Predicting the Fall of a Civilization – Part 1/2

April 12, 2011

For decades, I’ve said that American arrogance (due to being the only super power), run-away consumerism and growing debt of all kinds coupled with how the average American child is being raised by parents obsessed with the child’s self-esteem above all else would lead to the inevitable end of the American experiment in personal freedoms and a rapid decline in living standards followed by chaos and anarchy.

Then I had an e-mail this week from an American friend and expatriate living in China, who recently returned to teaching English to Chinese children.

I asked him in an E-mail how it was going.

He replied, “You’ll be interested to know the kids are WAY fatter and noisier than they were in 2004. I asked some other teachers about this. They attribute it to McDonalds (3 all on the same 3-kilometer street in this very small city). In 2004 there were none (in that city), and Chinese parents spoiling their kids more and more; that sense of entitlement carries over into the classroom….”

After teaching American children and teens for thirty years and experiencing the same decline in child health and behavior, I understood what he meant.

Could this cultural decay be a sign of the pending collapse of civilization?

To be continued on April 13, 2011 in Part 2 or discover Super Power Dawn

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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.

2 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, economy, environment, expatriates, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

America’s Gift to China – the Curse of the Middle Class Bulge

March 3, 2011

The Atom Stack Tribune reports McDonalds is facing stiff competition in China. Today, McDonalds has more than 2100 outlets in 450 cities and towns across China.

KFC has three times as many stores serving artery clogging fried chicken, while Coca Cola reported a 26% increase in sales in China of its sodas making up for reduced sales in the US.

At the end of 2010, Starbucks reported more than 750 Starbucks locations in Greater China.

Pizza Hut food is expensive in China when compared to Chinese restaurants, which explains why Pizza Hut focuses on China’s middle class.  Pizza Hut started doing business in China in 1987. Today it operates 3,000 restaurants in 650 cities and towns.

What has been the result of all this American fast food in China?

In 1979, less than one percent of China’s population was diagnosed as diabetic. Since that time, the increase of diabetes has paralleled China’s development along with the growth of American fast food outlets in China.

A recently published study reported that the proportion of diabetics in China was nearly equal to the United States, which is almost nine percent of the adult population.

In addition, the growth of reported cases in China is growing at about 1.5 million annually on average.

The increase in diabetes in China is due to increasing obesity, lack of exercise and to poor eating habits.

Dr. Liu Hongfang of Dongzhimen Hospital in Beijing says the situation is only going to get worse as living standards improve and more people can afford to eat high-fat foods more often.

As a result, the number of diabetics will keep increasing.

The World Health Organization estimated that in the period lasting from 2006 to 2015, China would lose 558 billion dollars in national income due to heart disease, stroke and diabetes combined.

Thanks to government reforms in health care in 2009, more than 1.2 billion people now have some form of basic medical insurance. However, this health coverage is often minimal and diabetes costs more than the health care covers.

Discover China’s Health Care Today

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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.

Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, business, China, Chinese food, Chinese middle class, food, health care | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Cause of China’s Pollution

February 26, 2011

Before criticizing and blaming China for polluting the environment, learn about the history that caused the pollution first.

The first Industrial Revolution took place in England after James Watt developed the coal/wood burning steam engine in the late 18th century. This was beginning of air and water pollution.

The second Industrial Revolution (1820-1870) helped the economic development of the United States. Then industrialization increased between 1870 and 1914.

Pollution from industries grew to epidemic proportions after 1945. In fact, the type of pollution changed significantly when industries in America and Europe began manufacturing and using synthetic materials such as plastics and DDT.

These materials are not only toxic; they accumulated in the environment and were not biodegradable. This increased rates of cancers, physical birth defects, and mental retardation.

Due to an increase in world trade after World War II and moving a significant percentage of the world’s manufacturing to Japan, then China after Mao died, the pollution created using these synthetic materials increased and pollution reached a global scale.

Most of the products manufactured in China were sold around the globe by multinational corporations such as Wal-Mart. If you buy products made in China, you are partly responsible for the pollution there. The odds are that the computer I’m using was made or assembled in China. Darn!


June 2007 – the US still has more cars on the road and buys much of what China manufactures for US companies.

Another factor was pressure from the people of China on their government to improve the standard of living for 1.3 billion people. India faced the same challenges.

The lifestyle changes taking place in China and India parallel the changes that already took place in America, Britain and Europe more than a century earlier.

In the 1960s, about 60% of Chinese labor worked in agriculture. That figure remained about the same throughout the 1960s into early 1990s. Then by the late 1990s, the farm force in rural China fell to about thirty percent.

