A Snapshot of Democracy in Asia – Part 5/6

October 1, 2011

Among the so-called Asian democracies, India is next.  The Guardian says of corruption in India “All your life you pay for things that should be free.”

The Guardian reported that “one ordinary man” had to pay at least a third of his income to survive. “Of the 40,000 rupees (£520) I earn a month from my restaurant, I pay at least a third in bribes,” Vishal, 26, said. But bribery also extends into his personal life. Vishal has two young children and to get the eldest into the best local school he paid a “donation” of 25,000 rupees (£340) in cash to the headmaster.”

Economy Watch.com said, “India’s underground economy is believed to be 50 percent of the country’s GDP – US$640 billion at the end of 2008,” and Janamejayan’s Weblog goes into detail of one scam that cost $40 billion, which is 3% of India’s GDP.


Poverty in India, 2011

In addition, there is confusion over how many live in poverty in India.

In 2009, the United Nations Development Programme reported that literacy in India was about 74 percent, while the CIA Factbook set the literacy rate at 61 percent (literacy and poverty are linked), which explains The World Bank’s estimates of poverty in India at 41.6 percent.

However, the Hindustan Times says for 2011 that there are 406 million poor in India, which is a third of the population—an increase of 8% since 2009.

In addition, a study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative using a Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) found that there were 645 million poor living under the MPI in India

In 2009, India’s population was about 1.2 billion and the country had 6 nationally recognized political parties and about 46 recognized state/provincial parties. Source: List of Recognized Political Parties in India (Wiki)

India has been the world’s largest democracy since 1947, and although India claims to have reduced poverty from about 53% in 1973-74 to  25.6% in 1999-2000, the definition and difficulty in reporting the exact numbers casts doubt on this claim.


Poverty in Calcutta

However,  in the same time span, China reduced poverty from 64% to less than 3%, and China is not a multi-party democracy.

In addition, according to Time’s Global Spin, a blog about the world, its people and its politics, “The size of India’s middle class was 50 million in 2005, according to this report by McKinsey,” and McKinsey may be wrong and the number may be lower.

In contrast, Martin Trieu, President of Tourmaline Capital, estimates “there are at least 250-300 million people (in China) who now fall into this (middle class) category.”

Helen H. Wang of Forbes Magazine’s China Tracker agrees with Trieu, and says, “Today, China’s middle class is already larger than the entire population of the United States and is expected to reach 800 million in fifteen years.”

Continued on October 2, 2011 in A Snapshot of Democracy in Asia – Part 6 or return to Part 4

______________

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.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

Leave a Comment » | capitalism, China, Communism, crime, history, India, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

A Snapshot of Democracy in Asia – Part 2/6

September 28, 2011

When you discover the roller-coaster ride of corruption, protests, shootings/assassinations, and military coups/dictatorships that have taken place in the Republic of (South) Korea [RoK], it makes Japan look honest in comparison and provides more evidence of why the West and America, in particular, wants China to become a similar multi-party democracy.

On August 14, 1948, Syngman Rhee became the first president of the RoK. In May 1952, Rhee pushed through constitutional amendments, which made the presidency a directly elected position. To do this, he declared martial law, arrested opposing members of parliament, demonstrators, and anti-government groups.  In 1954, Rhee regained control of parliament by fraudulently pushing through an amendment that exempted him from the eight-year term limit.

Then in 1956,  Rhee’s administration arrested members of the opposing party and executed the leader after accusing him of being a North Korean spy.

The U.S. Department of State says, “President Syngman Rhee was forced to resign in April 1960 following a student-led uprising.”

The Second Republic under the leadership of Chang Myon ended one  year later when Major General Park Chung-hee led a military coup. Park declared martial law, dissolved the National Assembly and suspended the constitution, which resulted in mass protests and a return to democracy.

Park’s rule, which resulted in tremendous economic growth and development but increasingly restricted political freedoms, ended with his assassination in 1979, when a powerful group of military officers, led by Lieutenant General Chun Doo-hwan, declared martial law and took power.

