Seventy-five percent of the world’s indigenous people live in China

May 15, 2019

If this post focused only on the United States, the topic would be about that country’s Native Americans and how the European invaders took away their land, slaughtered them, and forced the few survivors on reservations monitored by the FBI today. For a time, Native American children were forcebably taken from their families and sent to religious boarding schools. “As part of this federal push for assimilation, boarding schools forbid Native American children from using their own languages and names, as well as from practicing their religion and culture. They were given new Anglo-American names, clothes, and haircuts, and told they must abandon their way of life because it was inferior to white people’s.”

Back to China where 91.5-percent of the population of 1,418,984,771 is Han Chinese, and its native minority population represents about 8.5-percent of the total or more than 120.5 million compared to 5.2 million native Americans in the U.S. Please take note that recognized native minorities in China are equal to 36.7-percent of the total U.S. population of 327-million.

The World Bank defines the word “indigenous” as people recognized in international or national legislation as having a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory, and their cultural, linguistic or historical distinctiveness from other populations that are often politically dominant.

When the U.S. media criticizes China for allegedly cracking down on China’s Uyghur Muslim minority in northwest China, there is seldom any mention of the other recognized indigenous groups in China. The World Bank says, “The research found that in every country studied, Indigenous peoples are poorer. The Indigenous poverty headcount (the percent of the population living below the poverty line) is much larger than for the non-indigenous population, and the poverty gap (the distance from the poverty line) is far larger than the national average.” In fact, in the United States Indian Youth.org reports, “Many American Indian communities are impoverished, with some tribes reporting unemployment as high as 85%.”

Travel China Guide.com says, “As a large united multi-national state, China is composed of 56 ethnic groups. … Although they make up only a small proportion of the overall Chinese population, the … minority ethnic groups are distributed extensively throughout different regions of China.”

One of the 56-ethnic monitories lives primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China, where they are one of the officially-recognized ethnic groups. The Uyghur indigenous population represents about 0.8 percent of the country’s total population.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Who should be doing the brainwashing: Them or Us?

August 29, 2018

Recently in the Western media, China has been accused of throwing hundreds of thousands of Islamic Uyghurs in prison camps and reprograming them, but the media is leaving out most of the story?

In Xinjiang, the conflict between Islamic terrorists and China has been going on since 1960, for 58 years. The Islamic terrorists China’s fighting claim the area where they live was invaded by China and they want to be free but history tells another story.

The area known as Xinjiang was a protectorate of China as early as 60 BC (during the Han dynasty, when it was part of the Protectorate of the Western Regions) and during the Tang dynasty (when it was part of the Protectorate General to Pacify the West), although there were a number of periods of independence from China.

During the 18th century, the Qing Dynasty created the province of Xinjiang. In 1955, the Chinese Communist Party made Xinjiang an autonomous region.

However, bloody incidents in 1966 and 1967 occurred as Chinese and Soviet forces clashed along the border. The Soviets trained anti-Chinese guerillas and urged the Uyghurs to revolt, praising their national liberation struggle. On 30 January 1967, guerilla attacks were reportedly made in Xinjiang by a Soviet-based Turkestan refugee army. In 1969, Chinese and Soviet forces clashed along the Xinjiang-Soviet border.

The Soviets and Chinese stopped fighting but the Uyghurs never stopped.

Now, CNN claims, “thousands of Uyghur Muslims are currently being detained in Chinese ‘political education’ camps.

“One recent news report put the number of Uyghurs confined at 120,000 in ‘overcrowded and squalid’ conditions in just one prefecture in southern Xinjiang.”

Not to be outdone, I also found a self-proclaimed internet news site called supchina.com that claimed, “China’s Re-education Camps for a Million Muslims: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

It’s amazing how fast numbers can grow without any valid evidence.

Even with a Google search, I couldn’t find out who supchina.com is or who funds it.  The only information that appeared from the Google search came from that site. This alleged news site wasn’t listed on Wiki.  That’s why I think supchina.com is an internet propaganda site probably funded by the Uyghurs China has been fighting for almost 60 years.

Then there was this from Foreign Policy.com and Magazine, “Islamic Leaders Have Nothing to Say About China’s Internment Camps for Muslims. Hundreds of thousands of Uighur have been detained without trial in China’s western region of Xinjiang.

