In the South China Sea Possession is Nine Points of the Law

August 28, 2011

In reference to “Possession is Nine Points of the Law”, U.S. Legal.com says, “Possession means holding property in one’s power or the exercise of dominion over property. By having possession one exercises control over something to the exclusion of all others.”

This has been true of the United States since it became a nation and took thirteen colonies away from the British Empire by force.

In fact, if you exercise dominion over a property, it belongs to you, which means you must be willing to fight to keep it if someone else comes along and challenges you for possession. If someone breaks into your house while you are there, how do you react?

For a few examples, the U.S. did this in the Louisiana Purchase (1803), Alaska (1867), Hawaii (1898), Puerto Rico (1898), Guam (1898), Northern Mariana Islands (1978), United States Virgin Island (1917), and Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (since 1903), etc.

The British Empire once held possession of a quarter of the earth’s surface mostly taken by force from those that lived there for thousands of years, or when Spain destroyed and occupied the Aztec and Inca Empires in the Americas.

At one time, the Philippines was a territory (held by force) of the United States, and there have been other territories possessed by the U.S. that no longer are occupied by America.

With that in mind, China’s historical claim over the South China Sea and the Spratly Islands has a long history, which is documented in detail at Citizen Economist Dee Woo starting with 220 BC when Nansha Island (a Spratly island) was settled by Chinese monks that built a monastery there.

Woo’s final piece of evidence is a link to a 64-page document titled, China’s Sovereignty over the South China Sea islands: A Historical Perspective, which is archived at the Oxford Journals.

Chinese authorities argue that they and other nations in the region can work out their differences without intervention from the United States. They say that the U.S. is intruding and attempting to make this an international issue.

The South China Sea is bordered by ten nations and includes some of the world’s most important shipping lanes and fisheries. Another motivation to possess this territory is the critically important mineral resources found there, including oil (with reserves thought to be the fourth largest in the world).

Historically, the South China Sea dispute is no different from any the United States has been involved in since defeating the British Empire and becoming a nation or when the U.S. paid France for the Louisiana Purchase, while millions of North American natives still lived where their ancestress had lived for more than 10,000 years.

“Possession is Nine Points of the Law” and the South China Sea dispute is no different, so regardless of the claims, victory will go to the squatters with the biggest weapons. After all, the United States is a perfect role model that has used the unwritten “possession law” to its advantage many times.

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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.

5 Comments | America, China, Chinese history, economy, environment, history, media, military, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Doing Mankind a Favor – Part 1/2

August 23, 2011

Recently, I learned something new from a comment left by Xiaohu Liu for a post called China’s Goals for going Green.

Liu wrote, “More likely China will go more nuclear before it goes green … (there are) two types of nuclear technology that could revolutionized the world as much as the steam power or petrol power did in the 19th and 20th century.”

Until Liu left that comment, I was unaware of the types of nuclear power China is developing.

The (UK) Telegraph says, “Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium.”

I discovered the Chinese are investing millions in research into reactors powered by thorium, a metal, supporters say, that is as common as lead (which means it would be cheap and easy to find), and one, which, despite some concerns, would lead to power plants with fewer safety issues as well as other benefits.

“Thorium-based reactors certainly have advantages,” says Wang Kan, leader of the Tsinghua University Thorium Research Team. “The energy release from Thorium is greater than from Uranium, the by-products from using Thorium are less toxic than from Uranium, and it’s much harder to make weapons from those by-products.”

However, China was not the first nation to research the use of Thorium. In the late 1940s, US physicists were exploring the use of thorium as fuel to generate power but dangerous and dirty uranium won since the US and the USSR were fighting the Cold War and building thousands of nuclear weapons.

Continued on August 24, 2011 in Doing Mankind a Favor – Part 2

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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.

3 Comments | America, capitalism, China, Communism, economy, environment, government, military, military spending, politics, science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Waking the Unconscious Demon Within

August 21, 2011

Recently, I wrote a post about Mao and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), and provided “overwhelming” evidence that Mao may have suffered from CPTSD. The reason I first thought of this is that I have lived with PTSD since I served in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine. I am no stranger to this malady, and I know I am capable of barbaric behavior under the right circumstances.

Now, more evidence suggests that this demon becomes more difficult to manage as we age.

PTSD Forum had a post about the Dragon Brain – The Dark Side of the Lizard Brain, which along with a study at Stanford forty years ago may offer more insight of how Mao, starting out as a young sensitive poet and activist for the poor, was responsible for decisions later in his life that led to the failed Great Leap Forward then The Cultural Revolution.

The PTSD Forum says, “The down side (of PTSD) is a tendency to be more critical … to sense a threat where none may exist, or to sense a bigger threat than actually appears.”

Anxiety Insights.info says,” Post-traumatic stress, a condition that can cause patients to feel physical pain on remembering a traumatic event, is known to have a number of effects on the mind and body.”

In addition, PTSD may get worse as we grow older. In a comment on Veterans Benefits Network, Patrick428 says, “As we grow older there is a tendency to have less control of our frustrations and we anger more easily… This is why I say PTSD is much more problematic at an older age than was at a younger age.”

