Are China’s Dissidents in Danger?

May 6, 2012

This week much of the Western media has been busy touting fears for the safety and future of China’s blind dissident Chen Guangcheng.

A Reuters report by Andrew Quinn and Chris Buckley fulfilled the China bashing and fear mongering of the week by reporting in the lead paragraph that Cheng “feared for his life just hours after leaving the U.S. Embassy under a deal that Washington had hoped would defuse the crises with Beijing.”

However, what are the odds that Chen should fear for his life for protesting China’s urban one-child rule and abortion policies?

To find out what might really happen to Chen and other dissidents in China, let’s examine what happened with a few high profile cases in the past and ignore the alleged language designed to paint China’s leaders/government in an evil light.

According to the record, none of China’s dissidents since 1976 have been executed and only one is serving a life sentence. In fact, if Chen ends up in the US, that is not uncommon.

For Example:

1. In 1989, Tan Baiqiao was arrested for spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda; inciting counterrevolutionary activities; defection to the enemy, and treason— but due to international pressure, Tan was released and reached the U.S. in 1992.

2. In 2002, Cai Lujun, a businessman and writer was arrested for “incitement to subversion and eventually sought political asylum in Taiwan in 2007.

3. In 1995, Wang Dan was sentenced to 11 years in prison but was released on medical parole to the US in 1998 and is currently living in Taiwan.

4. In 1998, Wang Youcai was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion but was released and exiled to the United States in 2004.

5. In 1979, Wei Jingsheng an electrician was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison for passing military secretes.  He was released from prison for medical reasons and deported to the US in 1997.

In fact, there are laws in most countries that support what China does with its political dissidents.

For example, in the United States Code, 18 U.S.C. & 2385, “Advocating overthrow of Government by force or violence”:

“Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

“Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

“Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

“Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.”

In addition, on May 4, 2012, the New York Times got it right with this headline, For China, a Dissident in Exile Is One Less Headache Back Home

The NY Times says, “Based on past experience, China is often all too pleased to see its most nettlesome dissidents go into exile, where they almost invariably lose their ability to grab headlines in the West and to command widespread sympathy both in China and abroad.”

In fact, if you read the US law carefully, it may be illegal in America to advocate the overthrow of another country’s government—just read the first paragraph in bold print above.

Moreover, fifty-two countries are led by authoritarian governments ruling over more than a third of humanity, so if you have to live under an authoritarian government, which kind is best?  After all, everyone cannot live in Hong Kong, which is considered the freest economy in the world.  Hong Kong (part of China) is followed by Singapore, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland. The U.S. ranks tenth of more than 150 nations.  China is ranked 138. Sources: The Freest Nations on Earth and Heritage.org

In addition, according to Foreign Policy magazine, Joshua E. Keating, “found that single-party states—think China and Vietnam—are the most responsive to citizens’ demands, providing a higher quality of governance… the Chinese Communist Party has not lasted through the use of force alone, but also by making popular investments in China’s infrastructure and social services,” which has reduced poverty from more than 80% in 1949 to less than 13% today and increased the average lifespan from 35 years of age in 1949 to more than 75 today.

Recommended — A Snapshot of Democracy in Asia

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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

Comparing Economy Management – China versus the United States

April 28, 2012

Over at CNN World, Stephen S. Roach wrote a post about America’s renminbi fixation.  Many of the comments that responded to the post were obviously from Internet Trolls that lack the skills for an intellectually reasoned response. Instead, the trolls resort to logical fallacies to divert attention away from Roach’s message (I left a comment and a few replies too).

While many in the West have predicted for about three decades that China is going to have a hard landing after an economic bubble of some sort bursts, it hasn’t happened yet.

I Reblogged Roach’s piece and you may reach it by scrolling down or clicking on this iLook China link.

To research this post I Googled “financial crisis in China since 1980” and found no results that answered what I was looking for.

