The Fear of Mao Buying the World

November 22, 2010

The cover of The Economist’s November 13 issue plays on fear to sell magazines.

I haven’t read Buying up the world, The coming wave of Chinese takeovers yet, which is the feature piece. I’ll probably write another post about that once I do.

Instead, I’m writing about the magazine’s cover, which is taking advantage of the West’s PTCSD (Post Traumatic Chinese Stress Disorder) that has roots in the “history” of a fear of the word “Communist”, the Korean Conflict and the Cultural Revolution.

I’m sure most Sinophobes that see this cover will have flashbacks of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the rest of China dressed in drab Mao jackets marching across the world to take possession of everything China buys.

However, Mao isn’t the proper man to adorn The Economist’s cover.

Deng Xiaoping or one of China’s recent presidents (there have been four since the 1982 Constitution) would have been more appropriate.

Why? Because after Mao died in 1976, Deng Xiaoping and his allies rejected Maoist Revolutionary thought and embraced CAPITALISM in a very big way.

In fact, surviving Maoists consider the Party that rules China today to be traitors to Mao and the revolution.

Do you remember the 1980s, when wealthy Japanese spent billions buying property in America then a real estate bubble burst, Japan lost a lot of money, and its economy has been limping since?

If anyone should be afraid, it should be the Chinese fearing spending habits in the US, Canada and Europe where debt and plastic rule.

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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

The Sky is Falling but only in China

September 4, 2010

The Los Angeles Times published a piece that says, “Airline crash shows China safety standards have fallen, critics say.”

In the lead paragraph, the Times mentioned that China’s overall air safety record has been one of the best in the world for six years.

In China, “State media said Wednesday that the plane carrying 96 people overshot the runway on a fog-shrouded night…”

Let’s put this crash in perspective by looking at a list Wikipedia provides of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft around the globe.  

Remember US Airways flight 1549 on January 15, 2009, which ditched in the Hudson River with no fatalities, or Cogan Air flight 3407 on February 12 that hit a house in Clarence, New York killing all 49 passengers on board.

Then there is Southwest Airlines Flight 2294 on July 13, 2009, that made an emergency landing in Charleston, West Virginia with no injuries.

How about October 21, 2009, when the pilot of Northwest Airlines flight 188 was distracted by his personal laptop computer and missed his destination in San Diego by 150 miles.

On December 22, American Airlines flight 331 overruns the runway in Kingston, Jamaica and there are 40 injuries and no fatalities.

If you visit the List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft, scroll from 2004 to 2010 to see how long that global list is.  Then there is the list of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft.

Yet a crash in China, with a great safety record for six years, has Sinophobes leaping out of their swamps shouting in morbid joy as if they are celebrating.

An excellent post on Telos does a good job explaining why so many hate China. “China-bashing is the new anti-capitalism.”

See Dragon Air

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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

Conquest

July 9, 2010

I woke up this morning thinking that many in the West want nothing less than China to be something he or she understands, which means a capitalist, multi-party republic, Christian nation with a culture based on individualism rather than China’s more than two-thousand year old collective culture without religion. 

To help dispel this atmosphere of ignorance in the West, Pearl S. Buck urged Lin Yutang to write a book about China and its people. In the Preface for My Country and My People (1935), Lin Yutang wrote, “I write only for men of simple common sense…” Later, in the Prologue, he mentions how for every Sir Robert Hart, the Irish godfather of China’s modernization, there are ten thousand who do not understand the Chinese and do not care to learn.

Then in the Introduction for Lin’s book, Buck wrote, “It (My Country and My People) is truthful and not ashamed of the truth: it is written proudly and humorously and with beauty, seriously and with gaiety, appreciative and understanding of both old and new.”

It is unfortunate that most Sinophobes have no concept of China and its culture and do not want to learn, and men and women of simple common sense are as rare today as in Lin Yutan and Pearl S. Buck’s time.

Discover more about Lin YuTang’s “My Country and My People“

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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