How close does China’s Great Firewall watch Tik Tok?

July 1, 2020

The BBC reports “US President Donald Trump sought help from Chinese President Xi Jinping to win re-election, ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton’s new book says.”

The allegations refer to a meeting between President Trump and President Xi at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, in June last year. “Trump, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election [in 2020], alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Mr. Bolton wrote in his book The Room Where It Happened, released June 23.

 

What if Xi Jinping does not want to help Donald Trump win reelection?

 

Until yesterday, I didn’t know what Tik Tok was. Curious, I Googled it and discovered from Business Insider that this popular video-sharing app has more than 1.5 billion all-time downloads, and is owned by a Chinese internet company called ByteDance.

From Forbes, I learned that ByteDance, the Beijing-based Chinese Digital Giant and Owner of Tik Tok, had impressive 2019 revenue and earnings of $17 Billion.

 

Does that mean China’s President XI Jinping allowed Tik Tok Tokers and K-pop fans to Tank Trump’s Tulsa rally to embarrass Donald Trump?

 

After all, the Chinese Communist Party is well known for its Great Firewall. Internet censorship and surveillance have been tightly implemented in China blocking social websites like Gmail, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and others. The excessive censorship practices of the Great Firewall of China have now engulfed the VPN service providers as well.

The New York Times even reported, “We Should Worry About How China Uses Apps Like Tik Tok, illiberal innovations created for China’s vast surveilled and censored domestic market are increasingly popular overseas.

“To China’s surveillance state,” The NYT continues, “a video-sharing app offers much more than your dog dancing to Drake. Tik Tok’s domestic Chinese version, Douyin, is heavily censored and surveilled: Last year, the British cartoon Peppa Pig was purged from the platform after the authorities decided she had taken on subversive meaning. (It is unclear whether this was because of a direct government order or the company pre-emptively censoring itself.) … “To date, no evidence suggests that Chinese authorities have used their leverage over Douyin domestically to censor or surveil Tik Tok overseas. But given what we know about Beijing’s illiberal impulses, there is a gap between what is provable beforehand, and what it is prudent to presume.”

Since China keeps a close watch on its social networking sites like Tik Tok, why did its Great Firewall allow all those teens in China and around the world to sabotage Trump’s hate rally in Tulsa and embarrass the most unpopular president in United States history, not only in America but throughout the world?

After all, wouldn’t it be in China’s interest to see Donald Trump defeated in November 2020? Trump even answered that question when he said, “China wants me to lose reelection.”

If true, China would not be alone. Most of the world wants Trump to lose, and so do I. That is why I am asking China’s President Xi Jinping to please help Trump lose this year’s U.S. election and block Russia from helping him like they did in 2016.

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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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The World’s Favorite Dessert is Not Chocolate

May 27, 2020

I am a chocoholic. I’m very fond of chocolate and eat or drink some every day. In fact, I usually start my day with some chocolate, and I was enjoying some really-dark chocolate when I started writing this blog post ten hours later in the early evening.

If world civilization collapsed and global trade suffered, I would not miss most of the luxuries I take for granted, but I would miss chocolate. The World Atlas says, “Unsurprisingly, most of the top 10 cocoa-producing countries come from warm, wet climates similar to where the bean originated.”

You might not find this surprising, but the countries that consume the most chocolate do not produce it.

 

How about China? If world trade suffered because of the COVID-19 pandemic, would the Chinese miss chocolate?

Chocolate wasn’t introduced to China until the 1980s. China Business Review reports, “Thirty years ago, most Chinese had never eaten a piece of chocolate; their taste for chocolate was ready to be shaped by whichever company entered the country with a winning combination of quality, marketing savvy, and manufacturing and distribution acumen. For chocolate companies, China was the next great frontier—a market of almost limitless potential to be unlocked through a battle between the world’s leading chocolate companies for the hearts, minds, taste buds, and ultimately the wallets of China’s consumers.”

Those chocolate companies failed.

“Even today, the amount of chocolate sold in China is relatively small, accounting for less than 2 percent of total global consumption. Most Chinese would not be able to find chocolate in their vicinity even if they were willing to buy it.”

Why chocolate never caught on in China should be obvious. The favorite dessert in China, Japan, and most, if not all of Southeast Asia is mochi, and that is made from rice.

Mochi is the most popular dessert in the world, but only because there are more Asians than any other ethnic group on the planet. Caucasians (found mostly in North America, Russia, and Europe) only make up 11.5% (850,000,000) of the world’s 7.8 billion people. The Han Chinese, by themselves, represent more than 20%, and that is not counting the populations of Japan and the other countries in that area of the world that love mochi.