However, I found this at Princeton.edu, which said, “It is now just over twenty years after China initiated its economic reform in 1978. Since then the average rate of growth of GDP has been a phenomenal 9.5 percent per year. This essay reviews the reform process, discusses the impact of the current Asian financial crisis and attempts to assess the prospects of China’s economy in the future…

“In summary China’s reform process has been an experimental and gradual process. It was to be continued before the Asian financial crisis (1997). State-enterprise reform, financial reform and the opening of the Chinese economy have all been affected by the crisis, but there is no question that as soon as conditions allow the reform process will continue, incorporating the lessons learned from the crisis…

“In conclusion, economic reforms in China are likely to continue in the manner and directions as described above. Because of the strong fundamentals of China’s economy as demonstrated by its good performance during the financial crisis substantial growth will continue perhaps for another decade after the current crisis.”

In addition, in an April 2008 economic study from Harvard, we discover, This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises.

The Harvard study said, “As the first paper employing this data, our aim is to illustrate some of the broad insights that can be gleaned from such a sweeping historical database.  We find that serial default is a nearly universal phenomenon as countries struggle to transform themselves from emerging markets to advanced economies.  Major default episodes are typically spaced some years (or decades) apart, creating an illusion that “this time is different” among policymakers and investors.  A recent example of the “this time is different” syndrome is the false belief that domestic debt is a novel feature of the modern financial landscape.  We also confirm that crises frequently emanate from the financial centers with transmission through interest rate shocks and commodity price collapses…

“The ability of governments and investors to delude themselves, giving rise to periodic bouts of euphoria that usually end in tears, seems to have remained a constant.”

Since not much time has passed since China’s economic reforms in 1978, we will look at the United States for examples.

The current total US deficit (national debt) as of today is more than $15.5 trillion and the average credit card debt per household based on 609.8 million credit cards held by US consumers is almost $16,000.

However, “Chinese households save a large share of their disposable incomes and their average saving rate has increased over the last decade and a half. This pattern is particularly pronounced for urban households, which account for about two-thirds of national income. After remaining relatively flat during the early 1990s, the average saving rate of urban households relative to their disposable incomes rose from 18% in 1995 to nearly 29% in 2009.”

In addition, if we study “Panics, Depressions and Economic Crisis Prior to 1930 in the United States”, we discover that “Those most disastrous have usually followed general injudicious speculation in lands or inflated securities. The crisis of 1816-1819 in the United States, it is claimed was due to the speculation and disorder following the War of 1812. The next occurred in 1825. A very memorable panic was that of 1837.” Source: The History Box.com

Akorra.com lists the Top 10 Worst Financial Crisis in U.S. History starting with the Crash of 1929/Great Depression; our current and continuing Mortgage Crisis of 2007; the Panic of 1893; The Banker’s Panic of 1907; the Panic of 1873; the Panic of 1819; the 2001-2002 Recession (known as the dotcom bubble that wiped out $5 trillion in market value of technology companies);  the Kennedy Slide in 1962 which caused a 22.5% drop in the S&P 500; the Panic of 1837, and The Oil Crises of 1973.

In addition, there have also been recessions in 1937, which followed the Great Depression (1929 – 1933); 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1960-61, 1969-70, and 1973-75.

As for China, the predictions of an economic crises/crash keep coming as if they were being manufactured on an assembly line — but one hasn’t arrived yet and it has been 34 years since China’s 1978 economic reforms, while for the same period in the US there have been several economic recessions running from January – July 1980; July 1981 – November 1982; July 1990 – 1991; March -November 2001, and December 2007 – June 2009.

When an economic crises does appear in China (the odds favor that it will), it may be part of a global universal phenomenon as the Princeton and Harvard studies reveal, so it is a good bet that sooner or later China’s economic critics will be able to step up on their soap boxes and crow, “I told you so (a hundred times over the last several decades that it would happen one day)!”

I suggest watching the two videos with this post to learn about manufactured financial panics in the United States, which leads to a question: Is the American fixation on China’s currency manufactured too?

