Misconceptions of China – The Chinese Government

August 20, 2010

This three-part series comes from a young Chinese man speaking on YouTube about Western misconceptions of China.

Larry says that one of the greatest misconceptions about China’s government is that people outside China believe it is completely Communist—a machine that gets rid of what it doesn’t like.  Even Larry’s Chinese-American friends feel this way.  That opinion is wrong.

Larry says that China does censor a few things like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The reason for that are because of Falun Gong, and Tibetan or Muslim (in Xingjian province) separatists.

Source: ShiWoLarry

Larry says many Westerners believe if you say bad things about the Chinese government, you will be arrested. The only instance where that might be true is if you used a loud speaker in the center of Tiananmen Square.  

Larry then talks about the few human rights violations Westerners hear so much about. The central government reacts the way it does toward the Falun Gong, Tibetan Separatists and the Muslims in Xingjian province because the Communists came to power through rebellion and want to avoid the same thing happening to them.  

After the Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911, China went through chaos and anarchy for decades—millions suffered and died.  Any rebellion would mean a return to those horrible times and regardless of any negativity one hears or reads about China, there is a lot of good things going on that we don’t hear about in the West.

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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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1 Comment | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Communism, cults, cultural differences, Islam, media, politics, Tibet | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China Rejects Western Pressure on Human Rights

August 13, 2010

One place to read anything positive about China is in the “China Daily” or a few Blogs written by people like me, who have been to China and do their homework to know what’s really going on.

In China rejects Western standards on human rights, Xinhua (7-3-2010), Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying says that the “West” ignores China’s political progress.

In fact, there has been much political progress since Mao died in 1976. See China’s Capitalist Revolution to learn more.

I’d like to rewrite Minister Fu Ying’s statement to say that most of the “Western media” and conservative and liberal political action groups in the US ignore China’s progress for a reason. These groups have a political agenda against anything that has the word “Communist” in front of it. To them, China is still a Maoist country that they fear, and they do not want to hear the truth.

Minister Fu Ying is correct when she says that the Western point-of-view on human rights in China is spread by “political extremists”.

The Tibetan separatists represent about one percent of the Tibetan population, and the Muslim separatists from China’s northwest are the same as the Islamic fundamentalists the West is fighting on the other side of the border in Afghanistan.

The other loud voice is the Falun Gong, a cult with enough money to support a traveling international musical troop, a TV station and a newspaper. That has to cost a small fortune, so where does that money come from?

Well, we know from Congressional hearings that the CIA supports the Tibetan separatists, so it isn’t a stretch to figure out who supports the Falun Gong and the Muslims.

I suggest you watch the three videos and tell me who isn’t guilty of human rights violations.

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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

The Dangers of the Korean Incident

July 30, 2010

Sunny Lee writing for the The Korea Times reports that the majority of Chinese policymakers and academics feel that the Cheonan incident, where a North Korean torpedo allegedly sank a South Korean navy ship, “may” not be true. However, that doubt is not the only factor playing a crucial role in Chinese decision-making.

The Chinese also feel that the US and South Korea are politically motivated and overreacting. China sees the incident as part of the 60-year-long hostility between the two Koreas. In fact, China wants the US, South Korea and North Korea to pull back from the incident.

China’s opinion may be the best advice. 

If you do not agree, consider World War I, the “Great War” if a war may be called great. World War I was not caused by dictators hungry for power as in the case of Mussolini and Hitler and the military oligarchy that ruled Japan during World War II.

World War I was caused by a strong sense of nationalism and emotions that were allowed to rule the day. Strong feelings of nationalism fed hatred in pre-war Europe. It turned Frenchman against German and Russian against Austrian.  Source: Causes of World War I

Regarding the Cheonan incident, China is the cool head while the hotheads are the US, South Korea and North Korea. If these hot heads prevail, how much suffering and death would add to the 45 deaths already caused by the sinking of the Cheonan?

The match that lit World War I was the assassination of one man, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, 1914.  By the end of the war in late 1918, fifteen-million people had been killed, making the war one of the deadliest in history. 

Does the world want that in Asia?  America’s Military Industrial Media Empire might, but China clearly doesn’t—evidence that war is the last thing China wants.

Discover more about China and North Korea

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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

Big Brother is Watching — Who?

July 13, 2010

There are more than 4 million security cameras in the UK—one for every fourteen people. Many have been installed by businesses but more than a million are cameras controlled by the government and/or police. Source: London Evening Standard

Recently, I read a piece from Voice of America about China Tightens Xinjiang Security, Targets Tibetan Environmentalist.

CIA Map of China

The lead paragraph says, “China has installed 40,000 security cameras throughout the capital of Xinjiang region days before the first anniversary of the country’s worst ethnic violence in decades.”

As usual, there is no mention that next-door a war is raging against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. There is no mention of Pakistan’s struggle with the same enemy that NATO and US forces are fighting.

In fact, if you look at a map of the region, you will see that Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, is close to Kyrgyztan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, all areas having trouble with Islamic fundamentalists but in China, the Muslims are a peaceful ethnic group according to the Western media. That’s interesting.

If Britain, a democracy, puts up more than 4 million security cameras to deal with crime and unrest in the UK, why can’t China do the same without being criticized? Did you know that local governments in the US are installing these cameras too? Source: MSNBC

Learn more about Minority 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. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Google Blinked First

July 10, 2010

I read a Washington Post piece by Keith B. Richburg that Google’s license to operate in China has been renewed, surprising many—even me.  I thought China would punish Google for all the noise over accusations of being hacked by China and stirring the Western criticism pot about China’s Net Nanny.

“We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license, and we look forward to continuing to provide Web search and local products to our users in China,” Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, wrote on the company’s blog.

To get this approval, it appears that Google stopped redirecting mainland Chinese to Google’s site in Hong Kong, where people wouldn’t have to deal with the mainland Net Nanny.

The Wall Street Journal Blogs – Digits reports that this is a step back for Google since the affair lost them market share in China. Digits also explains the reason Google backed away from its threats not to censor its search engine was due to future profits by staying in the largest Internet market in the world.

The message I read at The Technology Liberation Front (cool name) is that it is important for American companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to stay in China. If they leave, their influence on China becoming a politically and economically freer nation would not exist.

The result, future profits defeated idealism.

See Google Recycled

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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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