Corruption in China may often stem from Cultural Pressure

August 12, 2010

I’m thinking about what motivated the CEO of Enron and others to steal from their employees and stockholders so they could party, live in mansions and travel as if they were members of the jet set.

In America, there is a history of insider trading, securities and commodities fraud, corporate fraud, health care fraud, antitrust violations, bribery, embezzlement and organized crime.

In fact, the FBI estimates that white-collar crime costs the US more than $300 billion annually.

In China that would be more than 2 trillion yuan.

Western civilization is based on individualism so the primary motivation of those white-collar criminals would probably be individual greed.

However, in Chinese culture, the motivation to become corrupt may not be just from greed.  The American media appears obsessed over corruption in China without addressing how culture plays a role.

In rural China, the peasant, who works the fields, probably is only motivated to grow enough food so his family will not starve while selling enough to keep a roof over their heads.

Most peasants live according to the concept of Taoism, which roughly interpreted means go with the natural order of things or do as little as possible to survive while living in a passive state.

Confucianism teaches the opposite and has more influence in urban China where most of China’s middle class lives and works. Here, loss of face is enough to motivate the individual to become corrupt so he will not look like a loser in the minds of his family, associates or friends. The other choice is suicide.

Since Jesus Christ supposedly said, “Let he who has no guilt cast the first stone”, I want to mention that I read about representatives in both houses of Congress in Washington DC costing the US taxpayer about a million annually for moral corruption. Why—to settle with abused congressional employees, who have been harassed (I’m thinking sexual) or treated badly by their political bosses over the past 14 years. Source: Politico

Back to corruption in Taiwan and China.

The Economist reportedthat corruption flourishes in Taiwan in the judicial system.  The same piece also says that Chen Shui-bian, the former president of Taiwan from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is serving a 20 year sentence for corruption.  On the next page of the July 24th issue is another piece about academic fraud in (mainland) China.

Although greed may play a role in Chinese corruption, another factor may be a more powerful force and that is maintaining, “face” or increasing it since upwardly mobile Chinese are expected to constantly gain face.

To do this, one has to gain in wealth, stature or reputation. This puts a lot of pressure on a Chinese man, which reminds me of the Taiwanese architect our daughter found hanging dead in a tree a few years back during a family hike in Southern California.

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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.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

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Vestiges of China’s Early Empires

August 8, 2010

 David Frum writes about China’s Early Empires referring to Belknap’s six-volume history of Imperial China. Frum says, “There is no Chinese equivalent of the Parthenon or the Roman Forum, no Pantheon or Coliseum.  For all its overpowering continuity, China does not preserve physical remains of the past… Lewis offhandedly mentions at one point that there remains not a single surviving house or palace from Han China. There are not even ruins,” which is wrong.

I recently wrote a three-part series about Han Dynasty tombs discovered in Xuzhou, which was the location of the capital of the Han Dynasty. The tombs, which had not been destroyed or looted, are now tourist attractions. A museum was built to house artifacts that were discovered. One tomb has a living room and a bedroom before the coffin chamber.  Since the tomb was built inside a hollowed-out mountain and made of rock, it survived more than two millennia with evidence of how the Han Dynasty lived then.

In fact, I’ve toured the Ming tombs, seen the graves of heroes from the Song Dynasty near the West Lake in Hangzhou, south of Shanghai.  Also, let’s not forget that the Grand Canal, which was started five centuries before the birth of Christ and is still in use today.

In fact, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 with much of China’s imperial treasures.

Then, if you visit Tibet, there’s the Potala Palace, which was first built in 637 AD and is still lived in. Although much of ancient China has vanished, there are still vestiges that equal or surpass what the Roman and Greek civilizations left behind.

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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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Defector / Traitor (4/4)

August 5, 2010

We have a friend who came from China to the US to study in the 1980s. She thought about defecting but didn’t. She loved her family and friends too much to hurt them, so she went back to China. Years later, she returned to the US legally and become an American citizen without defecting, and no village in China suffered for her act.

