amish do today in America and as 90% of Americans did before the Industrial Revolution.

If Chinese peasants, go to school, eat a nutritious diet and have access to basic medical care as China’s central government has promised, health will improve and life spans may surpass urban China where the air pollution is bad.

China is extending the electric grid and improving public transportation so rural China will have access to the same luxuries that urban people have. Before 1980, rural Chinese lived as most Americans did before the Industrial Revolution.

For thousands of years, the backbone of China has always been the peasant farmers and their collective lifestyle. What will happen to China if they all join the consumer oriented middle class?

Rural America must have been a collective culture before the Industrial Revolution. Consumerism and credit cards changed most Americans, except the Amish, into an individualistic culture where “I” is more important than “We”. 

The Amish are still a collective culture with free will to leave and become a modern American consumer. Why don’t they?

See Climbing the Dragon’s Back

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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

The Distribution of Wealth

September 3, 2010

Howard Steven Friedman writes in the Huffington Post about the incredible economic growth in China and the high degree of income inequality between the haves and have nots—a growing problem in America too (but Friedman doesn’t mention that).

Friedman concludes by saying, “For China to continue its growth rate, it will need to address inequality systematically and aggressively.” He mentioned large numbers of men with limited social mobility and few job or family prospects and warns that this inequality could lead to political instability and discontent.

Friedman also doesn’t mention that in the 1930s, there was a huge gap between lifestyles in urban America and the rural U.S. since only 10% of farm families had central station electricity in the mid 1930s. 

It took America forty-five years to establish a power grid in one state, Pennsylvania.  China has accomplished this feat for all of its cities in less time. Source: America Electrified — China’s Road Map

In fact, Friedman points out [without knowing it] the solution that will soften the threat of political instability when he writes, “the Chinese government is trying to modernize the countryside in an effort to quell discontent.”

China may have learned how to deal with this potential threat from the U.S. by providing the same liquid and virtual drugs.

In America, watching TV is the leisure activity that occupied the most time (almost 3 hours a day). Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Like many Americans at the low end of the economic ladder, guzzling beer and staring at TV sooths discontent. There is no reason that won’t work in China too.

America ranks 14th globally in beer consumption and the Chinese 36th—an area that needs improvement to numb the have-nots. Source: List of countries by beer consumption per capita

However, for those who do not calm down, there is always prison and America has the largest prison population on the planet—another role model for China to study.

See China’s Stick People

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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

The “What If” Housing Bubble in China

August 29, 2010

Charles Hugh Smith writes for the Daily Finance and claims that China’s Housing Bubble Will End Badly.

That’s not going to happen for several reasons. The first reason is that China’s economy does not depend on the housing market to survive. Most people in China still don’t own their homes even in the cities.

In the US, housing loans to GDP were 79% but in China, that number is about 15%, which means real estate in China doesn’t prop up the economy.

Let’s look at one fictional individual who loses his job in China and can’t make his mortgage payment.

If he always lived in the city and has family (even distant relations), he will move in with them and rent his home to make the payments. The family may even pitch in so he doesn’t lose the home.

If that fictional Chinese man came to the city to work from a village, he returns home.  The peasants in rural China don’t have to worry about losing those homes.  In fact, it’s as if China had two economies: rural and urban.

If the government needs to develop the land the peasant’s home sits on, a new home is provided. More than seven hundred million Chinese live in villages owned by collectives and the central government. Those peasants don’t have a mortgage payment, pay rent or property tax.

Even in urban China, people only pay property tax once when they buy the home they live in.  Property tax for your home isn’t an annual burden as in the US.

Another factor is that the average savings rate in China is 40% and the wealthiest Chinese own about 40% of urban real estate.

See Betting Against China’s Housing Market

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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

Misconceptions of China – Chinese Wealth and Poverty

August 21, 2010

In this post, Larry talks about Chinese wealth and Chinese society. He says that many believe all of China is old and while that may be true in rural areas, China’s major cities have become more modern than American cities.

He mentions films like the most recent Karate Kid, which he feels is not a good representation of Beijing, China’s capital.

The average Chinese person in the big city makes about one thousand US dollars a month. The income disparities in China are similar to those in Latin America while the Chinese middle class is still growing.

Source: ShiWoLarry

Larry says the wealthiest people in China are all business owners. However, in the US, top management of large corporations are paid high salaries compared to management positions in China. In China, to have a chance at wealth, you must own a business.

He feels that lifestyles of the wealthy in America and China are about the same. 

Larry says the cities are modern and have complex public-transport systems. I can attest to this. I’ve ridden the subways in Shanghai and Beijing and they are more efficient at moving more people than public transportation I’ve taken in the US.

See Don’t Drive in Beijing – Take the Subway or go to Misconceptions of China – The Chinese Government

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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

Marxist Maoism Died in 76

June 29, 2010

Walter Russell Mead writes about changes taking place in China, and his long piece was quoted at Beliefnet.com. Read the quote or go to “Walter Russell Mead” for the “longer” piece.

What bothered me was the ignorance of the comments below the shorter Beliefnet piece. “We know what happened when the Velvet Revolution tactics that worked in Eastern Europe were tried in Tiananmen Square—the protesters were crushed to death under tank tracks.… We and they are almost in a prisoner’s dilemma here—doing the morally right thing is hugely dangerous but alone can deliver those 1.2 billion from a form of slavery”.

Have you heard of the 2/28 Massacre in Taiwan? Almost 30 thousand protesters were slaughtered by Chiang Kai-shek’s troops, while only few hundred were killed in Tiananmen Square.

Not counting sexual slavery, which is a global problem and illegal in China, there are no slaves in China. Those factory workers are free to go home to the rural village any time they want. Also, there is an expanding middle class with lifestyles equal to Europe and America.

Most people in the West have no concept of the effort it has taken to lift China from where it was in the 1950s, when Chiang Kai-shek, protected by US military might, fled with most of his troops and all of China’s wealth.

Prior to the Western nations and Japan invading China in the 19th century, China had the world’s largest economy and it wasn’t built on manufacturing or exports. China’s leaders are aware that China cannot rely on this type of economy for long and must return to an economy that supports itself from within. China is not a Maoist Communist country. It’s a blended capitalist, socialist system and is evolving with a Chinese twist.

And by definition, China is not a dictatorship.

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Lloyd Lofthouse,
Award winning author of Hart’s 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

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