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

Tiger Woods smiles big while golfing in China

November 21, 2010

Lisa Mason shows a gallery of photos of Tiger Woods smiling big at the WGC-HSBC Champions at Sheshan International Gold Club in Shanghai, China on November 3, 2010.

She says, “He looks truly happy in these photos. Maybe he is finding some happiness again.”

China is building golf courses and China’s growing middle class is taking up golf.

The Golf Travel Gurusays that Hainan Island in the South China Sea is China’s answer to Hawaii and is one of Asia’s finest golfing destinations, with several world-class courses.

Golf Todaysays the first thing one notices about golf in China – after marveling at the game’s sudden popularity – is how many players seem to have decent swings.

In fact, Golf Today says, golf is the latest fashion in Beijing and it is estimated there are 100,000 golfers in China.  “The number should double in five years,” T. K. Pen, a Taiwanese-American investor says.

Meanwhile, officials in China are being careful. Golf Today says there are so manygolf courses in China the government is losing count.

Golf courses take up a lot of land. With more than 1.3 billion people to feed, the central government has declared a moratorium on course construction.

However, Slate says, “Almost all of the nation’s 600 or so completed golf courses are illegal in some way.”

Since China grows food on about 10% of its land, turning croplands into golf courses may not be the best way to make a profit.

Discover the Winemaker from Shanxi Province to learn how others are using farmland in China.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

#1 - Joanna Daneman review posted June 19 2014

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3 Comments | business, capitalism, China, Chinese food, Chinese middle class, economy, environment, food, government, legal system, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Sending a Message the Wrong Way

November 20, 2010

Yasheng Huang at Foreign Policy magazine says in an opinion piece — identified as an “argument” — that the US should bypass China’s government and “somehow” directly reach the Chinese people with the message that the US knows what’s best for China.

Considering China’s history with the West starting with the first Opium War and the West’s support of the Dalai Lama, Tibetan and Islamic Separatists, outspoken Chinese democracy activists and religious cults such as the Falun Gong, I’m sure that would be well received — not.

Wanting to know more about Yasheng Huang, I discovered that he has a long title and is a professor of political economy and international management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a special-term professorship at Fudan University with an honorary professorship at Hunan University.

Impressive resume. You may want to check it out. Just click on his name above. I’m sure the good professor wears his many titles well.

Professor Yasheng Huang may be right when he says, “To be sure, the vast majority of serious economists are absolutely right that in the long run, a currency revaluation is in the interest of the Chinese. But this is politics, where the issue is not about the technocratic intricacies of who is right and who is wrong.”

However, the professor is wrong to suggest that Washington D.C. find a way to communicate more effectively with the Chinese people by bypassing China’s government.

Consider how Americans would take to China’s Communist Party bypassing Washington and going directly to the entire US population with a huge media campaign to win them over.

The US already tried that in the Middle East and that hasn’t worked well. Islamic Fundamentalists have done a much better job winning Muslims over to their cause than the US has.

In fact, a report by Professor Frank Griffel at YaleGlobal Online makes a good case for why Professor Yasheng Huang’s suggestion won’t work in China.

Griffel writes, “Muslim fundamentalist movements encourage the use of the internet among their followers, for instance, not in order to sell something by e-mail order, but rather to promote the creation of a network of like-minded people who share a common understanding of what ‘Islam’ means and what it advocates.”

The same is true of the Chinese, who use the Internet differently than people in the West and are promoting a network of like-minded people who share a common understanding of what being “Chinese” means.

Most Chinese are not interested in being told how to think or what to do by anyone outside China.

I suggest that the good professor stick to economics and let the politicians do their job even if they don’t always get it right. Doesn’t he understand that it is impossible to even get a majority of Americans to listen and agree on one concept?

Learn about the Power of the Peasant

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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

Chinese Border Guards stop Drug Trafficking — Part 1/2

November 17, 2010

The expansion of poppy growing in recent years has created problems around the globe.

Even at one of the most remote border inspection stations in the world, the frontier guards must be vigilant against drug traffickers.

Hongqilafu, Zinjiang lies along the border of China and Pakistan at an altitude of 5,100 meters (almost 17,000 feet).

The oxygen at this altitude is less than half of sea level. This is where China’s Hongqilafu border station stands.

In the last few years, more drugs have been smuggled across the Sino-Pakistani border because of the expansion of poppy growing in Afghanistan.

In fact, United Nations statistics show that 87% of all illegal heroin in the world comes from Afghanistan.

Li Shengyu, commander of the Hongqilafu Border Inspection Station says, “They need buyers for the huge amount of drugs. As far as we know, the drug dealers are targeting China as a new market and plan to make their way into China across the border at Hongqilafu.”

Between 2006 and 2008, huge amounts of drugs were intercepted at border stations. The Chinese border guards must be vigilant to discover hidden drugs among the tourists coming into China.

Learn about the 19th Century Opium Wars

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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, Chinese Culture, Chinese police, crime, government | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Power of the Peasant

November 14, 2010

Corruption is a fact-of-life in Asia and China may be one of the few country in Asia doing something about it.  Country rankings in Asia are dismal compared to Western democracies and Singapore.

The Corruption Perception Index of 2010 says most of Asia is “very” corrupt—the smaller number is better and 178 is the worst global rank.

Of 178 countries ranked for corruption, Myanmar (Burma) scores 176 and is tied with Afghanistan as two of the most corrupt countries on the planet.

Iraq is 175. Laos and Cambodia are 154. Vietnam is 116, and Indonesia is 110.

Even India, the world’s largest democracy, is ranked 87. Singapore, for comparison, is tied for first place as one of the least corrupt countries.

In fact, two of the least corrupt countries in Asia are Thailand and China tied at 78.

The power of the Chinese peasant demonstrated in this video may have something to do with China’s improved score as one of the least corrupt nations in Asia.

It may come as a surprise to many Western critics but in rural China, democracy’s ballot box has been active at the village level since the mid 1980s.

In 1997, The Independent reported that China’s rural peasants were discovering the power of the ballot box.

“Under Communist Party rule, village elections are the only example of one-person, one-vote democracy in China. Launched in the mid-eighties, they were originally introduced to replace the village communes that were dissolved after the Cultural Revolution.”

Few outside China paid much attention to this move toward China’s rural democracy. Nearly one million villages hold elections and each time there is an election, the peasants learn more about democracy in action.

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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, Chinese minorities, crime, government, legal system, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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