To understand why China is often the focus of so much attention when it comes to pollution, such as carbon emissions from oil, coal, gasoline, diesel and burning wood, we should start where the industrial revolution began and that is in the West (more than two centuries ago).
I will start with an “old” friend that believes environmentalists worship the environment instead of God. I do not agree.
Instead, I see environmentalism as humanity’s effort to save the world from a potential catastrophe. If anything, the Christian God would support environmentalism, since He entrusted the earth to humanity’s care. Nowhere in Genesis or the Bible does God tell man to destroy and/or pollute the earth.
In fact, He says in Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
Then, in Numbers 35:33, the Christian Bible says, “So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are…” and 35:34, “Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit…”
My “old” friend, that claims Global Warming is a hoax, has joined those that shout “no” loudest at the scientific theories that current trends in Global Warming are caused by carbon emissions, which “may” create what is known as greenhouse gasses that become trapped in the atmosphere.
If you want to learn more about the theory behind Global Warming, visit the Environmental Defense Fund and read the Basics of Global Warming, which my “old” friend believes is a hoax.
My “old” friend may also be described as an evangelical, born-again Christian, conservative libertarian that believes everything bad that happens is the fault of liberals. He also listens to neoconservative talk show host Dennis Prager and belongs to a chapter of the Dennis Prager fan club, which meets regularly.
If you decide to discover what Dennis Prager preaches to his fans, I suggest reading Why Liberals Fear Global Warming more Than Conservatives Do. You may quickly learn how an American radio talk-show host uses emotional language to manipulate the people that “worship” what he preaches daily.
Black Carbon causes an estimated 1.5 million deaths per year.
However, when we return to what the Christian Bible says about pollution, how guilty is the US (and American conservatives such as Dennis Prager and his fans) when it comes to what the Christian Bible says not to do?
To discover the answer, we will focus on Black Carbon and CO2 emissions as a source of pollution.
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.
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Carter did not suggest a subject for this post, but he did ask that I include the promotional video for his next book with whatever I wrote, and it “rather” fits the topic I decided to write about, which is that most of America may learn something from those Americans that “really” want to do business in China and India.
Besides, Carter’s photos of India are as stunning as those he took of China are.
Vikas Bajaj wrote the NYT’s piece, and we learn that Amazon is moving into India and whatever Amazon’s plans are for entering India’s consumer market, Amazon is not talking.
However, “while dozens of electronic commerce firms have recently sprung up to capitalize on India’s growing Internet use” Bajaj wrote, “they have a problem. Indians are not yet comfortable with shopping on the Web. Many of them remain unwilling to use credit cards online. So the Indian retailers have gone to great lengths to gain customers. Customers may pay in cash on delivery, and the company fields delivery squads to ensure shipments get to customers quickly.”
What we learn from this quote is that cultural differences influence how people shop but culture goes deeper than shopping habits, which is a fact that many Americans do not understand.
In addition, a Blog at Stanford.edu says, “Approximately half of Amazon.com’s revenue comes from outside the United States, according to the company’s Senior Vice President of International Retail, Diego Piacentini. This makes global strategy a key component to the company’s continued success,” and “Amazon aims to be the ‘most customer-centric company on the planet’.”
Then Matt Harvey, who wrote the post for the Stanford Blog, asked, “But what do you build, and how do you act, to make this mean something?”
The answer may come from Amazon’s Diego Piacentini when he said, “When Amazon began doing business in China in 2004, some of the company’s core values came into conflict with traditional business practice.” Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs was quoted in 2010 saying Amazon has competition in China with Taobao.com.
Taobao.com, the Chinese equivalent of eBay, generates estimated annual sales of close to $60 billion—about 75% of all online retail sales in China while, according to Goldman Sachs, Amazon had only $750 million in annual sales in China in 2009 with estimates that Amazon sales in China would increase to $1 billion in 2010. Amazon has a long way to go to catch up with Taobao.
The moral of this story is that Western retailers such as Amazon must learn to do business in other cultures such as China and/or India without attempting to change the people.
They must “start with the customer and work backwards”, which isn’t what most of America’s politicians and religious leaders are doing and the best quote that explains why comes from a Henry Kissinger quote that I have used before. “American exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world.”
From what I understand, two of the world’s greatest conquerors, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, knew the key to hold an empire together was not to change other cultures but to allow those cultures to remain unchanged, so why can’t the rest of the West learn from them?
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.