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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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6 Comments | America, business, capitalism, China, economy, government, history, media, politics, United States | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Power of e-bikes and Public Debate in China

April 16, 2012

If you have been led to believe that the Chinese people do not have a voice in China, think again. It may not be a voice expressing political opinions, but it is a voice.

One example of the power of those voices happened December 2009 and had to do with electric bikes. When new regulations threatened to restrict the use of e-bikes and ban them from public roads, opposition from the e-bike industry and bike riders stopped the regulations in their tracks.

Tim Snaith said, “I’m not surprised that Chinese riders are up in arms. A huge amount of the population rely on electric bikes on a daily basis in a way that UK riders don’t.”  Source: Bike Radar.com

Adrienne Mong of NBC News said, “The news triggered a heated debate that was played out all over the Chinese-language media and on the Internet. Eventually, the government backed down, and it’s been left up to industry groups to figure out new guidelines.” Source: Gr-r-r-r! Why I hate China’s e-bikes

When we visit China, we mostly walk (long distances), take taxis or use the subways, but I have admired the electric bikes that crowd China’s streets.

However, don’t count on us changing how we get around when in China, since many of the drivers in China drive crazy. The crowded urban streets behave more like an NFL game in the Super Bowl. I’ve often observed that red lights at intersection are ignored and crossing any street and sometimes even using sidewalks is risky and the only thing lower in the food chain than an electric bike are pedestrians risking lives as they cross streets even legally in a crosswalk.

That e-bike debate sounds similar to America where public debates often have an impact on government policy since the majority rules. Well, in theory the majority rules, since in America the majority is often ignored while we constantly hear from loud minorities such as the Tea Party or Occupy Movement, PETA, or the Million Woman March, which has only a few thousand members.

It also doesn’t help that about half of eligible voters in the U.S. seldom or never vote and the U.S. president is not elected by the popular vote but by a few hundred loyal party members (Republican and/or Democratic) in the Electoral College.

However, back in China, more than two years after the e-bike protest, Tea Leaf Nation reported on February 23, 2012 about a weibo Blog that was deleted by Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging platform, but what was deleted was soon restored thanks to widespread outrage and threats that the majority of Chinese would switch to Twitter and Facebook.

In addition, the Reuters Institute ran a piece about the power of the Chinese netizen and how microblogging is changing Chinese journalism. Zhou Kangliang, a Chinese journalist, concludes that “as Chinese online microblogging services grow and traditional journalism grows with them, it is learning from lessons and experience…”

In fact, The Washington Post reported, “In a country where most media are controlled by the state, information is heavily censored and free-flowing opinions are sharply constricted, Chinese have turned to a new platform to openly exchange unfettered news and views: microblogs, similar to Twitter.”

Xie Gengyun, a professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University, recently completed a report on microblogging and said weibo is the most popular choice for trustworthy information, ahead of newspapers, online forums and blogs.

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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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Note: This edited and revised post first appeared on April 29, 2010

6 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, Communism, cultural differences, environment, government, legal system, media, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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China’s Porn War – Part 3/3

April 11, 2012

China’s war on pornography was launched in 2004. In this post, I will provide quotes and links from 2004 to 2011 so we may track the progress of China’s porn combat. There was a lot of material for this topic so I restricted it to one pull quote per year.

In July 2004, Danwei reported, “Xinhua quotes an unnamed official who says China is going to wage a ‘people’s war against porn’: Pornographic activities have been rampant online in recent years, and have severely damaged social style, polluted the social environment, and harmed the physical and psychological health of the young people, said the official, who is also a state councilor and minister of public security.”

In 2005, Arts Technica.com reported, “The Chinese government regularly censors Internet content in an effort to diminish the distribution of politically subversive material, but now the communist state is expanding its control and targeting Internet pornography web sites as well. According to a Chinese government official, 221 people have been arrested, and almost 600 web sites have been shut down since March in a crackdown on ‘obscene’ Internet content.”

