Beijing Must Maintain Tight Control

November 18, 2010

My wife and I went to see Inside Job, and I returned home thinking that China should maintain tight control over its financial sector and continue to keep out disruptive elements such as the Tibetan and Islamic separatists and the Falun Gong Religious Cult.

In addition, China must keep locking up dissidents that want China to become a full-blown, so-called democracy as the US claims to be.

In fact, I suspect the same people (named in the documentary) that produced the 2008 global economic crises want to have their go at China’s money to see how much of that they may legally steal once they change Chinese laws for their purposes.

I seriously question that America is still a democracy or a republic.

Instead, America seems controlled by a few huge US banks and Wall Street. The rest of us peasants are being relegated to the position of modern-day debt serfs who must pay for the greed and mistakes of a few.

Anyone that believes that China is more corrupt than America, think again. I’d rather deal with China’s corruption challenges than the moral and ethical corruption that plagues America’s financial sector.

If you know how much the 2008 economic crisis cost the globe, you will know the extent of that American corruption. Global Issues pegs that global loss at about 62 trillion.


“Inside Job” Trailer

For those who continue to blame China for stealing US jobs, the Pew Economic Policy Group says the 2008 economic crises that started in the US cost 5.5 million Americans their jobs and another 4 million jobs that would have been created.

In China, about 15 million jobs were lost resulting in more than 80,000 demonstrations and riots across the country.

Millions more jobs were lost outside China and the US.

Reuters says, “Inside Job … is a must-see for pretty much everybody.”

“This is not a piece of ragged muckraking or breathless advocacy,” the NY Times says. “It rests its outrage on reason, research and careful argument.”

The sad fact is that this documentary was only in the art house that shows films in our area that do not have the popularity of a “Megamind” or a “Harry Potter” film.

We were part of an audience of five.

It doesn’t matter if US citizens vote Republican or Democratic. It is obvious that President Reagan let the sociopathic foxes into the hen house and both Bushes, Clinton and now President Obama are feeding our chickens to those foxes.

Unfortunately, I agree with the comments I’ve read on the Internet that say no matter how many people see Inside Job nothing will change. This malignant cancer has spread too far.

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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, business, capitalism, China, Communism, crime, economy, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Good Financial News for China

November 12, 2010

China’s economic growth continues as a report from Mogran Stanley claims that Apple could make as much as $9 billion from the Chinese in 2012 compared to $2.9 billion this year.  According to Katy Huberty and Matthew Schneider, this increase will be due to Apple creating more ways for Chinese customers to find and buy Apple products in the future. Source: tuaw.com

The World Bank also announced China was the largest growth economy on the globe.

However, the post at Wall St.com pointed out potential weaknesses in China’s economy due to rising prices for agricultural goods and metals and the possibility of less demand for goods manufactured in China. The possibility of a currency or trade war that was recently avoided was also mentioned.

Then The Truth About Cars says that industry experts predict China is on the way to breaking the U.S. car sales peak in 2000 when 17.4 million vehicles were sold.

That would make China the auto industry’s largest consumer. Meanwhile, GM President Kevin Wale predicted that sales in China should top 19 million next year.

In fact, since the 1990s, China has expanded a network of expressways to connect the country’s cities. That network now has more than 65,000 kilometers (40,430 miles) making China the second longest expressway system in the world after the US. 

All major cities are expected to be linked to this system by 2020 when the goal to reach 85,000 kilometers (53,000 miles) is reached. This continued construction of roads, railroads and airports will provide a massive employment boost in China over the next decade.

As a comparison to understand how fast China has modernized, its neighbor and economic competitor in the region, India, only has about 200 kilometers of expressway.

Ride the Train to Tibet

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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, economy, environment | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Meet the Winemaker from Shanxi Province

November 8, 2010

There are about two million private companies operating in China, and women own twenty percent (400,000).

Meet one of those women. Judy Leissner is Chinese and she was 24 when she became the CEO and President of 168-acre Grace Vineyard in Shanxi province, south of Beijing.  

