The Politics of Fear – Part 5/5

September 18, 2011

The prescription that leads to a successful “noble or big lie” is keeping people semi-literate or illiterate so it is more difficult to recognize the “Politics of Fear”.

However, what is literacy and how do we define it? There are no universal definitions and standards of literacy. Unless otherwise specified, the most common definition is the ability to read and write at a specified age.

In addition, literacy is learned, while illiteracy is passed along by parents who cannot read or write, and in 2003, 5% of Americans that read Below Basic did not graduate from high school, 44% spoke no English before starting school, 39% are Hispanic/Latino adults, 20% are African-American/Black adults, 25% are age 65+ and 21% have multiple disabilities.

But, at 18, many of these illiterate people are eligible to vote and votes can be influenced with little and BIG lies—especially when the voter reads at Basic or below, which is more than 40% of the population of the United States.


Manufacturing Consent: Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies

NCES.ed.gov says that in the United States, “14% of the people read ‘Below Basic’, which means no more than the most simple and concrete literacy skills; 29% read at the ‘Basic’ level, which means these people can perform simple and everyday literacy activities; 44% read at the ‘Intermediate’ level, which means they can perform moderately challenging literacy activates, and 13% of readers are ‘Proficient’, which means many of these readers can perform complex and challenging literacy activates” and are the most difficult to fool.What is more shocking is that compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. is doing well.

According to the latest International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), between 19% and 23% of American adults performed at the top levels for each of the three literacy scales: document literacy, prose literacy and quantitative (number) literacy. Sweden is the only country that scored higher. People that are literate and read often are harder to fool.

Yet, many Americans are being left behind. The same survey found that between 21% and 24% of U.S. adults performed at the lowest level. Source: Education-Portal.com

The state of literacy in America explains why neoconservative voices such as Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck may influence millions of listeners and talk to them as if they cannot think or reason.

In fact, Rush Limbaugh often says on his neo-conservative radio talk show that he will do the thinking for his audience so they do not have to, and his audience may be as large as 30 million—which is a large number of votes to influence.

This also may explain why ABC World News started their piece about China’s first aircraft carrier with, “the U.S. government directed a pointed question at the Chinese military: Why would you need a warship like that?”

Since China is now the world’s number one energy consumer and the second largest economy, why not, if it is in China’s national interest to have an aircraft carrier?

In addition, if Brazil, France, India, Italy, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Thailand and Britain all have one or more aircraft carriers, why can’t China join that club?

How is this a threat to America, which has twenty aircraft carriers?

What we have is simple language for simple minds to generate fear and control public opinion. If you read the ABC World News piece, you will notice they don’t mention the other countries that have aircraft carriers or how many the U.S. has.

Return to The Politics of Fear – Part 4 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.

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.

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The Politics of Fear – Part 4/5

September 17, 2011

In Part 1, the Nazis and US neoconservatives were mentioned together in the lead paragraph. In this post, a connection between the two will be made.

Adolf Hitler’s primary rules were: “never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

Then Liberty Defined.org says, “Present-day champions of the noble lie are the neoconservatives, and their influence is strongly bipartisan. The principle of lying and deception for the people’s “benefit” is endorsed by each administration regardless of party. The lies are considered noble since a cohesive society is sought. Modern-day neoconservatives have been largely influenced by Leo Strauss, who studied and was influenced by Plato and especially by Machiavelli. According to the neoconservatives, lying is reserved for the nobility; it’s not for the common person who may lie on an IRS form. Lying is reserved for the powerful and those who claim they are the only ones who can take care of the ignorant masses.”

In addition, journalists, such as Seymour Hersh, have declared that Strauss endorsed noble lies, “myths used by political leaders seeking to maintain a cohesive society”.

This topic was also dealt with in The Crusading Spirit In Modern America: George W. Bush and the Radical Conservative Elite by Richard J. Bazillion

Bazillion makes a strong case in his scholarly work linking these two men, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, to America’s neoconservative movement.

Schmitt joined the Nazi party in May 1933, and is sometimes referred to as “the crown jurist of the Third Reich.” His ideas had a powerful influence over neoconservatives. Crusading Spirit links these dangerous Straussian ideas to the George W. Bush Whitehouse and many of the president’s influential advisors (including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Abram Shulsky, Stephen Cambone, Elliott Abrams, Stephen Hadley, and Douglas Feith–page 65).