In 2006, Why We Worry.com reported, “Chen Hui was sentenced to a life in jail on Wednesday for having created the largest porn site in China… Xinhua News Agency said judges at the Taiyuan Intermediate People’s Court in Shanxi province gave the life sentence to Chen Hui and handed down terms of 13 months to 10 years to eight others after they were convicted of profiting from pornographic dissemination.

“Chen, 28, and his accomplices started the Qingseliuyuetian (Pornographic Summer) Web site in 2004, and opened a further three porn Web sites, attracting more than 600,000 users.”

In 2007, Spam Fighter.com reported, “Virtually, 5,000 websites were shut down, 270 culprits detained, and more than 160,000 of harmful materials was seized in the one month long assault that China made on online pornography, as reported by state media.

“Despite a drastic drop, cyber porn is still a concern,” Public-Security Vice Minister Zhang Xinfeng said this while calling for extra efforts for bringing the domestic cyber porn under control, and blocking its overseas sources.

In 2008, the Financial Times reported, “China has vowed to drive on with its multi-ministry crackdown on online pornography until after the Beijing Olympics, extending a campaign that last year led to the detention of 868 people and the deletion of 440,000 prurient postings.

“Publicly prudish Communist party leaders bill the action as a vital part of a wider drive to ‘purify’ the internet by eliminating immoral or politically dangerous content.”

In 2009, English People.com reported, “China shut down or blocked more than 140,000 mobile WAP sites offering pornography for mobile phone users in a five-month crackdown, an official said Monday.”

In 2010, Natural Order Guild.com reported, “China’s anti-pornography campaign shut down more than 60,000 pornographic websites this year, with police investigating almost 2,200 criminal cases, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported Thursday. Wang Chen, director of the Information Office of the State Council, said at a news conference that some 350 million pieces of pornographic and indecent internet content were eliminated, according to the Xinhua report.

“Overall, the campaign included 2,197 criminal cases involving 4,965 people who violated Chinese law by disseminating pornography via the internet or mobile phones, the news agency said. Of those, 58 people received prison sentences exceeding five years, the report said.”

Then in August 2011, The Wall Street Journal reported, “Beijing’s war against pornography is infamous for producing an inordinate amount of collateral damage… Despite the sledge-hammer strategy, sex scholar Katrien Jacobs says in an interview published Tuesday by the Web magazine Danwei, China’s guardians of public morality are losing, badly…”

Is anyone surprised?

As a comparison — since 1990 (a period of more than twenty years compared to the eight for China’s war on porn), China arrested 30 high profile democracy advocates with others on watch lists similar to America’s list of state enemies, which has about 21,000 names of known or suspected terrorists on it. “Both U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities and foreign services continue to identify people who want to cause us harm…” Source: CBS News.com

China’s list has nineteen names of people to be arrested on entry to China; fourteen that are to be refused re-entry and nineteen to be dealt with “according to the circumstances of the situation”.

Compare those numbers with the numbers of China’s alleged lost war waged on porn and what does that tell us? From the numbers, it appears that the Chinese people have spoken with their actions that say pornography is desired more than democracy.

And let’s not forget that in 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court added child pornography as another category of speech excluded from First Amendment protection. In addition, the US Congress made this a crime that might lead to a life sentence in jail.

Return to China’s Porn War – Part 2 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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China’s Porn War – Part 2/3

April 10, 2012

I’ve written about piety and what it means to the Chinese, and I’ve written about heroes from China’s history that the Chinese still honor. Now I’m going to write about some of China’s modern day heroes.

I’ve read complaints about China’s control over the Internet and media. The Western media and China’s critics/enemies love to hate the CCP’s attempt to control content on the Internet. Imagine, not being able to practice Yellow Journalism with a potential audience of 1.3 billion. Think of all the newspapers and magazines that could be sold to such a vast audience if the CCP would relax its controls over the media in China.


If you did not read Part One, you may want to go there now to learn about pornography in the United States.

In early 2010, I read an example of Chinese common sense the rest of the world might have learned from.

In the war against pornography, China recruited moms. Who better to protect children? Even most Westerners should agree that child pornography is not a good thing. Polluting the minds of and abusing young people and making money off them should be ranked alongside heroin or crack with a death sentence or at last a life sentence after castration.


Child Porn on Facebook

Since I’m married to a Chinese mother, and I know how dedicated Chinese moms are to their children, I’d rather have a U.S. Marine parked on my butt and I wrote, “Beware pornographers. You may have met your match.”

However, while updating and adding to this topic, I learned that even China’s famous tiger mothers may not be enough to stem the tide of pornography as you shall discover in Part 3.

Continued on March 3, 2012 in China’s Porn War – Part 3 or return to 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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Note: This revised and edited post first appeared February 8, 2010

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Porn War – Part 1/3

April 9, 2012

Before I introduce the topic of China’s war on pornography in Part Two, I felt it was necessary to mention the scope of this crime in America.  If I didn’t, I suspect that China’s critics/enemies would go out of the way to accuse the Chinese of being perverts and criminals or something worse for China’s Communist Party (CCP).

In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court added child pornography as another category of speech excluded from First Amendment protection. The other categories excluded are obscenity, defamation, incitement, and “fighting words”.

However, for the last 15 years, the distribution of on-line child pornography has been the fastest growing crime in America (it has grown 100% annually). Source: kens5.com

The U.S. Justice Department says, “Congress recently significantly increased the maximum prison sentences for child pornography crimes and in some instances created new mandatory minimum sentences. These prison terms can be substantial, and where there have been prior convictions for child sexual exploitation, can result in a life sentence.”


Fifty-five percent of global child pornography comes from the US.

Family Safe Media.com says, every second, more than $3 million is spent on pornography; every second, more than 28,000 Internet users are viewing pornography and every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is being created in the United States.

US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC. In fact, the world’s top video porn producers are in the United States.

In 2006, revenue from worldwide pornography reached almost $100 billion — $27 billion in China and more than $13 billion in the US. Source: Family Safe Media.com (Note: China has more than four times the population of the US. To match the US average, China’s share would have to be $54.5 billion.)

Continued on March 2, 2012 in China’s Porn War – 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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The Man that may be China’s next President – Part 2/2

April 4, 2012

From Laura Rozen, who writes a Blog for Yahoo News called The Envoy, we learn that Xi Jinping is 58 years old and is no stranger to the United States.

Rozen says, “His daughter and only child attends Harvard University (under a pseudonym). He himself famously visited Muscatine, Iowa (his current trip will be a repeat visit) in the 1980s when he was a provincial Chinese official trying to promote U.S.-Chinese agriculture ties.

“The son of a Chinese Communist revolutionary general and war hero who was jailed for a time after a falling-out with Chairman Mao, Xi is described as a workaholic pragmatist with a reputation for clean living and (rare among Chinese party bosses) for his anti-corruption practices.”

On February 15, 2012, a staff reporter for Want China Times.com said, “China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, was interviewed by the Washington Post…  he answered six questions but declined to talk about his father, Xi Zhongxun, saying the subject was simply too sensitive, according to the Hong Kong-based Ming Pao… Xi Zhongxun was persecuted by Mao Zedong’s right-hand man, Kang Sheng. He was investigated and put in prison for almost 16 years. After Xi was rehabilitated under Deng Xiaoping, he played an important role in China’s economic reforms.”

In addition, Xi Jinping is married to one of China’s most famous singers, patriotic folk singer Peng Liyuan.

The Daily Beast says, “Xi began pursuing Peng in the ’80s, after his previous marriage ended in divorce. Reportedly, Peng’s parents initially weren’t crazy about the match because of Xi’s label as a ‘princeling’…  Undaunted, Xi continued his courtship, eventually winning over both Peng and her family.”

In 2011, his wife, Peng Liyuan was appointed as a goodwill ambassador for the World Health Organization.

Rozen says,  ”Xi reportedly lived in a cave for almost seven years and did hard labor as a young man after his father’s political troubles, and had to apply eight times before being accepted into the Chinese Communist Party.”

