Was Miley Cyrus—alias Hanna Montana—Banned in China?

December 11, 2010

What got this post started was a media blitz this morning on the Blogosphere and in the traditional media that Miley Cyrus, now 18, was smoking herbal “Salvia” fumes from a bong.

Curious what herbal “Salvia” was, I Googled the topic and discovered seemly bogus claims that Miley was banned from China early in 2009 when she was still 16.

I discovered that Miley Cyrus Online.co.uk (billed as the “ultimate fan site” for gossip) said in February 2009, that Cyrus had been banned in China due to a photograph showing her pulling her eyes back into an Asian slant.

To verify this, I searched Reuters, United Press International and Associated Press and came up with nothing to support the fan-site claim.

However, the BBC News did report, “The Organization of Chinese Americans criticized Cyrus for setting ‘a terrible example for her young fans’.”


Miley Cyrus singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

Then I discovered in March 2010, that Cyrus was featured in the China Daily, which is the English version of Xinhua, the state owned media giant in China.

If Cyrus had been banned in China, I doubt the China Daily would feature her a year later.

However, I did learn that “Salvia” comes from the deep roots of the Chinese sage plant and has been used for centuries in China as a salve on damaged, diseased or injured body tissues and is best known for its ability to promote circulation in the capillary beds or the microcirculation system. 

Nowhere did this information say one should smoke Salvia to achieve these benefits. After all, inhaling smoke into one’s lungs is not a good idea because it causes damage to the sensitive lining of the lungs and increases cancer risk.

Then I learned from NPR.org that “Salvia” is a powerful and legal hallucinogenic herb that is gaining popularity among teenagers and young adults…. Legislation to make it a controlled substance has failed twice in (in the US) Congress.

If Cyrus were smoking Salvia, what she was doing wasn’t illegal in California. If you want to learn where not to smoke Salvia visit Sage Wisdom.org.

As for celebrities banned in China, such as Brad Pitt, the Dalai Lama, Martin Scorsese, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere (no surprise there), and singer Mjork, check out Elephant Journal.com.

It seems there may be some truth to what Cyrus said, “I definitely feel like the press (and the Blogosphere rumor mill) is trying to make me out as the new ‘bad girl’!” Source:  BBC

Discover more about Chinese Herbalism

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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, crime, media | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

More Freedom in China brings Sorrow

December 5, 2010

I read a TIME piece by Austin Ramzy about stolen children in China seeking answers. Some Chinese parents that lost children complain that the police do not do enough to find the missing children.

As usual, the story is more complicated than that.

In fact, Ramzy wrote, corruption began to rise, and organized crime, beaten back by relentless social controls during the Maoist era (1949 – 1976), grew once again (which means that with more freedom comes more risk due to crime).

Because of new freedom of movement, Ramzy wrote, gangs found it easier to take children from one place and sell them in another.

However, the police in China are learning. Last year, the police launched their biggest crackdown ever, with more than 15,000 people arrested over 17 months. The ultimate penalty for trafficking in children is death.

The longer the child is missing, however, the more difficult it is to find them.


Length of Al Jazeera English video 21 minutes

101 East, an Al Jazeera English program, did a special on this topic. The host says, “Tens of thousands of children are abducted and sold in China each year.”

Curious, I wanted to know if a similar situation exists in the US.

Checking FBI statistics, I learned that the FBI reported in 2009, 558,493 missing persons under the age of 18. Non-family members adduced fifty-eight thousand.

Further research revealed that most child abductions in the US and China are for different reasons. Another family member abducts most in America.  In China, many of the abductions are so the children may be sold to strangers that live far from where the child was taken.

One reason for why children are kidnapped and sold to other families is due to cultural reasons. In China, parents depend on their children to care for them in old age and this motivates some Chinese couples to pay a kidnapper to find a child for them.

In fact, up until the early 20th century, children and women were often sold in China and it wasn’t against the law as it is today.

Of the thousands abducted in the US, the FBI says about a hundred children a year are murdered within three hours.

Discover more about the growth of Organized Crime in China

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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, China, Chinese police, crime, cultural differences, legal system | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Heroin Abuse in China’s South

November 28, 2010

There is a price to live in a “free” world with human rights that extend to every citizen — even hard-core criminals.

Besides violent crime, one of those challenges is illegal drugs.

