How much did it cost for the U.S. to support a brutal dictator?

April 25, 2017

Just about everyone in the United States who reads and/or listens to the news has probably heard of Mao’s brutality and the alleged brutality of the Chinese Communist Party, but what about Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT, an ally of the United States during and after World War II.

But since 1949, China is responsible for 90-percent of the reduction in global poverty. At the same time the United States was supporting a brutal authoritarian dictatorship in Taiwan that didn’t become a democracy until 1996.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History reports, “Taiwan was the home of one of the Cold War ‘friendly dictatorships’: illiberal governments with which Washington partnered because they were anti-communist. Taiwan’s political system allowed only the KMT to rule and maintained a permanent state of martial law, with severe constraints on civil and political liberties and harsh punishment of dissidents. Until the 1990s the KMT government, like the CCP, had a Leninist party structure originally designed by Soviet advisors.”

The Taipei Times published a piece on the front page of the paper on Tuesday, February 27, 2007, and said, Former dictator Chiang Kai-shek was a murderer, and President Chen Shui-bian said Taiwan’s former authoritarian regime and its leaders were responsible for the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians slain in 1947.

On a site that lists the death tolls for the major wars and atrocities of the twentieth century, Chiang Kai-shek was given credit for 10,214,000 democides from 1921 to 1948.

Democide is a term revived and redefined by the political scientist R. J. Rummel as “the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder.”

Scaruffi.com credits Chiang Kai-shek with the deaths of 30-thousand people during a popular uprising against his regime in Taiwan in 1947.

The next day, several thousand protesters marched in Taipei on February 28, 1947 against the brutality that took place the day before, but they were met with bullets, and martial law was declared.

I discovered a book on the topic, Representing Atrocity in Taiwan, The 2.28 Incident and the White Terror by Sylvia Li-Chun, who is the Notre Dame Assistant Professor of Chinese at the University of Notre Dame.

The Asia Times also reported, “They slaughtered civilians at random to terrorize the Taiwanese into submission, and carried out a targeted campaign to wipe out the Taiwanese elite—local leaders and intellectuals who represented the biggest threat to KMT rule. To this date, the numbers killed are uncertain, but historians estimate 30,000.”

The reason for all this was the confrontation between capitalism and communism worldwide. The thinking was “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” even if that friend is a monster, a tyrant who is equal to or worse than the targeted enemy.

Discover China’s First Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, the man that unified China more than 2,000 years ago.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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The Noise between China and Japan

April 12, 2017

Poor relations with Japan started as far back as 1840, when Japan joined the British, French and Americans during the Opium Wars to gain concessions to sell opium legally to the Chinese.

In 1843, under the agreement of the Nanjing Treaty, Shanghai became one of five treaty ports to be turned into a colonial city that would be under control of foreign countries—Great Britain, France, America and Japan.

Until 1871, most Japanese never had much contact with the Chinese. Then, getting to know the Chinese led to a Japanese opinion that the Chinese were ethnically inferior since they were different from the Japanese and most Japanese haven’t changed their minds to this day. It didn’t matter that China had been more powerful and technologically advanced for about 1,500 years up to the 15th century.

In 1884, Japanese and Chinese troops faced off in Korea, which ended in a lopsided stalemate in Japan’s favor.

In 1894, Japan and China fought their first war over Korea. Like Tibet, Korea had been a tributary state of China for centuries.

China was defeated in 1895 losing Korea as a tributary and a large portion of Eastern Manchuria.

Then in 1870, Japan annexed the islands of the Ryukyu Kingdom, which had also been a tributary to China.

A Ryukyuan envoy even begged England for help, but the British ruled that the islands should belong to Japan instead of China.

On July 7, 1937, Japan launched a war to conquer China. Over the next 8 years, Japan would occupy most of China.