The most important tool of the “noble lie”, which was endorsed by Hitler, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss is illiteracy.  When individuals are ‘Proficient’ readers and are capable of performing complex and challenging literacy activities, these individuals are difficult to fool.

However, when we discover how many readers in America are ‘Proficient’, we learn why neoconservatives may not want the public schools to be successful, which explains the demonizing of America’s public school teachers and their unions.

Continued September 18, 2011 in The Politics of Fear – Part 5 or return to Part 3

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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.

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The Politics of Fear – Part 3/5

September 16, 2011

As long as there is no law to insure balance and honesty in the media, Americans are ripe to fear almost anything and China is a tempting target to induce fear and loathing by manipulating public opinion.

Since the history of Sinophobia in the United States starts with the California Gold Rush (1848 – 1855) leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which formalized this prejudice into a law that would not be removed from the books until 1965 (eighty-three years later) during the Civil Rights era, China is a perfect target since the demonizing was started in the 19th century.

Due to this early demonizing, during the later 19th and early 20th century, many Chinese were relentlessly beaten just because of their race, and in 1884, the Chinese Exclusion Act was amended in Washington D.C., so it would apply to all ethnic Chinese regardless of their country of origin.

As the years went by, other amendments were added to the Chinese Exclusion Act making the law more restrictive for the Chinese.

Political Scientist Corey Robin wrote Fear: the History of a Political Idea in 2004, published by Oxford University Press, which may also help explain why there is so much antagonism toward China in the United States.

On August 17, 2011, KPFA’s Against the Grain, a radio program about politics, society and ideas talked with Robin about how “fear dominates our society. Fear of crime, fear of the poor, fear of foreign terrorists, to which we might add fear of our government and fear of our bosses.”


Watch the Young Turks reveal Glenn Beck‘s lies.

Newsday said, “Robin argues that whereas Hobbes and Arendt appreciated the political dimensions of fear, Montesquieu and Tocqueville relegated the idea to the realm of the psychological—a view of fear that has endured, blinding us to the self-serving ways elites deploy fear for political ends.”

Steven Lukes, Professor of Sociology at New York University, said, “Corey Robin provides an acute and sustained analysis of the very idea of fear, of the role of fear as an instrument of political rule and of its unacknowledged prevalence within our liberal democratic institutions.”

The National Post said, “Brilliant…. What he does in Fear is show us, by carefully plotting the progress of modern fear politics from the Enlightenment to present day, that we are as dependent on fear as a political vehicle, if not more so, as we are the charades of left/right/middle factionalism.”

Robin mentions that fear is a method used by political groups and individuals to advance themselves and/or their political and religious agendas.

One example is Glenn Beck, who often incites violence and fear with lies and fear mongering (for more about Glenn Beck, watch the embedded video with this post).

In addition, according to former Fox News producer Charlie Reina… Fox News’s editorial policy is set from the top down in the form of a daily memo: “frequently, Reina says, it also contains hints, suggestions and directives on how to slant the day’s news – invariably, he says, in a way that’s consistent with the politics and desires of the Bush administration.”

Moreover, the December 17, 2010 issue of The Atlantic said, “One alleged news network fed its audience a diet of lies, while contributing financially to the party that benefited from those lies. Those who work for Fox News are not working for a journalistic enterprise. They are working for the communications department of a political party.”

Without an honest, trustworthy media reporting honest and balanced news, how can a democracy that depends on a literate and informed public survive?

In fact, how will China rid itself of being seen as a demon by many in America?

Continued September 17, 2011 in  The Politics of Fear – Part 4 or return to 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.

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.

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The Politics of Fear – Part 2/5

September 15, 2011

In America, there is a “BIG” dollar sign driving the “Politics of Fear”, and this dollar sign has generated much hate and distrust of China (and a few other countries) in the United States.

There are BIG lies and little lies that drive the “Politics of Fear” and some are subtle.

McCarthyism is an example of a BIG lie and another “BIG” lie by President Johnson (LBJ) led to the Vietnam War (at a time when most neo-conservatives still belonged to the Democratic Party).

Most of the lies that drive the “Politics of Fear” are not planned, and it is not a plot (a political/religious ideology drives the Politics of Fear).

