Recently, Barbara Walters talked to President Obama about North Korea’s shelling of a South Korean island near the DMZ.
Obama said South Korea was one of America’s most important alliances (in Asia), which has to be true since South Korea has many Christians (about a third of the population). It also has a strong open market, capitalist economy and a democratic government.
However, although China is considered North Korea’s only friend and ally, the two countries are different today.
First, China left the autocratic Maoist revolutionary form of government behind soon after Mao’s death.
Second, China is a republic that appears to be moving toward democracy and has an open market economy similar to South Korea’s.
I said in a previous post, “China’s reluctance to put public pressure on Pyongyang to step off the warhorse might be because the Chinese feel it would be like pressuring a family member.” Source: China and North Korea
That may no longer be the case.
Austin Ramzy writing for TIME says, “The news, delivered at a rare Sunday press conference, was that China was calling for emergency consultations between itself, North and South Korea, the U.S., Japan and Russia… it was a welcome call for calm by the North’s key ally.”
Many in the world should be glad of China’s relationship with the Hermit Kingdom. If it weren’t for China, there would be no one North Korea would listen to.
Walters also was in China with President Richard Nixon in 1972, and she paints a picture of China about thirty-eight years ago that vividly offers a contrast to today’s China.
Then in April 2009, Walters asked Jiang Zemin (China’s third president after Mao died) what happened to the famous “tank man” of the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989.
Walters says, “Did you execute him? We heard he was arrested and executed.”
Zemin replied that he did not know what happened to the man. Then he said he thinks the man was never killed.
______________
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 look China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Al Jazerra explores topics about China seldom heard in the Western Media. Riz Khan, the host of this program, moderates a panel of global experts discussing China’s role in Africa.
If this is a topic that interests you, I suggest you read Leopold’s Ghostby Adam Hochschild for a balance and comparison.
Khan says that between 1998 and 2006, Africa’s exports to China increased 2,126% while exports only increased 139% to the European Union and 402% to the US.
Due to China’s incredible modernization growth rate, China has become dependent on resources from Africa, South America, Australia and Southeast Asia.
Some critics, which is to be expected, complain that China is robbing Africa of its natural resources and ignoring human rights violations and other humanitarian concerns.
However, supporters say that due to this trade with China, economies in Sub-Saharan Africa have grown an average of six percent a year since 2004.
Khan’s program explores if China is exploiting Africa or creating opportunities for economic growth.
Khan’s guests are Richard Behar, an American reporter, who wrote China Storms Africa. He says China is doing both good and bad at this time, and there is no way to predict the outcome. He feels China is copying what the West already did.
Dr. Afele says there is a difference. African governments opened to China. China did not invade Africa as the West did in the 19th and 20th centuries. China was invited in.
From Washington D.C. comes David Shinn, a former US ambassador to Ethiopia, who is now a professor at George Washington University.
Shinn says the US buys more oil from Africa but China buys more minerals and hardwood timber. All of the major players in Africa have the same interests—resource extraction and selling goods to Africans.
Juliana, a caller from Paris, asked, “Why is China being demonized?” She mentions that all Western countries did this. She points out that the differences are that China’s interests are for good because China’s focus is to invest in Africa.
Richard Behar replies that no one is demonizing China here.
Then Behar spends time criticizing China by slipping in the standard complaints from a Westerner’s point of view.
I suggest you learn more about Oil and Death in Africa to discover more on this topic.
______________
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.
Ted Koppel writes an interesting and revealing commentary for the Washington Post of how the US media reports opinions as if they were facts.
Koppel writes, “While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic.… But when our accountants, bankers and lawyers, our doctors and our politicians tell us only what we want to hear, despite hard evidence to the contrary, we are headed for disaster.”
For example, a Reuter’s piece on Yahoo had this lead paragraph in the morning, “China warning on Friday against military acts near its coastline…” as if China would retaliate if anything happened.
From comments I’ve read on the Internet, the US mob reacted as expected calling President Obama a loser for not retaliating in North Korea.
