The Emperor is Dead

November 5, 2010

In a Republic, everyone “does not” have the right to vote and that’s the way it was in the United States until 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act and created a democracy.

In 1776, when the US was a Republic, only white men with property had the right to vote, and the electorate consisted of perhaps only 10 to 20 percent of the population.

In fact, “”This made the country (America) far more stable than places that did not have this tradition and later went through dozens of constitutions and revolutions. In short, when it came to government and voting, Americans had a model to build on.” Source: History – Voting in Early America

Since America took almost two centuries to become the chaotic democracy it is today where almost everyone may vote but many don’t, why should China be rushed.

In China, members of the Communist Party make up the electorate, which is about 5% of the population. If the Communist Youth League were added, it would be closer to 10 percent. Regardless of how this electorate makes decisions, they do have a voice.

However, the consensus (rather than a majority vote) of that electorate still decides the direction China is moving.

China’s Central Committee has about 300 members (connected by a hot line) and nominally appoints the current 25 Politburo members, who select the Standing Committee of 5 to 9 men who select the President and Prime Minister.

Before 1911, only one man had a vote and that was the emperor. China has no emperor today. Today, China’s leaders may only serve two, five-year terms and there are also age limits, which the US doesn’t have. In fact, China’s next leader will not be the son of an emperor.

At its birth, the United States was not a democratic nation—far from it. The very word “democracy” had pejorative overtones, summoning up images of disorder, government by the unfit, even mob rule — considering the run up to the 2010 election, which sounds about right.

The explanation for the pressure from the “so-called” free world that China throw away the more stable Republic that has led to a steady, controlled modernization, improved health care and lifestyles and stumble quickly into a chaotic democracy is that misery loves company.

In 1950, the average life expectancy in China was 32.  Today life expectancy at birth is 73 (78 in the US). The infant mortality rate in 1950 was about 200 for 1,000 live births. Today that number is 20 (6 in the US).

If you want to see what happens to a country that became a Democracy before it was ready, study India carefully.

In India, the infant mortality rate is 51 for 1,000 live births. Life expectancy at birth is 66.

So far, since 1982 (which marks the end of Mao’s era and the birth of China’s new Constitution), China has avoided many of India’s mistakes, and India has been a democracy since 1947.

The learn more about India, see Comparing India and China’s Economic Engines, India Falling Short and The India, China battle to eliminate poverty and illiteracy.

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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

Playing Politics for Simple Minds

October 30, 2010

Shikha Dalmia writes for Forbes and says, China Bashing is for Losers. My first thought was, who is this sensible person?

After all, China bashing is a popular sport in America and ranks slightly below basketball, baseball and football. Whenever Americans lose jobs or there is a national election, it is China bashing season— before China it was Japan or some other country or race or religion.

I discovered that Dalmia is a senior policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank. She is also a columnist at Forbes and won the first 2009 Bastiat Prize for Online journalism for her column in Forbes and Reason magazines.

What she says about China bashers is true. Since I started writing iLook China, I’ve discovered that most of my critics know little to nothing about China and base their flawed opinions on stereotypes that should have died with Mao in 1976.

Instead, ignorance rules the day and politicians love that because it leads to votes from people who shouldn’t vote.

However, Shikha Dalmia knows what she is talking about. She points out that protectionism doesn’t work.

Dalmia provides evidence to make her point.

She writes that between 2005 and 2008, the yuan rose 21% but the trade divide, instead of going down, went up by $66 billion because while a strong yuan increases the dollar price for Chinese goods, it also lowers the yuan price of foreign raw materials.

She then uses the iPod as an example. The iPod, Dalmia says, is designed in America and its 451 parts are made in dozens of countries. When all those parts arrive in China to be assembled, that adds only $4 to the price if a $150 item.

This means if the US punishes China by erecting trade barriers, people lose jobs all along the manufacturing line, which starts in the US at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters.

Dalmia concludes by stating a truth few know—that Republicans and Democrats are sowing the seeds of their own destruction, which will lead to more suffering when the US economy drops lower. 

I suggest you read Dalmia’s piece at Forbes to understand why global trade is too complex for simple minds to understand.

Learn more about the Chinese Stereotype Alive and Rotten in America

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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

Maoism Alive

October 27, 2010

Caution—do not confuse Maoists with the Communist Party that currently rules China.

The Maoists in China want a return to the Cultural Revolution and pure socialism with no capitalism. Chinese Maoists consider the current leaders as traitors.