Instead, the architects of these lies take advantage of events as they happen and mold the public’s opinion mostly with the little lies waiting for the “BIG” moment that leads to wars such as the one in Iraq.

Creating fear and loathing of China to justify “HUGE” military expenditures in the US also may explain the criticism of a recent rail accident, which I wrote of in High Speed Rail Tragedy in China Reveals Small Minds in the West (an example of a little lie).

To create an atmosphere of fear, first there must be distrust and loathing, which is the job of the little lies. That way it is easier for the American public to accept the BIG lies when they arrive.

In addition, we learn from Information Clearing House.info that President Harry Truman (33rd President of the United States – 1945–1953) set out, as Arthur Vandenberg advised, to “Scare the Hell out of the American people.”

However, fear to manipulate public opinion did not start with China. The US government first generated fear to manipulate the citizens of the US and Europe through the CIA‘s Operation Mockingbird (1948) soon after the end of World War II at the start of the Cold War with Soviet Russia.

Eventually, in the late 1970s, many neoconservatives moved from the Democratic Party to Ronald Reagan, the Republican hawk that promised to confront Soviet expansionism. Source: Rejecting the Democratic Party

But, soon after launching Operation Mockingbird, The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enacted the Fairness Doctrine, which was a deterrent to control of the media and success of operations such as the CIA’s Mockingbird.

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the FCC (introduced in 1949) that required the holders of broadcast licenses (radio and TV) to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was, in the Commission’s view, honest, equitable and balanced, which wasn’t the goal of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird or President Reagan‘s neo-conservatives.

To rid America of honest, equitable and balanced media reporting, in 1987, President Reagan defeated the Fairness Doctrine when he vetoed legislation intended to make it a federal law, and there were not enough votes to override his veto.

The House of Representatives had voted earlier that month with 302 votes in favor while 102 voted no. However, in the Senate, the vote was 59 to 31, less than the two-thirds necessary to override a presidential veto and President Reagan did away with the only protection the public had to hear both sides of every controversial issue, which was the end of any assurance that the news would be honest, equitable and balanced.

Consortium News.com says, “A rule of thumb in journalism is that there are almost always two sides to a story, but that rule is often ignored by the U.S. news media in the heat of some conflict when the United States is involved. Then, the real motivations of the U.S. adversary are widely ignored in favor of demonization.”

However, if the Fairness Doctrine were a law, demonizing countries (such as China) in the media would be a challenge, because the public would hear both sides of every issue making fear difficult to generate.


After the Fairness Doctrine was vetoed by President Reagan, conservative talk radio boomed.

A Media Use and Evaluation by Gallup.com of the trust and confidence the American public had of the mass media says that in 1976, 72% of the people had a great deal/fair amount of trust in the mass media, such as newspapers, TV, and radio.

By 2009, however, 57% of the people did not trust what they heard or read in the media due to smear campaigns against the media that it was controlled by ‘godless’ liberals (notice the use of language to cause fear and loathing).

In addition, the Pew Research Center said that in 1985, 55% (already down 17% from 1976) of the people felt news organizations had the facts straight, but by 2009 that trust had dropped to 29% and 63% felt the news was often inaccurate, which represents a great victory for the Politics of Fear.

How can a democracy function when the citizens are not honestly informed of both sides of an issue?

Since 1976, the public trust factor of the media has declined almost 30%, which may be because Internet Forums and Blogs, radio talk shows and TV programs may claim anything without proof and without worry, because in the United States today, freedom of expression also means freedom to lie and manipulate.

Who has benefited the most from the absence of a Fairness Doctrine in the United States designed to insure balance and honesty in the media?

Continued September 16, 2011 in The Politics of Fear – 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.

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.

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The Politics of Fear – Part 1/5

September 14, 2011

The modern politics of fear has a history and in the U.S. that history may be traced to President Harry Truman in the 1940s.

In fact, there are many elements to the politics of fear that involve the CIA, Operation Mockingbird (and its clones, which continue today—see first embedded video), Nazis/neoconservatives, the Fairness Doctrine (1949 – 1987), U.S. President Ronald Reagan and conservative talk radio, etc.

For example, ABC World News started their recent piece about China’s first aircraft carrier with, “the U.S. government directed a pointed question at the Chinese military: Why would you need a warship like that?” It’s not what they say but what they “don’t say” that reveals an element of the politics of fear, which means leaving out important facts.