In the afternoon, the replacement lead paragraph said, “China said on Friday it was determined to prevent an escalation of this week’s violence on the Korean peninsula…” I’ve read what the Chinese minister said and this is closer to the truth.
It is obvious a hot-blooded reporter wrote the morning piece for the mob that wants war, since there are voices in South Korea and in the US screaming for blood regardless of the outcome.
Mobs seldom pay attention to history. It takes wiser heads in positions of power to prevail. In the US media and often in Washington DC, there is seldom this level of wisdom to be seen.
An example of a government reacting to what a nationalistic mob demanded led to World War I. By the time that war ended more than sixteen million had been killed, and this all took place because one man had been assassinated.
The same thing happened in Vietnam where more than three million died after the LBJ White House lied and the US media stirred the mob to action.
Over Iraq, opinions and White House lies repeated in the US media stirred the mob again and that led to a war where hundreds of thousands have already died and the violence in Iraq hasn’t ended.
This brings up another point raised from Koppel’s commentary.
Koppel aptly reveals that today’s “free” press has abandoned the truth, because there are millions of Americans that worship the opinions of people such as “Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly – individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.”
The opposite often happens in China between the state-run media and nationalistic mob.
For example, in May 1999, Chinese nationalism and anger ran high after the US bombing of the PRC’s embassy in Belgrade. Instead of fanning the flames, the state-run media calmed the mob.
Then there was the April 2001 Hainan Island incident caused by the collision of a US spy plane with a PLA fighter jet killing the Chinese pilot. The same thing happened.
Next, there was the recent Senkaku Island dispute between China and Japan.
In all three incidents, the state-run media in China calmed nationalist pride and the people’s demand for blood.
It is ironic that in America, the opinionated, biased voices from the so-called “free” media often feeds the mob’s frenzy and the mob signals what it wants to hear, which may lead to another war unless wiser heads prevail.
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.
China is not responsible. The issue is more complicated than that.
I suggest that most Americans look in a mirror to see whom to blame.
National, consumer and housing debt is part of the problem.
James Wood, an eHow Contributor, says, “Totaling all of the debt outstanding for every adult in the United States yields a stunning result. With $43,000 of national debt, $10,360 of consumer debt and $60,000 of housing debt, the average debt for every adult in the United States is $113,360, as of 2010. With a median household income of just $50,000, that places a huge strain on the ability of people to pay their debts.”
While the government and consumers are paying off this debt, how can they spend money on other items?
Another part of problem is that many Americans are “good” at blaming others.
In fact, many Americans are “good” at blaming others for just about all the problems in the US.
When kids don’t learn, it is the teachers or the unions’ fault—not the kids or the parents, who spend more time with their children than teachers.
I blame the lawyers.
After all, “According to the American Bar Association there are currently 1,116,967 lawyers practicing in the United States. That is approximately one lawyer for every 300 people, or approximately .36% of the total population. These statistics relate only to lawyers currently practicing and maintaining their licenses.” Source: Wise Geek.com
Six Wise.com says, “The U.S. legal system ensures that every American who feels they have been injured or victimized is able to seek justice through the court system.…However, in recent decades the United States has earned the nickname as the most “litigious society” out there, in part due to major increases in lawsuits involving everything from hot spilled coffee to neighbors’ disputes.”
If it weren’t for all these people hiring lawyers to file lawsuits, there would be more money to spend on consumer goods, which would put more people to work.
See how easy it is to blame something or someone else for America’s lost job and economic problems.
There are jobs out there.
After all, there are eleven million illegal aliens in the US working in the fields, cleaning swimming pools and houses, mowing lawn, etc. I see my neighbors Latin housekeepers arrive every week and they drive a late model SUV that I can’t even afford.
The solution might be to stop paying people unemployment benefits and tell them to take one of those jobs the illegal aliens are doing.
Those jobs might not pay enough to support the average American lifestyle but they would put food on the table.
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.
China’s longest lasting dynasties survived due to one or more great emperors.
After China was unified by Qin Shi Huangdi (221 – 207 BC), there were only five dynasties that survived for long periods — the Han, Tang, Sung, Ming, and Qing Dynasties.
