China - Online Affiliate Wealth.com

VPN’s in China

November 1, 2017 Peter China, Review

Living and working in China for the past five years. I am often asked by other foreigners about VPN’s in China.

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network and is a way of connecting your computer (or smartphone) in order to circumvent the restriction on access to the World Wide Web.

VPN’s in China are an important part of life if you are someone who works online globally. A lot has changed during my time here including the use of VPN‘s. Initially there where a lot of free VPNs, but slowly these have become ineffective and now even the paid ones are slowly becoming less and less useful.

I haven’t used all of them but I have certainly tried many and I will tell you about the ones that still work for me. But first a little background on VPN’s in China.

The Chinese Government

The Chinese government is well known for its tight control over what its citizens can, learn, read, research, listen to, view and publish, within mainland China.

Access to the ‘Internet‘ is regulated in much the same way. China has a heavily censored Internet or perhaps more accurately one could say they don’t actually have internet, instead they have a China-wide intranet.

VPN's in China The Chinese authorities employ more than two million people to monitor web activity, on blogs and social media sites, such as the popular Chinese social media site ‘Weibo‘. They also block access and communication on topics or sites they deem to be ‘sensitive‘.

Censorship

China censors content for a variety of reasons, often because it’s critical of the Chinese Government or is contrary to Communist Party propaganda or official policy, and also pretty much anything else which they deem, may cause ‘social unrest‘.

“This very post would certainly fall into the ‘anything else’ catergory”

China doesn’t only block individual websites, they use a variety of techniques to scan URLs and web content for blacklisted keywords such “Tiananmen” and when located, they block them and redirect the traffic to other places.

For example they block, Google and other western search engines, including news and information sites, such as The Wall Street Journal, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, just to name a few.

Why Do They Do That?

To answer that question comphrensively we need to first determine what is the very essence of government? After you cut through the rhetoric, the politicial B.S, the self interests and emotional attachments. You will find that the ‘very essence‘ of all government is force and the belief that they are better at managing ‘your affairs‘ and ‘controlling‘ your life, than you are. And they have the right to initiate force whenever its expedient to ensure that you agree with that position and comply with their wishes, where it’s in your interests or not.

Typically a Government is an organization that has the monopoly on the ‘use of force’ within a given territory. As Mao Zedong once said, “The power of government, comes out of the barrel of a gun.”

Past Governments

The past Governments of Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R, are now widely recognised as criminal entities on a grand scale. But at the time when these regimes held power, they were treated with the respect granted any official government system.

The fact that every government has been founded on, gross illegalities, war, revolt or revolution against its predecessors, is rarely considered an issue after the event.

Force is the essence of all governments and they become official by gaining power and then by maintaining a monopoly of control over the majority of its citzens. The possession of that monopoly almost inevitably requires the control of an area or a territory. And its the maintaining of influence over that region that is considered the test of a “successful” government.

So once force has been used to gain power. Its continuation is necessary to maintain control and influence over its citizens in order to secure its own survival. One of the ways to do that and to gain legitimacy for its authority, is to control the ‘narrative‘ and access to information that its citizens have is a major part of that statergy.

Recent Example

In January 2011, Egyptian activists began organizing a demonstration in protest against the longstanding Mubarak regime. In a matter of days, thousands of protesters had gathered in Cairo after learning about the event through the social media platform, Facebook.

In an attempt to quash this ‘civil unrest‘, and to prevent the activists from organising further demonstrations, the Egyptian government in an effort to assert its aurthority, resorted to an unprecidented action. They completely cut off access to the internet for the entire country. Sending shock waves around the world.

This action (cutting of internet access) caused the size of protests to swell from thousands, to millions of people and the Mubarak regime was ultimately forced to resign, after just 18 days of massive country-wide protests.

A Learning Experience

Egypt’s ‘Arab Spring‘ demonstrated three things: (1) the incredible organizing power of the internet, (2) how quickly a government could shut down internet access. (3) The under estimation of the peoples tolerance to such blatant abuse and overtly obvious manipulation of internet access as a method of implementing an information black out.