The first grape-vine plantings were in 1997 and the first vintage in 2001.

Judy started the winery because her father liked to drink. Today, Judy produces a quality wine—about 700,000 bottles annually.

Most people do not know that wine is produced in China.

In fact, Judy has competition since there are about 400 wineries in China.

Judy says there is an opportunity in China to make a lot of money in a short period of time, because the country is developing and growing.

The difference between the wine market in China and the rest of the world is that most drinkers in China must drink because they have to.  It’s part of the culture of doing business.

Learn more about Chinese Women in Science & Business

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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.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

3 Comments | business, capitalism, China, Chinese women, economy, environment | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Recycling Industry in China

November 4, 2010

There are more than one hundred thousand people working in China’s recycling industry. It is a hard way to make a living.

However, trash and recycling are a big business in China. Some estimate that it is a fourteen billion dollar business for a family driven cottage industry.

Long hours of hard work add up to a living wage for the Chinese involved in this recycling business.

One recycler, Yang Shou Xue, said they start at ten in the morning waiting for the garbage trucks to arrive. Then they work until 1:00 PM before taking a break.  Work continues until 8:00 or 9:00 PM.

The collected recyclable scraps are then taken from the city for a few hour drive to factories where the trash is turned into raw material for a second life.

In fact, the recyclables just don’t come from China’s cities. It comes from all over the world, since China is the world’s largest importer of trash.

Bottles tossed in recycle bins in the US, often show up in China where they are processed then resold as a new product to Western countries.

Learn about Business is a Global War

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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 » | business, capitalism, China, economy, environment | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The India, China battle to eliminate poverty and illiteracy

November 2, 2010

Chris Devonshire-Ellis wrote a convincing piece at China Briefing that India‘s economic growth would speed past China in the near future. 

He says, “It (India’s) growth rate could overtake China’s by 2013… Some economists think India will grow faster than any other large country over the next 25 years.”

However, there are flaws in that opinion.

Once again, the foundation of this prediction is based on India being a democracy “where entrepreneurs are all furiously doing their own thing” while China is a culture of secrecy and censorship. Chris mentions a few of China’s other flaws too, which China is struggling to overcome.

What Chris doesn’t mention is the difference in poverty and illiteracy between India and China.

India and China both became independent about the same time—China in 1949 and India in 1947.  Due to Chairman Mao’s policies, China suffered horribly from 1949 to 1976 and little progress was made.

For China, most of the progress has taken place in the last three decades. India, on the other hand, has had more than 60 years to solve its problems.

Let’s see what each has accomplished.

The World Bank says, “that China’s record of poverty reduction and growth is enviable. Between 1981 and 2004 the fraction of the population consuming less than a dollar-a-day fell from 65% to 10% and more than half a billion people were lifted out of poverty.”

For India, the World Bank says, “poverty remains a major challenge. According to the revised official poverty line, 37.2% of the population (about 410 million people remains poor, making India home to one-third of the World’s poor people.” UNICEF shows the poverty in India to be 42%.

World Bank studies also established the direct and functional relationship between literacy and productivity on the one hand and literacy and the overall quality of human life on the other.

India’s literacy rate was about 12% when the British left in 1947. Today, literacy is 68%.

In China, literacy is more than 93% with a goal to reach 99% in the next few years.

This means that India has about 800 million literate people competing with 1.2 billion in China.

As for India succeeding, MeriNews.com says, “At a time when we (India) are poised on the threshold of becoming a superpower, the rampant malnutrition and prevalence of anemic children and women to the extent of 48 per cent of the population is a definitive indicator that we have failed as a democracy in ensuring the fundamental requirements of our citizens.”

It appears that China—with its censorship, secrecy and socialist government—has done a much better job of taking care of its citizens.

See the other posts on this topic at India Falling Short and Comparing India and China’s Economic Engines

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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 | China, economy, education, India | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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