In China, every defection is considered a loss of face by the government.  In a collective society like China, the individual is not the only one to carry the burden of guilt.  The family, friends and comrades left behind also carry that burden.


Defecting is a two-way street Joe Dresnok – U.S. Army Defector one nation’s defector/hero is another nation’s deserter/traitor

When defectors from China arrive in the US, they are often treated as heroes and the media splashes the defector’s story on TV, newspapers and magazines. Many defectors are rewarded and they prosper in their new country. In fact, until 1988, Taiwan paid defectors a handsome sum in gold.

However, whatever the reason for defecting, in the ideological war between the “isms” (Communism versus Capitalism), those left behind often become collateral damage. See Media Slugfest Using Taiwan

Merriam-Webster’s Online dictionary defines “traitor” as one who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty

Return to Defector/Traitor – Part 3 or start with Part 1

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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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Chiang Kai-shek

July 23, 2010

Chiang Kai-shek (also known as Jiang Jieshi) was born on October 31, 1887. His family was from the upper class and was wine merchants. At 18, he attended a military college in Japan. Chiang had four wives during his life. His first wife died in the Second Sino-Japanese War. His second wife contracted gonorrhea from Chiang (a known womanizer) soon after they married. His most famous wife lived to 106 and died in 2003. Before one marriage, he converted to Christianity as a condition to marry.

After training in Japan, he went to Russia to study the Soviet government and decided he did not care for the Communists. Returning to China, Sun Yat-sin appointed Chiang to command a military academy

Under Sun Yat-sen the Communists and the Nationalists worked together to rule China, and Soviet advisers provided the help needed to increase their power since most of China was ruled by warlords.

However, when Sun died in 1925, Chiang led the Kuomintang army north to defeat the warlords and destroy the Communists.

Meanwhile, in Shanghai, the Communist Party had organized labor unions to improve working conditions in the low paying sweat-shop factories. During Communist organized labor strikes, these factories were shut down.

When Chiang Kai-shek army reached Shanghai, he joined forces with gangsters then went on a killing spree known as the White Terror. Tens of thousands of workers, who belonged to the labor unions organized by the Communists, were hunted down and killed along with their Communist leaders. One of the few to escape was Mao Zedong.

For the next few years, Chiang would rule China unchallenged until 1931, when Japan invaded. During the early months of the war, Chiang ignored Japan and continued hunting for the Communist survivors, who had fled into the countryside.

In 1949, when Mao won the civil war, Chiang Kai-shek took the survivors of his nationalist army to Taiwan where, protected by the US military, he declared brutal martial law and ruled as a dictator until he died on April 5, 1975 at the age of eighty-seven.

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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 lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

#1 - Joanna Daneman review posted June 19 2014

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China’s Capitalist Revolution (Part 3 of 9)

July 2, 2010

In May 1978, Deng invited President Carter’s National Security Advisor to Beijing. Deng needed a deal with the US but he wanted something in return. The US had to end its friendship with the breakaway republic of Taiwan—an island China considered theirs. America agreed and closed its embassy in Taiwan to open full diplomatic relations in China. A few weeks later, Deng became the first Chinese leader to visit the US.

Deng Xiaoping meets President Carter in the White House and signs the new alliance.  Deng says, “Mr. President, we share the sense of being on a historic mission.  Sino-US relations have reached a new beginning.”

Later in the White House, Carter mentions human rights and says that people in China should have the right to leave if they wanted to. Deng says, “Sure, how many Chinese would you want—forty or fifty million?”  Deng tours the US.

After US diplomats arrive in China, a new cultural revolution starts.  With the Chinese and Americans now the best of friends, Deng opened China to American companies, who would get cheap labor while China would get money to grow an economy.

Return to China’s Capitalist Revolution Part 2 or go to Part 4

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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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