Blockbusters from China

June 23, 2010

After China opened its doors to the world in 1980, Chinese entrepreneurs conquered one global manufacturing industry after another except one. In 2009, The Chosun IIbo said there are 875,000 millionaires in China including 55,000 with more than 100 million yuan and almost 2 thousand billionaires. One of those billionaires wants to conquer that last frontier.

The NY Times says that one of China’s richest men, Jon Jiang, wants to equal tinsel town by producing a move that has ancient Greek warriors, pirates, underwater kingdoms and more by using mostly American actors and 3/D technology.  The big difference is ” Empires of the Deep” is being produced in a studio near Beijing.

Jiang is not the only wealthy capitalist in China who wants to build a Chinese Hollywood. I’ve written about Zhang Zhao heading Enlight Pictures and another production company run by the Huayi brothers, who have collaborated with Sony and Disney. Source: Hollywood to Bollywood to a Rising Chinawood

Then there is the new Karate Kid, co-produced between an American Studio and China and was filmed in and around Beijing, which has earned close to 84 million globally as I get ready to schedule this post.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning My Splendid Concubine and writes The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Belching about China

June 20, 2010

I sometimes read opinions about China from individuals who should stay quiet.  Leo Hindery wrote one for The Huffington Post, which  is an example of an American castigating China from a Western cultural point-of-view.

These biased voices bother me and probably bother many Chinese too. Of course, Hindery has a right to voice his opinions, but most Chinese don’t understand that the American government has no control (at least we like to think so) of what appears in the American media.

Xu Xiao-dong, in Zhouzhuang, China, an artist in his shop earning a living without help from the American labor movement.

Since the media in China is the official voice of the government, many in China see the Western media the same way. Hindery says he is eager to see the “American labor movement smartly and creatively provide all the help to China’s workers that it can responsibly offer” to help Chinese workers earn more money along with better benefits. Considering what the American labor movement did for the US auto industry, that is a bad idea.

Due to Western meddling in China  during the 19th century, there were two Opium Wars  forcing British, French and American opium into the country along with Christian missionaries, which led to the Taiping Rebellion started by a Christian convert ending in 20 to 100 million killed. Then there was the Boxer Rebellion, a peasant uprising caused by meddling Christian missionaries, greedy Western businessmen and pompous politicians.

In fact, due to the West forcing China to open its doors, more than two-thousand years of Imperial rule ended leading to four decades of chaos and anarchy between 1913 and 1950 where millions more were killed.

My opinion is to let the Chinese fix China and leave the American labor movement out of it.

See China’s Labor Laws

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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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16 Comments | American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Christianity, cultural differences, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

See, Hear, Touch No Truth—Just Lies, Please

June 18, 2010

The “Wall Street Journal” published China: Not Intentionally Pursing Trade Surplus With US, and I agree. The American thirst for high wages with benefits and cheap products created this mess.  After all, when you balance global exports and imports for China, they are close to even. China has a small trade surplus with the world—nothing compared with the “HUGE” trade surplus with the US, where far too many people use plastic to live beyond their means. 

However, most Americans don’t know that. Politicians who tell American voters the truth lose elections and the media seldom shows the whole picture—only the American slice. It seems that most Americans are not interested in the truth.

Qin Gang, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, mentioned the problem was with low US savings rates and high levels of borrowing and unemployment.  He should have mentioned Wall Street risk taking too, which caused the current world economic crises and most of the job losses. Even China lost about 20 million jobs thanks to greed in the US.

People who accuse China of taking jobs from US workers don’t take into account that there are about 12 million illegal aliens in the US working low pay jobs most Americans refuse to do. Even Mexico and Canada, because of NATFA, have taken more jobs than China has.

Gang said, “We hope politician in the U.S. will think seriously about how to resolve the structural problems in their own economy, rather than invariably blaming others.”

Right again. Americans and US politicians spend too much time finding scapegoats while disagreeing on how to fix the problems in America. The US Federal deficit is in the trillions, and the average credit card debt per household is $15,519.  Source: CreditCard.com

The personal savings rate in the US as a percent of personal income is about 3%, while in China that rate is more than 30% and the Chinese government saves too—its cultural.  What’s more embarrassing for grumbling Americans is the fact that the Chinese work longer hours for much lower pay and still manage to save.

See Chinese Work Ethic

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning My Splendid Concubine and writes The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, economy, media | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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Danwei TV Interviews Veteran China Journalist Paul Mooney

June 16, 2010

Danwei TV interviewed Paul Mooney, who first went to Asia while in the US Army in 1968 where he served in Vietnam. When he left the war, his interest in Asia followed. During the 10 minute (click the above link to watch) interview on Danwei TV, Mooney said he did not think the negative press in the US comes from editorial decisions. 

He felt that the Western media does not have a bias toward China and that Barack Obama has more problems with the media than Hu Jintao does. Instead, what’s written in the West is due to people reading negative stories more than positive ones—proving, in my opinion, that Yellow Journalism is alive and mentally ill in the US.

by Paul Mooney

Mooney has a BA in East Asian Studies, an M.I.A. in International Affairs, speaks Chinese and Vietnamese and has written for National Geographic Traveler, Knight-Ridder Financial News, Far Eastern Economic Review, Kyodo News Service, Asiaweek, Newsweek, Asian Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, Daily Beast, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Washington Post, etc. You may find some of Paul Mooney’s work here.

Peter Hessler, another China expert, has different opinions about China. See what he has to say.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning My Splendid Concubine and writes The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Red Dawn Remake

June 9, 2010

Cinematical reports that a remake of “Red Dawn”, a 1984 move about the US being invaded by the Soviet Union, is scheduled to be out later this year.  However, since the evil Communist Soviet Empire does not exist anymore, the remake needed another bad guy to invade the US, so they made Communist China the villain.

This resulted in Chinese newspaper headlines saying the “U.S. Reshoots Cold War Move to Demonize China.”

Judging from at least one comment on Cinematical, I’d say the Chinese have a reason to be upset.  Some person (who can’t spell or punctuate) called “Buzz” said, “Guys china is not our friend or allie.  They are still very bad people (gov’t) who want to dominate the world. Let them grip and complain. Who cares? Their newspapers are full of anyi American propaganda so why should we care what they think.” 

If “Buzz” didn’t grow up in Kentucky or Tennessee, he must be a Tibetan or Uyghur refugee.

Here are a few reasons why the Chinese might be sensitive when demonized in the West.

1. The Opium Wars (1839 and 1860) invaded by France and England
2. Taiping Rebellion (1851 to 1864) led by a Christian convert
3. Burning of the Summer Palace (1860) by a Western allied force
4. Dungan Revolt 1862 (a Muslim rebellion)
5. Yangzhou riot 1868
6. Tianjin Massacre 1870
7. Panthay Rebellion 1856 to 1873 (another Muslim rebellion)
8. Sino-French War (1884 -1885)
9. Sino-Japanese War (1894 – 1895)
10. The Boxer Rebellion followed by a Western invasion
11. The collapse of the Qing Dynasty followed by forty years of civil war and anarchy as warlords fought for control of China and the West did nothing to intervene.
12. World War II (1937 – 1945) invaded by Japan
13. The Korean and Vietnam wars, which to the Chinese were seen as threats to China considering the century that came before those two conflicts. Mao said that Vietnam was the lips to China’s teeth. What happens to the teeth when the lips are gone?

How many times has China invaded America, England, France or Japan with a military force? Has a Chinese Buddhist or any Chinese raised in Confucian tradition started a rebellion anywhere in the world?

See Christianity and Islam in China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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