China in Africa – Part 2/2

November 29, 2010

Richard Behar, the American reporter, starts out by answering a question from an e-mail that came in about sweatshop, slave labor in Africa. 

Behar says that African consumers can buy cheap goods—that’s the good news.

The bad news is that most developing countries need light manufacturing industries such as textiles to develop, and China is making that almost impossible for African countries.

Riz Khan turns to Dr. John Afele and mentions something Behar wrote in China Storms Africa that claims what China is doing is a replay of imperial colonialism.

Dr. Afele says he sees this as an economic situation and if it is economic, than Thomas Friedman, the author of The World is Flat, is right that economics is not like war and can be a win-win situation.

This is not a time when Africa has no voice, Afele says. This time the world is watching so I do not think we are going back to an era of colonialism. There are international organizations to help that didn’t exist during colonialism.

Then Khan turns to David Shinn, the former US ambassador to Ethiopia, who is now a professor at George Washington University. The question has to do with countries like America that are reluctant to do business in Africa due to Africa’s negative international image.

Shinn replies that the perception of Africa for American businesses is negative. However, he does not think China is bothered by that image.

Referring to Behar’s claims of colonialism rearing its ugly head, Shinn says this infers political control and that is not part of today’s equation. Colonialism is not happening.

Turning back to Behar, Khan brings up the perception of corruption of businesses in China.

Behar uses Mozambique as an example saying that within five years the best wood will be gone as the trees are cut down. He says the same thing is going on in the Congo with copper. (I ask, How is this corruption?)

Shinn responds by saying the upside (or win-win situation Afele mentioned) is that China offers Africa long term, low interest loans that were only being offered by the West with political strings attached.

China doesn’t make the same demands the West does.  (What no one said is that China was also a victim of colonialism for more than a century starting with the Opium Wars.)

Return to China in Africa – Part 1

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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

Reversing China’s “one-child” Policy

November 28, 2010

France 24 reports another exception to China “one-child” policy.  In fact, Chinese law allows married couples who are both the only child of their parents to have two children.

China provides support from government run family planning centers that check on women’s health and inform them of their rights and responsibilities.

The Shanghai government encourages married couples eligible to have more than one child to do so.  In Shanghai, that means most married couples.

In 2009, the Shanghai Family Planning Commission promoted this policy. The reason for this campaign lies in China’s population structure.

Because of the one-child policy, China is aging fast. Shanghai is particularly hard hit by this age disparity. Twenty-two percent of the citizens of Shanghai are over sixty and these numbers are expected to grow.

Xu Xihua, the director of Shanghai’s Aging Development Center says that by adjusting the one-child policy in Shanghai, this disparity in ages can be partially reduced. Giving couples an opportunity to have two children is part of the plan.

However, the central government stresses it is not abandoning its family planning policies or its control over the number of births.  Fear of overpopulation and potential famines remains high.

Discover more about Exemptions in China’s ‘one-child policy’

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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

Looking Like Jessica Alba in China

November 27, 2010

Nekesa Mumbi Moody wrote for the Huffington Post that Jessica Alba was upset about a Chinese woman having plastic surgery to look like her so she could win her Alba obsessed ex-boyfriend back.

When this news hit the stands in February, I missed it.

I’m currently watching Alba in Dark Angel on DVDs, a TV series that survived two seasons. I’ve seen Alba in the Fantastic Four franchise and that’s about it. She’s a talented actress that started with a small role in 1994 in Camp Nowhere, a film that didn’t do well.

However, Alba went on to compile an impressive history in film, was nominated for 29 awards and won nine.

Alba was right when she said, “I think you should never have to change yourself like that. If someone loves you, they’ll love you no matter what.”

Well, I wouldn’t agree totally with “no matter what” and there may be another side to this story. In China, what you hear is often not the real story.

In China, the odds of being successful at anything are daunting. Less than 15% make it into universities and most of China’s more than 1.3 billion people work hard for little pay earning enough so they won’t starve or become homeless.

On the other hand, there’s a growing shortage of women in China and this woman that wants to look like Jessica Alba should have no trouble finding another man without the plastic surgery.

In fact, the woman who wants to look like Jessica Alba isn’t the only woman changing her looks to gain something.

Over 40 and Feeling Fine says, “There’s an article on ABC News about women in China going under the knife to have ‘western’ eyes, fuller lips, bigger breasts and longer legs.”

Anne Marie Dorning at ABC News says, “Imagine, if you will, a surgeon breaking your leg bones in four places, then attaching a steel scaffold frame to the outside of your limbs with metal pins jutting into your bones.”

The odds are that the woman who wants to look like Alba may be doing this for other reasons than for love. Looking like Jessica Alba in China may lead to success in other areas.

Consider what this young woman accomplished. She used love and sacrifice bordering on the insane to gain the attention of the world’s media, and a well-known American actress responded.

This Chinese woman may have found a way to get to the head of the line. If successful, she will probably write a book about how she did it. Knowing the Chinese obsession to achieve success, it would be a best seller.

Discover how The One-Child Tragedy led to a shortage of women 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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty – Part 3/4

November 27, 2010

The Yongle Emperor’s father, Zhu Yuanzhang (Emperor Hongwu) would have seen his son as unfilial, which means not observing the obligations of a child to a parent—even after the parent is dead.

When Yongle opened China, he demonstrated disrespect for his parent. Instead, he should have continued supporting the closed-door policy his father had instituted.

In Chinese society, to maintain a well-controlled country or a peaceful world requires the children to love and respect his or her parents even after death.

In fact, filial piety is not only a foundation of morality in China but also a fundamental basis of Chinese culture.

This also explains why each of China’s current presidents continues supporting the policies of the former president and Deng Xiaoping.

For change to take place in China, it usually comes slowly. Filial piety is the reason the People’s Liberation Army did not remove Mao during the Cultural Revolution and waited until he was dead to act.


Mandarin with English subtitles

However, when the Yongle Emperor acted against his father’s wishes, he demonstrated courage because he knew many in the imperial court would consider him unfilial.

Emperor Yongle commissioned building the great fleet that Admiral Zheng He sailed as far as Africa. 

Admiral Zheng He was selected to command because he was an organizer, a diplomat and could be trusted. He was not a merchant or a conqueror.

Although during this time, many Chinese immigrated to Southeast Asia, the Yongle Emperor had no interest in establishing colonies outside China.

In the north, it was a different story. Emperor Yongle had to deal with ceaseless attacks by the Mongolian tribes.

For the first time in centuries, an emperor sent a Chinese army of 100,000 beyond the Great Wall to end this threat and bring peace to China.

When the nomadic tribes retreated, a larger army was raised and sent after them.

Return to Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty – Part 2

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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

Chasing Profits – Defeating Truth

November 26, 2010

Ted Koppel writes an interesting and revealing commentary for the Washington Post of how the US media reports opinions as if they were facts.

Koppel writes, “While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic.… But when our accountants, bankers and lawyers, our doctors and our politicians tell us only what we want to hear, despite hard evidence to the contrary, we are headed for disaster.”

For example, a Reuter’s piece on Yahoo had this lead paragraph in the morning, “China warning on Friday against military acts near its coastline…” as if China would retaliate if anything happened.

From comments I’ve read on the Internet, the US mob reacted as expected calling President Obama a loser for not retaliating in North Korea.

In the afternoon, the replacement lead paragraph said, “China said on Friday it was determined to prevent an escalation of this week’s violence on the Korean peninsula…” I’ve read what the Chinese minister said and this is closer to the truth.

It is obvious a hot-blooded reporter wrote the morning piece for the mob that wants war, since there are voices in South Korea and in the US screaming for blood regardless of the outcome.

Mobs seldom pay attention to history. It takes wiser heads in positions of power to prevail. In the US media and often in Washington DC, there is seldom this level of wisdom to be seen.

An example of a government reacting to what a nationalistic mob demanded led to World War I. By the time that war ended more than sixteen million had been killed, and this all took place because one man had been assassinated.

The same thing happened in Vietnam where more than three million died after the LBJ White House lied and the US media stirred the mob to action.

Over Iraq, opinions and White House lies repeated in the US media stirred the mob again and that led to a war where hundreds of thousands have already died and the violence in Iraq hasn’t ended.

This brings up another point raised from Koppel’s commentary.

Koppel aptly reveals that today’s “free” press has abandoned the truth, because there are millions of Americans that worship the opinions of people such as “Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly – individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.”

The opposite often happens in China between the state-run media and nationalistic mob.

For example, in May 1999, Chinese nationalism and anger ran high after the US bombing of the PRC’s embassy in Belgrade. Instead of fanning the flames, the state-run media calmed the mob.

Then there was the April 2001 Hainan Island incident caused by the collision of a US spy plane with a PLA fighter jet killing the Chinese pilot.  The same thing happened.

Next, there was the recent Senkaku Island dispute between China and Japan. 

In all three incidents, the state-run media in China calmed nationalist pride and the people’s demand for blood.

It is ironic that in America, the opinionated, biased voices from the so-called “free” media often feeds the mob’s frenzy and the mob signals what it wants to hear, which may lead to another war unless wiser heads prevail.

Discover more at Media Slugfest Using Taiwan

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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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