As a result ALL Governments, fearing a similar backlash, are now a little more cautions about how they implement internet restrictions and now do so in ways that are a lot less obvious and far more subtle. They implement cybersecurity laws, unertake internet surveilance and impose content restriction and censorship for the ‘public good‘ and dozens of other tactics designed to quielty control information sharing. Not that any of this is new.

Censorship in China

In September 2000, State Council Order No. 292, created the first of many content restrictions for internet providers. It stated that China-based Web sites could not link to overseas news Websites or distribute news from overseas media, without specific and separate government approval.

Only “licensed print publishers” have the authority to deliver news online. Non-licensed Websites that wish to broadcast news, may only publish information already released publicly by other licensed news media.

According to one Harvard study, at least, 18,000 plus websites are blocked from mainland China, including 12 out of the Top 100 Global Websites.

Foreign media websites such as Yahoo! Hong Kong
Voice of America (is occasionally blocked)
the New York Times
the BBC,
Bloomberg News

The Chinese-sponsored news agency, Xinhua, stated that;

“censorship targets only superstitious, pornographic, violence-related, gambling, and other harmful information.”

This appears highly questionable when for example the e-mail provider gmail.com is also blocked and it cannot be said that it falls into any of these categories.

Areas of Internet Censorship in Asia

VPN's in China

» Read more

38 comments vpn china, vpn's in china

Is China the Next Superpower

October 1, 2016 Peter China, Economics

Is China the Next Superpower?

The Chinese have long seen themselves as superior to every other race and the center of the world. It’s because they were so confident of this, that historically they never ventured out much or as often as the Europeans did.

Well, that is with a brief exception during the 15th, Century (from 1405 to 1433) when they had a fleet of gigantic ships, vastly superior to those of Europe and they ventured as far as Africa and India and some say they even went as far as America, before Columbus. The Chinese had long been a nation of seafarers and had invented the mariner’s compass in the 11th century.

Then They Shut The Door

But then the Emperor reversed the policy of open exploration and by 1500, it became a capital offence to build a seagoing junk with more than two masts. It is said they burned the large sea going ships, which abruptly ended further exploration and potential global conquest or at least exporting their culture. They shut the door to foreigners and isolated themselves from the world for the next three hundred years.

It was the Europeans that came to China looking for opportunities and as a latter consequence it was the Chinese who were on the receiving end of whatever Europe dished out.

The Chinese were happy to sell too, (but not buy from the European traders). They demanded payment in silver for their tea, silk and ceramics and eventually this imbalance of trade caused resentment from the Europeans (especially the British) who wanted reciprocal trading.

A market was initially found for narcotics (Opium) that resulted in the infamous Opium Wars, of the late 1800s’ that resulted in the humiliation of having foreign soldiers running around the Chinese countryside. But it was also the beginning of international markets being established for many port side cities in China.

Resentment

The Chinese have historically valued the importance of ‘saving face‘ (it’s culturally important to them) And just as they have a deep-seated resentment of the (“foreign devil“) for the humiliation suffered by occupying places like Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, and numerous other enclaves.

The Chinese today, also resent the U.S government interference in its global expansion plans and it dislikes immensely the U.S parading its aircraft carriers, in and around the South China Sea. A body of water that they claim belongs to them.

The U.S government may feel like it can call the shots, because it has a dozen aircraft carriers and a couple of thousand fighter planes. But times have changed since the early nineteenth-century, and the U.S government might actually be antagonising what could turn out to be a sleeping dragon.

An Enemy

It could be making a serious enemy with a country that now has serious wealth and a lot more modern technology. Unlike the China of early times which was isolated and insular, modern day China is vibrant and relatively advanced, and at the end of the day, any war will go to the country with the most wealth. Not the one that has the most expensive military hardware. A modern day war with a country like China would certainly bankrupt America.

The Future in China

Putting thoughts of war aside, there are dozens of likely scenarios as to what might happen in China over the next few decades and although I am not going to pretend I can predict which one is the most likely to occur.

However, the trend that seems the most credible is the rapid rate of wealth increase in China.

