The West, America in particular, has been pressuring China for years to revalue the yuan. If the following reports are correct, it seems the US may have lost the fight.
During elections, U.S. politicians often used this issue with China as a scapegoat for lost jobs without mentioning that more jobs have gone to Canada and Mexico since NAFTA was signed.
In fact, I seldom hear or read in the major media about the estimated 11 million jobs that have gone to illegal aliens working in the U.S.
Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that Turkey joined China to shun the U.S. dollar in conducting trade that is expected to grow to $50 billion within five years and $100 billion by 2020.
Another potential blow to the U.S. dollar’s global dominance was reported by Bloomberg Business Week.
Bloomberg says that the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will put up a “strong resistance” to currency controls at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington.
The 24-7 Christian News.com says that the U.S. Dollar will no longer be the global currency predicting that the world is going to detach from the US economy in the near future. “China, Russia, Japan and France, several Middle East Arab states have taken the initiative to detach oil from the US Dollar.”
Instead, these countries plan to trade in a currency basket consisting of Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan, the Euro, etc.
Then Goldman Sachs predicts a sharp slump in the US dollar’s value against other major currencies. Source: Credit Write Downs.com
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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.
An interesting post at The Globalist says, “Many regard China’s economic powerhouse as a new phenomenon. But a thousand years ago, Chinese merchants ruled the seas of Asia.”
The post goes on to point out how China’s Song Dynasty promoted international trade and that Chinese merchants expanded foreign trade rapidly but with Chinese government control over trade as in China today.
The Song Dynasty also kept a close watch on exports as in China today.
The Globalist said, “Even 1000 years ago, China’s government kept a close eye on trade. If a ship was blown off course, its captain had to report it promptly (on his return to China) — and produce evidence.”
In fact, Merchants from all over the world came to China at that time just as they are doing today.
Therefore, it should be no surprise when The Economist says, “China’s overreaction to a Japanese ‘provocation’ has set its regional diplomacy back years. … China sneezes, Asia shivers.”
I don’t believe China cares if diplomacy suffered. China is more concerned with not letting anyone step on its toes again.
When I say that, I’m talking about the Opium Wars then Western domination of China’s politics for close to a century before World War II when Japan invaded and killed about 30 million Chinese.
If we are to believe Marco Polo (1254 – 1324), who said China could have conquered the world, then we should also breathe a sigh of relief that China didn’t want to do that then when it could have and still doesn’t.
However, China’s desires to control events that affect China have not changed. Japan sneezed and China roared back. It’s all about harmony—in 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.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
For the last two years, the U.S. has been embroiled in partisican warfare over universal healthcare.
Universal values wasn’t an issue. The Political Correctness of the democratic mob decides that.
The American Republican Party says they will get rid of universal healthcare if they gain a majority in Congress in the mid-term elections.
However, in China, the debate is over universal values. In The Economist for October 2, 2010, there is a piece on this topic that mentions a “smouldering” debate in China for the past two years.
The lead sentence says, “It is not quite true that China is rejecting Western values such as democracy. Rather, it is fighting over them.”
If there is a Politically Correct belief in the West driven by Sinophobia that the Chinese have no freedom, consider this quote from The Economist, “A philosophical question of whether universal values exist has turned into a political fight, dividing scholars, the media and even, some analysts believe, China’s leaders.”
It even appears, according to The Economist, that China’s Vice-President Xi Jinping, who is all but certain to take over from Hu Jintao as party chief in 2012, has been involved in this debate about values.
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.
The Early Republic (1789 – 1829)
The Jacksonian Democracy (1829 – 1854)
Sectional Conflict (1853 – 1881)
Gilded Age (1881 – 1897)
Progressive Era (1897 – 1921)
Depression & World Conflict (1921 – 1961)
Social Change & Soviet Relations (1961 – 1989)
Globalization (1989 – )
In Democracy, Deceit and Mob Rule, the embedded YouTube video mentioned that Woodrow Wilson was the first president to refer to the U.S. as a democracy.
