Different Cultures Different Laws

March 19, 2010

Language is a powerful tool. When abused by the media or “any” political agenda, the audience is misled and forms incorrect opinions. The Western media often judges actions in China based on Western law from a Judeo-Christian foundation.

Chinese law uses the Chinese Constitution as its basis—not the American Constitution.

China’s Legal System weighs the Law from different values

When the legal system in China arrests and finds political activists guilty, consider Article 28 from China’s Constitution. “The State maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter-revolutionary activities; it penalizes acts that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals”.

If you are not a Chinese citizen and you do not agree, don’t go to China. Understand that Chinese criminal law uses a mixture of Legalism, Confucius, Marxist, and a Leninist, Maoist philosophy as its guide in addition to being modeled on German Law.

Since 1979, China has educated its people about the law in the universities and other education institutions like the primary, middle and high schools. China has also publicized information about their legal system through the China Law Journal and many provincial and municipal journals, magazines, and newspapers. Public lectures are often organized in factories, mines, and rural communes in order to increase the people’s understanding of China’s Constitution and laws. Chinese citizens probably understand their country’s law better than most Americans do.

Discover Justice–a Matter of Opinion

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

March 18, 2010

Based on a novel written by Dai Sijie, who also directed the film.
ISBN: 978-0385722209
Publisher – Anchor (October 29, 2002)

I read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress soon after it came out.  A few years later, we drove more than sixty miles to see the Mandarin language movie. Checking Amazon this morning, I saw there have been 230 customer reviews for the book with a four out of five star average. This short novel spent twenty-three weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. The author, born in China, moved to France where he learned to read, speak and write French. The book was originally written in French and translated into English by Ina Rilke.

Dai Sijie

The story is about two likable, teenage boys and their struggle after being banished to a peasant village for “re-education” during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Sons of doctors and dentists, the boys work at muscling buckets of excrement up the mountainside and mining coal. Then there is the little seamstress of the title, whom Luo, one of the boys, falls in love with. He dreams of transforming the seamstress from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he expected.

This link goes to the Mandarin language DVD with English subtitles.

Discover more Chinese cinema through Joan Chen’s Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

#1 - Joanna Daneman review posted June 19 2014

Where to Buy

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China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Justice—a difference of Opinion

March 17, 2010

The American media seems obsessed when pointing out every event that takes place in China that can be used as an example that China is not free like America but should be.

It was reported months ago that Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was placed under arrest. Liu was a former university professor who spent 20 months in jail for joining the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square. In his writings, most published only on the Internet, Liu called for civil rights and political reform.

Then there is the case of Gao Zhisheng, a missing Chinese human rights lawyer. At a Beijing news conference, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said the lawyer had been sentenced to prison for subversion.

National Guard Troops at Kent State

“On May 4, l970 members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine Kent State students. The impact of the shootings was dramatic.” source

Even if it is wrong—by Western standards—to send these two Chinese citizens to prison, considering what happened at Kent State, Luy Ziaobo and Gao Zhishen are fortunate to be alive.

Discover Respecting Cultural Differences Out-of-Focus

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

An Unhealthy War of Words

March 17, 2010

Both China and America face a crises in health care, because many in both countries cannot afford it.

Emperor Wudi (Han Dynasty, 141 BCE) may have made the right choice. Wudi wanted to make sure that peasants could afford salt and iron so his government controlled the prices. The private sector that sold these commodities was upset, because they couldn’t amass the great fortunes they wanted.

Emperor Wudi - Han Dynasty

After Emperor Wudi’s death in 87 BCE, a great debate (similar to the debate over health care in America today) took place.  It was called the “Debate on Salt and Iron”.  It pitted the advocates of a strong central state against those favoring more autonomy for local elites—people who owned businesses in the private sector. In the end, the government program that controlled the prices of essential commodities was abolished.

The results—

1. The imperial court became more concerned with an extravagant social life and stopped doing their job running the country. Greed became rampant.

2. Powerful families manipulated the emperor and his ministers—like corporate and special-interest lobbyists in America today. For a few, fortunes grew while many peasants had to go without.

3. Revenues declined and military affairs were neglected.

4. The Han Dynasty collapsed.

Health is an essential commodity, and Bill Maher makes a good case for this in his piece at the Huffington Post.

To learn more, read “China’s Health Care During Mao’s Time” http://wp.me/pN4pY-br

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China Bashing

March 16, 2010

Americans need their boogiemen. Many Americans blame teachers when kids don’t learn. Many also blame liberals when the economy or a war goes wrong. Kids blame mom and dad for things the kid did. After all, mom and dad raised the child. It seems rare when an American takes the blame for anything.

China bashing is still popular as US lawmakers attack China ahead of November elections. source  The big difference between now and then is China’s standing in the world. In the 19th century, China was weak. Today, China is strong.

Dr. George Morrison (on the right)

Americans did not invent China bashing. That started in the 19th century. The man responsible was probably Dr. George Ernest Morrison, Peking correspondent for the London Times. He was the only full-time resident journalist in China’s Imperial capital, and his lies influenced the history of China for almost a century.

It is ironic that Sir Robert Hart, the main character in my novel, who was in Peking and witnessed Morrison’s conduct and read his inaccurate newspaper reports, saw him as lazy, self-indulgent, intolerant, racist and unprincipled.

Many of the London Times pieces Morrison wrote were littered with lies and deceit influencing people’s opinions toward China to this day.

To read another example of China Bashing, see No Political Machine

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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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