Among the so-called Asian democracies, India is next. The Guardian says of corruption in India “All your life you pay for things that should be free.”
The Guardian reported that “one ordinary man” had to pay at least a third of his income to survive. “Of the 40,000 rupees (£520) I earn a month from my restaurant, I pay at least a third in bribes,” Vishal, 26, said. But bribery also extends into his personal life. Vishal has two young children and to get the eldest into the best local school he paid a “donation” of 25,000 rupees (£340) in cash to the headmaster.”
Economy Watch.com said, “India’s underground economy is believed to be 50 percent of the country’s GDP – US$640 billion at the end of 2008,” and Janamejayan’s Weblog goes into detail of one scam that cost $40 billion, which is 3% of India’s GDP.
Poverty in India, 2011
In addition, there is confusion over how many live in poverty in India.
In 2009, the United Nations Development Programme reported that literacy in India was about 74 percent, while the CIA Factbook set the literacy rate at 61 percent (literacy and poverty are linked), which explains The World Bank’s estimates of poverty in India at 41.6 percent.
However, the Hindustan Times says for 2011 that there are 406 million poor in India, which is a third of the population—an increase of 8% since 2009.
In 2009, India’s population was about 1.2 billion and the country had 6 nationally recognized political parties and about 46 recognized state/provincial parties. Source: List of Recognized Political Parties in India (Wiki)
India has been the world’s largest democracy since 1947, and although India claims to have reduced poverty from about 53% in 1973-74 to 25.6% in 1999-2000, the definition and difficulty in reporting the exact numbers casts doubt on this claim.
Poverty in Calcutta
However, in the same time span, China reduced poverty from 64% to less than 3%, and China is not a multi-party democracy.
In addition, according to Time’s Global Spin, a blog about the world, its people and its politics, “The size of India’s middle class was 50 million in 2005, according to this report by McKinsey,” and McKinsey may be wrong and the number may be lower.
In contrast, Martin Trieu, President of Tourmaline Capital, estimates “there are at least 250-300 million people (in China) who now fall into this (middle class) category.”
Helen H. Wang of Forbes Magazine’s China Tracker agrees with Trieu, and says, “Today, China’s middle class is already larger than the entire population of the United States and is expected to reach 800 million in fifteen years.”
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.
If you suspect China is under a biased Western microscope being watched for every hiccup, the answer is “absolutely” yes and the evidence is overwhelming, while most of the world – especially the United States – is often ignored for the same sins and flaws.
On Saturday, July 23, 2011, China had its first railroad accident of the year, and it was reported globally with much criticism.
The Los Angeles Times shouts, “Deadly Chinese bullet train crash spawns anger, safety concerns”, and then reports that at least 43 people were killed and at least 200 injured.
The LA Times only had a few comments from readers and all that I read were insulting and negative of China.
MSNBC’s headline said, 32 die in China high-speed train crash and reported, “The total power failure rendered useless an electronic safety system designed to warn following trains of stalled trains on the tracks up ahead, and automatically halt them before a collision can occur.”
Comments such as this one followed the piece in MSNBC, “Anytime the Chinese get hosed by their own doing I just can’t feel bad for them… Better them than anyone else getting screwed by their quality control and reverse engineering.”
However, to be fair to MSNBC’s audience, there were many comments attacking ones such as the example I copied. It was a lively debate worth reading.
Yahoo News was much more critical of China than MSNBC by focusing on safety and previous train wrecks in China dredging up as much dirt as possible.
One comment of many said, “the traffic safety in china is a joke. a very big joke. they don’t care about people, they care about face, they only interested in propaganda and fighting the big imperialist empire. they struggle to show the communism is working. guess what, is not working. so next time when you reverse engineering something do it completely. ever heard of Line blocks ? and throw the CTCS down the toilet and flush. twice.”
What causes such cruel and often evil reactions such as these from the Western media and readers?
Is it resentment because China is fast catching up to the United States as a global economic superpower?
Is it ethnic/racial hate because they are Chinese?
Is it envy because the quality of life is improving in China while life in the West is crumbling and burdened by debt?
Is it because they have a government run by China’s Communist Party?
One example of the “always beat up China” syndrome is a flawed and misleading opinion piece written by Charles Lane for The Washington Post.
Charles Lane wrote, “China’s bullet-train experience shows what can go wrong when an unelected elite, influenced by corrupt opportunists, gives orders that all must follow — without the robust public discussion we would have in the states.”