I would never credit any official government figures with any accuracy, (because all Government lie – some more than others) but if we were to assume them to be correct, then the U.S. economy is growing at 2%, and China’s at about 7%.

Now add to that China has about four times the population, then this means that the largest economy on the planet may soon no longer be the U.S.A, but China. (For more on this you may wish to view my other post here)

Capitalism

While the country has remained steadfastly a one party communistic state they have whole heartily embraced capitalism (at least economically) since the Nixon era of the 1970s’ when they opened the door to doing business with the ‘west’.

There has been, and continues to be reforms to its economic model and unlike America they are quietly unapologetic about making money. The Government of course still owns and controls many of the major businesses, it restricts wholly owned foreign competition and it still owns all the land in the country. The people pay ‘for everything’ and nothing is free!

Even the Panda is loaned out to other nations on a ten-year contract that includes a fee of $1,000,000 per year and a provision that any cubs born during the loan period are the property of Chinese Government. This has been the arrangement ever since 1984.

So, it’s really no surprise that their GDP has shot up nearly 10,000%, since 1972 from $113 Billion, to $11.2 Trillion, today. One thing is for certain they know how to make money.

China vs. the U.S.A

The US has been the worlds largest economy in terms of GDP since the 1920’s overtaking Britain and is currently 22.4% of Global GDP. But China is quickly closing the gap. The USA exports to China account for 7.7% of total exports and its imports account for 21.5% with Canada and Mexico both tying at second with 13.2%.

Other statistics are below;

Cash Reserves: China has US$3.2Trillion vs. America US$434Billion
Total GDP: China US$11.26Trillion vs. America US$18.42Trillion
GDP per Person: China US$14,600 vs. America US$49,888
Average Income: China US$7,593 vs. America US$54,629

Of course, the average American will still be living far more comfortably than the average Chinese in that he’ll still have a bigger house, more gadgets, cars, and consumer goods.

But if look at China vs the U.S.A, he will have considerably less investment capital and savings, and there will be far more Chinese, with substantially more wealth than many wealthy Americans.

Savings

The Chinese people save over half their income and invest in real estate, even though they don’t own the actual land (since 1949 it’s been leased for 70 years from the government)

Nevertheless home ‘ownership‘ is high (at 90%) compared to the U.S where it is just 64%.

Also, most Chinese households have a major proportion of their assets in real estate vs. 27.9% in the U.S.

As the incomes in China have increased so has real estate values have gone up. In Shanghai, for example, it has increased 560% since 2000.

Also, the Chinese are buying up expensive real estate all around the world and as a result, have become the leading buyers in cities like Sydney, Singapore, L.A., San Francisco, New York, Vancouver, and London.

In 2014, they accounted for around $22 billion or some 24% of the total real estate purchases in the U.S.

Why China Has More Growth

It has nothing to do with the Chinese Government, which has actually hindered the Chinese economy. (Apart from Deng’s liberalization of the economy, in the 1980s’) Doing business and trading with the West and opening up its markets is the prime reason for the last three decades of incredible growth. There are also other reasons for its economic expansion.

One is that Chinese culture is ingrained with the Confucian work ethic, which is exploited by the Chinese government in its efforts to grow the economy, but nevertheless, this work ethic is similar to the ‘Protestant work ethic’ that helped the West get where it is now.

Another, is the sheer number of people that share a common culture and language. Upwardly mobile Chinese are now learning English, the world’s Business, Science, and technology language. So they can access everything from the West.

Also, just as other people, from a given culture tend to prefer associating and doing business with themselves, for example, the Jews, blacks, Arabs, Irish, Italians, etc., the same is true of the Chinese.

And they a much larger than any other cultural grouping so from a financial point of view this means that business opportunities are largest within this group.

They are Smarter

Also, the Chinese on average are smarter than Westerners and have a higher I.Q (105 vs.100) As an example Chinese children need to learn 3000-5000 different characters to write and read Chinese and spend much more time is school.

