Growing Cautiously Into a Modern Republic – Part 1/7

October 23, 2010

The China Law Blog challenged an opinion I wrote about China becoming a republic with more freedom for the people.

I wrote, “The Economist wants India to win this race, because it is called a democracy as is the U.S., but what isn’t mentioned is that China is becoming a republic with a Chinese twist, which is what Dr. Sun Yat-sen wanted.… Once you read the two pieces in The Economist, you may understand why India’s democracy cannot beat China’s evolving republic.” Source: Comparing India and China’s Economic Engines

The China Law Blog criticized this post saying, “In other words, iLook takes what he sees as China’s aspirations and assumes (without a shred of factual support or even argument) that China will very shortly fully achieve those aspirations.”

I don’t recall writing “very shortly“.

In fact, the freedoms the world’s democracies are urging China’s government to implement ASAP may not materialize for decades and some freedoms found in the West may never appear.

To understand why China may be moving toward more freedom slowly, the best place to start is with Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866 – 1925)

Sun is known as the father of China’s Republic.

To achieve this dream, Sun started by unifying the Communists and Nationalists into a two-party republic in southern China in the early 20th century. Both parties respected Sun, and he made it work.

Unfortunately, Sun died in 1924 at a time when China was in ruins and torn by anarchy and violence between competing warlords.

Then, Chiang Kai-shek, who was a member of the ruling class and a man who hated the Communists, went on a rampage slaughtering Communists and igniting a civil war that would rage even after Japan invaded during World War II. 

Chiang’s first move against the Communists was in the south. His next was in Shanghai to break the labor unions the Communists had been organizing to improve the lives of sweatshop labor working in foreign owned factories. 

Chiang Kai-shek’s goal was to exterminate the labor unions and the Communists, and he had support from the foreign factory owners.

The Communists that survived had no choice but to defend themselves. Surrender wasn’t an option.

Decades later, in 1949, the Communist Party won the revolution under Mao’s leadership and with the support of China’s peasants.

Chiang Kai-shek would flee to Taiwan and protected by the US, he would rule that island under martial law as a brutal dictator for twenty-six years. Taiwan would not become a democracy until years after Chiang and Mao’s deaths.

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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.

2 Comments | America, China, Chinese history, Communism, cultural differences, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Democracy in Exile – Yea, Right!

October 21, 2010

I read a misleading post at Global Voices that was titled China and Tibet: Democracy in Exile. My first thought was, “When was Tibet ever a Democracy?”

I also thought about double standards and hypocrisy, which I’ll get to later.

Here’s what the author said in the first sentence at Global Voices, “Being a Tibetan in exile is a loss that manifests in many forms: the loss of homeland and natural rights fall within that.”

What were those natural rights that were lost?

Most Tibetans in exile gave up land and millions of serfs who were treated no better than slaves. What was lost were positions of power and wealth.

Before 1950, when Mao’s Red army occupied Tibet, there had been no democracy or republic in Tibet – ever.

The next quote shows Tibet before 1950.

“Lamaism is the state religion of Tibet and its power in the Hermit Country is tremendous. Religion dominated every phase of life.… For instance, in a family of four sons, at least two, generally three, of them must be Lamas. Property and family prestige also naturally go with the Lamas to the monastery in which they are inmates.

“Keeping the common people or laymen, in ignorance is another means of maintaining the power of the Lamas. Nearly all of the laymen (serfs) are illiterate. Lamas are the only people who are taught to read and write.”  Source: October 1912 National Geographic Magazine, page 979.

Between 1912—when those words appeared in National Geographic—and 1950, Tibet did not change.

What we have in Global Voices is clever manipulation to elicit support for the Tibetan separatist movement.

In fact, Tibetans have the same chance to be free from China as Hawaiians have of being free of the United States. There is a separatist movement in Hawaii and the circumstances of Hawaii and Tibet being occupied and ruled by nations that are more powerful is similar.

The only difference is that a reluctant Tibet was ruled over by the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties from 1277 to 1913 when Great Britain convinced Tibet to break from China at the same time the Qing Dynasty was collapsing.

See Why Tibet?

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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 | Buddhism, Buddhist, China, Chinese history, history, media, politics, Tibet | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Triumph in Chile Leads to Criticism of China

October 20, 2010

On the “media menu” in America, there is “Hypocrisy” listed near the top of the front page, and it is cheap.

In a New York Times piece of China Cheers Rescue Halfway Around the Word, we learn that the state owned media in China has been covering the rescue operation to save 33 miners in Chile.

How the New York Times turned good news in Chile into a criticism of China is another story.

If you read the entire piece in the Asia Pacific section of the NYT, go to the bottom to see what I’m talking about.