After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the Communist Party under Deng Xiaoping repudiated revolutionary Maoism and embarked on the path toward a socialist-capitalist economic model that has led to the prosperity in China today.

However, Maoism did not vanish. The Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) was founded in 1984 and included the Communist Party of Peru (also known as the “Shining Path”).

Recently, the Chinese “Maoist” Communist Party thought they had a leader in Bo Xilai because of the crackdown on crime in Chongqing until Bo had thirty members of the Maoist Party arrested and locked up.  Source: Serve the People


China’s last Maoist village

Then there is the Maoist Communist Party of Nepal that formed a coalition government in Nepal in 2009, which collapsed a few months later as different rebel factions fought with each other. The Maoist’s goal was to turn Nepal into a Marxist Republic. Source: Nepal Assessment 2010

In India, there is an ongoing Naxalite-Maoist rebellion against the democratic government.

The Maoist influence in India comes from the lack of progress to end starvation among rural Indians, who have had no improvement in their lifestyles for decades. See: Naxalite-Maoist insurgency

In the US, the Black Panthers (1967) were a militant Maoist organization. In Paris in 1968, the National Liberation Front, another Maoist group, caused street combat.

Maoism, known as Mao Zedong thought, is a variant of Marxism derived from the teachings of the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong. 

Maoism was widely applied as the political and military guiding ideology in the Communist Party between 1949 and 1976, which led to the horrors of the Cultural 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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Sun Yat-sen’s Last Days – Part 1/3

October 25, 2010

In October 1911, a revolution in China overthrew the Qing Dynasty and ended more than two thousand years of imperial monarchy.

After the revolution, the Republic of China was founded but warlords still controlled much of China.

The leader of this revolution was Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), and he served as the first president of the Republic of China.

The Chinese Communist Party persuaded Sun that if his Nationalist Party formed an alliance with the Communists, Sun would gain support from China’s peasants and industrial workers to help end the anarchy in China. Source: Time Asia

In 1924, Sun Yat-sen’s health was not good. He was so sick he had turned command of the Nationalist navy and army over to Hu Hanmin, who would later be a rival with Chiang Kai-shek for control of the Nationalists (Kuomintang) in the late 1920s. 

The reason that Sun Yat-sen gave command of the navy and army to Hu Hanmin was because he wanted to go to the Baiyun Mountains of Guangzhou to recover from his illness.

However, Sun Yat-sen was invited to Beijing instead — the reason was to meet the warlord that controlled Beijing.

At the time, The Nationalists only held power in Southern China.

When he arrived by train, about 20 thousand people met him at the station. 

The warlord had invited Sun Yat-sen to Beijing to talk about how to end the chaos and anarchy that still raged throughout much of China.

Continued in Sun Yat-sen’s Last Days – 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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Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 7/7

October 25, 2010

Another reason China is moving toward a more open republic is China’s growing, highly educated middle class. Even most of China’s peasants have seen lifestyle improvements — not as fast as urban areas but there has been growth.

“Growth in (China’s) peasant income, which had reached a rate of 15.2% a year from 1978 to 1984, dropped to 2.8% a year from 1986 to 1991. Some recovery occurred in the early 1990s, but stagnation of rural incomes marked the latter part of the decade.” Source: Asia Times

Between 1978 to 1984, rural income improved almost 100% within six years.  That growth slowed to 14% between 1986 to 1991. 

Yet, Western critics that blast China for this slow growth seldom mention that rural India has stood still for the last twenty years. There must be an unwritten rule about criticizing other democracies, which is censorship.

China’s Western critics act as if they expect an infant to walk the day he or she is born, and run a marathon, become a rocket scientist and a Nobel laureate all within twenty-four hours.

The China Law Blog said I wasn’t being fair to India when I wrote Comparing India and China’s Economic Engines.

In fact, the West’s Sinophobic critics are the ones guilty of being unfair.

China will open the door to more freedom when China is ready and that door is open wider now than it was in 1976.

I never said “when” China would be finished building a more open, modern republic, and it may never happen until a majority of the people demand it and there may even be bloodshed.

However, the signs are there for anyone who takes the time to look.

When China arrives at that destination is in the hands of the planners, engineers, scientists and architects who lead and rule China—not the Western politicians, the media or Sinophobic critics.

In fact, in 2012, the seventy million members of the Party will have an election and the leadership of China will change again.

However, the West will still refer to the elected president of China’s republic as a dictator without mentioning that in a republic not everyone has the right to vote as it was in America in 1776.

Return to Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 6

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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

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