Although China’s civilization survived, the country’s history is rampant with rebellions, palace coups, corruption among palace officials, and insurrections. Between the five longest dynasties, the country usually fell apart into warring states as it did after 1911.
The most successful emperors managed to stabilize the country while managing wisely as the Communist Party has done since 1976.
EmperorHan Wudi (ruled 141 – 87 B.C.) of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – 219 A.D.) was fifteen when he first sat on the throne.
Wudi is considered one of the greatest emperors in China’s history. He expanded the borders, opened the early Silk Road, developed the economy, and established state monopolies on salt, liquor and rice.
After the Han Dynasty collapsed, China fell apart for almost 400 years before the Tang Dynasty was established (618 -906). The Tang Dynasty was blessed with several powerful emperors.
The first was Emperor Tang Taizong (ruled 627-649).
According to historical records, Wu Zetain, China’s only woman emperor also ruled wisely.
Emperor Tang Zuanzong , Zetain’s grandson, ruled longer than any Tang emperor and the dynasty prospered while he sat on the throne.
After the dynasty fell, there would be short period of about 60 years before the Sung Dynasty reestablished order and unified the country again.
The second emperor of the Sung Dynasty, Sung Taizong (ruled 976 – 997) unified China after defeating the Northern Han Dynasty. The third emperor, Sung Zhenzong (ruled 997-1022) also deserves credit for maintaining stability.
The Sung Dynasty then declined until a revival by Sung Ningzong (ruled 1194 – 1224) After he died, the dynasty limped along until Kublai Khan defeated the last emperor in 1279.
After conquering all of China, Kublai Khan founded the Mongol, Yuan Dynasty (1277-1367). Not long after Kublai died, the dynasty was swept away.
In 1368, a peasant rebellion defeated the Yuan Dynasty and drove the Mongols from China.
The Ming Dynasty (1271 – 1368) is known for rebuilding, strengthening and extending the Great Wall among a list of other accomplishments.
Historical records show that the rule of the third Ming Emperor, Ming Chengzu (ruled 1403 – 1424), was the most prosperous period.
After Chengzu, the dynasty would decline until 1567 when Emperor Ming Muzong reversed the decline.
His son, Emperor Ming Shenzong, also ruled wisely from 1573 to 1620.
After Shenzong’s death, the Ming Dynasty quickly declined and was replaced by the Qing Dynasty in 1644.
The Opium Wars started by England and France and the Taiping Rebellion led by a Christian convert in the 19th century would contribute to the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.
The Qing Dynasty was fortunate to have three powerful, consecutive emperors: Emperor Kangxi (1661 – 1722), Yongzhen (1722-1735) and Qianlong (1735-1796). For one-hundred-and-thirty-five years, China remained strong and prosperous.
After the corrupt Qing Dynasty was swept aside in 1911 by a rebellion led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, China fell apart and warlords fought to see who would rule China.
When Sun Yat-sen died, the republic he was building in southern China fell apart when Chiang Kai-shek broke the coalition that Sun Yat-sen had formed between the Nationalist and Communist Parties. Mao’s famous Long March shows how the Communists survived.
Then Japan invaded, and China would be engulfed in war and rebellion until 1945 when World War II ended. After World War II, the rebellion between the Nationalist and Communists ended in victory for the Communists in 1949.
This victory was made possible because the Communists were supported by China’s peasants that hated, despised and distrusted the Nationalist Party, which represented China’s ruling elite.
The Communists gained the support of the peasants by treating the peasants with respect and promising reforms that would end the suffering.
Then Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution extended the peasants suffering.
However, since the early 1980s, the Communist Party has been working to fulfill the promises made during the revolution, and the lifestyles of China’s peasants are slowly improving.
There are many impatient voices in the West and a few in China that are not happy with the speed of China’s reforms or how the Party has handled them.
In fact, China has modernized and improved lifestyles in China since the early 1980s at a pace that has never been seen before in recorded history.
_______________
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 love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
iLook China 