“As the Chinese authorities continue a brutal crackdown in Xinjiang, the northwest region of China that’s home to the Uighur, Islam has been one of the main targets.”

What about across the border from Xinjiang in Afghanistan?

That’s right; America’s war in Afghanistan is next door where the United States and some of its allies have been fighting Islamic terrorist groups in Afghanistan since 2001.

Maybe the U.S. is fighting some of the same people the Chinese are fighting.

Seventeen years after 2001, the BBC reports, “Afghanistan conflict: Civilian deaths hit record high, says UN.”  And the Military Times reported recently, “The U.S. is bolstering its military presence in Afghanistan, more than 16 years after the war started. Is anyone paying attention?”

In addition, “Yet today, on Afghan soil, the United States is maintaining a system of arrests and detention as part of its ongoing military and intelligence operations that violates international human rights law and international humanitarian law (the laws of war).”

But when China does the same thing, on the other side of the border, the U.S. media calls it brutal.

What about ISIS behind bars in Europe?

The Washington Post reports, “Hundreds of Europeans who joined the ‘caliphate’ are now back home and incarcerated. The new challenge: Keeping prisons from becoming recruitment centers for future terrorists. … A few months before his killing rampage, convicted robber and prison inmate Benjamin Herman had a jailhouse conversion of a sort. A white suburban teen and a nominal Catholic when he was first incarcerated, he emerged in late May as an avowed Islamist who would murder three people within hours of gaining freedom on a work-release program.

“Never have so many people been arrested on charges related to terrorism, and never have we seen so many of these guys in prison together,” said Thomas Renard, a Belgian terrorism expert and researcher at the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels. “In bringing them together, we are facilitating their ability to recruit. And that is something that will stay with us for a long time.”

After reading that last paragraph, it seems to me, the Chinese are smarter and wiser because they are the ones doing the brainwashing/reprograming instead of the other way around.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Subscribe to my newsletter to hear about new releases and get a free copy of my award-winning, historical fiction short story “A Night at the Well of Purity”.

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China’s Changing Misunderstood One-Child Policy

July 24, 2018

The BBC reported, The first day of 2016 was the end of China’s controversial (and often misunderstood), 40-year-old one-child policy. Although families will still require government-issued birth permits, or face the sanction of a forced abortion, couples in China can now request to have two children.

In 1979, the same year that China established diplomatic relations with the United States, China’s government imposed a one-child policy in an effort to curb population growth.

Why did China do that?

ONE, China has the largest population in the world, a population that has doubled since 1976 and is currently at 1.4 billion people and growing.

TWO, China has 119 million hectares of arable land compared to 156.4 million in India and 152.2 million in the United States. This helps explain why China was once known as the land of famines because China could not grow enough food to feed all of its people even when the population was 150 million in 1650.

For a comparison, even with all that crop land in India, 37.4 million hectares more than China, India Food Banking says, “Three thousand children in India die every day (EVERY DAY) from poor diet related illness.”

It’s obvious that China did not want that for their children or adults. Why allow children to be born so they can live in poverty and starve to death?

THREE, people cause pollution. The more people a developed country has, the more pollution they produce.

What happens when China becomes as developed as the United States? The answer: In 2015 the United States produced 4997.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion. China produced 9040.74, but that country has 4.4 times the people. If the U.S. had that many people, America would be producing 19,990 million metric tons of carbon emissions.

In addition, there were and still are exceptions to China’s One-Child Policy. For instance, the one-child policy does not apply to the hundred million people in China that belong to one of the fifty-six recognized minorities or many of the Han Chinese living in rural China.

Since minorities in China are a small segment of the population, China’s government practices flexibility with the minority birth rate in order to keep minorities an important part of China’s culture.

A few examples: Tibetans may not have the freedom to live a feudal, nomadic, illiterate lifestyle of servitude that came with an average 35-year lifespan they once had under the Dalai Lama, but Tibetans may have as many children as they want.

This applies to all of China’s recognized minorities.

We often hear of the Uighur Muslims since this minority has an Islamic separatist movement in the northwest near Afghanistan where the US is still fighting a war against a similar insurgency, but the Uighurs are a minority in China, so the one-child policy also does not apply to them, and they are not the only Muslims.