I wonder if Lane would include the “robust public discussion” we had in the states leading up to the 2008 global financial crises caused by American and Western greed and corruption.
I wanted to put Charles Lane’s Washington Post opinion to the test and I Googled the “history of global train wrecks” and found a detailed history going back to the early 19th century.
To save time and space, I decided to compare rail accidents starting from 2007 for only two of the world’s largest democracies and China.
It should be mentioned that both India and China rely on trains to move people much more than the United States, so we should expect more injuries and deaths from rail accidents in those countries. For that reason, I will compare the number of rail accidents to see which country has the best safety record.
The lowest score wins.
In 2007, there were thirty-three rail accidents listed for the world, and the United States had nine (27% of the total) killing seven and injuring more than a hundred, while India had three accidents killing 80 and injuring twelve.
China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had two rail accidents killing four and injuring two.
Score: United States 9, India 3 and China 2
In 2008, there were thirty-four rail accidents listed for the world, and the United States had eight (24%) with twenty-nine deaths and almost 300 injured, while India had one rail accident with no deaths or injured listed.
China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had one rail accident killing seventy-two and injuring 416.
Score: United States 17, India 4 and China 3
In 2009, there were thirty-nine rail accidents listed for the world, and the united States had seven (18%) with seventeen killed and five injured, while India had four accidents with thirty-two killed and 280 injured.
China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had two rail accidents killing seven and injuring 280.
Score: United States 24, India 8 and China 5
In 2010, there were fifty rail accidents listed for the world, and the United States had three (6%) with 32 injured, while India had fourteen rail accidents with hundreds killed and injured.
China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had one rail accident killing nineteen and injuring 71.
Score: United States 27, India 22 and China 6
This year by July 23, 2011, twenty-one train accidents were listed for the world, and the United States had eight (35%) killing eleven and injuring eighteen, while India had five accidents killing seventy-one and injuring two.
China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had one rail accident with at least 35 dead and 200 injured.
Score: United States 35, India 27 and China 7
From 2007 to July 23, 2011, the world had 177 rail accidents. The United States had 20% of the total, India 15% and China 4%. Source: List of Rail Accidents (Wiki)
When I Googled “train accident in China 2011” there were 55 million hits. It seems that popular “bad news” about China spreads fast and then the Western blame game begins, which represents Charles Lane’s “robust public discussion” in a democracy.
A few more interesting facts to know before judging China’s rail system is that the average number of people traveling daily by train in China is 2.4 million, and in 2008, 1.456 billion people travelled 772.8 billion kilometers by rail.
I’d say with confidence that the odds are very good that if you travel by rail in China, you will reach your destination on time and without an accident.
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.
In another e-mail, this “old” friend questioned China’s behavior in Asia and mentioned the disagreement between Vietnam and China over some offshore oil fields that both countries claim.
He felt this was a sign that China would wage war on other countries and inferred this would not happen if China were a democracy similar to the US, since “no democracy has ever gone to war with another democracy” (his words).
White says, basically, it depends on the definition of democracy and that individuals will shift the meaning of the definition to fit what he or she wants to believe.
To come up with a set of probabilities, White studied the wars that took place in 1967 and came up with these results:
White wrote, “Now, 1967 is just a single year, but I’ve spent a good deal of this Atlas counting democracies. I can state with reasonable certainty that 44.5% of mapable sovereignties during the WW2-Y2K Era were full democracies. This calculates out to…
The odds of 2 random democracies going to war: 19.8%
The odds of 2 random non-democracies going to war: 30.8%
The odds of a random democracy going to war with a random non-democracy: 49.4%
He also mentions an interesting theory that “no two countries with a McDonald’s Restaurant have ever gone to war with one another”, which seems to indicate that as countries are incorporated into the global economy by trans-national corporations, they stop waging war on one another.
This theory is an individual truth that most of us might want to believe since there then should be no worry that the US and China will ever wage war.
In 2009, the US had 13,381 McDonalds and in 2010, China had almost 1,000 with thousands more planned. In addition, China has thousands of Pizza Huts, KFCs, Starbucks and the Chinese love to drive Buicks and Fords. Wal-Mart is even building stores in China.
However, I discovered the McDonald’s theory might be another false truth.
Pakistan has 25 McDonalds and the first one was built in 1998. India has 192 with the first built in 1996, and the last Indo-Pakistani War was in 1999.
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.
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.
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