Considering China as a Democracy – Part 1/3

April 4, 2011

Using history, the US and India as examples of what democracy offers may show what might happen in China if it were to become a multi-party republic with a democratic political system.

India became a democracy in 1947, and more than 60 years later, about 40% of the population is still illiterate and lives in severe poverty due to political gridlock and government corruption, while the CIA reports that only 2 1/2 percent of Chinese live in similar poverty today.

For India, that’s 400 million people while China has 33 million living in severe poverty mostly in remote and rugged areas of China.

Thirty years ago, about sixty percent of Chinese lived in severe poverty. When Mao ruled China (1949-1976), 30 to 40 million died from famines. No one has died from famine since Mao’s death.

However, in 2009, the Times of India reported that India tops world hunger chart. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) reported some staggering figures. More than 27% of the world’s undernourished population lives in India while 43% of children (under 5 years) in the country are underweight. The figure is among the highest in the world…

In India, which has a democratic parliamentary political system, there are six recognized national parties and more than forty recognized state parties. Source: Wikipedia

While China’s one political party has managed to almost end poverty and boost literacy from 20 to more than 90% in thirty years, India’s many-party democracy has failed.

In Part 2, we will see why China may not survive to become a successful democracy if US history is an indication of what the future holds.

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Boiled in Blood

March 28, 2011

While brutal and corrupt authoritarian dictators in Egypt and Tunisia (supported by Western democracies for decades) were swept away by popular uprisings and a bloody revolution raged in Libya’s Qaddafi land, the Western media made comparisons to China.

The Economist’s Banyan|The wind that will not subside says, “But it is in China that domestic parallels with recent events, above all in Cairo, are on most people’s minds.”

What parallels and which minds?

According to a recent 60 Minutes segment, the uprisings in North Africa were caused by widespread corruption, poverty and unemployment (fallout from the 2008 global financial crises, which caused global losses of about 64 trillion US dollars and millions of lost jobs — 9 million in the US and about 20 million in China — not counting the rest of the world).

When the dictators in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya attempted to stifle unrest with violence, citizens posted pictures on Facebook of the killings and brutality, which led to the revolutions.

There is no guarantee that these revolutions will result in successful Western style democracies.

Another parallel that fails to surface is Facebook. The Wall Street Journal says, “Facebook…doesn’t have operations in Mainland China.”

As for poverty, The World Bank says, “Between 1981 and 2001, the proportion of population living in poverty in China fell from 53 percent to just eight percent,” and Global Issues.org says, “China accounts for nearly all the world’s reduction in poverty.”

Meanwhile, World Hunger.org reports American, “Households with incomes below the poverty line (19.2 percent).”

In addition, to paint China with the same brush as Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, the Economist attempted to rewrite the definition of dictatorship: “China is a dictatorship of a party, not an individual”.


No Wonder the GOP wants to cut funding for  PBS – the truth hurts!

That “party” has more than seventy million members and decisions are based on consensus. The last dictators that ruled mainland China (Mao) and Taiwan (Chiang Kai-shek, who was supported by the US) both died in 1976.

When the United States won the revolution against the British Empire in the 18th century, only 10% of the colonial population was allowed to vote (white men with money and/or property).  

Does that mean the early US was a dictatorship?

The Economist also quoted an editorial on the Caixin Website, saying “Autocracy manufactures turbulence; democracy brews peace.”

Really?

If the Caixin Website were correct that “democracy brews peace”, explain the Guardian’s report of India’s hidden war. “Entire villages have been emptied as tribal communities flee from the burnings, lootings and killings. The civil conflict has left more than 50,000 people camping under tarpaulin sheets without work or food along the roadsides of southern Chhattisgarh.”

India is the world’s largest democracy, but India has fought border wars with China, Nepal and Pakistan.

In addition, while China reduced poverty dramatically, India has done almost nothing for more than six decades.  According to Azad India Foundation, nearly 38% of India’s population (almost 400 million) lives in poverty.

If “democracy brews peace”, it must be boiled in blood, which is evidence that America’s Founding Fathers were right about democracies being ruled by mobs.

Discover Border Crossings and the Blood on Our Hands

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Decline of the American Empire

March 22, 2011

In February 2008, Amy Chu was one of two guests on Riz Khan’s Al Jazeera talk show as an expert on the rise and fall of empires.

LegalTreeHouse.com says of Chua’s second book, which has nothing to do with parenting, “Day of Empire (2007) argues that great civilizations — hyperpowers, as she calls them — rise because of their tolerance of minority cultures and religions. Conversely, hyperpowers decline when this stops, when they, in the words of the Publishers’ Weekly review, “lapse into intolerance and exclusion.”

The other guest speaker is the author of “The Second World” by Parag Khanna, a professor at Princeton.

Chua speaks first saying, “A hyperpower is one of a few remarkable societies in all of history that amassed so much wealth and military might they dominated the world.

Then the host turns to Parag Khanna, who says he does not disagree with Chua.  However, he mentions that the European Union (EU) and China are also capable of influencing affairs and events globally.

While answering the first caller’s question, Chua says her book explores parallels between the Roman Empire and the United States and there are many. She then says that every hyperpower in history was tolerant while rising and intolerant while in decline.

Chua says, she does not mean tolerance for modern human rights and respect for others. She means being tolerant by allowing many different kinds of people regardless of skin color, ethnicity or religion to live, prosper and participate without persecution or limitations.

Today, to be globally dominant, Chua says, a society must attract the best and brightest from all ethnicities around the globe. She says if her thesis is correct, China cannot become a hyperpower but can become a super power since China doesn’t allow many ethnicities to live, work and prosper in China as citizens.

Parag Khanna answers the next question of how the US may react as it is in decline since it has so many weapons of mass destruction at its disposal. He also mentions that the EU is the largest economy in the world — not the US. Then he says India is far from being able to compete globally with the US, the EU and China since it has so many internal challenges to solve.

Learn of India Falling Short

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

How a Unified Korea becomes a Win-Win for China and the U.S.

March 21, 2011

I subscribe to Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.  While finishing my morning exercise routine on the stationary bike, I read an essay written by Sung-Yoon Lee of Keeping the Peace: American in Korea 1950 – 2010.

Professor Lee is an adjunct assistant professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and an associate in research at the Korea Institute at Harvard University.

He writes of the pressure North Korea has applied on the United States to sign a peace treaty that might require US troops to leave South Korea.  Professor Lee feels this would be a mistake, and I agree.

He says, “It is important for Washington to hold quiet consultations with Beijing to prepare jointly for a unified Korea under Seoul’s direction, a new polity that will be free, peaceful, capitalist, pro-U.S. and pro-China.”

This is the first I’ve read anywhere in a Western media source (and Hillsdale College is decidedly conservative in its political stance, which I don’t always agree with) that it is possible a country could be both pro-U.S. and pro-China at the same time.

In fact, Hillsdale College is often anti-leftist (liberal) and anti-entitlement to the point that it has rejected accepting Federal aid even in the form of student scholarships since almost every entitlement dollar from the Federal government comes with strings.

By saying that a unified Korea under Seoul would be both pro-China and pro-U.S. admits China is not the evil dragon so many in the West believe.

When Mao ruled China, North Korea and Communist China seemed as if they were evil twins.  However, today that is not true. In the 1980s, China emerged as a hybrid one-party republic with term limits and age limits so one man would never rule the Middle Kingdom again as Mao did for 26 years.

China became a hybrid capitalist-socialist economy while politically it was an authoritarian one party republic guided by the 1982 Constitution.

Prior to 1911, there was the imperial aristocracy, a “small” middle class (with an emphasis on small) and a huge peasant class living in severe poverty with hard labor and short life spans.

Today, China’s middle class has reached about 300 million and almost 500 million are connected to the Internet, and China’s attempt at censorship does not totally control the flow of global information to those that want it who then share what was learned through Chinese Blogs and e-mails with friends, fans and family.

North Korea is frozen in time, but South Korea and China have evolved and adapted to the global economy.  It would be in China’s interest to see North Korea merge with South Korea and become a capitalist nation open to the world for trade.

In fact, China does more trade with South Korea than the North, which by all accounts is a burden since China often feeds many of North Korea’s citizens to avoid famine sending food grown in China that should have gone to Chinese consumers.

If Korea is unified under Seoul’s leadership, the threat of war in Korea will evaporate.

However, under Pyongyang’s leadership. Korea becomes a larger threat to both China and the US and more difficult to contain.

The US must maintain a military pretense in South Korea and I’m sure China agrees even if it never says so publicly since a war between Pyongyang and Seoul would not be in China’s interest economically.

Learn of China in 1950 Korea Protecting the Teeth

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Sarah Palin is not a Washington, Lincoln or Roosevelt

March 20, 2011

 

Sarah Palin once again opened her mouth and demonstrated her ignorance of history—this time China’s and the world.

While she was in India, Time magazine said of Sarah Palin, “Her personal appeal was apparent to those who attended the event.’She said the right things,’ said Kiran Aurora a retiree from New Delhi. ‘I don’t know if she’s Presidential material, but she’s charismatic.’…”

Time magazine said, “While lauding India’s democratic rise and economic liberalization, she expressed concern over China’s growing economic influence and militarization. She described Chinese ownership of American debt as ‘dangerous’ and questioned the country’s new military buildup.”

Palin said, “I personally have huge military concerns about China. They are stockpiling ballistic missiles, submarines, new age ultra modern fighter aircraft. Is that all for a defensive posture? How could that be when you don’t see a tangible outside threat to that country?”

If Sarah Palin knew history, she would know that “no threat today” does not mean “no threat tomorrow”.

With history as our teacher, we quickly learn that there are no guarantees for the future and that even America is not safe from change.


Is Sarah Palin America’s next Ronald Reagan?

In fact, America has changed much since 1776 when the Founders created a Republic where only 10% of citizen were allowed to vote in national elections.  Today America has become the democracy the Founding Fathers feared.  What started out as 13 states spread along the east coast of North America has grown into a global empire that has hundreds of military bases around the world.

Global Research says, “With more than 2,500,000 U.S. (military) personnel serving across the planet and military bases spread across each continent, it’s time to face up to the fact that our American democracy has spawned a global empire.”

After we add together the distruction and millions of deaths from the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan then include what America, Britain and France are doing in Libya, we have more evidence that explains why China has a right to a strong modern military.

After all, the best offense is a strong defense.

A look at China’s history from the early 19th century starting with the Opium Wars (started by Great Britain and France then later joined by America); the invasion to suppress the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 (American troops also took part in that invasion of China), and two wars with Japan ending in 1945 with the conclusion of World War II, China has good reasons to maintain a strong military for potential future threats.

Every country should have a strong, modern military, which may be the best deterrent to an invasion and war.

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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