Chinese Morality

Alexa Olesen, The Associated Press BEIJING, China – A pregnant woman in south China was detained, beaten and forced to have an abortion just a month before her due date because the baby would have violated the country’s one-child limit, her husband said Thursday. Construction worker Luo Yanquan said his wife was taken kicking and screaming from their home by more than a dozen people on Oct. 10 and detained in a clinic for three days by family planning officials, then taken to a hospital and injected with a drug that killed her baby. Family planning officials told the couple they weren’t allowed to have the child because they already have a 9-year-old daughter, Luo said. For the last 30 years, China has limited most urban couples to just one child in a bid to curb population growth and conserve its limited resources. China has the world’s largest population, with more than 1.3 billion people. Couples that flout the rules face hefty fines, seizure of their property and loss of their jobs. The case is an extreme example of the coercive measures Chinese officials sometimes use to comply with the strict family planning regulations. Though illegal, police and judicial authorities often look the other way when forced abortion cases are reported and the heavily censored state media shy away from such news. But in recent years, victims have begun to speak out about their ordeals with the help of the Internet and text messaging. Aiding them are social campaigners and lawyers who have documented cases of forced late-term abortions. Similar abuses have been reported in Hebei and Shandong provinces and in the Guangxi region. An official with the Siming district family planning commission, which oversees Luo’s neighbourhood, confirmed there was a record of Luo’s wife, Xiao Aiying, undergoing an abortion recently but said the procedure was voluntary and that she was about six months instead of eight months pregnant at the time. Like many Chinese bureaucrats, he refused to give his name. China bans forced abortions, but doesn’t prohibit or clearly define late-term abortion.

Great News From China- Oh Shit, Wait a Moment

Here is some uhhh great news from China? According to the chinadaily-communist-mouthpiece-pos, the benevolent chicoms are investing over U$600 in water projects over the next ten years. It sounds like a great idea, why not build more dams so the people of Vietnam and India have less water to consume, after all , its all about resources isnt it?
The bad news, other than the fact that the chicoms will be choking of water supplies to southeast Asia, is that although U$600 000 000 000 is planned for the endeavor, that is what is earmarked, but like all things Chinese we must look under the hood and examine the reality of the numbers.

U$ 600 000 000 000 planned expenditure
minus
-400 000 000 rework caused by shitty materials
-200 000 000 rework caused by shitty labor
-200 000 000 000 hong bao’s or bribes which will end up in the pockets of people who send their kids to our countries to ‘study’
-50 000 000 000 -ktv expenses less, hookers and alcohol
– 100 000 000 000-ktv ‘comfort laborers’ and alcohol

China Selling the USA Toxic Stocks Now-

This article is a shocker, Chinese companies are increasingly represented in US securities fraud. I dont know how this can happen. A country wiht the sparkling reputation of China and her morals and ethics, I am sure these cases are nothing more than outliers and are from the evil legacy of China’s past. On second thought, maybe its just business as usual with these guys and if you dont pay attention to your stock portfolio or lose your 401k to them then you probably deserve it.

excerpt:

“The folks at Stanford Law School and Cornerstone Research have once again issued their twice-annual study on securities lawsuits.

The newest findings show that while the “traditional” securities-fraud suits dropped significantly, plaintiffs firms are finding work with new types of suits, like suits against Chinese companies that have listed on U.S. exchanges and suits arising out of M&A activity. Click here for my story in Thursday’s WSJ; here for a link to the full report.

As a result, the totals were up: Plaintiffs sought a total of 176 federal securities class actions in 2010, compared with 168 in 2009, according to the study.

There are two potential reasons for the increase in lawsuits against Chinese issuers, according to Joseph Grundfest, a professor at Stanford Law School.

“There’s going to be a learning or adjustment process as Chinese companies adapt to different regulatory or disclosure regimes,” he said. Another possibility, Prof. Grundfest said, is that some of these companies may be flouting U.S. rules.

Also contributing to the total rise in filings: a nearly sixfold increase in suits filed shortly after the announcement of corporate mergers. Such suits, typically filed against takeover targets, often allege that the price agreed to by the company is too low. (Click here for a recent story from Dionne Searcey and me on these types of suits.)

The total number of securities filings, while up year over year, are still below the annual average of 195 filings between 1997 and 2009, according to the study.

Comment on Cruelty in China

Here is an excellent comment on my post about historical cruelty in China. I will post it here as the author has good insight and it is quite useful to understand this. L. Lofthouse- It’s true that punishments “WERE” harsh in China and probably didn’t change much until after the Communists came into power in 1949. In fact, the main character in my first two historical fiction novels lived in China from 1854 to 1908 and wrote in one of his letters or journal entrees that the Chinese often punished the innocent along with the guilty to rid the society of the problem while British common law often allowed the guilty to go free on a technicality. In fact, even under Mao and possibly still today, the Chinese punish an entire family for the crimes of one member of that family. That punishment might not be death for the family as it was in Imperial China as it might still be for the criminal but it could mean being sent to a far province so the tainted family is considered responsible for raising a criminal and is removed as far from the rest of Han China as possible to a remote area in rural China. Robert Hart (based on a real person), the main character in my novels, couldn’t make up his mind which legal system he preferred—the brutal Chinese method that existed before the Communists came to power or the lenient guilty until proven innocent methods of the West and America. However, the real changes started to take place after Mao died. Under Deng Xiaoping and the open door policy, China modernized and then the US sponsored China to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). To belong to the WTO, China had to have a legal system similar to western democracies and/or industrialized modern nations. To achieve this, China wrote a new constitution in 1982, eight years after Mao’s death. This new constitution has been the foundation guiding China into the modern nation it is becoming. The chances are that China’s new legal system and new profession (lawyers — yes there are law schools in China now educating lawyers in the new laws that are still evolving as China studies and learns from the legal systems of Western countries then adapts those laws to fit Chinese culture. The number of crimes that result in the death penalty have been reduced a lot.

