Flexible China – Inflexible America

April 1, 2010

Imagine a piece in the Op-Ed section of the NY Times, a media bastion for liberal democracy, saying China is more open to change than the United States.

“China may be more open to fundamental political reform than the United States. Since the rule of law in America is based upon the notion that the state itself is constrained by a body of pre-existing law that is sovereign, any thought of rewriting the Constitution is anathema.” Source: The Fault Lines of Democracy

Changes in the United States often end up mired in partisanship between the two major political parties. Consider that the Equal Rights Amendment (proposed in 1921) in America still is not part of the Constitution. The movement to gain freedom for women started in 1841 while changes in China to improve women’s lives started in 1949, when Mao said, “Women hold up half the sky.”

Consider that the juvenile justice system in China is considering changes after a delegation from China came to America to examine what the United States juvenile justice system was like.

Discover more about China Law and Justice System

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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. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

An Update about China’s Criminal Justice System

April 1, 2010

Amnesty International (started in 1961) says,” The time is long overdue for China to fall into line with international law and standards on the death penalty and be open and transparent regarding its use of capital punishment.”

My question is, who rules China – the government of China or Amnesty International?  Without taking into consideration the cultural differences that cause the Chinese to appear secretive, Amnesty International’s “demand” is uncalled for. Change takes time and change in China (a culture born about 2205 B.C.) does appear to be taking place. To understand the Chinese better, read what Peter Hessler has to say.

A few years ago, we would not have seen anything like this from China’s state-run English-language newspaper, China Daily, that inmates in China’s 2,700 pretrial detention centers suffer bullying and torture from fellow prisoners and police officers, and some criminal justice experts want a neutral body to take over the centers from the police to curb the abuses.

Meanwhile, the United States was the only nation in the Americas to carry out executions in 2009 with fifty-two executions. Saudi Arabia executed 69 people.  Iran executed at least 112 people in the 8 weeks after the last presidential election (we heard about that since Iran is on the list of evil countries).

See China Law and Justice System 

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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. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

From the Bottom Up

March 29, 2010

America may be learning something from China’s stimulus plan—spending hundreds of billions of dollars from its cash reserves to keep people working. This is called bottom-up economic growth and the gap between the rich and working poor shrinks instead of expands. The opposite is trickle-down economics from the Reagan era where the gap widens.

Chinese jobs

China’s bottom-up plan makes sense. After all, how much can one rich person consume compared to hundreds of millions of people—a little spending from each person at the bottom adds up and is better for long-term economic survival instead of short-term corporate profits. Who cares if the wealthy grow their fortunes slower? Well, the rich do. I’m sure they love having that money filling Wall Street vaults.

It appears that President Obama has the same idea. During the presidential campaign, he said.  “The project of the next president  is figuring out how you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth.” It seems that with the passing of the health care bill (that has upset so many of the trickle-down people), President Obama is putting his words into action and following China’s example.

To learn more about China’s economy see “Why China is Studying Singapore” http://wp.me/pN4pY-2z

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Super Power Dawn

March 29, 2010

Alan Caruba writes about Super Power China at “Speak Without Interruption”. “As the sun begins to set on an America whose dollar set the standard and whose capacity for manufacturing was unchallenged, a new superpower is emerging and it is China.”

Two notable individuals from history predicted more than a century ago what is taking place in China—the first was a young Irishman from Belfast who arrived in China in 1854 and left in 1908.  His name was Robert Hart and to historians, he’s known as the Godfather of China’s modernization.

Hart wrote near the end of the 19th century that in a hundred years China would be a superpower again. Jack London, who visited China and wrote about it, made the same prediction.

The way the government has decentralized power in China is not new. Imperial China did the same. The Emperor appointed the governors to the provinces based on who earned the highest scores in the Imperial exams and they ruled like kings. 

As for a market economy, China may have invented this on a national scale more than a millennia ago proving that it doesn’t take a democracy or republic to prosper.

If you spend time in China, you will discover that the Chinese are born entrepreneurs, who find ways to get around government restrictions to make money. Sadly, this has led to the pollution in China today—something the central government is struggling to deal with as they transition to green power.

As for long term planning, consider that the top men in China’s government are engineers or scientists compared to America’s leaders who are mostly lawyers. After Mao, China implemented term and age limits for government positions, something America does not have.

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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.

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The Changing Landscape

March 25, 2010

Regardless of what Political Correctness requires most Americans to say in public about other cultures and ethnic groups, America’s national interests (meaning Americans making money and spending more) have dominated the globe for decades clearly showing a lack of respect for other cultures.

Today, the world is on the verge of a major shift away from America’s national interests as China rewrites the rules on trade, technology, currency, climate change, etc.

中国
China/Middle Kingdom

The March 22, 2010, issue of Newsweek, “It’s China’s World—We’re Just living In It“, talks about those changes. Where the American dollar once ruled supreme, the Chinese yuan is appearing around the Asia-Pacific as an alternative currency.

As I pointed out about the Chinese space race, China is now the only country making major investments in space exploration and their reasons are not to earn bragging rights by putting footsteps in moon dust but to discover fresh sources of rare minerals that are quickly being depleted on the earth.

Looking for opportunities, China has become the leader in green technology.

Meanwhile, America is missing the boat as political/religious agendas rule the behavior of the ruling class who squabble over global warming, school prayer, abortion, health care, stem cell research, evolution versus creationism, etc.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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