“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” — William Colby, former CIA Director (Sept. 1973 to Jan. 1976), quoted by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing Democracy.

Another subtle element of the politics of fear came from the U.S. State Department when a spokesperson said, “The State Department is concerned that the Chinese military is not ‘transparent’ enough about its build-up, which, in addition to the aircraft carrier, also includes the development of a fifth-generation stealth jet fighter believed to be capable of rivaling America’s best (however, there is no mention that it will be years of development before combat ready aircraft are deployed on Chinese airfields).

Again, what isn’t said reveals elements of the politics of fear.

I wrote on this topic March 16, 2011, in China Reaching for Stealth and Aircraft Carriers.

The Chinese aircraft carrier that is generating so much concern from the U.S. government and the Western media is more than twenty years old and is not nuclear powered. It was originally launched in Russia (1988), but was never completed due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia has also been negotiating the sale of another aircraft carrier to India, which is supposed to be completed and delivered in 2011, but we hear nothing about that and India also has nuclear weapons and has waged war several times with another nuclear power, Pakistan.

If the U.S. is so concerned about China having an outdated aircraft carrier, what about all the other countries that have aircraft carriers?

Global Security.org lists twenty for America (nine small/medium sized in addition to eleven of the largest in the world), and then Brazil has one in addition to France, India, Italy, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Thailand and two for the UK (Britain is planning two more large carriers and France wants another one too).

Global Security says that all of America’s aircraft carriers add up to nearly 70 acres of deck space while the rest of the world’s carriers combined have less than 15 acres—one fifth that of America.

With such a massive superiority over the entire world, what is the “real” reason for so much concern in the U.S. of one out-of-date aircraft carrier in China?

One clue may be discovered at Global Security.org, which lists World Wide Military Expenditures and of the more than $2 trillion the nations of the world will spend in 2011, the US will spend more than $741 billion (37% of the global total).


Former US Secretary of State James Baker talks about US-Sino relations starting at 4:13

The top five countries in the world for military expenditures are the United States ($741 billion), China ($380 billion), India ($92 billion), Russia ($92 billion) and Saudi Arabia (about $60 billion).

If America were to cut its defense spending to equal China, that would go a long way to solve the National Debt crises.

However, the truth of why the West and especially America is making such a big deal over China’s one aircraft carrier has more to do with generating fear to achieve political agendas, and those behind the smear campaign don’t fear China.

To discover more, this series will continue September 15, 2011 in The Politics of Fear – 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.

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.

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Doing Mankind a Favor – Part 1/2

August 23, 2011

Recently, I learned something new from a comment left by Xiaohu Liu for a post called China’s Goals for going Green.

Liu wrote, “More likely China will go more nuclear before it goes green … (there are) two types of nuclear technology that could revolutionized the world as much as the steam power or petrol power did in the 19th and 20th century.”

Until Liu left that comment, I was unaware of the types of nuclear power China is developing.

The (UK) Telegraph says, “Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium.”

I discovered the Chinese are investing millions in research into reactors powered by thorium, a metal, supporters say, that is as common as lead (which means it would be cheap and easy to find), and one, which, despite some concerns, would lead to power plants with fewer safety issues as well as other benefits.

“Thorium-based reactors certainly have advantages,” says Wang Kan, leader of the Tsinghua University Thorium Research Team. “The energy release from Thorium is greater than from Uranium, the by-products from using Thorium are less toxic than from Uranium, and it’s much harder to make weapons from those by-products.”

However, China was not the first nation to research the use of Thorium. In the late 1940s, US physicists were exploring the use of thorium as fuel to generate power but dangerous and dirty uranium won since the US and the USSR were fighting the Cold War and building thousands of nuclear weapons.

Continued on August 24, 2011 in Doing Mankind a Favor – 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.

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.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Spy that Never Was

June 20, 2011

A friend sent me a link to the story of Glenn Shriver, an American sent to jail for four years after he pleaded guilty for being paid $70,000 by China to attempt to get a job with the CIA or another intelligence agency in the US.

The Huffington Post said, “Court documents said Shriver was approached by Chinese officers while living in Shanghai in 2004 after earlier study trips to China.”

Shriver didn’t get the job since the CIA caught him before he was hired by the agency.