For example—in the United States, The DEA reports that Mexican drug cartels are making a bigger push to organize their black market activities in the United States, Europe and neighboring Latin American countries. Source: United States Border Narcotics Intelligence

In fact, the US Justice Department says, “The illegal drug market in the United States is one of the most profitable in the world.”

Between 1950 and 1976, China had little crime and had eliminated illegal drug use.  The traffickers were executed and addicts either rehabilitated or shot.

That situation has changed.

Since the early 1980s, due to China’s economic boom to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty, some parts of the country are battling social problems, including soaring rates of drug addiction.

One of the worst affected areas is China’s southern province of Yunnan, an entry point for heroin.

Yunnan’s border is easy to cross from the infamous Golden Triangle. In Yunnan, a fix of heroin costs about the same as a US chocolate bar.

To deal with this challenge, Chinese authorities send heroin addicts to a drug rehabilitation center at the provincial capital of Yunnan province, which is where the largest drug rehabilitation center in the world is located.

The heroin addicts spend two years in a strict rehabilitation program to help kick the habit. However, once released, many return to addiction.

Today, China’s government says that there are at last seven hundred thousand heroin users in China.

This invisible downside comes with more freedom and economic success.

To learn more about crime in China, see Crime and the Law – Thirty Years in China

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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, China, crime, economy | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Internet Security in China

November 24, 2010

We must be careful not to allow the “free” Western media, which often practices the exaggerations of Yellow Journalism to gain a larger audience share, to turn us into virtual on-line paranoid freaks.

In fact, Americans seldom hear that other nations around the globe also have the same challenges with Internet Security as the US does.

The following newscast from CCTV proves that we are not alone. The Chinese also suffer from virtual viruses and crimes.

It doesn’t take a government-funded agency to create a virus or other Internet threats. Any hacker may do so, and China Internet Watch reported 420 million Chinese Internet users on-line in 2010.

China has a National Computer Network Emergency Response Center. In 2009, the Center said, “Internet security cases have been on the rise in recent years posing severe challenges to information safety (in China).

“Hackers can profit from renting or selling computer information.… This crime has caused over 4.5 billion yuan in losses.”

The Center says, “The number of viruses and assaults launched by hackers number in the tens of thousands and the number of attacks is rising by one-third each year.”

The Ministry of Public Security and State Information Center has launched an exclusive campaign to protect Internet security.

For example, in December 2009, China found eleven guilty in a virus case and sent the defendants to jail for up to three years for their role in creating on-line viruses in east China. This on-line gang reportedly made illegal gains of 646,000 yuan or about 94,600 US dollars.

It was reported that 80 people across China were involved in this crime and more trials were expected.

Learn more from Tom Carter about Crime in China

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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, crime, legal system | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Death by Execution or Murder

November 23, 2010

The Huffington Post and other media reported that Ambassador Mark Sedwill, NATO’s Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, said that youngsters living in Afghan’s capital probably are safer than in other big cities like London or New York.

The knee jerk reaction of the virtual mob judged Sedwill wrong without evidence.

However, he was right!

Between 2001 to June of 2010, direct deaths of “all” civilians killed in Afghanistan as a result of insurgent actions was estimated to be 4,949 to 6,499 or an average of 550 to 722 a year.

In the US, total murders 2001 to 2009 were 137,840 people. Forcible rape was about a million. Aggravated assault was about eight million. Source: FBI

About 260,000 children die globally each year in motor vehicle collisions and ten million are injured. That’s more than all the roadside and suicide bombings in both Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars started.

In the US, Child Help reported that 10,432 children died from abuse 2001 to 2007 and over 3 million reports of child abuse are made annually.

That leads me to the Western mob’s criticism of China’s convicted criminal execution rate.

Amnesty International estimated that 1,718 executions took place in 2008 in China.

The big difference is that most people executed in China at least get a trial and a chance to prove innocence before death. In a motor vehicle collision, murder or child abuse, the innocent victim has no chance.

It is wrong that criminals serving life sentences in the US without a chance for parole or execution cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

KPBS did a special on The Cost of Life in Prison. For 2,600 serving life sentences in California, the projected cost was about $6.4 billion.

Criminal Justice says, 140,610 people are serving life sentences in the U.S. and more than 40,000 are serving life without parole.

China’s justice system is doing the right thing. China has executed convicted child molesters. Source: Dream Catchers for Abused Children

Discover The Founding Fathers had it Right about the Death Penalty

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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.

4 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese police, crime, cultural differences, family values, legal system, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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