The Communist Party in China

the political parties in China are mentioned neither in art. 50, General Principles of Civil Law 1986 , nor in the Regulations on Registration of Social Organizations Management issued in 1998 by the State Council15. This legal vacuum seems to imply that (i) the political parties in China are -and are only-the CPC itself and the small eight “Democratic Parties” that the Party tolerates, and (ii) that whatever evolution of the political scenario can just originate and be successful with the explicit approval of the ruling Party. A partial confirmation of this is in a document issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs that suddenly appeared on February 2007 on some Chinese official media: Notice of the Ministry of Civil Affairs on Issues regarding Registration Exemption for some Associations 16 , that explains how organizations within the CPPCC and those approved/ratified/cleared by the State Council are waived to register (according to the 1998 regulations). One can infer that the battalion of “flower-pot” parties17 and the CPC itself, in their capacity as key members of the CPPCC, live a sort of “separate life” 15 For the complete text, see. http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2005-10 from ssrn.com

Judicial Review in China

This snippet is about judicial review- the lack thereof in China. judicial review is a tool whereby there are checks and balances on a legal system. The idea is that judicial review is used to weed out poor decisions and also to build a block of good ones which should be followed. As china is ruled by communists whose power is complete, no judicial review is really allowed. from A Constitutional Court for China Within the Chinese Communist Party Consortium for Peace & Ethics Working Paper 2008-1 Larry Catá Backer “As for judicial review powers, Amended Article 5 of the 1982 Constitution reads, “the People’s Republic of China governs the country according to law and makes it a socialist country ruled by law,” [and Article 127 provides that the Supreme People’s Court is the highest judicial organ. However, constitutionalism in action and text reduced a potential for a rule of law rubric to a non-rule of law rubric, reduced a potential for legal accountability to political accountability. This left China’s judicial system without a positive discursive machinery for judicial review: neither constitutional review or constitutional court, nor decentralized (or diffused) or centralized (or concentrated) constitutional review.5 For Western observers of Chinese constitutionalism, then, there is no proper form of constitutional (or judicial) review because there is neither an appropriate institutional mechanism for its exercise set out in the Chinese constitution, nor is such a power otherwise vested in a proper court within the organs of state power.

Chinese and Plagiarism

Maybe the Chinese who are notorious for plagiarizing believed as RW Emerson “Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest or private addition so rare and insignificant,—and this commonly on the ground of other reading or hearing,—that, in a large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. Ralph Waldo Emerson

State Ownership of Business in China

From The Party – Richard McGregor “If I am not mistaken, our country’s private enterprises produce over 40 per cent of GDP nationally. Here in Shanghai, state enterprises produce nearly 80 per cent of GDP. If you want to discuss who adheres most to socialism, couldn’t it be said to be Shanghai?’” (Chen Liangyu, Shanghai Party Secretary)

“Ghetto China”

When I first graduated from college I took a job that placed me on Telephone Rd. by Hobby Airport in Houston. Some years later I had a job in Flint (armpit of the world) Michigan. What the residents of these two places have in common with China is that uncanny ability to justify obtaining wealth no matter the method of obtaining it. For instance, as long as a Flint’ite has some bling and extra cash, they may be happy, the process by which the funds were obtained is quickly forgotten. To understand China, consider this. Almost every China-man you will meet will have a similar desire to get rich as that Houstonian. They will do whatever it takes and proudly park their long dark vehicles upon the sidewalk. Fearful of telling you how they obtained their wealth, they wash away their consciouses at the KTV’s at the hands of their newest mistresses.

Re-Blog About US and China War Tech

Interesting take on the new arms race between the US and China, from here. from http://blog.loadingdata.nl Are the U.S. making the same mistakes that cost Germany the war? Last night I was watching an episode of “The Genius of Design” about wartime design. In this episode they discussed the difference between German design and Allied design, most notably the difference between the German Tiger tank and the Russian T-34 tank. As any Discovery Channel watcher would know, the Tiger tank was by far the superior, there are documented cases of one Tiger tank defeating over ten T-34′s. In a one-on-one battle no Allied tank would stand a chance. However, it was so over-engineered that it cost a fortune to build (DM 250.000, which would translate into US$ 1.5M today) The Soviet T-34 on the other hand cost RUB 270.000 (US$ 780.000 today) at the start of the war and a mere RUB 142.000 (US$ 320.000 today) by the end of the war. Beside the cost, it was also much simpler and thus quicker and easier to manufacture. By the end of the war, Germany had produced 1.347 Tiger I and 492 Tiger II tanks, while Russia had build over 84.000 T-34 tanks (45 times as many). Although a single Tiger tank was far superior to any other tank, it was no match to a swarm of T-34s. Now, what does this all have to do with the United States and present day? While I was watching this program I couldn’t help to think of the latest scare the Chinese military gave the United States. In the last weeks the Chinese Airforce leaked pictures of test flights of their new fifth generation stealth fighter plane. This came as a total shock to the Americans, who have recently began fasing out their comparable F-22 Raptor in favor of the smaller and lighter F-35 JSF, believing they were decades ahead of any serious competition. Of course American experts were quick to point out that on many points their planes are still superior, especially with regards to stealth, radar integration of multiple airplane, etc. They may or may not be right, the point however is that there are 187 F-22 planes in operation. The costs to build one are: US$ 140M, plus about US$ 250M in R&D. Operation costs are a little of US$ 3M per year. If the Chinese has understood one concept, it’s mass production of adequate products. The projected costs of building a J-20 fighter plane are expected to be 50 to 80% lower than the F-22. That means the compared price will be even lower than during WW2.