Appreciating the Yuan

First, no country including US has the right to tell other countries to appreciate their currency. The era of ‘you’re either my puppet or my enemy’ is long past and Obama is still living in the past glory. He blames China for all our ills, as he cannot fix our problems.

Keeping the Yuan low actually helps US's consumers and US in buying wind turbines or HSRs from China at lower prices. Not to mention the huge loans from China. China does not want to withdraw the bad loans as they do not want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The major products of China and US are not the same, so there are no direct competitions. If we do not buy the products from China, most likely we'll buy same products from Mexico or India.

Until China builds up its local market for its growing middle class, I do not see Yuan will appreciate by more than 5% a year.

A strong China is good for the world including US! China is just one part of the global economy. The other players are research companies from the west and the US, oil from Middle East and Africa, and commodities from Australia, Brazil… Everyone benefits including the consumers in every country.

Lord Obama and his 'advisers' including Uncle Ben and Tiny Tim can do a lot of good if they looked longer-term (more than 4 years for re-election). To give generous welfare to buy votes and creating jobs for the lazy government servants are definitely not good for the country. Have we learned from California?

Throwing money on HSR is stupid and reckless without calculating basic return of the investment. China is successful with HSR due to its dense population, but not here.

Father of China's rocketry

He passed away at 98.

The description of his life in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen or just click here.

I just finished a book on him by Iris Chang. It is translated from English to Chinese. A very fascinating life.

99.9% chance he was not a communist when he was in US. He was a dedicated scientist.

The joke of the century is the witch hunt of communists in US and drove Tsien back to China to help China to develop missiles. It speeds up China’s missile development by at least 10 years when China did not know how to build good bicycle.

Did Middle East and N.Korea benefit from his initial work?

The book mentioned one or two flaws in his life. I believe he needed to do so to be political stable and be able to secure funding for his work.

Paris auction of looted Chinese treasures

A serious event.

First some history.
The Britain’s evil parliament approved to send warships to enforce the opium trade to China. What do you call a country pushing opium?

It is about 150 years ago, but it seems it is forgotten outside China.

The settlement asked China to compensate all the opium burned by the Chinese and army expenses, open the seaports for opium trade, release the Chinese prisoners who helped the British, cede Hong Kong…

Imagine Cambodia asks US to pay for the opium burned during US raids and their army expenses, open more seaports for opium trade, release all the traitors who helped Cambodia during the war, and cede Hawaii to Cambodia. How outrageous?

Cambodia can be replaced by another opium export country.

The alliance of foreign countries burned China’s summer palace, looted all the treasures (most are done by over 3,000 Franco-British soldiers and took 3 days/nights to burn it down)… Imagine foreigners loot all the treasures from Buckingham Palace and burn it down.

The common excuse from the west is the rebellion against the west. As some one said in the blog, they’re patriots or rebels. How outrageous to open opium trades by using force in the first place.

All European foreigners to Beijing should be informed of the ruin so we can learn not to repeat from history. You do not see many foreigners in the ruin. Same as few Japanese tourists in the Pearl Harbor Memorial.

All the museums in Europe should classify whether the Chinese treasures are loots and posted the info if necessary. I like to know the percentage of the Chinese treasures are loots.

If it is stolen, it should be returned to the owner. From stolen jewelry from your house to mummy from Egypt.

No matter how many times it is legally traded and as long as it is stolen it is still loot.

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Reality check.

It would be a moral victory but not feasible to stop the auction. All the lawyers can tell you that. I just want to raise the awareness of the beginning part of our bad history (late Qing to end of Mao). A lot of lawyers donate their services free for China on this incident, so I have a higher respect on the legal profession.

The auction is intended for AIDS research. I suggest to give the part of the auction to a Chinese university on same cause, preferably in Beijing.

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I came across YingYing's comment as follows. Just sad and no words can describe how outrageous the barbarians from the west were. Thanks YingYing. With this kind of grand palace for pleasure including the marble boat, I wonder how the regime could be strong to protect its citizens.

Let's hope that the history will not repeat since problems are over our head again!! Can we ever learn as human?? We always choose destruction to solve our problems. We do not have much left to destroy…

The Old Summer Palace which was built in the 18th and early 19th century were destroyed by British and French troops in 1860. It was almost 5 times the size of the Forbidden City, and 8 times the size of the Vatican City.

There were also a few buildings in Tibetan and Mongol styles, and European-style buildings reflecting the diversity of the Qing Empire. It had hundreds of halls, pavilions, temples, galleries, gardens, lakes, etc. Several famous landscapes of southern China had been reproduced in the Imperial Gardens, hundreds of invaluable Chinese art masterpieces and antiquities were stored in the halls, making the Imperial Gardens one of the largest museums in the world. Some unique copies of literary work and compilations were also stored inside the Imperial Gardens.

It took 3,500 British troops to set the entire place ablaze, taking three days to burn.

Charles George Gordon, a 27-year-old captain in the Royal Engineers wrote: “We went out, and, after pillaging it, burned the whole place, destroying in a vandal-like manner most valuable property which [could] not be replaced for four millions. We got upward of £48 apiece prize money…I have done well. The [local] people are very civil, but I think the grandees hate us, as they must after what we did the Palace. You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one’s heart sore to burn them; in fact, these places were so large, and we were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder them carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burnt, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralizing work for an army.”

Some contemporary Frenchmen, such as Victor Hugo, disapproved of the action; in his "Expédition de Chine", Hugo described the looting as, "'Two robbers breaking into a museum, devastating, looting and burning, leaving laughing hand-in-hand with their bags full of treasures; one of the robbers is called France and the other Britain. In his letter Hugo hoped that one day France would feel guilty and return what it had plundered from China.

China helps African countries

This blog is for fun. However, some current events are interesting. Here is a great article on this topic.

China and Africa should be good trade partners. When there is money available, corruption follows. It happens in most developing countries. Human right is better with better economy in most cases. Hence, China's improving their economies would improve the human rights in theory. Being a developing country, it is not China’s responsibility to fight for the human rights/freedom of their trade partners, but their own citizens’ - did the world learn on foreign intervention from what Bush did to the Middle East?