Whereas western children only need to know 26 letters of the alphabet to read and write and some even struggle to do that. So perhaps that explains why the Chinese tend to do better academically and prosper in business all over the world, once they get out from under the Chinese Governments control over them.

Here’s Another Thing

Take an American and a Chinese, each with a dollar. Say both are equally smart and hardworking, and each can double his dollar every year, 2, 4, 8, 16…

The only difference is that the American pays 35% – 50% in taxes and the Chinese pays far less by comparison because the state provides almost nothing.

In China, you pay for almost everything, education, medical care, to use the roads, to visit a park. There is no sense of entitlement, they are brought up to pay their own way through life, nothing is free, and credit is not easy to get.

Whereas the average American has been so brainwashed that he thinks he has a moral obligation pay taxes to the government at whatever rate it asks for; he thinks it’s dishonest or it’s cheating if someone doesn’t pay or if someone puts their own family’s welfare above the demands of the State.

He also thinks the State has a moral obligation to provide for his health, education, welfare, and retirement. He actually believes that these things are ‘entitlements’ that are his by right.

Chinese Style Clothing for Women

July 2, 2016 Peter China, Review

If you are considering buying clothes from China, particularly Chinese traditional clothing then this article is for you. It is alway difficult finding a trustworthy supplier and one that consistently provides a quality product. There are many horror stories and unless you have confidence in your supplier it may all be too overwhelming. Fortunately, I can help you and point you in the right direction.

Chinese Traditional Clothing

Ming Chongzhen

China’s traditional clothing was characterized, as magnificent.

A Characteristic of traditional Chinese clothing was that not only was the clothing an external expression of elegance, but each and every piece communicated a sense of external form and contained an internal symbolism of meaning. Certain colours and images carried specific meaning and status.

Today’s clothing

Chinese people like the color red. The red color, indicates happiness, success and unity. Today’s China’s fashion designers use a mixture of traditional and modern ideas to create new fashions.

These new fashions also incorporate, age-old motifs such as guardian deities, lions, and masks of Chinese opera characters. Another source of printed, woven and embroidered design for clothes. Some of the distinctive designs include dragons, phoenixes, clouds, flowers and lighting. These often dominate Chinese clothing style for women.

Men’s Clothing

In modern day society, Chinese men can be seen at social occasions wearing ceremonial clothes in two varieties on formal occasions, The dignified and refined traditional Chinese long gown and the SunYat-sen’s uniform, which is a blending of fashion elements from the East and West and was once hailed as the “State Suit”.

Sun Yat-sen introduced the style shortly after the founding of the Republic of China as a form of national dress although with a distinctly political and later governmental implication.

After the end of the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, such suits came to be worn widely by males and government leaders as a symbol of proletarian unity and an Eastern counterpart to the Western business suit.

This “State Suit” or Chinese tunic is a style of male attire traditionally known as the Zhongshan suit and later as the Mao suit (after Mao Zedong).

The name “Mao suit” comes from Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s fondness for wearing them in public, so that the garment became closely associated with him and with Chinese communism in general in the Western imagination.

In the 1960s and 1970’s, the Mao suit became fashionable among Western European socialists and intellectuals. It was sometimes worn over a turtleneck.

Although they fell into disuse among the general public in the 1990s due to increasing Western influences, they are still commonly worn by Chinese leaders during important state ceremonies and functions.

How to Teach English in China

December 18, 2015 Peter China, Education, Getting Started

Teaching Jobs in China

If you are looking for information about English teaching in China then you are in the right place.

Today, China is emerging as a global financial force, and as English is the established global language of commerce, science, entertainment, and aviation. It stands to reason that a primary focus of the Chinese government is improving English competency amongst its citizens.

That’s me having FUN teaching in China

They say that as many as 400 million Chinese people are studying English, which is one-third of the country’s population, and the value of the English-training market is estimated to be US$4.5 billion annually.

Great Opportunities

This offers excellent opportunities for those interested in teaching English in China or indeed those wanting to know how to teach English in China.

The English language market is growing fast, and many new positions are becoming available for those wanting to teach English in China.