Japan has never apologized for The Rape of Nanking and other atrocities that happened during World War II that resulted in millions of Chinese deaths. The Chinese estimate that they lost about 15-20 million in World War II and most of those deaths were civilians. An additional 2.2 million deaths were Chinese troops.

U.S. News & World Report says, “The Chinese have resented the Japanese ever since Japan conquered and occupied China in the 1930s and 40s. The Japanese prime minister’s yearly visits to a Tokyo shrine for war veterans has always played in China as a reminder of Japan’s wartime brutality and continued lack of remorse.”

The argument between China and Japan over a group of uninhabited islands that both nations claim is a continuation of this history of poor relations.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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The Lost Crew of “Tough Titi” made it home thanks to China

March 1, 2017

It’s ironic that during World War II, the United States fought alongside the Chinese, both the Nationalists and the Communists, against the Japanese until 1945. In fact, it was Mao’s Chinese Communist guerrilla troops who rescued some of Jimmy Doolittle’s B-25 crews when they crash landed in China after bombing Tokyo on April 18, 1942. The Chinese who helped save those American troops paid a horrible price. Click the link to discover how horrible.

Then a few years later Communist China and the United States became enemies fighting in North Korea until 1953, and China sent advisers to Vietnam to help fight the United States there (1955 to 1975).

To punish Communist China, the U.S. placed an embargo on China from 1949 to 1969. The Korean War ended in 1953 but the embargo didn’t end until 1969. The goal had been to disrupt, destabilize, and weaken China’s communist government by causing the people of China to suffer, and this “complete embargo” was one of the tools to achieve that goal. The embargo also helped set the stage for millions of Chinese to die of starvation during what’s known as Mao’s Great Famine.

When Nixon arrived in China in 1972, China and the U.S. became friends again.

Now President Donald Trump, the popular-vote loser by almost 3 million votes, is working overtime to turn China into an enemy of the U.S. again.

But in 1996, when the U.S. and China were trading partners and still friendly, Chinese farmers discovered a World War II American bomber’s wreckage and the remains of the ten-man crew on Little Cat Mountain (Mao’er Shan), Southern China’s highest peak.

The name of the B-24 bomber was Tough Titi.

These Americans were considered heroes to the Chinese, and the remains of the crew were returned to the United States for burial.

There’s a memorial stone near the crash site and Chinese tourists pay honor to these Americans by leaving flowers and other gifts.

To honor these American heroes further, the Chinese recovered some of the bomber’s parts and used them as a centerpiece for a museum in Xing’an, about a four-hour drive from the crash site.

Why is President Donald Trump going out of his way to make China an enemy of the United States while doing the opposite in Russia with the brutal Vladimir Putin?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Does Putin want the Kremlin’s Candidate to start a war with China? Part 2 of 2

February 8, 2017

What would a war with China look like?

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons says that China has 260 warheads. “Its warheads are deliverable by air, land, and sea.”  Business Insider reports, “China now has dozens of nuclear-capable missiles that could target almost the entirety of the US, according to the Department of Defense’s 2015 report on the Chinese military. “

Global Firepower.com reports that China is ranked 3rd out of 126 countries for its military capability and available firepower.

The United States is ranked 1st for military capability and available firepower. Click Global Firepower.com to compare the U.S. with China.

Don’t forget that China would be fighting near and from its home base, but the United States is more than 6,000 miles away, and China has 4 ballistic missile submarines with more to be commissioned and more in development.   They are not as advanced as America’s SSBNs but they still exist and are a threat.  National Interest.org says, “Even if China acquires the technical capacity necessary for a survivable sea-based nuclear deterrent, the highly centralized PLA has no operational experience in maintaining deterrence patrols on the open seas. China has traditionally relied exclusively on its land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) for deterrence and thus has never confronted the existential question of whether to predelegate SLBM launch authority to submarine commanders in case of crises.”

According to NuclearForces.org, Russia has 112 SLBMs.

Why would Vladimir Putin want the United States to break with its old allies and start a war with China?

I think Putin wants to get rid of China and the United States as military powers.  Newsweek reports “How Trump is Alienating Allies and making China Great Again.”

Without its historical allies, the United States would probably win the war with a Pyrrhic victory (a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat) leaving Russia with the most powerful military on the planet and the only super power.

The U.S. would go after China’s infrastructure like the Three Gorges Dam (China has more dams than any country in the world), and end up destroying most of China’s infrastructure (dams, roads, airports, railroads, the power grid, bridges, etc.) destroying China as a modern technological state and economic power and plunging most of the survivors into extreme poverty.

Global Firepower ranks Russia’s military as #2.

Economically, many U.S. corporations do business in China. To understand how a war with China would devastate many U.S. corporations that make money from Chinese consumers, read this CNN Money report. In addition, The Wall Street Journal reveals how important Chinese consumers are to General Motors and Ford that sell millions of cars in China.

In fact, according to StatisticsTimes.com, the United States has the largest GDP in the world and China is in a distant second place.

In 2016, the United States had a GDP of $18,561,934 billion vs. China with $11,391,619 billion.

Where does Putin’s Russia fit on that global GDP list?  12th place with $1,267,754 billion.

If you look at the list, you will quickly learn that seven countries with GDP’s larger than Russia are historically allies of the United States, allies that President Trump is alienating.

And if Trump is planning to blast most or all of China’s major cities killing hundreds of millions of innocent civilians with nuclear weapons to punish China for not doing what he wants, I wonder if he knows which way the wind blows since he doesn’t pay attention to the environment. Pollution from China blows across the Pacific and blankets the United States just like pollution from the U.S. blows across the Atlantic to fall in Europe. Even the president of the U.S. can’t avoid the poisoned radioactive air, water, and replace the contaminated soil that grows the food we all eat in America.

Divided we fall.

What do you think the odds are that Trump will get the U.S. into a conventional and/or nuclear war with China, and will Russia finish off the winner?

Start with or return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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Does Putin want the Kremlin’s Candidate to start a war with China? Part 1 of 2

February 7, 2017

What are the odds that President Trump will start a war with China? Please wait and answer the question after reading this two part series.

President Donald Trump continuous to talk about Putin with praise while badmouthing and challenging China.

Trump has a history of racism, and the Chinese are not Caucasians but Putin is.

Beijing is seriously concerned about Trump’s comments on One China policy says Politico.com.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump had signaled that the U.S. commitment to the policy that undergirds its relationship with China should be up for negotiation: “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things,” he said.

Then the New York Post reports, “China lashes out after Mattis backs Japan in islands dispute.”

Politifact reports, Trump warned of China military might. “We have rebuilt China, and yet they will go in the South China Sea and build a military fortress the likes of which perhaps the world has not seen …”

Trump was wrong when he said the U.S. rebuilt China. After World War II, the United States, under the Marshall Plan, rebuilt Europe, but blockaded China and fought wars in Korea (1959 – 1953 with an estimated 2.5 million civilians killed/wounded) and Vietnam (1955 – 1975 with an estimated 1.3 million to 4.2 million civilian dead) that were wars that China saw as a threat.

American Foreign Relations.com reports, “During the Cold War in Asia, the United States imposed embargoes on North Korea, China, and North Vietnam. These were severe embargoes established under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The embargo on China and North Korea began in 1950, during the Korean War.” The United States wouldn’t lift the embargo with China until 1969 during the Richard Nixon administration.

To discover if the Trump White House is planning to start a war with China, The Guardian.com reported that Steve Bannon said, “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years. There’s no doubt about that.”

The Guardian went on: “Bannon’s sentiments and his position in Trump’s inner circle add to fears of a military confrontation with China, after secretary of state Rex Tillerson said that the US would deny China access to the seven artificial islands. Experts warned any blockade would lead to war.”

Continued on February 22, 2017, in Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.

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