China’s vice president since 2008, Xi is expected to become general secretary of China’s Communist Party this fall, and to formally succeed Hu Jintao as China’s president next year. But the succession plan is not absolutely certain, officials caution.

“In fairness, Xi is not yet the number 1 official in China, …. and there’s still a long runway before take-off ahead of him…’

Chinese Leaders.org says, “an unnamed professor who was a childhood friend of Xi reportedly said Xi was drawn to Buddhism during his early career, and had a ‘seeming belief in supernatural forces’. The professor added that Xi was incorruptible by money, did not drink or take drugs and women felt he was ‘boring’.”

Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore was quoted in Time magazine saying, “I would put him in the Nelson Mandela class of persons. A person with enormous emotional stability who does not allow his personal misfortunes or sufferings to affect his judgment. In other words, he is impressive.”

Return to The Man that may be China’s next President – 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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The Man that may be China’s next President – Part 1/2

April 3, 2012

I’m sure that you have never heard of a dictator that had term limits—in fact, two different term limits. You may often hear that the president of China is a dictator and that China is a dictatorship. However, the facts say otherwise unless the definition for this term has been changed in recent years to fit China.

However, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English says that a dictator is “a ruler who has complete power over a country, especially one whose power has been gained by force.”

The Oxford Dictionary (the world’s most trusted dictionaries – according to them) says, that a dictator is “a ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has obtained control by force.”

Wiki says “A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch… In modern usage, the term ‘dictator” is generally used to describe a leader who holds and/or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power, especially the power to make laws without effective restraint by a legislative assembly.”

Therefore, when the president of China is limited to two, four-year terms and/or must retire at age sixty-eight (whichever comes first) and there is a legislative body that has the power to make laws while the courts enforce them (but may not overrule or interpret those laws), does that mean that president is a dictator too? I’ll leave that answer up to the reader.


Newsmakers 2011 – Xi Jinping

In addition, Article 62 of China’s Constitution says that The National People’s Congress (NPC) “elects the President and the Vice-President of the People’s Republic of China… In Article 63, it also says the NPC has the power to recall or remove from office the President and the Vice-President, which hasn’t happened yet but to be fair, it hasn’t happened in the United States either.

Then in Section 2, Articles 79 to 84 you may discover what the power of China’s president is. In Article 80, it says, “The President of the People’s Republic of China, in pursuance of decisions of the National People’s Congress and its Standing Committee, promulgates statutes … confers state medals and titles of honour; issues orders of special pardons; proclaims martial law; proclaims a state of war; and issues mobilization orders.”

I suggest clicking on this link to China’s Constitution and scrolling down to Section 2 to learn the rest.

Anyway, these two posts are about the man that may rule China as its president for the next four to eight years. Earlier this month, that man visited the United States and his name is Xi Jinping.

We will learn more about him as a person in the next post.

But first, it helps to learn more about how China’s government works. Patrick Chovanec is a professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing, China. He says, “In China there is the Party, the Army, and the State. Unlike in the U.S., where the three branches are co-equal and are specifically designed to check and balance each other’s powers, in China the Party is supreme and rules over the other two elements. China’s ‘leadership transition’  involves coordinated handovers of power involving all three parts of the political system.”

Chovanec says, “Since the late 1990s, a semi-official mandatory retirement age of 68 has applied to all Politburo members. If that rule is applied in 2012 (and there is no reason to expect that it won’t), all seven members of the current Politburo Standing Committee besides Xi and Li (including Hu and Wen) will retire, and be replaced by new appointees.”

I recommend clicking on this link to Chovanec’s Blog to read the rest of his post on this topic. It may be worth your time to learn more about how China works.

Continued on February 29, 2012 in The Man that may be China’s next President – 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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Greenpeace and the growth of environmentalism in China – Part 3/3

March 10, 2012

In another post at Greenpeace.org, we learned that Greenpeace activists went undercover in China up to a year to infiltrate and investigate factories that were releasing hazardous chemicals into China’s waterways.

Greenpeace said, “Two weeks after we released our report, Puma came out with its promise to eliminate toxic substances from its supply chain. When we heard that, we were overjoyed. Since then Adidas, H&M, Nike and Li-Ning have all followed suit.”


Climate Voices from China

“More than 3,500 environmental organizations now have legal status in China,” Andrew Grant said. “While activists there are not as vocal as their counterparts in Europe or the United States, they have made an impact by encouraging transparency and pressuring local governments and industries to adhere to (China’s) new national regulations.

“Through a program called the Green Choice Alliance, environmental groups publish lists of companies in violation of environmental regulations and offer to conduct a third-party audit if a company chooses to clean up its act.

“Last year, under the supervision of environmental groups, independent auditors found that Fuguo’s Shanghai leather factory had rectified its major violations and reduced gas emissions.”


Yangtze River, China

“The local and national Chinese press has been very aggressive in uncovering environmental problems and mobilizing forces to go after polluters. Local newspapers have broken stories about cancer villages, which have been picked up by television networks and broadcast nationwide. In some cases, the revelations have been praised by government officials. In other cases the revelations have been embarrassing or hurt investments by officials, and the sources of the stories have been harassed or jailed.” Source: Andrew Grant, Discover magazine, March 18, 2011

Return to Greenpeace and the growth of environmentalism in China – Part 2 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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Note from Blog Post — This post is iLook China’s fifteen-hundredth (1,500) post, and with it this Blog will be cutting back from posting daily to two or more days a week. The next post (1,501) will appear March 12.

2 Comments | China, Communism, crime, environment, government, legal system, media, politics, science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Greenpeace and the growth of environmentalism in China – Part 2/3

March 9, 2012

When The Diplomat.com asked Li Yan, head of Greenpeace in East Asia’s Climate and Energy Campaign about China, Li Yan replied, “China has made impressive efforts to cut back its carbon emission growth, and it’s fair to say that China is doing much better than many other countries, including industrialized ones. However, with the rapid growth of emissions, China needs – and has the capability – to do more…”

“According to a recent U.N. Environment Program report, China has surpassed the United States in renewable energy investment in 2010, making it now the world’s largest… In 2010, China’s wind power installation capacity was about 42GW, which places China as the biggest installation country globally.”

In addition, a recent post by Ma Tianjie on the Greenpeace East Asia Blog said, “As early as 2009, after a series of lead pollution cases, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (China) had called for a ‘blanket inspection’ of heavy metal pollution facilities. This means, in theory, local governments should already have an inventory of local industrial facilities that release heavy metals, with basic information on who is discharging what…”


Gloria Chang is Greenpeace China’s key campaigner on climate change – June 2007

“It is clear that the government’s environmental protection apparatus, low in capacity and short in manpower, cannot fight this battle alone,” Ma Tianjie said. “The public, especially non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working for the protection of the environment, has a role in contributing to such efforts.

“In August 2011, the ministry (in China) made an unprecedented move by releasing detailed pollution information on more than 1,900 lead-acid battery facilites across the country. It was the first time that information on an entire industry’s environmental performance was made public.

“Reactions to the initiative were overwhelmingly positive. A close scrutiny of the data by the media, environmental NGOs and the public resulted in corrections and a dataset of improved quality, which would only help the ministry to better supervise the listed facilities.”

Ma Tianjie recently appeared on China’s CCTV news program “China 24″ to discuss the recent toxic metal contamination of water supply in Guanxi Autonomous Region. You may learn more of this CCTV appearance at Greenpeace.org.

However, China is often criticized by its critics/enemies for censorship and controlling what the state owned media reports without any mention of broadcasts such as this one on CCTV with Ma Tianjie of Greenpeace East Asia.

Continued March 10, 2012 in Greenpeace and the growth of environmentalism in China – Part 3 or return to 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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Leave a Comment » | China, Communism, environment, government, legal system, media, politics, science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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