In fact, the Daily Herald reported that Shriver isn’t alone and “was one of at least 57 defendants in federal cases prosecuted since 2008 involving espionage conspiracies with China or efforts to pass secret information, sensitive defense technology or trade secrets to various players within the nation — be them intelligence operatives, state-sponsored research institutes or private-sector businessmen, according to an Associated Press review of U.S. Justice Department cases.”

It’s a fact that China spies on the US. That cannot be denied. Heck, there are cases where England and Israel have spied on the US too.

However, before you start ranting about China being sneaky and underhanded, you may be interested that spying is a two way street between nations and the US plays the same serious game.

In February 2003, the BBC News World Edition reported, “The US Central Intelligence Agency has launched a campaign to attract Chinese-American recruits with an advert welcoming the Year of the Goat.” The CIA advertised in newspapers and magazine in American cities with big Chinese communities.

What’s ironic, is Glenn Shriver never became a spy. He only appeared to have had the intent to spy. Since Shriver was paid $70,000 over a period of several years and still failed to get a job, who are the fools here?

How much does the CIA spend for its operations?

The overall US intelligence budget has been considered classified until recently when Mary Margaret Graham, a former CIA official and deputy director of national intelligence for collection in 2005, said the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion. Source: Wikipedia.org

However, that may not be all the money the CIA spends on spying.

According to Source Watch.org, “The CIA black budget is annually in the vicinity of 1.1 trillion dollars and the covert world of ‘black programs’ acts with virtual impunity, overseen and regulated by itself, funding itself through secret slush funds, and is free of the limitations that come from Congressional oversight, proper auditing procedures and public scrutiny.”

Don’t have any secrets to sell. Don’t worry. Glenn Shriver was paid $70,000 by China and had nothing to sell and if Source Watch is correct, the CIA has a lot of money to throw around but watch out. You may find yourself in prison for just wanting to be a spy for the other side.

Discover more about Serious Spy Games

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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.

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.

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Decline of the American Empire

March 22, 2011

In February 2008, Amy Chu was one of two guests on Riz Khan’s Al Jazeera talk show as an expert on the rise and fall of empires.

LegalTreeHouse.com says of Chua’s second book, which has nothing to do with parenting, “Day of Empire (2007) argues that great civilizations — hyperpowers, as she calls them — rise because of their tolerance of minority cultures and religions. Conversely, hyperpowers decline when this stops, when they, in the words of the Publishers’ Weekly review, “lapse into intolerance and exclusion.”

The other guest speaker is the author of “The Second World” by Parag Khanna, a professor at Princeton.

Chua speaks first saying, “A hyperpower is one of a few remarkable societies in all of history that amassed so much wealth and military might they dominated the world.

Then the host turns to Parag Khanna, who says he does not disagree with Chua.  However, he mentions that the European Union (EU) and China are also capable of influencing affairs and events globally.

While answering the first caller’s question, Chua says her book explores parallels between the Roman Empire and the United States and there are many. She then says that every hyperpower in history was tolerant while rising and intolerant while in decline.

Chua says, she does not mean tolerance for modern human rights and respect for others. She means being tolerant by allowing many different kinds of people regardless of skin color, ethnicity or religion to live, prosper and participate without persecution or limitations.

Today, to be globally dominant, Chua says, a society must attract the best and brightest from all ethnicities around the globe. She says if her thesis is correct, China cannot become a hyperpower but can become a super power since China doesn’t allow many ethnicities to live, work and prosper in China as citizens.

Parag Khanna answers the next question of how the US may react as it is in decline since it has so many weapons of mass destruction at its disposal. He also mentions that the EU is the largest economy in the world — not the US. Then he says India is far from being able to compete globally with the US, the EU and China since it has so many internal challenges to solve.

Learn of India Falling Short

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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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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China Reaching for Stealth and Aircraft Carriers

March 16, 2011

I read about China’s J-20 Stealth Fighter at the Huffington Post. Sinophobes seem to be all a Twitter saying, “The J-20 would pose the greatest immediate threat to Taiwan and undermine the Taiwan air force’s advantages.”

However, the US is currently the only country in the world with operational stealth fighters and bombers, and China is years away from deploying stealth aircraft.

As for China’s aircraft carrier, in April 2009 CCTV reported that China wanted an aircraft carrier and would eventually build their own.

China Business asks, “Will China’s future aircraft carriers be a threat to other nations?”

