Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 6/7

October 24, 2010

In parts 1 through 5, I provided evidence showing that China is building a republic that may last for centuries.

What is happening on the Internet offers more evidence that China is moving toward a more open society. In China, there are more Blogs than any nation and a free exchange of ideas via e-mails.

In fact, in China there are more people logging onto the Internet than America’s entire population.

China could have limited all Internet use as North Korea has, but China hooked up to the World Wide Web instead.

What are the real reasons China struggles to censor parts of the international internet like pornography, WordPress, Facebook and Blogger? 

Is it possible that China is doing this because they do not have the confidence that most of their people are sophisticated enough to deal with all the crazy ideas floating around in international cyberspace.

Instead, China is opening to the world like a slow blooming flower allowing the people to adapt instead of being overwhelmed, which might lead to a meltdown and a return to chaos and anarchy.

However, anyone who wants to sneak past China’s Net Nanny may do so.

I’ve known people in China who have slipped past the Net Nanny, which is more like a leaky dam getting ready to burst, and it isn’t that hard. It just takes some time. See Tech Crunch for more information about Internet use in China.

Deng Xiaoping was right. If China had the political gridlock and partisieanship that exists in America today, would the Chinese have achieved the goals to modernize that they have? 

Return to Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 5

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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

Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 5/7

October 24, 2010

In Part 6, I provided evidence that China is making progress at improving the integrity of its government and legal system.

Returning to the topic of literacy, why would China improve the literacy rate if the government didn’t want to become a republic since illiteracy is the greatest tool of a dictator?

Illiterate people are easier to brainwash, fool and control.

Imagine the effort to raise literacy from 20% in the late 1970s to more than 90% today. Then give birth to a legal system that China has never had before. Source: History of Literacy in China

Why waste this time if the goal wasn’t to build a republic with more freedom for the people?

In addition, China rebuilt all of its major cities, took an electrical grid in 1950 that produced a half megawatt of electricity in a few cities and spread that system over a country about the size of America in a few decades to serve a population of 1.3 billion people.

In comparison, the electrical grid in America took “much” longer to build.

Experts say that the growth that has taken place in China in the last three decades has never happened before in the history of global civilization.

If China wanted to stay a totalitarian government, why bother? 

After all, North Korea lives in a state of never ending Cultural Revolution. The people starve and have few freedoms. Why not copy them? Yet, after Mao, the Chinese repudiated Revolutionary Maoism and opened China to world trade. In fact, China is buying food from all over the world to make sure the people do not starve.

Today, millions of mainland Chinese are global tourists spending billions of dollars in European democracies and in the U.S.  There are also about one hundred thousand Chinese students in U.S. colleges and universities exposed to American ideas and democracy. 

Shouldn’t China’s leaders be worried about this exposure to democracy or is it possible this is what the Party wants?

Return to Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 4

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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

Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 4/7

October 24, 2010

In Part 3, I talked about the differences between the Constitutions of the United States and China.

Another sign of China becoming a more open society comes from the Global Integrity Report, which shows America’s overall score in 2009 as 85 compared to China’s overall score of 60.

China legal system had an integrity score of 76.

Consider that China didn’t have a legal system when Mao died— it was a shambles. China had to build a legal system from zero and make it fit the Chinese culture.

I doubt that China will end the death penalty, and I’m sure that China will lead the world in executions for many years to come.

However, recently, several crimes that led to the death penalty were removed from that list and the law was changed so only China’s highest court could hand out a death sentence to a convicted criminal.

Business law was developed first because of world trade and China’s entrance in the WTO.

China integrity score also has inched upward on an annual basis.

In 2007, China’s score was 55, which is considered very weak. However, in 2008, the score was 59 — up 4 points and in 2009, it improved a bit more to 60.

Progress with a country of 1.3 billion people takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight.

Return to Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 3

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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

Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 3/7

October 23, 2010

In Post 2, I talked about the importance of literacy in a democracy or republic.

To fix this problem, China leaders planned ahead fifty to a hundred years with this question in mind—what would it take to successfully modernize China and educate the people for a republican government?

In 1982, China wrote a new Constitution with term limits and age limits so there would not be another modern emperor like Mao.

That constitution has been amended several times.

Although Western critics claim the Party hasn’t implemented the freedom of press and religion mentioned in the Chinese Constitution, what isn’t said is that there are other articles that give the central government and the courts the power to stop anyone deemed a threat to the stability of China’s government and economic growth.


This video is outdated but accurate in some of its facts.  In Fact, China is now the world’s 2nd largest economy.

Article 5 says, “All acts in violation of the Constitution and the law must be investigated. No organization or individual may enjoy the privilege of being above the Constitution and the law.”

Article 28 says, “The state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter- revolutionary activities; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.”

Article 35 says, “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.”

Notice that the language in Article 35 does not guarantee this freedom but says, “enjoy“, whatever that means.

China’s Constitution is not America’s Constitution. Yet China is often judged by Western critics as if it were.

Return to Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – 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

Building the Rest of China’s Republic

October 15, 2010

I’m looking at a site, American President, An Online Reference Resource, and this site has divided the history of the U.S. into eight eras and lists the presidents of each era.

The Early Republic (1789 – 1829)
The Jacksonian Democracy (1829 – 1854)
Sectional Conflict (1853 – 1881)
Gilded Age (1881 – 1897)
Progressive Era (1897 – 1921)
Depression & World Conflict (1921 – 1961)
Social Change & Soviet Relations (1961 – 1989)
Globalization (1989 – )

In Democracy, Deceit and Mob Rule, the embedded YouTube video mentioned that Woodrow Wilson was the first president to refer to the U.S. as a democracy.

By the time President Johnson left office in 1969, America was no longer a Republic. The transition was complete and the democratic mob ruled leading to Political Correctness, Rush Limbaugh and the Self-esteem Generations.

To avoid becoming a democracy, China should consider adding a lower house of Congress as in the U.S.

All eligible voters, who do not belong to the Communist Party, would elect the representatives in the lower house and the upper house would be the National People’s Congress, which would be elected from within the Communist Party as it is today.

Since legislation in the U.S. must be approved by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the president, this would allow the Communist Party in the upper hosue to kill unpopular or destructive legislation from the lower house and the other way around.

That way, the mob rule of a democracy would be avoided.

Since in a Republic, no mature citizen has to vote as in a democracy, it would be wise if China defined who the eligible voters outside the Party would be.

I suggest people only be allowed to vote if they have a high comprehension level that helps understand the issues.

As has been seen in the U.S., with its falling literacy rate, many in the population cannot understand the political issues and don’t vote or use misleading information from politically biased people like Rush Limbaugh to decide for them.

Of course, a democracy ruled by the mob would cry foul, but a republic is ruled by the elected officials—not by the majority as in the U.S.

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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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