The Use of Power

April 4, 2010

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Lord Acton

There’s a lot of truth to what Lord Acton wrote.

William Pitt, The Earl of Chatham and British Prime Minister from 1766 to 1778 said something similar: “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.”

The corruption that Lord Acton and William Pitt talk about does not only apply to a nation’s political and business leaders. It influences common citizens, who put pressure on their government to react violently.

As China grows its power, how will that corruption manifest itself?  Will China become like the British Empire or the United States and continue to wage wars around the globe in the national interest? Maybe, or will China re-define what the use of power means?

“China is presenting its ascent not as a power shift, but as a paradigm shift. It claims that its rise will be different from other powers in the past and sets an example for a fundamental revision of the nature of great power politics.” Source: In The New Times

See Power Corrupts http://wp.me/pN4pY-40

 

 

Leave a Comment » | America, China, Chinese history, government, politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Farewell, My Concubine

April 2, 2010

Chen Kaige, self-trained as a filmmaker, was the director for this award winning 1993 film. Prior to “Farewell, My Concubine“, Chen received modest acclaim for the “Yellow Earth” and “The Big Parade”. With “Farewell, My Concubine,” he won the Palme d-or in Cannes.

Farewell, My Concubine

Although the film is in Mandarin with English subtitles, the story captured me from the beginning. If you are interested in Chinese history, this film spans several decades beginning near the end of the Ch’ing Dynasty. On the surface, it is just a story of two boys who happen to become famous, but have their difficulties like most of us lesser mortals do. However, the setting shows the  transformation of a nation from the Ch’ing Dynasty to a warlord dominated republic, the Japanese invasion of World War II and then Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

I saw this movie a decade ago and I remember this powerful, dramatic story of one man’s life from the day his mother took a knife and chopped off an extra finger on each hand so he would have five instead of the six he was born with.

The main character is apparently modeled after an actual person—Peking Opera superstar Mei Lanfang—some may imagine that Lanfang was ‘gay’. However, he only specialized in male roles. He was married at least three times and had children.

Discover Not One Less

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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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2 Comments | China, Chinese arts and music, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese women, family values, government, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Evil Tobacco in Big China

March 30, 2010

Cigarettes are evil.  The person smoking the cigarette may not be evil but the pain and suffering that cigarettes cause is. I watched a father-in-law, a neighbor, an aunt and my father die from the ravages from tobacco.  The last few years of my father’s life, he wore a breathing mask attached to a tank of oxygen.  His freedom was limited to the fifty-foot hose connected to that tank.

Smoking Kills

Margie Mason (Associated Press) wrote about smoking and listed some frightening statistics.

  • Thirty percent of the world’s smokers are in China.
  • In the next 15 years, an estimated 2 million will die from it.
  • The largest tobacco grower in the world is in China.
  • Heart disease, linked to smoking, is already killing a million a year.
  • China has more cases of diabetes than any country.

Dr. Judith Mackay said, “You have to price them (cigarettes) out of the hands and pockets and the mouths of children.”

Hong Kong may be showing the rest of the mainland how to cut back on tobacco use by putting high taxes on cigarettes as we have done in America. The Chinese government may be watching and hoping that this cycle of doom can be slowed.

Learn more from Smoking Gun

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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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1 Comment | business, capitalism, China, Chinese men, economy, health care | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Saying Goodbye

March 28, 2010

To the Chinese, the hardest goodbye is when white hair buries dark. This week, a  friend of our daughter’s died a tragic death at 17. The lost daughter’s name was Faith. Her story, like so many, was told in The Lost Daughters of China by Karin Evans, a book about abandoned girls and their journeys to American homes with loving adopted parents.

The phone call arrived at midnight from Faith’s mother. When my wife answered, I could hear and feel the grief like a bullet—my eyes filled with tears and an ache formed where my heart beats. No mother should suffer the loss of a child.

On the way to the airport, I listened to a memory about our daughter and Faith when they were in preschool together and a boy took a toy from our daughter. He refused to give it back. Faith came to the rescue.  She was only four or five. She demanded the toy be returned. The boy refused and Faith attacked biting him on the elbow.

You see, she had learned to survive in an orphanage in China where life can be a challenge. She was loyal to those she loved, who loved her. As long as those memories are shared and kept alive, she will always be with those who knew her.

The rest of Faith’s tragic journey may be discovered at Earth to Earth, Dirt to Dirt, Ashes to Ashes

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