Then on May 18, 1980, students at Chonnam National University protested, which led to the Gwangju Massacre with estimates of the civilian death toll ranging from a few dozen to 2,000. Later, a full investigation by the civilian government reported nearly 200 deaths and 850 injured.

It wouldn’t be until October 1987 that a revised Constitution would be approved by a national referendum leading to the direct elections of President Roh Tae-woo in the first direct presidential election in 16 years.

In 1997, the country suffered a severe economic crises leading to the next civilian president, Roh Moo-hyun being impeached in March 2004 on charges of a breach of election laws and corruption. While under investigation for bribery and corruption, he committed suicide.

Roh’s successor was Lee Myung-bak, who was inaugurated in February 2008 and is still in office.

The CIA says 15% of the RoK’s population lives below the poverty line, while poverty in the United States in 2009 was 14.3%.

In August 2011, CBS reported that 20 percent of American children lived in poverty.

In fact, Homelessness in America remains an issue of deep concern. The American dream is a distant one for about 2.3 million to 3.5 million Americans that do not have a place to call home and about 1.35 million of the homeless are children.

Continued on September 29, 2011 in A Snapshot of Democracy in Asia – Part 3 or return to Part 1

______________

SIDE NOTE: The Gwangju Massacre (1980) in The Republic of (South) Korea—a strong ally of the United States—is the second massacre “I never heard of” while writing this Blog.

However, annually, the media and American politicians remind us of the so-called Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, which I wrote of in The Tiananmen Square Hoax after learning from Wiki Leaks that a massacre never happened.

In addition, the protests in Beijing in 1989 were never a democracy movement, which was revealed by a BBC documentary. I wrote of this in What is the Truth about Tiananmen Square?

Then there was the first massacre “I never heard of” until I stumbled on it by accident while researching another post. I wrote of that massacre [by a strong ally of America] in the 2/28 Massacre in Taiwan.

Why is it that the world knows so much about the Tiananmen Square Incident while hardly anyone knows about the Gwangju Massacre and the one in Taiwan?

______________

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.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

6 Comments | capitalism, China, Communism, crime, economy, history, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

A Snapshot of Democracy in Asia – Part 1/6

September 27, 2011

The partnership between capitalism and multi-party democracies in Asia is a joy to behold.

After spending hours researching Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, India and Taiwan, I understand why the West and America, in particular, keep pressuring mainland China to allow democracy to flourish.

The best way to discover what would happen to China if it were to become a parliamentary multi-party democracy is to look at the Asian democracies surrounding it, and we start with Japan.

In 2009, the Guardian said of Japan, “After more than 50 years of almost uninterrupted power, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been buried in a general election. Once before, in 1993, change came when a coalition of opposition parties briefly took power, but the LDP still held on to a majority in the Diet’s powerful lower house. This time … the center-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took more than 300 of 480 seats in the lower house. The LDP rules no more.”

The Guardian says the DPJ, which ended the five-decade rule of the LDP, was “funded to some degree by the US, (and) was put in place to marginalize all left-wing opposition. This involved some strong-arm tactics, especially against the unions…”

The trail of corruption in Japan is long.

Werner Pacha’s study of Corruption in Japan from an Economist’s Perspective says, “Ccorruption can quite simply be understood as the use of public office for private gains.”

Then Pacha reveals a series of scandals starting with the 1954 Shipbuilding Scandal, which contributed to the collapse of the Yoshida cabinet sending one person to prison of the 71 arrested.

Then there was the Lockheed Scandal of 1976, resulting in the arrest of Prime Minister Tanaka for having received payments from Lockheed (an American defense contractor) of about 500 million Yen.

In 1988-89, there was the Recruit Scandal, which concluded with the resignation of Prime Minister Takeshita on April 1989.

In 1991, the Kyôwa Affair, another scandal, included former Prime Minister Suzuki and Kyôwa, a steel-girder construction firm.

