Border Crossings and the Blood on Our Hands

March 11, 2011

In 2006, China was crucified in the Western media due to a few unarmed Tibetans being killed attempting to illegally cross the border into India.

Buzzle.com repeated this news that originally ran in the UK’s Guardian. I recall the incident because it was on the news in the US at the time.

Of these few border deaths in China, Buzzle says, “A Romanian cameraman, whose footage of the incident revealed that snipers shot the unarmed Tibetans as they waded through thick snow. The shaky video shows two figures in a column of refugees fall to the ground. “They’re shooting them like, like dogs,” says a witness next to the cameraman.”

The headline shouted “International Anger Grows Over Tibet Shooting. Human Rights groups are calling for a UN Investigation into the killing of a nun by Chinese border patrol guards, writes Jonathan Watts in Beijing.”

Recently, I read another story I’d never heard of before from The Economist of another border where similar killings happen often, but I found no demand for a UN Investigation in the Western media. Even The Economist, which reported the story, did not call for an investigation.

Instead, The Economist concludes with, “Shooting the people you claim to want to do business with is a poor start.”

Maybe the difference is that the border killings reported by The Economist took place between two democracies — India and Bangladesh.


I couldn’t find a report of this India-Bangladesh incident in English on YouTube

The Economist says, “On January 7th India’s Border Security Force (BSF) shot dead Mr. Nur Islam’s 15-year-old (daughter) Felani, at an illegal crossing into Bangladesh from the Indian state of West Bengal. Felani’s body hung from the barbed-wired fence for five hours. Then the Indians took her down, tied her hands and feet to a bamboo pole, and carried her away. Her body was handed over the next day and buried in the yard at home.”

“The BSF (India’s Border Security Force) kills with such impunity along India’s 4,100-kilometer (2,550-mile) border with Bangladesh that one local journalist wonders what the story is about. According to Human Rights Watch, India’s force has killed almost 1,000 Bangladeshis over the past ten years.”

How many were reported killed by witnesses of the China incident? Two or three?

What about deaths along the US border? The Snow Report says, “Border deaths for illegal immigrants hit record high in Arizona sector.”

The Snow Report says, “The discovery of record numbers of bodies along the Tucson sector of the US-Mexico border suggests that border crossings for illegal immigrants are becoming deadlier as heightened security forces migrants into remoter and more forbidding areas.”

Maybe democracies (which are billed as better places to live), sort of like James Bond, get a free pass from the Western media to kill.

Discover more about India Falling Short

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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.

23 Comments | America, China, crime, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Communist Revolution or Civil War

March 5, 2011

In Russia and Cuba, there were Communist Revolutions. In China, it was a Civil War. There is a difference.

Dictionary.com says a revolution is an overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.

A civil war is a war between political factions or regions within the same country.

The United States of America fought a Revolution from 1775 to 1783. The American Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865. Both fit the definitions.

PBS.org gets it wrong when it says, “Mao Zedong led China’s Communist revolution in the 1920s and 1930s.”

In fact, many Blogs and Websites get the facts wrong with it comes to China’s civil war. 

However, the PBS report clearly shows that in 1923, Sun Yat-sen, known as the father of China’s republic and the leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), allied with the Communist Party (CCP) to strengthen the republic and take China back from the warlords.

Then in 1927, after Sun Yat-sen’s death in 1925, the KMT broke from the CCP shattering the alliance that Sun Yat-sen had formed.

Chiang Kai-shek, the new leader of the KMT, launched a brutal purge to kill all Communists in China.

The CCP had no choice but to fight or be exterminated by Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT. With the support of China’s peasants, the CCP won the civil war in 1949. The US backed the loser.

In fact, both the CCP and the KMT honor Sun Yat-sen as the father of the republic.

In mainland China, the Memorial Hall for Sun Yat-sen is in Guangzhou on the southern slope of Yuexiu Hill and was constructed between 1929 and 1931.

Another memorial hall dedicated to Sun Yat-sen is in Taipei and was completed on May 16, 1972.

So, why do so many call it China’s Communist Revolution when it was a civil war between the KMT and the CCP? Could they be confused?

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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.

4 Comments | China, Chinese history, Communism, history, media, politics, Taiwan | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Real Threat of Nationalism

March 4, 2011

After writing about The Economist’s report on The dangers of a rising China, I became curious about China’s nationalism, which has been seen in the West as a bad thing.

While in China, I have never experienced Chinese nationalism as it has been featured in the West’s media or from the mouths of US politicians.

During the 2010 midterm elections, since the US economy was in pain and millions were out of work, China was used (primary by GOP politicians) as a scapegoat and this tactic, among others, paid off when the GOP gained a majority in the House and closed the gap in the Senate.

The China Herald reported on China’s nationalism and what Helen Wang wrote in Forbes. Wang says, “China suspects that America seeks to stop China from rising and interprets everything the US does (or says publicly through the media) through this lens. America worries about China’s nationalism and sees China as a growing power that will challenge its global hegemony. Such mistrust can be a self-fulfilling prophecy and a source of global instability.”

Instead of believing the myths and fictions born of political agendas, I prefer what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, “The term ‘nationalism’ is generally used to describe two phenomena: (1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination.