In fact, China’s first aircraft carrier is a very old, used Russian-made aircraft carrier and may be operational by 2012.

Wu Huayang, Deputy Political Commissar of the PLA Navy, says China has the economic and technological capacity to build its own aircraft carriers. Western military experts believe that China will eventually build five.

Liang Guanglie, China’s Defense Minister, says, “China will not be the only major country without an aircraft carrier to protect the country’s maritime security.”

Even Japan has an aircraft carrier, its first since World War 2.  It was launched in 2009.  In fact, Japan is planning to build six-light carriers. Sounds sinister to me. No wonder China wants stealth and aircraft carriers after what the Japanese did to China in World War 2.

An outdated list at Wiki shows that the US has 67 aircraft carriers with 11 in service and the United Kingdom has 40 with two in service.  India has two with one in service. Even Thailand has a light aircraft carrier.

For stealth, the US has the F-117 Nighthawk (about 64 were built), the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber (20 are active), the F-22 Raptor (168 built and 187 planned) and the R-35 Lightning II (13 test flight aircraft).

Discover When the Generals Laughed

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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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

A Modern Chinese Military is Not a Threat

February 17, 2011

I often find Al Jazeera to be one of the best sources to find unbiased and educational reports of China, and in August 2010, Al Jazeera’s Inside Story questioned if China is attempting to become a major, global military power and if following the US example to modernize the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will achieve this goal.

Inside Story starts out showing a Chinese military parade with troops marching in precision much as I did in the U.S, Marine Corps when taking part in military parades after serving in Vietnam.  It’s just that Americans seldom see the American military on parade. Believe me, the precision you will see at the beginning of this Al Jazeera video is no different from military precision in the United States military. The style of how they march may be different but the precision is the same.

While serving in the US Marines 1965 to 1968, I took part in military parades where Marines were required to be perfect while marching, doing drills with unloaded weapons, and standing in the summer heat at attention for hours without batting an eyelid. 

If a Marine passed out in the heat, it helped if he or she fell while still standing stiffly at attention all the way to the ground. The chewing out that might come later wouldn’t be as harsh.


Al Jazeera English – Inside Story, Modernizing China’s Military – 23:24 minutes

On the 83rd anniversary of the PLA, the Liberation Army Daily said, “China’s army should modernize to boost combat capability using the US as an example.”

The Liberation Army Daily reported, “History and reality have shown again and again that a country which does not have a world view is a backward one. A military which lacks global vision is one without hope.”

To discuss this issue, Al Jazeera convened three military experts from around the globe: Shunzi Taoka from Japan, Lei Wang of Harvard University, and Richard Weitz of the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C.

Lei Wang says that the topic of a modern military in China is not new. It is a topic that has been discussed in China for centuries. He points out that in the 19th century many countries invaded China, which caused people to rethink how to protect China.

Wang says, modernizing the Chinese military will serve economic achievement, China’s role in global peace keeping, and fighting global terrorism. In fact, Wang points out that Chinese troops are always the first to reach a site in China devastated by a natural catastrophe to provide aid and protection to the people.

Richard Weitz agrees that the Chinese military has been modernizing all through its history, which means more than two thousand years. In fact, the Chinese military was technologically superior to the Roman Empire at the time of the Han Dynasty, and maintained that position for centuries until the 19th century.

Shunzi Taoka says he is not typical Japanese. He says he does not believe in the theory that China is a military threat. He points out that China’s navy is no match for the US, and China’s military expansion is over emphasized.

Lei Wang then says that the key mission of the Chinese military is to protect all of China’s economic development—not to intervene or invade other countries. He says, “It is important to look at the culture of Chinese and to also look at what China has done…” and China is now part of global trade and feels a responsibility to provide global protection for free trade.  To achieve that goal, the military must be modern.

When asked about China’s military secrecy, Richard Weitz says that is somewhat understandable.  However, he points out, we have seen cooperation. China has become a major contributor to UN global peacekeeping operations on the ground.

Shunzi Taoka says to see China as an enemy of the United States as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War is outdated.  China is too heavily invested in America and depends on American trade for its economic development. China is very, very different from the Soviet Union.

In fact, China sponsors the US with economic support.

In summation, all three military experts did not see China as a military threat to other nations.

Discover Why China’s Generals Laughed

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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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