Rush Limbaugh Lies

In the conclusion to the piece, David Barboza, the reporter, quotes someone identified as Mr. Guan, the poet and blogger, who wrote a few lines of verse about Chile’s rescue on the Web, “What the government (of Chile) did warms our hearts. They didn’t suppress the truth, they didn’t secretly pay anyone money, they don’t make irresponsible statements, they don’t forgive those who should be responsible for it. And they don’t laud themselves with clichés.”

If the NYT didn’t make a point that this was aimed at China, anyone could make a case that the same verse is about the media in America.

 


Glen Beck Lies

 

Have you listened to people like Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck or read Ann Coulter or how about lies and deceit in political campaign Ads?

In fact, who is Mr. Guan, the poet and blogger? I used Google Blog Search and Google and came up with zero. Did Barboza fabricate Mr. Guan?

The United States Department of Labor documented 1,546 average deaths for all mining fatalities and 81,341 injuries between 1936 to 1940 in the U.S.  Between 2006 to 2007, they reported 69 deaths and 11,800 injuries.

 


Ann Coulter Lies


Then “In one of the most scandalous crises in workplace safety in the United States, over 10,000 coal miners have died needlessly from black lung disease (from the inhalation of coal dust) in the last decade.” Source: Chesapeake Climate

In addition, the NYT made no effort to mention that there is evidence that China is eager to lower the number of coal mining fatalities as reported by Internet Marketing Strategy for Business.

More research using Google shows that fatalities in mines are a global problem. I found a post in All Africa.com about South Africa’s high mine fatalities.

However, what did David Barboza, the New York Times reporter do? He dug up a poet called Mr. Guan. The truth is that the media in America is free — free to lie.

See more about Unbalanced Reporting 

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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, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Japan’s War of Lies about Atrocities in China

October 19, 2010

Adolf Hitler said, “If you tell a big lie enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.…”

That’s what Japan has been doing since 1945—telling a big lie about the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in Nanking, China during World War II.

It is estimated that about 17 million Chinese civilians died due to Japan’s invasion of China along with 2 million Chinese troops.

Several hundred thousand civilians were murdered in Nanking.

Eamonn Fingleton is an Irish journalist and author who refused to allow this lie about Nanking to become truth.

Fingleton is a former editor for Forbes and the Financial Times. His books deal with global economics and globalism. He has written on East Asian and global issues for The Atlantic Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Harvard Business Review.

Fingleton writes that Iris Chang’s book, The Rape of Nanking, broke a half-century of silence on Japanese war crimes in China.

He says of American scholars, The self-censorship was all such a sharp contrast with the dedication with which American scholars had pored over the horrors of Auschwitz and Treblinka (and indeed of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Why had Nanking been forgotten by most of the world?

The answer, Fingleton says, is that the highest government officials in Tokyo wanted it forgotten and they got their way until Iris Chang wrote The Rape of Nanking.

In an attempt to revive the decades old lies, the rightist Japanese-language magazine Sapio in the summer of 1998, said that Chang’s book was not “serious history”.

The magazine portrayed Chang’s book as having been spawned by a Sino-American conspiracy against Japan.

To learn more about The Rape of Nanking and Iris Chang see The Rape of Nanking with Iris Chang

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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 » | China, Chinese history, crime, history, politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Striking Differences

October 18, 2010

In Psychology Today, I read a post by Christopher Peterson.

I wrote a comment to his post, but addressed it to the wrong person. Since I couldn’t edit the comment, I have no way to fix the mistake.

Peterson writes about how much he enjoyed his recent August trip to China. He said, “I loved the Chinese people I met! We did not talk politics with anyone…”

In fact, I’ve been to China about ten times since 1999 and have never talked politics to anyone there.

There is no reason for that. After all, in China, the government runs the country and doesn’t ask the people for advice.

I sometimes wonder who is running America since there are so many opinions and so much anger.

Peterson also said, “China is not only a highly collectivist culture but also one that takes a very long time perspective on things. We often heard mention of the ‘seven generation’ view, which means that the Chinese take into account the consequences of policies for at least seven future generations.”

Peterson also mentioned, “the Chinese want their people and especially their children to be happy… There are of course cultural differences in what constitutes legitimate happiness.”

Then I read a post in the Democratic Underground, which was striking in its darkness and inferred unhappiness and anger.

The Democratic Underground said, “in the past week or so, at least 29 candidates (running for political office in the U.S. November midterms) have unveiled advertisements suggesting that their opponents have been too sympathetic to China and, as a result, Americans have suffered.”

Evan B. Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising, said that “China has sort of become a straw-man villain in this election” in a way that elicits comparisons to the sentiments toward Japan in the 1980s over car manufacturing and Mexico in the 1990s over the North American Free Trade Agreement. Source: Democratic Underground

It’s common in America for politicians to turn the people’s anger and unhappiness on a scapegoat. It helps win elections.

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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, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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