Anthony D. Smith, who wrote Nationalism: theory, ideology, history, says “It is misleading to seek to compare nationalism tout court (simply) with other ‘mainstream’ political ideologies, even within the West, their home and main arena.”

The truth is that the rise of China’s nationalism is not the real danger to America.

In fact, the real threat may be a selective form of nationalism growing roots in America, which is the rise of American religious fanaticism.

This embedded YouTube video explores the emerging religious, ultra right-wing mass movement seeking dominion over all aspects of contemporary American society.

Also, discover how the religious right has already infiltrated the US government in Separation of Church and State.

If the religious right achieves its political agenda, the US may become a theocracy.

No matter what you read or hear, nowhere does the definition of theocracy say republic or democracy.

Instead, the definition in Merriam-Webster says, “a government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided (such as the Pope in the Vatican),” and Wikipedia says, “a state ruled by clergy…”

Iran is the perfect example of a religious mass movement giving birth to a theocracy.

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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, Christianity, cultural differences, media, politics, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

E-readers Sprouting in China

January 9, 2011

The first time I visited China in 1999, we visited Book City in Shanghai. It was the largest bookstore I’d seen—ever! Book City has about seven stories with elevators and escalators, and at each floor I waited in line to get on the next escalator.

It was that busy.

Bookstore owners in the US must dream of such traffic.

Most of the books were by Chinese authors and written in Chinese. One small segment on the fourth floor (I recall) carried books from the rest of the world and most were in English.

Since then, bookstores owned by private companies (not state owned) sprouted like mushrooms but today, as in the US, those brick and mortar bookstores may be struggling to survive.

The Independent in the UK says, “Hard times for traditional books as China’s digital publishing industry grows. Pity the poor paperback. The days of the traditional book in China are numbered, according to figures just released by the central government, it seems more and more people are now turning their attention to digital forms of publishing.”

And the Chinese are buying e-readers with a passion. Recently, hundreds lined up and some waited for days to buy an Apple iPad as you may witness in the embedded video.


Apple launches iPad in China

In fact, the market for e-readers is so hot in China, PC World reported in March, “The Amazon Kindle can now count itself among devices such as the iPhone being unofficially sold in bustling Chinese bazaars, marking the growing popularity of e-readers in China.… The Kindle 2 was on sale for US$380 and the DX for US$630.”

The Economic Times says, “In 2009, the number of e-books sold in China reached 3.82 million, and in the first half of 2010 amounted to over 20 percent of the world’s total.”

It you have never been to China, you should not be surprised.

China has had a thriving publishing industry for more than a thousand years and now more than 90% of the population is literate.

After all, the Chinese invented paper and the printing press.

Amazon.com is also selling books on-line in China but they have serious E-Commerce competition in China Dangdang Inc., a Beijing-based online book retailer that had 42% of the transactions in China in the third quarter this year, while Amazon only had a 19% share.

Discover Harlequin Romance Invades 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.

Leave a Comment » | business, capitalism, China, economy, media | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Gwyneth Paltrow Popular in China

January 7, 2011

With Country Strong, Gwyneth Paltrow’s popularity in China may mean a busy box office in Chinese theaters.


Gwyneth Paltrow – Country Strong – CMA Awards 2010

However, Facts and Details says, “Many foreign films never make it to China. The guidelines on content are very strict: No sex, no religion. Nothing to do with the occult. Nothing that could threaten public morality or portray criminal behavior—in other words, the basic ingredients for many successful films. Those that are allowed to be shown often have key scenes deleted.”

The China Daily reported how Paltrow asked Beyonce for singing tips while Country Strong was in production. She told Access Hollywood, “I kind of asked my girl singer friends for advice. I asked Faith Hill a lot of questions – and Beyonce actually too.”

Why would China Daily be reporting this of Paltrow if Country Strong hadn’t been approved for Chinese audiences?


Gwyneth Paltrow’s solo in Infamous

In fact, Paltrow’s belief in Chinese medicine may help see Country Strong, with some cutting, appear in Chinese cinemas.

About five years ago, Gwyneth attended a premiere in a backless gown revealing a collection of symmetrical, purple dots that graced the skin of her back. Those marks were a sign of “cupping” and sent a flurry of photographs around the globe and even prompted her friend Oprah Winfrey to explore this ancient (medical) practice on her show.

“It feels amazing and it’s very relaxing, and it feels terrific,” Paltrow told Winfrey. “It’s just one of the alternative medicines that I do instead of taking antibiotics.”

“I have been a big fan of Chinese medicine for a long time because it works,” Paltrow said.


Gwyneth Paltrow sings Bette Davis Eyes

Facts and Details reports of popular Hollywood movies in China, in 1994, The Fugitive, with Harrison Ford, became the first American feature film to be shown legally in Chinese cinemas. Titanic was also a big box office hit. Pearl Harbor was the second highest grossing film ever in China.

Then in 2006, Chinese sensors approved Miami Vice and left a steamy love scene with Collin Farrell and Gong Li largely intact.

In July 2009, Transformers 2 became China’s biggest box office hit replacing Titanic.

Discover Looking Like Jessica Alba 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.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, cultural differences, family values, government, media | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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