Two Republics – Part 4/4

September 24, 2010

Mao Zedong ruled China from 1949 to 1976 when he died.  For a brief period between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Mao was forced to retire.  However, when he launched the Cultural Revolution, the people of China returned Mao to power.

Today, China has a one party system and there is a “small” body of citizens entitled to vote for the top leaders who then rule China. 

China has a Constitution but the language of that Constitution is different from the Constitution of the United States and that Constitution is still being Amended as in the U.S.

China does not have a monarch or a hereditary head of state. The fact that China has both term and  an age limit for holding political positions in the government is proof that China is not a dictatorship, which is a popular opinion held around the world.

Under Mao, who ruled for 27 years and who was known by some as “China’s Modern Emperor”, it would be safe to say a dictator ruled China.

Many may not agree with China’s legal system or laws, but that legal system and those laws were written and adopted by the elected representatives who rule China – not by a dictator or a monarch and they are still subject to change through future amendments as is the United States.

The United States and China are both Republics, and the evidence suggests that China is modeling their Republic after America, but  with a Constitution to fit Chinese culture as the elected leaders of China interpret the document that is China’s law of the land.

Dr. Sun Yat-Sen – China’s Democratic Revolutionary wrote that he wanted to model China’s government after America but by combining Western thought with Chinese tradition.

It appears that is exactly what is happening.

If America had more than two centuries to amend the U.S. Constitution, what will China’s Constitution look like one-hundred-and-seventy-two years from now?

What if China is the real republic transitioning from a socialist state while the US was becoming a socialist democracy.

Return to Two Republics – Part 3

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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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Two Republics – Part 2/4

September 23, 2010

Soon after the Revolution and the formation of the United States of America “white, male property owners twenty-one or older could vote. Some colonists not only accepted these restrictions but also opposed broadening the franchise.”

Duke University professor Alexander Keyssar wrote in The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States: “At its birth, the United States was not a democratic nation—far from it. The very word “democracy” had pejorative overtones, summoning up images of disorder, government by the unfit, even mob rule. In practice, moreover, relatively few of the nation’s inhabitants were able to participate in elections: among the excluded were most African Americans, Native Americans, women, men who had not attained their majority, and white males who did not own land.”  Source: Voting in Early America

Correct me if I’m wrong, but nowhere in Article 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which is about “The Legislative Branch”, does it say that the Republic requires more than one political party to compete for “The Legislature” and “The House”. Source: USConstitution.net/Article 1

This means that political parties like the Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States do not have to exist for the United States to be a Republic.

In fact, the U.S. could have one political party as China does and still be a Republic.

Return to Two Republics – 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. 

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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Two Republics – Part 1/4

September 23, 2010

America and China are both Republics. In this four part series, evidence will prove this to be a fact.

The Declaration of Independence makes no mention of the United States being a Democracy or a Republic.

The Constitution of the United States, the law of the land, says a “Republican Form of Government” rules America and nowhere does the Constitution mention that the United States is a Democracy.

Here is the exact language of Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States.

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion…” Source: USConstitution.net

What is a Republic?

republic n 1: a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and is usually a president; also: a nation or other political unit having such a government

2: a government in which supreme power is held by the citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives governing according to law; also: a nation or other political unit having such a form of government. Source: USConstitution.net/REPUBLIC

Today, many citizens in the United States take for granted that they may vote for elected representatives during elections at the state and federal level.

That may be true but it wasn’t always the case, as you will learn in Part 2. Early in the Republic of the United States, the number of people given the right to vote was extremely limited.

See Dictatorship Defined

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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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Imperial Power or Republic

June 25, 2010

Did you know that after World War II, the CIA recruited Nazi war criminals to help fight the Cold War? Source: Third World Traveler

The Associated Press reported recently in Lessons from failed Cold War spy mission in China that the CIA admitted a cloak-and-dagger plot to destabilize China in 1952.  When the plot failed, there was a cover up. Now, the mistakes the CIA made are being used as a teaching tool so the next time the CIA plots regime change, they have a better chance to succeed.

However, the CIA should have learned that lesson in 1953 when the agency replaced the elected prime minister of Iran, an ardent nationalist, with Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, a dictatorial monarch, who—due to his brutality— was replaced in 1979 by American hating Islamic Fundamentalists. Source: New York Times

Then there was the CIA’s support for the Dalai Lama in the 1960s as reported by the New York Times followed in the 1980s by the The Iran-Contra Affair during Reagan’s Presidency. Later, President H. W. Bush issued six pardons to the Reagan loyalists—or should I say patriots—who went to jail for illegal activities while serving in President Reagan’s administration.

The CIA’s crowning achievement was when the agency become the “World’s Real Drug Lords” as reported in Serendipity, which chronicles the CIA involvement in the drug trade from 1947 to the 1990s.  If you ever wondered how marijuana, cocaine and heroin addicted so many in America and other Western countries, you need look no further. In fact, after the West lost China as the dumping ground for drugs like opium, new customers were needed to keep the gold flowing.

Do these actions by the CIA support the language of the following documents?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Source: Declaration of Independence

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Source: Constitution of the United States

See What is the Truth about Tiananmen Square?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning My Splendid Concubine and writes The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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