In comparison, in 1870, 53% of US labor worked in agriculture. Today, farm labor in the US makes up 3% of workforce. The rest live in towns and cities with a middle-class demanding more synthetic products to feed the consumer lifestyle.

Discover The One Party Advantage

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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, here is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

 

Note: This post first appeared on iLook China February 7, 2010 as post # 31. This revised version reappears as post # 1086.

2 Comments | America, business, China, Chinese middle class, economy, environment | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Changing China through its Youth – Part 5/5

February 3, 2011

As PBS’s Frontline started its fourth year of filming in China, the subjects of their documentary were still restless rethinking their lives, their ambitions and values.

One Chinese woman (not identified) talks about a survey called the “Happiness Index”, which is practical.  It has nothing to do with the individual and society. She says, “When Chinese talk about happiness, it’s about affording the things they want to buy, the housing they want, and if they like the work they do…”

Lu Dong, who started an Internet tailoring business, says, “China is a country with no beliefs and there are no role models. All the models are materialistic.”

Although Lu Dong’s opinion may be true for many Chinese in the rising middle class, I disagree that it means everyone in China. There are role models in China’s history, and even today, there are others who will look to them as an example.

He says, “Chinese are very hungry now and hard to satisfy,” which may be a better way of stating the situation today and goes a long way to explain why rural Chinese are willing to sacrifice so much to migrate to cities and work long hours in factories for low pay.

Lu Dong says, “The water is still dirty. What I can do is make the water in my company clean… Although when I deal with the outside world I still have to deal with business the way others do. That’s another reason why I became a Christian.”

Then Ben Wu, who launched the Internet cafe, says he won’t be in the Internet cafe business for the rest of his life. His real passion is renewable energy. His father’s expertise in is solar cells. He wants to start a factory to build this product.

Dr. Zhang Yao works in a large hospital and feels an obligation to do public health work. He thinks residents in large urban hospitals could provide training in rural ones.

Zhang Jingjing is a public interest lawyer. She represented more than a 1,000 families over a power line built for the (2008) Olympics. She wants to protect China’s environment and natural resources. However, she wants to meet the right man too.

Meanwhile, the rapper, Wang Xiaolei, is achieving his dream of becoming a star. He says he has 20,000 fans. He wants to be the head of a record company. He says he firmly believes that if you work hard your dream will come true.

Wow! That sounds like many of the American children I taught during my thirty years in the classroom. How many do you believe actually achieve their dreams?

In conclusion, this PBS Frontline documentary shows us that there are no stereotypes in China. Even in a collective culture such as China, there are individuals.

Return to Changing China through its Youth – Part 4

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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.

Leave a Comment » | business, capitalism, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, cultural differences, family values, health care | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Young and in Love in China

January 20, 2011

Kellie Schmitt of CNN Go Asia wrote, “Love & Other Catastrophes: Conquering China’s young-love taboo“.

The China that Western Sinophobes, gossips and stereotypes paint is not today’s China. Anyone that reads this Blog regularly knows that China is not the “Party” but is the people. That’s why it is called the People’s Republic of China.

In fact, Schmitt is a Shanghai-based writer whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist’s Business China, Marie Claire, World Hum and Backpacker. I haven’t read all that she has written but this piece was worth mentioning.

If you want to learn about China, you would have to travel to China often or live there as an expatriate as Schmitt has. Marrying into a Chinese family also helps.

While living in China, Schmitt moonlighted as a restaurant reviewer for City Weekend Shanghai. She’s gone falcon hunting in Yunnan, drank fermented mare’s milk in a Mongolian yurt, and attended a mail-order bride’s wedding and donned qipaos with Shanghai’s senior citizens.


Another example of being young in urban China. The world this generation knows is not the world their parents grew up in.

Instead of playing it safe and staying primarily in modern China around other foreigners and expatriates as many do, Schmitt has “tasted” what being Chinese means.

Schmitt has written often of China. Visit her profile page to see topics she’s written of from Shanghai’s lesbian sub-culture to debates held at the 15th century Sera Monastery by Lhasa monks.

As for young love, Kellie Schmitt writes, “In Shanghai, teachers and parents widely prohibit dating in high school, urging students to study instead.”

But for Enid and Michael (the couple Schmitt writes of), their love was “worth a little sneaking around”. That was when they were sixteen.

When they turned 22, they were still together and got married. When Schmitt wrote the post for CNN Go Asia, Enid and Michael were 26. As in all marriages, Enid and Michael have had their difficulties but it appears love has kept them dedicated to each other and together. I recommend Schmitt’s post to learn more of how China is changing.

Discover more of China’s Sexual Revolution

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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.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, expatriates, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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