Scapegoating China and Manipulating the Opinions of Americans – Part 1/4

November 5, 2012

If the traditional media in the United States or politicians campaigning for election are not bashing China, he or she may lose votes and/or an audience.

Why? Because many people want to believe what they want to believe. It does not matter what the facts from reputable unbiased sources reveal.

“Older Americans and Republicans are especially concerned about China’s emergence as a world power. About six-in-ten people ages 50 to 64 (62%) and 65 or older (59%) consider this a major threat to the U.S., compared with 48% of 30- to 49-year-olds and 43% of people younger than 30. Similarly, 60% of Republicans consider the rise of China as a world power a major threat, while 48% of Democrats share this view.” Source: Pew Global.org

In fact, I still run into Blog comments where people bash China for the tainted drywall (2009) or infant formula (2008).  However, these same China bashers will not mention that “Foodborne illnesses kill 3,000 Americans each year. Nearly 130,000 more are hospitalized. The aggregate cost of foodborne illnesses to the U.S. economy in 2011 was $77.7 billion.” Source: The Daily Ticker


Financial Crisis History Lesson – Part 1

Another example is when the US media focuses on economic problems in China that may lead to a financial disaster there. “China’s economic model that delivered three decades of double-digit growth is running out of steam and the country’s next leaders face tough choices to keep incomes rising.” Source: Yahoo! Finance and the Associated Press

Is it possible that all this attention on China is to take American minds off problems in the United States?

For example, during the three decades of double digit growth in China, in the United States there was Black Monday on October 19, 1987 when stock markets around the world crashed. In the US alone, the value of stocks dropped 22.78%.

Then the savings and loan crises in the US led to the failure of 747 out of 3,234 savings and loan associations caused in part by the tax reform act of 1986 that removed many tax shelters, especially for real estate investments.

Continued on October 30, 2012 in Scapegoating China … 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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Free to Lie – Part 1/3

July 12, 2011

China’s central government is often criticized in the West for filtering the Internet and controlling what is published in China’s state-owned media.

The West should also be criticized for the exact opposite, which is allowing too much freedom to lie, which often leads to hate, bad politics and worse economic policy.

In fact, we seldom hear any criticism in the media of the lies and misinformation that appears in the West where abusing freedom of expression to mislead the public has become the art of repeating something that is not a fact until it is considered the truth.

Recently, I wrote “A Short History of the National Debt” and posted it at Speak Without Interruption, Authors Den and Scribd and plan to add it to Gather.

Before I researched the history of the National Debt, I asked myself how President Obama ran up the National Debt to $14.3 trillion dollars, because that amount was about all I was hearing from the Western media, the Tea Party and the GOP. I never heard an explanation of where that National Debt came from.  What I was hearing made Obama seem responsible for the entire amount.

After doing some digging, I learned a few facts.  I hesitate using the word “truth” to define anything, since the “truth” seems to be whatever anyone wants to believe, so I will stick to a few facts and let each reader decide what his or her truth is.

Continued on July 13, 2011 in Free to Lie – Part 2

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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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Giving up Power is Painful

May 13, 2010

Something I read this morning revealed a similarity about America and China’s governments. Break Up the Parties was in the May 2010, AARP Bulletin about ending the partisan poison that has almost caused a political cardiac arrest in Washington and Sacramento. In Washington, the suggestion was to stop seating Democrats on one side of the aisle and Republicans on the other and seat them alphabetically so they talk to each other. 

In California, Two Government Reform Measures on June 8 Ballot would end the status quo.  Instead of Registered Republican voters only voting for Republican candidates and Democrats for Democratic politicians, this measure, if passed, would open the ballot so all voters could vote for any candidate from any political party.

Gasp! California’s Proposition 14 brought Democrats and Republicans together to defeat it.

Why? For the same reason why most of the 70 million members of China’s Communist Party don’t want to hold open elections and allow all Chinese citizens to vote for multiple parties, which is restricted in both America and China since it isn’t the voters who decide the next President of the United States. The Electoral College does that. 

In case you don’t know, it was 535 handpicked, loyal registered Republicans and Democrats that elected President G. W. Bush to his first term in the White House while the popular vote went to Vice President Al Gore by more than a million. At least in China, the Communist Party has more than 70 million who take part in deciding who the eventual Presidential contenders will be.

Discover an example of how Power Corrupts
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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China’s Modern Dynasty

February 21, 2010

In 2012, the new rulers of China will “all” have been educated in the West.

After Mao died, Deng Xiaoping and his supporters “rebuilt” the government. The party instituted term limits, two five-year terms for any political position and an age limit of sixty-seven.

Mao

These changes were implemented to avoid having another modern emperor like Mao. Those who spoke out against Mao while he ruled China were usually killed, went to prison or fell out of favor. Deng Xiaoping’s son was dropped from a high rise and paralyzed for life—the message to Deng was to “shut up or else”.

A high-ranking, retired Communist who fought with Mao during World War II and the revolution told me that the seventy million party members (like America’s Democrats and Republicans) do not always agree on issues.

The difference is that the world hears little of what goes on behind the scenes in China. Doing business that way has little to do with the party. That type of behavior is classically Chinese—not to talk about the elephant in the room or to hang out your dirty laundry for everyone to see as the West does. Behaving like that goes against what “face” means 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. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Fast Track Growth

February 13, 2010

Here’s more evidence that Robert Hart and Jack London were right when they predicted that China would be a super power again. These two Western men spent time in China, got to know the culture and realized the potential of the Chinese people.

Bullet trains, something the United States doesn’t have due to the national debt and partisanship between political parties more interested in who packs the pork barrel than running the country efficiently, have raced into China providing jobs for hundreds of thousands of Chinese and a faster, fuel efficient way to get around.

With the Lunar New Year and more Chinese traveling home than the population of Russia, another, fast, energy efficient means of public transportation was needed.  When the economy collapsed under President George W. Bush due to real estate, banks and Wall Street greed, the Democrats and Republican’s started pointing fingers at each other and throwing more debt around.

In China, where debt does not rule and the savings rate is 40%, instead of arguing and tossing blame about, the Chinese started working. Is this evidence that one political party is more efficient than two?

My thanks to Ian Carter for bringing the Chinese bullet trains to my attention–visit his Blog to “see” more of China, or discover why China is Studying Singapore

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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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse