From the Bottom Up

March 29, 2010

America may be learning something from China’s stimulus plan—spending hundreds of billions of dollars from its cash reserves to keep people working. This is called bottom-up economic growth and the gap between the rich and working poor shrinks instead of expands. The opposite is trickle-down economics from the Reagan era where the gap widens.

Chinese jobs

China’s bottom-up plan makes sense. After all, how much can one rich person consume compared to hundreds of millions of people—a little spending from each person at the bottom adds up and is better for long-term economic survival instead of short-term corporate profits. Who cares if the wealthy grow their fortunes slower? Well, the rich do. I’m sure they love having that money filling Wall Street vaults.

It appears that President Obama has the same idea. During the presidential campaign, he said.  “The project of the next president  is figuring out how you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth.” It seems that with the passing of the health care bill (that has upset so many of the trickle-down people), President Obama is putting his words into action and following China’s example.

To learn more about China’s economy see “Why China is Studying Singapore” http://wp.me/pN4pY-2z


Super Power Dawn

March 29, 2010

Alan Caruba writes about Super Power China at “Speak Without Interruption”. “As the sun begins to set on an America whose dollar set the standard and whose capacity for manufacturing was unchallenged, a new superpower is emerging and it is China.”

Two notable individuals from history predicted more than a century ago what is taking place in China—the first was a young Irishman from Belfast who arrived in China in 1854 and left in 1908.  His name was Robert Hart and to historians, he’s known as the Godfather of China’s modernization.

Hart wrote near the end of the 19th century that in a hundred years China would be a superpower again. Jack London, who visited China and wrote about it, made the same prediction.

The way the government has decentralized power in China is not new. Imperial China did the same. The Emperor appointed the governors to the provinces based on who earned the highest scores in the Imperial exams and they ruled like kings. 

As for a market economy, China may have invented this on a national scale more than a millennia ago proving that it doesn’t take a democracy or republic to prosper.

If you spend time in China, you will discover that the Chinese are born entrepreneurs, who find ways to get around government restrictions to make money. Sadly, this has led to the pollution in China today—something the central government is struggling to deal with as they transition to green power.

As for long term planning, consider that the top men in China’s government are engineers or scientists compared to America’s leaders who are mostly lawyers. After Mao, China implemented term and age limits for government positions, something America does not have.

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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.

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Walking Barefoot on a Double Edged Blade

March 27, 2010

From what I’ve learned, when Mao died, many Chinese were tired of the Communists because of  the Cultural Revolution. If Deng Xiaoping hadn’t introduced a market economy resulting in decades of growth and prosperity, China may have fallen into chaos to emerge with a dictator similar to what they had with the Kuomintang.

Nichols Kristof

Nicholas Kristof wrote, China & Google (New York Times, March 24, 2010), an opinion piece that gets closer to the truth about China. Kristof seems to know what he is talking about when he said, “They (ordinary Chinese) don’t gripe  a lot about the regime imprisoning dissidents, who mostly have a negligible following around the country.”

It’s probably true that many in China want to have free access to the Internet, but I doubt it is serious enough to cause concern. The biggest concern is raising the standard of living for the 800 million rural Chinese who have not cashed in on the prosperity.

When there are accusations from Washington that China isn’t playing fair with currency control, China has a choice. Give in and wait for hundreds of millions of unhappy Chinese to rebel or stand firm and continue to grow the economy.

As far as Google is concerned, China has Baidu (with more than 60% of the market) and shedding Google probably feels like passing gas in public.


The Changing Landscape

March 25, 2010

Regardless of what Political Correctness requires most Americans to say in public about other cultures and ethnic groups, America’s national interests (meaning Americans making money and spending more) have dominated the globe for decades clearly showing a lack of respect for other cultures.

Today, the world is on the verge of a major shift away from America’s national interests as China rewrites the rules on trade, technology, currency, climate change, etc.

中国
China/Middle Kingdom

The March 22, 2010, issue of Newsweek, “It’s China’s World—We’re Just living In It“, talks about those changes. Where the American dollar once ruled supreme, the Chinese yuan is appearing around the Asia-Pacific as an alternative currency.

As I pointed out about the Chinese space race, China is now the only country making major investments in space exploration and their reasons are not to earn bragging rights by putting footsteps in moon dust but to discover fresh sources of rare minerals that are quickly being depleted on the earth.

Looking for opportunities, China has become the leader in green technology.

Meanwhile, America is missing the boat as political/religious agendas rule the behavior of the ruling class who squabble over global warming, school prayer, abortion, health care, stem cell research, evolution versus creationism, etc.


Google Going Hong Kong

March 25, 2010

In Google’s China Play? Search me by Muhammad Cohen, author of Hong Kong On Air, Cohen writes a compelling post about his anger concerning Google’s flight and fight with mainland China’s  government. He says Google has no reasonable objective baiting Beijing and inviting Chinese authorities to crack down on Hong Kong’s freedoms. He says, Google’s longstanding corporate hypocrisy raises questions about its claims of mainland cyber attacks and hacking. I talked about this in Google Recycled (http://wp.me/pN4pY-2r).

Any freedom is a precious gift.  Americans believe they have freedom but what they have isn’t far from what the Chinese have. After all, Americans must pay income tax, sales tax, property tax, wear seat belts while driving or helmets on motor bikes, no smoking in public, no drinking booze or talking on cell phones while driving, and the list goes on. Now Americans have to pay for health insurance, which has given birth to protests across the United States—it’s a shame so many eligible Americans don’t vote.

Many of those freedom restrictions don’t exist in China. What does exist is the fact that Chinese are not allowed to challenge their government in public or in the media—a privilege that has never existed in China ever. However, Hong Kong has this freedom and doesn’t want to lose it.  When Google wanted to do business in China, they agreed to the censorship rules. Now they have broken that agreement.

See “When in Rome, Do as the Romans” http://wp.me/sN4pY-354