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

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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.

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Beware of Biased Rumors Masquerading as Truth

June 16, 2011

A Music Blog Post written by Caryn Ganz (posted May 13, 2011) reveals how often the Western media plays into the hand of rumors and misinformation. Bias has much to do with that as you may discover.

A 2010 Pew Global Attitudes Project revealed that unfavorable views of China in the West are legion.  The question Pew asked was, “Please tell me if you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable opinion of China.”

The response—sixty-one percent (50 million) of those that responded in Germany had an unfavorable opinion of China; France 59% (39 million); Turkey 61% (45 million); Spain 38% (17.5 million); United States 36% (112 million), and Britain 35% (22 million).  More than 285 million minds and mouths may have a negative opinion of China. To see the entire list (for other countries), click the link for the Pew Project.


Mao died in 1976 and the Communist Party guided by Deng Xiaoping repudiated Revolutionary Maoism. When anyone mentions Mao, they are talking of history—not today.

Just to make clear what an “opinion” means, here are a few definitions: judgment or belief not founded on certainty or proof; the prevailing or popular feeling or view (public opinion); an opinion formed by judging something

Just because people believe something that does not mean it is a fact.

With this in mind, consider that many of those people that have unfavorable opinions of China are publishers, editors and reporters working in the Western Media spreading rumors and misinformation in what they write and report.

For example the media rumor mill reported Bob Dylan was refused permission to perform in China.

In fact, Western newspapers and magazines made all kinds of incorrect claims that Bob Dylan played to half-empty audiences, and the Chinese government censored what he would play when he performed in China

Bob Dylan was not pleased. In fact, Bob Dylan wrote on his Website, “Allow me to clarify a couple of things about this so-called China controversy which has been going on for over a year. First of all, we were never denied permission to play in China….”

Dylan said, “According to Mojo magazine, the concerts were attended mostly by ex-pats and there were a lot of empty seats. Not true. If anybody wants to check with any of the concertgoers they will see that it was mostly Chinese young people that came.… Out of 13,000 seats we sold about 12,000 of them, and the rest of the tickets were given away to orphanages.”

“As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing…. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.”

If you are interested in everything Bob Dylan said, I suggest you visit his Website (the link above).

For those readers with open minds, if we are to learn anything from this,
“It is to take with a grain of salt everything you hear or read in the World about China.”  Most of it will be opinions written as fact based on bias, which shows us that Yellow Journalism  is alive and well in freedom land proving that in the West we have the freedom to lie and pretend it is the truth.

To discover the possible truth about other opinions of China, learn from What is the Truth about Tiananmen Square? and/or 2/28 Massacre in Taiwan

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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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Defector / Traitor (2/4)

August 5, 2010

One of the few defector/traitors I discovered was Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat, who defected to Australia in 2005. He was a university student in Beijing during the so-called “pro-democracy” movement that led to the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. (also discover What is the Truth about Tiananmen Square?)

Some of the student leaders were Chen’s friends. However, the Tiananmen Square incident did not start as a “pro-democracy” movement as many in the West believe.  It started as a protest by Chinese workers over political corruption in the government.  If you want to learn more about the Tiananmen Square incident, I recommend seeing all nine parts of China’s Capitalist Revolution.


The Communists say that  Shen Yun is a political tool of Falun Gong

Another Chinese defector was Hu Na, a former professional tennis player, who defected to the United States in 1982, which kicked off a Cold War era diplomatic incident between the US and China.

In July 1982, while touring California with a Chinese government-sponsored tennis team, Hu Na sought refuge in the home of friends. In April 1983, she requested political asylum, claiming that she feared the Chinese government would compel her to join the Communist Party of China against her will under threat of persecution.

That is a strange excuse to defect, since the rulers of China, the members of the Communist Party, are the elite. Of course, in 1982 at the beginning of Den Xiaoping‘s “Getting Rich is Glorious” capitalist movement, the benefits hadn’t arrived yet. Maybe Hu Na didn’t want to wait like the 1.3 billion left behind who had no choice.

Return to Defector/Traitor – Part 1, go to Part 3 or discover more about The Falun Gong Machine

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Orphan’s Life

April 2, 2010

More than 90% of babies in Chinese orphanages are girls. Prior to 1949, it was common for parents to murder girl infants. From the 1950s to the end of the 1970s, due to Mao’s leadership and a tough stance for women’s equality, the death rate went down. Then in the 1980s, with the population growing too fast, a desperate government implemented the one-child policy.

After that, many girl babies went missing or were abandoned to state-run orphanages. To end this tragedy, the government eventually allowed rural families to have two children per family—hoping for a boy.

The conditions in these rural, state-run orphanages are often not ideal. Girls, who are not adopted, usually end up being the caregivers for the younger children. Since these orphan caregivers were raised without the love of parents and siblings, they may not be loving themselves creating a cold environment to grow up in.

abandoned at birth

It isn’t as if China’s government has done nothing to stop a practice that has been around for thousands of years. During the 90s, tougher laws were passed but often ignored. Government inspectors were sent to rural areas to enforce these laws, but it isn’t easy controlling a population of 1.3 billion scattered over a mountainous country almost the size of the United States.

I will not criticize the Chinese government for these conditions. I’ve been to China and understand the challenges. What would you do if you had inherited a medieval country in 1949 that was bankrupt due to the Kuomintang looting the banks and treasury as they fled to Taiwan under American protection? Then there is a culture reaching back thousands of years where girls were considered worthless. That is a lot to overcome.

Discover Gendercide in China and India, and also see the conclusion of one orphan’s journey in Saying Goodbye

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse