Shadow Land

February 21, 2010

It seems that students in China may be modeling themselves after a Jackie Chan movie and playing catch-me if you can.  Harking back to a piece I wrote about Google being hacked, more evidence has been revealed that the real perpetrators may be high school students.

Now, the New York Times says, “the attacks came from China but not necessarily from the Chinese government, or even from Chinese sources.”

The NSA traced some of the attacks to servers in Taiwan.  Then a United States military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has also led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at a vocational school in east China’s Shandong Province. Last week, in another hacking incident, the trail led through China to Germany where that other attack originated.

What is most disturbing is the knee jerk reaction that took place when shortly after Google went public with its accusations against China without evidence, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting China’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall.

This is not the way to build trust with other governments. The wise thing to do would have been to wait until all the evidence was in before deciding who was guilty. It’s also interesting to know that this vocational school is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and Google’s competitor.

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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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Wheezing for Profits

February 20, 2010

Thomas L. Friedman wrote in an OP-ED column for the New York Times, “China, of course, understands that (about Global warming), which is why it is investing heavily in clean-tech, efficiency and high-speed rail. It sees the future trends and is betting on them. Indeed, I suspect China is quietly laughing at us right now.”

It is obvious from Friedman’s OP-Ed piece that there is a benefit when Chinese engineers run the country instead of lawyers, accountants, corporate CEO’s with next quarter’s profits in mind, lobbyists, professional politicians and people like Rush Limbaugh, who confuses his ditto heads with bogus opinions.

If China’s engineers and scientists are laughing, it is because of the American fools that preach that carbon emissions are not the cause of global warming as if they are fighting a crusade against the infidel while ignoring all the other reasons why oil and coal are bad.

coal burning power plant - how would you like to breath this?

Let’s examine some other reasons why carbon emissions are not good and why humans should wean themselves from this dirty source of energy as quickly as possible.

1. Living near a freeway is not healthy
2. Carbon emissions and asthma
3. Dirty power from coal
4. Ocean acidification
5. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning


Because of China’s Return

February 19, 2010

I just read Facing up to China, The Economist, February 6th-12th, 2010, and I thought, “Who is the fool (sorry) person who wrote this?”

a) a neo-conservative
b) a Nazi sympathizer
c)  a believer in nation building using the military to shoot anyone that stand in the way
d)  a throwback to the age of imperialism (maybe a born again 19th century citizen of the defunct British, French, Spanish or German Empires)
e) all of the above

If the majority of Americans agreed with the opinion stated in this piece, why the masquerade that we actually care about human life? We should declare that America is the last Imperial Empire that serves corporations spanning the globe looting for profit.

Like Alexander the Great, Americans knew how to win wars once. During World War II, we firebombed cities in Germany and Japan roasting tens of thousands of non-combatant civilians nightly. In one final blow, we dropped nuclear bombs on Japan killing hundreds of thousands in two blasts ending that war. Along the way, we’d send a strong message to the world that we own it or at least the credit card companies and banks that own our government does. The last two sentences in “Facing Up to China” were the only ones that made sense.

The answer to the multiple-choice question is (e).


Men’s “Face” – Part 3/4

February 18, 2010

Face is why the Chinese businessman will take great risks or take only a few risks and if given a chance may steal another person blind—that is if they believe they can get away with it.  If they are caught and it is against the law, that is a loss of face—one reason for suicide. Most Chinese men will wait until they are successful before they let others know. If they fail, it’s possible no one will hear about it beyond the family unit.

Face is why Chinese men often work twelve to sixteen hour days, seven days a week earning small but saving big. The Chinese will do without luxuries and save to pay for their child’s university education. Chinese women will work just as hard.

Regaining face may be one reason why Mao reoccupied Tibet for China in 1950. The other reason may have been tactical—to control the high ground like Israel controls the Golan Heights.  Having control over that plateau was one of the tactical reasons Britain convinced the Dalai Lama to declare freedom from China in 1912.

Some of China's Seventy Million Leaders

Face may be why China’s leaders get so angry over Taiwan. As long as Taiwan is out there and not ruled by the mainland, it may be seen as a loss of face. It’s why the Chinese want to walk on the moon and reach the other planets before anyone else. In China, “face” is universal to the entire population and different for each person.

Continued at Gambling for “Face” – Part 4 or discover The Power of Public Debate 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. 

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Growing Great Honor in One Lunar Leap

February 17, 2010

It looks like China’s space program will fuel humanity’s next trip to the moon and beyond. The Middle Kingdom has everything needed to succeed. China is turning out more engineers from its universities than the United States is, and China has the technology and industry to support an active, growing space program.

It helps that seven of China’s nine-man Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s top ruling body, are engineers instead of lawyers or businessmen like in America. In addition, China has trillions of dollars to spend and no national debt.

In the last few years, China has sent men into space and conducted space walks. There is a strong chance that in a few more years, there will be Chinese space stations orbiting the earth with footprints on the moon that were not made by Americans.

We were in China when the space walks took place, and it was big news filling TV screens and splashing headlines across newspapers. The excitement was equal to the time Americans walked on the moon decades ago. Now, America’s space program is limping along—almost a cripple.

The honor China lost during the 19th and early 20th centuries to the bully tactics of aggressive Western powers and Japan during World War II is being reclaimed. For more than two thousand years, China was a regional super power.  It seems they have achieved that status again.

Discover Mao’s War Against Illegal Drugs

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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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