Briefly, there followed the Sagawa Kyûbin Scandal of 1991-1993, the Tax Evasion Scandal of 1993,  the Genecon Corruption Scandal of 1993, the Sôkaiya Scandals of 1997, and the 1996 – 1998 Scandals within the Elite Bureaucracy.

The CIA (in 2007) reported that 15.7 percent of the people in Japan lived below the poverty line. In comparison, only 2.8 (in 2007) percent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) live below the poverty line.

According to a chart on page 7 of his study, Pacha reveals that the multi-party democratic Republic of (South) Korea (RoK) is worse than Japan. South Korea’s democracy snapshot will appear tomorrow.

Continued on September 28, 2011 in A Snapshot of Democracy in Asia – Part 2

______________

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.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

1 Comment | capitalism, China, Communism, crime, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

No Link for Misguided Misinformation – Part 4/5

September 25, 2011

Kier clearly does not know what he is writing about when he said,  “At least those in Taiwan and Hong Kong don’t need to worry about their masters keeping SARS/bird flu/ environmental disasters/fake eggs and milk etc. state secrets because their deaths would be of less worry than the danger of inconveniencing the Party.”

If you were to read Punishing Food Fraud in China, you would discover that cover ups of tainted food products have happened in the US too, and the people responsible are seldom if ever punished by the legal system, while those that are caught in China may face long jail terms and the possibility of execution.

As for the attempt to hide the  SARS/bird flu, a high-ranked Party official, who was also a Western trained doctor, leaked the news to the world, and he wasn’t executed or tossed in prison. He did get in trouble, but he lives at home enjoying his family, his life and his retirement.

There is no secret that China is suffering from pollution due to becoming the factory floor of the world after 1980.

In fact, many American manufacturers moved to China so they wouldn’t have to pay the price to be environmentally clean in the United States, which means since they couldn’t pollute legally in the West and/or America, they moved their operations to China where strict environmental laws did not exist at the time.

However, a few years ago, China consulted Greenpeace for advice on where to start cleaning up the environment and have passed laws to start the process.

Continued on September 26, 2011 in No Link for Misguided Misinformation – Part 5 or return to Part 3

______________

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.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

Leave a Comment » | America, business, capitalism, China, Chinese history, Communism, economy, environment, government, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

No Link for Misguided Misinformation – Part 3/5

September 24, 2011

Kier is correct about censorship in China, but China does not have a freedom of the press clause in its Constitution, and Saudi Arabia is even more repressive but that doesn’t stop the US from buying Saudi oil. In addition, the major media in China is owned by the government.

How many that read this post know that freedom of expression in the United States only applies to criticisms of the American government, and workers do not have freedom of expression in the private sector? In America, it is highly possible to get fired for saying something that is forbidden or unacceptable by a company one works for.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that students attending America’s public schools do not have freedom of expression in the classroom if it disrupts the learning environment.

In China, there is censorship of the media and of the Internet, but it is a leaky bucket.  Books that are banned are only banned in Mandarin but that does not mean they are not available to the general population.

Bookstores, both state and private owned, often have banned titles available in English or other languages and since learning English is mandatory in the public schools, many in China may buy and read banned books without a problem.

In addition, there is an active black market in Mandarin translations of banned books as there is a black market for pirated DVDs of Western movies and TV series (some of which are banned in China). The Chinese people are notorious for finding ways to get around government rules.

As for censorship of the Internet, that is a joke.  I have friends in China that often use proxy servers daily to log onto the Internet and bypass the censors to access information in the West that China’s censors fail to block.  It takes a few minutes of effort for those that want to access censored sites on the Internet, but millions do it daily. At its worst, censorship in China is a nuisance.

In addition, there are more Blogs in China than any other country, and those Blogs are actively expressing themselves regardless of the censors, which has led to reversals of laws and government policies unpopular with millions of people.

In fact, my Blog is a WordPress Blog and WordPress is censored in China, but I have readers from China logging in daily to read my posts.

Continued on September 25, 2011 in No Link for Misguided Misinformation – Part 4 or return to Part 2

______________

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.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

4 Comments | America, China, Chinese history, Communism, education, government, history, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »