After Centuries of Neglect, China’s Forests Renewed

May 20, 2011

I was aware that China was planting trees but I had no idea how many until I read The Great Tree Survey in the May 2011 National Geographic Magazine, which said, “Huge tree-planting programs, especially in China, reduced the net loss of (global) forest even further.”

This triggered my curiosity so I did some “digging” [pun intended].

I already knew from posts I’ve written comparing China to India, China had reduced poverty more than any county on earth while poverty is increasing in countries such as the US and not changing much in India.

The Guardian in the UK reported, “China’s Great Green Wall was launched in 1978… The (Chinese) government has tightened logging restrictions and increased reforestation efforts, including aerial seeding of remote areas.


China planted about 60 billion trees in the last three decades.

 “If the plan is completed as scheduled in 2050, trees will cover over 400 million hectares (about one billion acres) or 42% of China’s landmass…”

By comparison, US forests cover about one-third of the nation, which is currently about 747 million acres down by 300 million acres since the mid-1600s. Source: National Atlas.gov

In 2009, Xinhua News Agency reported, “China would spend 60 billion yuan (8.77 billion US dollars) annually on its greening or tree planting campaigns….”

According to Worldwatch.org, “Nourishing China’s Forests is creating millions of Green jobs.”

New research from the Worldwatch Institute shows that over the next 10 years…planting forests (in China) where there were none could lead to the creation of more than 1 million “green jobs” in 2020 alone. If indirect employment opportunities in related sectors are also included, China’s investment in its forestry sector could generate as many as 2.5 million green jobs in 2020.

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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.

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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Is China Shifting Gears?

May 19, 2011

Is China shifting gears to avoid the Japanese Syndrome, which is what happened to Japan in the 1990s and was known as the Lost Decade? American economist Paul Krugman has described Japan’s Lost Decade as a liquidity trap, in which consumers and firms saved too much overall, causing the economy to slow too much.

In addition, on November 13, 2009, The Economist said, in The Dragon still roars, “Some analysts claim that China today looks ominously like Japan in the late 1980s… Banks’ non-performing loans will surely rise in 2010, and unless the government tightens monetary policy it will store up future problems which could harm economic growth.”

However, on April 10, 2011, Lianting Tu reported for CNBC that China is “Taking a cue from the larger economy, which is looking to make the transition from quantity to quality, China’s four biggest banks have decided to slow down growth and focus instead on better profit margins.”

What Lianting means is China’s banks are not loaning as much money, are making better loans and charging higher interest rates, which boosts profits.

She also writes, “Non-Performing Loans are a Non-Issue” in China.  She says, “For the four major Chinese banks, the average non-performing loan, or NPL, ratio dropped to around 1.1 percent in 2010 from 2 percent in 2009 and is expected to decline further this year, compared with 20 percent in 1990 and around 5 percent only 3 years ago.”

Compared to the United States, China is in good shape. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, total non-performing loans in the US flew from less than 2% in 2007 to almost 6% in 2010—the opposite of China, which has been reducing non-performing loans.

A Chinese friend said most loans get paid off because in China when a loan is made, entire working families cosign, which may be another benefit of a collective culture instead of one based on individualism. In China, mostly everyone in an extended family has to lose jobs and income to default on a loan.

In fact, in the US, bankruptcy cases filed in federal court for the 12-month period ending September 30, 2010 totaled 1,596,355, up 13.9 percent over the same period in 2009.  In 2007, before the 64 trillion dollar global financial crises caused by greed from Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and much of the US banking system, the bankruptcies were about 50% less. Source: Bankruptcy Action.com

Discover Deng Xiaoping’s 20/20 Vision

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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.

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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Chicken Little-Henny Penny says, “China’s Bubble is Bursting!”

May 17, 2011

The Chicken Little-Henny Penny story is a fable about a chicken that believes the world is ending. The phrase “The sky is falling!” features prominently in the story and is now a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent.

Chicken Little’s warnings or predictions of calamity, especially without justification, dates from 1895.

Because of this, the tale has become politicized and one example appeared on ZeroHedge.com when Tyler Durden submitted this post, “Chinese Real Estate Bubble Pops: Beijing Real Estate Prices Plunge 27% In One Month”.

Durden writes, “Prices of new homes in China’s capital plunged 26.7% month-on-month in March, the Beijing News reported Tuesday, citing data from the city’s Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission.”

Durden says, “IF” the pummeling in the Beijing real estate market shifts to other cities not only is the Chinese tightening regime over, but the SHCOMP (?) in the next few weeks could get very interesting as people understand the world’s biggest marginal bubble has popped.”

“IF” I had a dollar for every time I’ve read a “Sky is Falling” prediction of China’s economy, I’d take my wife out to dinner, shopping at Nordstrom’s and a movie on the weekend.

China’s real estate market only represents about 15% of China’s GDP while in America, that number is more than 70% of GDP, which explains why America is in the cellar with its economy and China is still growing but just slower.

Meanwhile, Tory Capital.com reports “China’s First Quarter 2011 GDP Rises 9.7 Percent,” while Mostly Economics.com compares that to the US annual rate of 3.1%.

A better, possibly more informed comparison between China and America’s economies may be found at Heritage.org where Derek Scissors, Ph.D. writes, “Its (China) raw population means that the PRC will likely pass the U.S. at some point after a resumption of market reform.”

However, Scissors says for that to happen, “The 2012 Communist Party Congress (must) nullify actions by the 2002 Party Congress and restore Deng Xiaoping’s economic model—this would enable roughly two more decades of rapid growth, perhaps in the 7 percent to 8 percent range, then gently decreasing to the 5 percent to 6 percent range over time. China would then surpass the U.S.” as the world’s largest economy.

Back to Durden’s Chicken Little-Henny Penny statement. The drop in “new housing prices” in Beijing may be a response to complaints from the people that prices were out of reach of many. Instead of a bubble bursting, the Party may have let some air out so it would not explode as it did in the US in 2008.

Discover The Fear of Mao Buying the World

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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.

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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The “Mandate of Heaven’s” Gobal Revelation – Part 2/2

May 15, 2011

Global history shows that not all previous civilizations collapsed at the same time.

After the Western Roman Empire (500 AD) and the Han Dynasty (219 AD) were gone, the Byzantine Empire thrived in the Middle East for almost a thousand years (500 – 1453 AD), while the Tang Dynasty survived until 906 AD and the Yuan Dynasty (the Mongols) to 1368 AD to be replaced by the Ming then Qing Dynasties.

The British Empire survived until 1947 then vanished as an empire as the United States became a global super power after World War II.

However, many people are not aware of The Mandate of Heaven’s cycle, which leads to behavior that repeats the same mistakes that caused the fall of other civilizations.

American style democracy, capitalism, socialism, jet planes, the combustion engine, telephones, electricity, the Internet, and the iPad are not going to save civilization, as we know it today.

The reason for this is that human nature is what causes the downfall of civilizations.

History shows that during the good times at the height of a civilization such as Rome or the Han Dynasty, most people take the quality of life for granted as if it will never end.  Once that happens, the end begins.


The Mandate of Heaven explained on a global scale by Warren Edward Pollock

In the video, Warren Pollack explains how the Communist Party returned China to stability after chaos and anarchy swept China after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. If the Party continues to maintain domestic stability and keep people working, China may survive as the civilization it is becoming for a few centuries before the next collapse.

Since Mao died in 1976, the internal goal of the People’s Republic of China has been domestic stability. With domestic stability, we see China returning to that period in the dynastic cycle where harmony and prosperity rules leading to a period of stability.

To understand what happened in China, I suggest reading The Roots of Madness.

Edward Pollock says, “If China stood as the world’s top country, it would not act like the United States, which has been irresponsible, lazy and greedy and engaged in robbery and cheating. They (US)  have brought economic recession to the whole world.”

If we look to the dynastic cycle as a guide, it would seem that the United States has entered the cycle’s stage of decay moving toward a collapse.

However, with the weapons of mass destruction that America has in its arsenal (more than any other nation even the USSR), could the US, like a drowning man, pull the rest of global civilization down with it?

Return to The Mandate of Heaven’s Global Revelation – Part 1

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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.

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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Elephants

May 13, 2011

I’ve written of China’s Giant Panda and Siberian Tigers in northeast China, but I had no idea that China also had elephants and not caged in zoos but living in their natural habitat.

It it hadn’t been for Go Daddy’s CEO, Bob Parsons, shooting an elephant in Zimbabwe and stirring up PETA, a Politically Correct gang of animal lovers in the US, I may have never been curious to see if China had elephants.

I discovered China may offer a safer haven for elephants than most nations that still have pachyderms living in their natural environment.


Wild Kingdom – China’s Wild Elephant Valley

Elephant Aid says, “Most people associate China and elephants with the demand for ivory but although China only has a small number of elephants it is one of the only range states where numbers are on the rise.

“China’s elephants can only be found in the extreme south of the Yunnan province bordering Burma and Laos. Their range includes Xishuangbanna (XSNB) and the Nangunhe Nature Reserves.”


BBC – Wild Elephants in China

“The elephant is a protected species in China,” Elephant Aid says, “and the government has taken steps to conserve areas of elephant habitat including moving people out of the reserves in a bid to minimize human-elephant conflict.

“Chinese official have reported that the population is growing through both reproduction and immigration of herds from Laos. This is attributed to the lack of a threat from poachers in China and the abundant availability of fodder.”

According to Elephant.se, there are about 450 captive elephants in the US and less than 4,000 captive elephants globally.  China has about 30 captive elephants.

All About Wildlife.com says there are 40 to 50 thousand wild Asian elephants and between 470,000 and 690,000 wild African Elephants.

Two hundred or more wild elephants live 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.

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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