Taste Atlas says, “Mochi, the tiny cakes made out of glutinous rice, are an important part of Japanese cuisine and culture (and the rest of East and Southeast Asia). The preparation of mochi starts with a time-consuming process of pounding boiled or steamed rice, usually the glutinous mochigome variety until it forms into a thick and homogenous paste. …The most common confectionery is referred to as daifuku-round cakes filled with different ingredients such as the traditional red bean paste, strawberries, or ice cream. … Due to its chewy texture, it is important to be extra careful and attentive while eating mochi and to take tiny bites of this glutinous treat.”

What ten countries produce the most rice?

The answer is revealed in the last video. If global trade suffers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia will not have to give up their favorite dessert. I live in the United States, and I am not a mochi fan.

What is your favorite dessert?

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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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Surviving a Pandemic: China vs the United States

March 25, 2020

China is a collective culture and the United States is individualistic. FutureLearn.com says, “Individualism stresses individual goals and the rights of the individual person. Collectivism focuses on group goals, what is best for the collective group, and personal relationships.”

While it is true that China got off to a bad start when local officials in the city of Wuhan attempted to silence and punish Dr. Li Wenliang for sending out a warning about the COVID-19 virus, it didn’t take long before China’s central government acted aggressively to contain the spread of the epidemic.

On December 27, Wuhan health officials learned that a new coronavirus was making people sick. Four days later, China informed the World Health Organization’s office in China.

Then on January 7, China’s President Xi Jinping became involved. Eleven days later Beijing sends epidemiologists to Wuhan to determine what is happening.

On January 21st, the CDC in the United States confirmed the first COVID-19 case. Two days later, China, locked down Wuhan and three other nearby cities, days before Dr. Li Wenliang died on February 7 from COVID-19. The lockdown was not voluntary. It was mandatory.

By March 19, China Daily reported, “The lockdown of Wuhan, the city hardest-hit by the novel coronavirus in China, could gradually be lifted if no new cases are reported for two consecutive weeks, which may happen in April, a top public health expert said.

“However, strict disease control and prevention measures will still be needed to prevent a possible rebound of the outbreak, said Li Lanjuan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a senior adviser to the nation’s top health authority.”

Meanwhile, in the United States on January 22, President Donald Trump, a hard-core individualist, because almost every word out of his mouth or from his Twitter account is about how great he is or an attack on someone else or another country, said, “We have it totally under control.”

That was the same day it was confirmed that the first American had COVID-19.

February 2, Trump said, “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It’s going to be fine.”

The number of confirmed victims in the U.S. had climbed to 8.

February 24, Trump said, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

But the number of confirmed infected individuals was increased by 27, and CNBC reported, “Stocks plunge for a second day as the DOW lost more than 800 points on Tuesday.”

February 25, Trump said, “CDC and my administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”

Eighteen more victims of COVID-19 were confirmed in the United States.

February 26: Trump said, “The 15 cases within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” He also said, “We’re going very substantially down, not up.”

Six more cases were reported by February 27.

On March 4 (Source: The White House), Trump said. “If we have thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work – some of them go to work, but they get better.” Trump made this comment during an interview on Fox News. At the time, the CDC was urging employers to have workers stay home. Later that day, Trump defended himself, “I never said people that are feeling sick should go to work.” Source: CBS News

By the end of March 4, another 51 confirmed cases had been added to the list.

Meanwhile, many of Donald Trump supporters, individuals that seem to think like him, refused to self-quarantine. “Trump supporters have been warned incessantly not to trust mainstream journalistic coverage of the issue.” Source: The Atlantic.com 

Between March 4 and March 18, another 7,078 confirmed cases had been added to the list. — Statista.com

“Though President Trump said March 7 that ‘anyone who wants a test can get a test,’ the United States’ limited testing capacity means that in practice, only a fraction of people who have symptoms are being tested.” – LiveScience.com

To see the list of Trump’s lies from January 22 to March 13, click on Snopes.com.

 

I started my self-quarantine on March 13th and have gone out once to buy supplies. I was gone for about an hour on March 19. While out, I saw two shoppers (of dozens) wearing masks and they were a young Asian American couple. Later, while at Trader Joes, I saw one cashier (Caucasian) with a face mask, but it was hanging around her neck and wasn’t covering her mouth or nose.

Time.com reported, “Why Wearing a Face mask is Encouraged in Asia, but Shunned in the U.S.”

What do you think – Do collectivist cultures like China have an advantage over an individualist country like the United States when it comes to dealing with a pandemic like COVID-19?

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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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Frozen in China but the sky is Blue

January 1, 2020

Tourism is an important industry in China and if you prefer colder weather, like me, the place to go for winter fun is Harbin.

CNN Travel reports, “China has invested heavily in bringing commercial and tourist traffic to more remote regions of the country. ……… The city of Harbin hosts the annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, the biggest of its kind in the world. Every winter, visitors come from across China and the world to see the mammoth creations, which this year included a Buddha statue made from 4,500 square cubic meters of snow, and a 3-D light show reflected against the ice for dramatic effect.”

The festival originated in 1963. … In 2001, the Harbin Ice Festival was merged with Heilongjiang’s International Ski Festival and got a new formal name, the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival.


Sneak Preview of Harbin Snow and Ice World 2020

“More than 100 activities and events will be held in Harbin … The activities and events fall into several categories, namely ice and snow tourism, ice and snow culture, ice and snow fashion culture, ice and snow trade, and ice & snow sports.” ꟷ Ice Festival Harbin.com

The Atlantic reports that more than a million tourists visit Harbin to see the massive ice and snow sculptures.

China Daily.com reports, “The festival officially starts in January 5th every year, but the locals begin to celebrate the festival in the third week of December of the previous year because most of the ice lanterns, ice and snow sculptures are completed by this time. Depending on the weather conditions and activities, the festival usually last until the end of February.”

As of 2015, China is the fourth most visited country in the world, after France, the United States, and Spain, with almost 57 million international tourists per year. In 2017, tourism resulted in revenue of about USD 1.35 trillion, 11.04% of the GDP, and contributed to direct and indirect employment for more than 28-million Chinese.

The Chinese also like to travel outside of China. According to The Telegraph, in 2018, almost 150 million Chinese visited other countries. But domestic tourism adds up to almost 5.5 billion trips annually.

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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 is Winning Trump’s Trade War with China?

September 25, 2019

Trump took the U.S. Constructional mandated Oath of Office (and he has repeatedly violated that Oath of Office) to become President of the United States on January 20, 2017.

  • In 2016, the United States exported $115,594,800,000, in good to China and imported $462,420,000,000 from China. [- $346,825,200,000]
  • In 2018, the United States exported $120,148,100,000, in good to China and imported $539,675,600,000 from China. [- $419,527,400,000] – United States Census Bureau

Do the math. Since Trump has been President of the United States, the imbalance in trade between China and the United States has increased by more than $72.7 billion dollars.

The Balance.com says, “China can produce many consumer goods at lower costs than other countries can. Americans, of course, want these goods for the lowest prices. … If the United States implemented trade protectionism, U.S. consumers would have to pay high prices for their ‘Made in America’ goods. It’s unlikely that the trade deficit will change. Most people would rather pay as little as possible for computers, electronics, and clothing, even if it means other Americans lose their jobs.”

Then we learn from the South China Morning Post that “Donald Trump’s trade war tariffs on China failing to bring jobs and manufacturing back to the US

“There is a clear sign that in the trade war between the US and China, the winner is not going to be the US and it’s not going to be China,” Breteau said. The winners are “going to be Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia and very likely Mexico and Bangladesh”.

What is China doing to counter this loss? The World Bank tells us about the significant policy adjustments required for China’s growth to be sustainable. “China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) addresses these issues. It highlights the development of services and measures to address environmental and social imbalances, setting targets to reduce pollution, to increase energy efficiency, to improve access to education and healthcare, and to expand social protection. The 13th Five-Year Plan’s annual growth target is 6.5%, reflecting the rebalancing of the economy and the focus on the quality of growth while maintaining the objective of achieving a ‘moderately prosperous society’ by 2020 (doubling GDP for 2010-2020).”

In addition, according to McKinsey.com, “[Chinese] Consumers remain the key driver of China’s domestic growth (not the United States), creating 78 percent of GDP growth in the first nine months of 2018.” … For instance, “Sales of China’s fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) grew by 6.3 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, and even supermarkets have grown by 5.0 percent. Across fresh foods, alcoholic beverages, cosmetics, and more, ten times as many consumers report trading up to higher-priced goods than down.”


Meet China’s New Middle Class representing 30-percent of the total Middle Class in China

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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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