Cost of Living in China

Although prices are generally rising, the cost of living in China still compares favorably to most industrialized countries. Eating out or even local food shopping and buying produce from the Chinese markets is still very affordable. Although they price things by the 500 grams, rather than 1 kilogram.

In the major cites there is a wide range of regional cuisines and eating out is the often best way to discover this variety and this is something you can do a lot of in China because it’s not expensive.

The cost of transportation in China is also inexpensive and the public transport is excellent and taxi rides are very reasonably-priced, (less than a cup of Starbucks) even if the experience can be somewhat harrowing at times.

Clothing is also very affordable and you never see anyone wearing the same clothes. Long gone is the standardised clothing from a previous era. Everyone dresses relatively modern and for more on clothing you may like to see my post here.

It Can be an Interesting Experience.

Mostly the people in China are friendly, and they treat you like someone special and will go out of their way to smile and say hello to you.

I remember in my first year teaching, way up north in Changchun, Jilin province, where they were not used to seeing foreigners and many times the people would stop and stare at you, even come up and walk around you, almost touching you, especially young children. People would even give up seats on buses for you so they could get a better look at you.

So much Delicious Food

Others would take photos with their phones and groups of teenagers would want photos and selfies with you.

Restaurant owners would want you to come in and they would seat you by the window and insist upon giving you your meal for free to get you to come back again and be seen by their customers.

These are not the sort of things that go on in the major cities like Beijing or Shanghai, as foreigners are a dime a dozen there, but it certainly makes for an interesting experience in the not so popular cities and lesser known locations.

It could even be a little intimidating being treated like a rockstar and having people stare at you out of curiosity, although for me having experienced a little momentary fame in a past life, I was amused by the attention I received just for being a ‘foreign‘ person.

China at a Glance – Quick Facts

China is considered to be one of the longest continuous civilization in the world and one out of every five people in the world is Chinese. They invented paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.

“China consumes twice as much steel as the US, Europe and Japan combined and has recently undergone massive infrastructure development, and its economy has been among the strongest performing in the world over the past few decades. Everywhere you go you will see new buildings and infrastructure”.

Capital: Beijing

Population: 1,339,724,852 China is also the fourth largest country in the world.

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Currency: Renminbi (yuan) (¥)

Climate: Varied: wet/dry seasons

Government: Nominally Marxist–Leninist single-party state.

Religion: No really – perhaps; Buddhism, Taoism

Time Zone: Despite its size, China has only one, time zone.

Learn and Make Money Online

October 3, 2015 Peter China, Economics, Education, Getting Started

Learn and Make Money Online

How? Easily, by understanding the global economy and how it affects your ability to make decisions that will make you money online.

China’s recent stock market decline and subsequent devaluation of the yuan. Sent shock waves throughout the financial world, as it showed that China would allow its currency to devalue, when usually it is pegged to the US dollar at around 6 to 1.

The fact that the Government’s using financial levers to stabilize its economy, is a sure sign that things are about to get a whole lot worse.

By devaluing its currency (around 3% against the U.S. dollar) the country’s exports becomes cheaper for the rest of the world and as products become cheaper more interest is shown by purchasers and as China has an export based economy that would be a good thing. But it may be a case of too little, too late.

Other Currencies

However most other currencies have fallen much further against the U.S dollar. Since 2014, the New Zealand dollar is down over 25% and the Australian dollar has dropped more than 30% since 2013.

The Mexican peso has fallen 28% and the Canadian dollar is down 31%, since 2001.

Canada

In Canada’s case this was mostly due to the fact that the Canadian economy has gone into recession because of the low price of Oil.

As a major oil exporter and the world’s fifth-biggest producer, oil made up 27% of exports last year. Last month, the Canadian dollar hit an 11-year low against the dollar.

Other Countries

More recently the Brazilian real has lost 23% and the Russian ruble is down 16%. As a group, Asian currencies are at their worst exchange levels since the ‘financial crisis’ of 1998, the Malaysian ringgit is down 14% and the Indonesian rupiah 9%. In fact most emerging market currencies are at their lowest levels since 2002.

