An Attitude Shift in China

June 7, 2010

During Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Pearl S. Buck, who wrote The Good Earth and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first American woman to win it, and the Pulitzer Prize, was denounced in 1972 as an “American cultural imperialist” by the Communists in China and was not allowed to visit China with Richard Nixon.

Pearl S. Buck

I recently read in Xinhua, the official voice of China’s government, that “A few months ago, the American novelist who spent most of the first 42 years of her life in China, from 1892 to 1934, putting her heartfelt and acute understanding of Chinese grassroots people in her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Good Earth (1931), was voted one of the top “friends of China” in an international event hosted by the Chinese government.”

In February 2009, city officials in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province in China opened the Pearl S. Buck Museum and Philanthropy Pavilion adjacent to her historic home. The museum and pavilion were divided into three sections: one devoted to her humanitarian works, another to her life and achievements, and the last, to her writings.

See International Women’s Day

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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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1 Comment | America, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese literature, cultural differences, expatriates, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Propaganda Masquerading as a Movie Review

June 7, 2010

I found another example of media propaganda in a movie review. In June 1989, the Tiananmen Square incident took place in China and “hundreds” of demonstrators died in what started as peaceful demonstrations “demanding” changes in China.

A few months later, a New York Times review made comparisons between the first emperor and China’s modern government. “The depiction of Qin’s bonfire and of his soldiers pushing his flailing enemies (they weren’t the emperor’s enemies) into a ditch caused the American Museum of Natural History to cancel its planned opening of ”The First Emperor of China” last July, when the news was still full of the Chinese Government’s violent suppression of student protests.… This re-enactment of the faraway Qin’s often despotic and often enlightened rule becomes more believable and complex in view of the parallels with recent events.”

The New York Times made a comparison with an event that took place more than two millennia ago but made no mention of the 2/28 Massacre in Taiwan by a US ally where almost thirty thousand noncombatants were killed by Kuomintang troops. There was also no mention of the almost 70,000 U.S. troops in the Philippians, who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Filipino freedom fighters and non-combatants between 1898 and World War II.

Filipinos killed by US troops before World War II

The New York Times does not review every movie or documentary produced so it is questionable why they would review this lackluster 38-minute documentary about China’s first emperor. Was there another motive behind this review—to remind Americans of the Tiananmen Square incident? After all, let’s not forget anything bad that Communist China does while forgetting worse historical sins committed by American troops and its allies.

See What is the Truth about Tiananmen Square?

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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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3 Comments | America, China, Chinese history, history, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Oil Greases a Shift in Global Power

June 6, 2010

Recently, I have written posts about China’s hunger for oil and energy. I also wrote a series about China’s need for electricity to build a middle class in rural China.

The DVB reported that the China National Petroleum Corporation has started building a trans-Burma crude oil pipeline to carry an estimated 240,000 barrels a day from Burma’s west coast to Kunming, the capital of China’s Southwestern Yunnan province.

China's Yunnan Province in green

While some may criticize China for working with a repressive government like Burma, it makes sense that China is doing this. After all, China has no choice but to do what it can to improve the lives of 750 million rural Chinese. To achieve this, they are working globally to provide China’s people with a higher standard of living while struggling to clean up an environment that is heavily polluted.

All one has to do is look at America’s history with dictators to see the dirty deeds that the US did in the national interest.  China has a “national interest” too and now they have the money to make things happen, as the US has for the last six decades.

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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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1 Comment | business, China, Chinese middle class, environment, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Bringing the Pollution Home

June 5, 2010

Business Insider reports that China may soon restrict exports for rare-earth minerals that are used in hybrid car batteries, computers, cell phones, flat screen monitors and high tech weapons that the US military depends on to fight wars around the globe.

It’s about time that the United States and other countries that uses these rare earth metals builds their own refining capability.  Until now, they have bought from China, the only supplier on the planet.  However, China has announced plans to curb pollution and greenhouse emissions dramatically. One strategy is to offer huge rebates to Chinese who buy plug-in hybrids or all electric vehicles meaning China will be using what they refine.

Recently, China also expressed concerns about some of the minerals crucial to green technologies since extracting and refining them pollutes and causes serious damage to China’s environment. That means the US and other countries will have to build refining capabilities to extract and refine rare-earth metals at home instead of in China’s back yard.

See Cornering the Plug-In Hybrid all Electric Car

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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

When the News becomes Propaganda

June 5, 2010

As a teen in China, my wife saw news film showing American solders using spoons to dig eyeballs out of Vietnamese children—blinding them. This is one example of how easy it is to use lies to demonize an enemy.

During the 19th century, to justify the Opium Wars and the brutal suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, the Western media demonized China and the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi. Then, about a century later in “Dragon Lady”, Sterling Seagrave revealed that radicals and reformers who were in exile at the time spread lies saying the empress was an evil hag, and the Western media gobbled those lies up as if they were sweet chocolate.

In fact, a Western journalist, Dr. George Ernest Morrison was responsible for many of the slanders and half-truths about China that persist to this day.

In the June Smithsonian, one of those half- truths surfaced in 110 Years Ago, Sobby Boxers. The piece said the empress ordered the peasant’s known as the “Righteous and Harmonious Fists”, called Boxers by the Western Media, to kill all foreigners.

What it didn’t say was that the empress also told her military to make sure no foreigners died and water and food was carried to the legations through tunnels while the “Boxers” thought the empress was on their side.

The politics were complex. The Empress had nothing to do with the uprising. It was a popular peasant uprising against Christianity and the foreign powers. If she hadn’t supported the “Boxers”, the peasants might have turned on her.

Also see Media Slugfest Using Taiwan

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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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