Avoiding China’s “one-child” Policy

November 29, 2010

In 2008, France 24 International News reported how one Chinese couple wanted to have more than one child and how the couple used loopholes in the one-child policy to have three.

The mother’s first child was a boy, and she was desperate to have a girl. 

Since fines are less for a second child if delivered in a remote province, the couple moved south from Shanghai.

However, the mother discovered she was pregnant again soon after the birth of the second child, a girl.  

The doctor told her that because of her health she couldn’t have an abortion.

Now, due to where the children were born, they will not be allowed to attend school in Shanghai. The mother is upset because she says rural schools are not as good as urban schools.

She also may resent the fact that wealthy Chinese businessmen, television and movie stars often avoid the one-child policy since they have money to pay the fines. Ten percent of rich Chinese have three children and this practice is spreading among the upper-middle class.

Since the early 1900s, state control of the life of individuals has diminished.

Peng Xizhe, dean of social development and public policy at Fudan University, says “In the Maoist era everyone was controlled by his work unit. It’s over now. Many workers are independent. It becomes more and more difficult for the government to pressure people to having only one child.”

In fact, according to experts, China will slip into a two-child policy in several years.

Learn more at Reversing 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

Basketball Great Yao Ming Interviewed by China Daily

November 28, 2010

The embedded ten-minute video of the China Daily interview with Yao Ming is in Mandarin with English subtitles.

For those who don’t know who Yao Ming is, he was born in Shanghai, China in 1980.  When he was twenty-two, Yao Ming came to the US.

Today he plays for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association and is currently the tallest player in the NBA at 2.29 meters or 7 feet 6 inches.

Before Yao Ming came to the US, he played for the Shanghai Sharks as a teen then played on their senior team for five years in the Chinese Basketball Association.

Watching the China Daily interview revealed another side to this gentle giant. A brief abridged transcript of the interview is provided.

The People Daily interview took place in July 2010 shortly before a charity game held in Beijing. The reporter conducting the interview is Yu Yilei

Yu Yilei – Your charity game will be held in Beijing. What idea do you want to convey through it?

Yao Ming – The main purpose of the game is to help kids in Sichuan and other remote areas to rebuild their schools. In addition, we want to tell the public that people like us, who live in big cities, have the responsibility and obligation to help others.

It (the charity) was actually Steve Nash’s idea. Nash had a friend who was an entrepreneur in China, and he’d been concerned about China’s education in its remote areas.  It was an early time, the beginning of 2007.

I said I needed to think it over, because I didn’t have any experience in terms of charity (In fact, Charity as we know it in America and/or the West was new to the Chinese).

The man who provided the information about education in remote areas of China shocked “us” deeply.

A foreigner knew more about China than I did.  It feels… It makes me blush. (He then mentions that charity is just getting started in China and there hasn’t yet been time to develop regulations to supervise and protect it.)

Yu Yilei – How to you insure the regulation of the Yao Foundation?

Yao Ming – I think information transparency is most important. There is a professional management team and accountants. You can also find out very clearly on our website what each donation has been used for.

Note: In 2004, Business Week said, Yao’s four-year contract with the Rockets was worth $18 million, and he earned an estimated $15 million a year in longer-term deals with top-tier brands Pepsi, Reebok, Gatorade, and McDonalds.…Some executives believe Yao has the potential to gross $300 million in his first 10 years in the league. Yao Ming earned 51 million U.S. Dollars (357 million yuan) in 2008 alone.

Yao Ming goes on to talk about his son and how China and America have influenced him.

Discover more about Charity and Philanthropy Sprouting 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

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

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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Merit Pay for Teachers in China

November 12, 2010

The Global Times quotes Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. “The nation’s rise and fall rely on education, as only first-rate education can generate first-rate talents who in turn can build a first-rate nation,” Wen said.

What Premier Wen Jiabao says is true of any nation including the United States.

In 2008, the premier chaired a State Council executive meeting to review and approve in principle the implementation of performance-based pay in primary and middle schools.

The new salary system for teachers consists of basic wages, seniority pay, performance-based bonus pay and allowances. China currently has about 12 million teachers in middle and primary schools. America has about 5 million.

However, the stories I’m hearing out of China is that this new merit system has led to some parents bribing school officials to get their kids into the best schools. 

The best schools test the students applying for entrance and turns those with the lowest scores away sending them to the worst schools where few teachers earn merit pay no matter how many hours are worked.

Merit pay has been a controversial political issue in the Untied States for years. The teachers unions in America have resisted efforts to implement merit pay.

Merit pay for teachers will not influence “poorly performing” students and “bad” parents to change their ways. Even if a teacher works 100 hours a week, which I sometimes did when I taught, little will change with poorly performing students that are not motivated to learn. Motivation cannot  be legislated.

In fact, Get Schooled with Maureen Downey says, “Tell that child’s teacher that her salary will depend on the testing performance of that child and chart the negative consequences on children’s working conditions in schools. Teachers – workers in the system controlled by bosses above – will be exploited. Students – the “producing” workers in the system whose production of test scores will determine reward for those above them – will be exploited.”

Learn more about China Investing BIG in Education

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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, education, family values | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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