The Hui are unique among the fifty-six officially recognized minorities of China in that Islam is their only unifying identity. They do not have a unique language as the other minorities do and often intermarry with Han Chinese.

In fact, many live outside the Hui autonomous region. Since the Hui are considered a minority, the one-child policy also does not apply to them.

The Chinese government said if it weren’t for the one-child policy, there would be about four-hundred million more mouths to feed and provide shelter for.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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An Islamic Pilgrimage from China: Part 2 of 2

June 1, 2016

Al Jazeera introduces us to another devout Chinese Muslim in Xian who is proudly transcribing the Quran into Chinese using traditional Chinese brush calligraphy. He says it took him over a year to transcribe the entire Quran this way. Now he is working on a second copy.

Wanting to pass down this tradition to the next generation, he has also taught his son and his grandsons how to write with the Chinese brush .

His son says that every generation should try their best to transcribe the Quran with the Chinese brush, as it is also a good way to reinforce their faith.

The original copy of the Quran in this family is over four hundred years old, a priceless relic transcribed by the Chinese imams. There are only a few remaining copies left in the world.

Jia Wen Yi, a hajj pilgrim, says the trip to Mecca is important to him and his wife, an elderly couple. They have done a lot of preparation for the hajj, and Mr. Jia goes into detail about the planning.

Going on the hajj for Yi and his wife, Jia Wang Yi, has been a dream for over two decades as they saved to have enough money.

Mr. and Mrs. Jia will be part of a group of 250 pilgrims leaving for the hajj from the city of Xian. It was a matter of saving most of their lives until they could afford the trip.

Since these Muslims are considered a minority in China, they are not restricted by the one-child policy, as you would see in the video when the family and friends gather to say goodbye before Mr. and Mrs. Jia leave on the long journey to Mecca.

There is no direct flight from Xian to Mecca, so the pilgrims will take a train to Beijing where they will board a flight to Saudi Arabia.

Whenever pilgrims leave Xian to go on the hajj to Mecca, thousands of Chinese Muslims show up at the railway station to say goodbye. This is the first time Mr. and Mrs. Jia have left China. They have never been apart from their family before.

Return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the unique love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

A1 on March 13 - 2016 Cover Image with BLurbs to promote novel

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An Islamic Pilgrimage from China: Part 1 of 2

May 31, 2016

The hajj is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, and a mandatory religious duty for Muslims that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by all adult Muslims who are physically and financially capable of undertaking the journey, and can support their family during their absence.

From Xian in China to Mecca in Saudi Arabia it is a distance of 6,812 km or 4,232.781 miles.

This post might be a surprise to many in the West that think there is no religious freedom in China, but China handles religious freedom similar to how Singapore does it. And Singapore is seldom if ever criticized in the Western media for its religious restrictions.

The U.S. Department of State says that Singapore’s government has broad powers to limit citizens’ rights and handicap political opposition, and it does. One of those restrictions is a limited freedom of religion.

For instance, Singapore bans the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Unification Church by making public meetings illegal. The Falun Gong, banned in China, also has problems in Singapore.

China recognizes five religions — Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism but has banned certain new religious movements that are considered cults. China does not recognize cults as religions.

In the video embedded with this post, Al Jazeera follows Chinese Muslims as they prepare to undertake the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca from Xian in China.

The ancient city of Xian in Shaanxi province is home to about 60,000 ethnic Chinese Muslims.

Xian claims it has a Muslim history going back more than thirteen hundred years when Islam was first introduced to China in 650 AD, and the oldest mosque in China was built in 685-762 AD in Xian during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty.

Chinese Imam Ma Yi Ping speaks both Chinese and Arabic. He studied at the Islamic University of Medina and has made the hajj several times. He was taught in secret to be a devout Muslim by his parents when Mao ruled China and the mosques in China were closed.

Despite the persecutions that took place during China Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976) for all religons, Islam survived.

Ma Yi Ping says that after Mao and the Gang of Four were gone and China opened for trade with the world, he did not have to study the Quran in secret anymore.

Since the 15th century, Xian Muslims have been going to Mecca in Saudi Arabia for the annual hajj pilgrimage.

In the past, during the ancient days of the Silk Road, these journeys started and ended in Xian’s Muslim quarter. Today is no different.

Continued in Part 2 starting June 1, 2016

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the unique love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

#1 - Joanna Daneman review posted June 19 2014

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