I suspect there may be a link between PTSD and a piece that I read in the July/August 2011 Stanford magazine — Six Days on the Dark Side -The Menace Within.

Forty years ago professor Phil Zimbardo (retired 2007) of Stanford’s psychology department conducted an experiment that was meant to run for twelve days but was stopped after six.  What the Stanford Prison Experiment (PSE) revealed was that ordinary college students were capable of doing terrible things under the right/wrong circumstances (like what happened at Abu Ghraib where Iraqi prisoners were abused and tortured by U.S. troops).

In fact, in the last decade, after the revelations of abuses committed by U.S. military and intelligence personal at prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, the SPE provided lessons in how good people placed in adverse conditions can act barbarically.

After Mao’s death and during Deng Xiaoping’s Beijing Spring, it was the collective consensus in China that Mao liberated China and was a good ruler 70% of the time. It may be difficult for many in the West to accept that Mao liberated most of the people of China from a worse life, but he did.

Now we may look back in hindsight and see that Mao was a product of his environment. He was not only the leader of the  People’s Republic of China, but he was also making decisions (mostly during the last decade of his life) influenced not only by CPTSD but also what SPE revealed about how good people placed in adverse conditions can act barbarically.

That does not make him a monster. It makes him the victim of an environment he had little control over at a young age, and if you want to discover what that environment was, I suggest reading Mao and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the links provided that reveals some of his life.

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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.

1 Comment | China, Chinese history, Chinese men, Communism, disabilities, history, military | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Births and Deaths – Part 2/2

August 13, 2011

The answer to China’s future may be found in Henry Kissinger’s “On China“, when this elder statesman and advisor of many American presidents on foreign policy, wrote, “China does not claim that its contemporary institutions are relevant outside China.”

In fact, history shows the Chinese are willing to do business and trade goods with other countries, but has never demonstrated a desire to rule the world. Most of China’s wars (not rebellions) were fought to secure its borders and/or defend against invaders.

More evidence that points toward China’s future might be when China ruled the oceans during the Ming Dynasty at a time when China was the most technologically advanced nation on the planet and the emperor called its giant fleet home and decided not to colonize, conquer and/or exploit the rest of the earth through conquest as all of the other empires have done that are mentioned in this post, which could have included the Spanish Empire of the 16th to 19th centuries and  World War II’s Imperial Japan and Hitler’s Nazi Germany. (Discover China’s Ancient Armada)

Another sign of the decline of America and an opportunity for China to become the next global empire is the end of the U.S. Shuttle (space) program. Fox news says, China Aiming High in Space as U.S. Shuttle Program Winds Down.

This year, China plans to send a train car-sized module into orbit, which will be the first building block for a Chinese space station with a goal to put men on the moon sometimes after 2010 — the same year the International Space Station is scheduled to close.

The Fox piece says, “China is still far behind the U.S. in space technology and experience, but what it doesn’t lack is a plan or financial resources … One of the biggest advantages of their system is that they have five-year plans so they can develop well ahead,” said Peter Bond, consultant editor for Jane’s Space Systems and Industry. “They are taking a step-by-step approach, taking their time and gradually improving their capabilities. They are putting all the pieces together for a very capable, advanced space industry.”

The Chinese have a history of long term planning.  If you doubt that claim, look at China’s Great Wall and the Grand Canal — both took centuries to build and there is no other project built by man that compares.

Return to or start with Births and Deaths – Part 1

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Births and Deaths – Part 1/2

August 12, 2011

If we study history, it does not take long to discover that all empires have births and deaths.

To name a few, the Persian Empire survived from 550 – 330 BC then fell to Alexander the Great as he built his vast but brief empire that survived from 346 to 323 BC.

After Alexander, there was the Roman Empire (27 BC – 476 AD in the West and 1453 AD in the East) and China’s Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) followed by other great dynasties such as the Tang, Sung, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasty until it collapsed in 1911.

There was also the Mongol Empire (1206 – 1368 AD) followed by the British (1583 – 1997, when the British returned Hong Kong to China).

The concept of an American Empire was born in 1898, after the Spanish-American War and the annexation of the Philippines to the US.


You cannot run an empire without money.

However, some historians claim the process of expansion and empire for America dates to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which doubled the size of the US.

Bill Bonner writes of America’s Imperial Suicide and offers compelling evidence that the sunset of another empire has arrived.

Bonner mentions that the end started under President Richard Nixon in 1971 when the US stopped backing the dollar with gold and replaced it with paper and the good intentions of a government that is now burdened by a National Debt well beyond $14 trillion.

Since the Chinese appear poised to become the next world empire, will they accept the crown or follow in the footsteps of Han Dynasty, which transformed itself into the Tang, Sung, Yuan, Ming then Qing Dynasties by not attempting to swallow or control a vast global empire with constant expansion and intimidation of others on a scale equal to the Romans, the British Empire and the United States.

Are the Chinese wise enough to avoid the mistakes made by the others that have blazed this trail of empire before them?

Continued on July 13, 2011 in Births and Deaths – Part 2

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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.

6 Comments | America, China, Chinese history, history, military, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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