By the time President Johnson left office in 1969, America was no longer a Republic. The transition was complete and the democratic mob ruled leading to Political Correctness, Rush Limbaugh and the Self-esteem Generations.
To avoid becoming a democracy, China should consider adding a lower house of Congress as in the U.S.
All eligible voters, who do not belong to the Communist Party, would elect the representatives in the lower house and the upper house would be the National People’s Congress, which would be elected from within the Communist Party as it is today.
Since legislation in the U.S. must be approved by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the president, this would allow the Communist Party in the upper hosue to kill unpopular or destructive legislation from the lower house and the other way around.
That way, the mob rule of a democracy would be avoided.
Since in a Republic, no mature citizen has to vote as in a democracy, it would be wise if China defined who the eligible voters outside the Party would be.
I suggest people only be allowed to vote if they have a high comprehension level that helps understand the issues.
As has been seen in the U.S., with its falling literacy rate, many in the population cannot understand the political issues and don’t vote or use misleading information from politically biased people like Rush Limbaugh to decide for them.
Of course, a democracy ruled by the mob would cry foul, but a republic is ruled by the elected officials—not by the majority as in the U.S.
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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.
In 1999, I had no idea that I was about to begin a journey of discovery that would lead to China.
It all started when my wife said, “You might be interested in Robert Hart, an Irishman who went to China in 1854. He worked for the emperor.”
Since my ancestors were Irish, I was curious.
I learned about Robert Hart through his letters and journals and more than a decade later, I’m still learning about China’s history and culture.
In 1999, I was a member of the ignorant democratic American mob in a country that was born as a republic in 1776 with slavery while women and children were considered chattel.
The slaves would be free eighty-nine years later after a bloody Civil War. The women and children would have to wait longer for their freedom.
While writing about China, I learned that America’s Founding Fathers built a republic because they despised democracies with good reason. The following You Tube video offers an explanation.
Before 1999, like those Americans who have called me a “Panda Lover” and “Pro China”, I believed China was an evil place with a horrible dictatorship and everyone was brainwashed, miserable and Godless.
Little did I know that the Chinese were closer to heaven and God than most Christians and Muslims were, since these Western and Middle Eastern religions act as the intermediary telling people how to think, act, worship and who to kill when it comes time to convert the heathens and non-believers.
In 19th century America, racial prejudice was so strong that sayings like, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” were taken seriously. See: Counter Currents
Substitute “Chinese” for the word “Indian” and that was another slogan that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Many European immigrants to the Americas worked hard to make those slogans true.
Once finished with the North American natives, those people moved on to Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan and China where the killing continued.
In 1999, I knew nothing about the 19th century Opium Wars where Western Imperial powers, including Americans, went to war with China so the West could sell opium to the Chinese people.
After China lost the Opium Wars, the treaties also forced China to allow Christian missionaries to enter China and go wherever they wanted to save the savage even if it meant more death.
A once proud people with a long history were humbled and crushed as their two thousand year old civilization was torn apart by Western greed and religions.
Then I learned about the Taiping Rebellion fought by Chinese Christian converts. When that rebellion ended, another twenty million Chinese had been killed in the name of the West’s God.
There were also Muslim led rebellions where millions died following a prophet shouting the word of God.
Growing up, the Hollywood movies I watched about China supported the stereotypes. The men were either coolies pulling rickshaws, or owned a Chinese restaurant or laundry and the woman were all concubines or whores.
Thanks to Robert Hart, I learned that the stereotypes about China I was fed as a child were wrong.
I’ve learned that China is recovering its position (one held for more than two thousand years) as a world power.
At the same time, the West continues making the same mistakes that led to the collapse of the Roman Empire — the same mistakes that led to wars in Europe where Christians killed Christians and then Christians invaded the Middle East to fight with Islam where the West is still fighting.
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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.
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