Government Created

This has come about as a result of virtually every government irresponsibly printing money and calling it fancy names like “Quantitative Easing“ (Q.E). What this means is that they are creating billions of new notes, euros, pesos, dollars and yen every day and injecting them into their economies.

This makes their currencies worth less as more go into circulation and it actually steals wealth from the very people they pretend to serve.

A Strong Dollar

Comparatively the U.S. dollar has gained about 20% vs. other major currencies during the last year. Even though the U.S. used ‘Q.E‘ to print Trillions of dollars from 2008-2014.

Now for the time being it has stopped and the current, U.S. monetary policy is “less printing” than other major players, like Europe and Japan, the dollar appears to be stronger.

» Read more

68 comments learn and make money online

How to Work Online from Home

July 13, 2015 Peter China, Economics, Education, Getting Started

How to work online from home comes down to choice and motivation. Many people want to know how to make money working online. I can give you the motivation and give you the ‘how‘ with this article. But the final decision to actually do it, is yours.

Many people overlook the most obvious benefit of working online from home which is the ability to control and manage your own financial destiny. Making money online is not difficult, once you know the how. But too often people fail online because they gave up way before they put all the pieces together. And there are a lot of pieces.

Making It Easy

Fortunately, I’m going to make it easy for you and give them ALL to you. I am even going to tell you how & where you can join a world class training community that you can start for free and where to access 300 ‘How to’ videos, that cover everything you will ever need to know about how to work online from home.

But first, let’s get you motivated to wanting to work online. Here are some powerful reasons, to make you think hard about getting started.

Some Background

Peter V Crisp

“I have written before about the Government being the biggest problem for the people of the world when it comes to wealth creation and that they are not the benefactors they pretend to be”.

They are actually detrimental to your economic well-being and its time for you to take personal responsibility and create your own online business to save yourself from their mismanagement.

Let Me Explain…

Why I say that Governments are not your friends and they are no looking out for you. Let me give you an example. Many people assume that China will one day become the next superpower and perhaps they might. But things are not always as them seem.

Not so long ago, the Chinese stock markets lost more than 3 trillion dollars in less than a month, following a strong bull market, that had risen 152% over a twelve month period, up until June 2015, before China’s two biggest stock markets suddenly plummeted.

Bubbles always burst much faster than they grow and after expanding for over a year, Chinese stocks crashed 35% in three weeks, meaning that Chinese companies lost around $3.2 trillion worth of value in less than a month.

A stunning loss of wealth and to put this in perspective that’s double the size of the entire stock market of Australia. Yet even though the drop is huge the Shanghai Index is still up 71% from a year ago, so perhaps it still has further to fall.

Why do these things happen? (More about that soon...)

Not the First Time

What you may not remember was that China led the global collapse in 2008, when the stock market ‘bubble‘ at that time saw a massive rise in just two short years before suddenly dropping 72%. So, recent events are not the first time the Chinese stock market has imploded and it won’t be the last.

In Response

In response to the meltdown in 2008 the government (in line with Keynesian economics) pumped Trillions into their economy, building hundreds of thousands of apartment blocks, commercial buildings and developing infrastructure, massively ‘overbuilding‘ basically everything.

Resulting in having real estate and industrial capacity 12 to 15 years ahead of demand. But they didn’t care, they did this to stimulate their economy and to provide jobs for half a billion people who had moved from rural areas to urban cities, looking for work.

Increased GDP

This government funded real estate construction program, artificially boosted the economy and drove up the country’s GDP – making the communist economy look successful, as they weathered the global economic meltdown, becoming the envy of the western world. Despite creating a huge hidden real estate bubble.

This unprecedented overhaul of their economy had actually been going on for decades, but really only got traction from 2009 and after five years of rapid growth, the Real Estate market began to slow, as the number of unsold properties mounted in the face of continued overbuilding and weakening demand.

Economic Out-Look

Economic growth has begun slowing, home prices are deflating (despite offical figures to the contrary) and most local governments are facing a potential debt crisis from all the massive building being undertaken with borrowed funds.

But that’s not all, this is also the same country, where families are only allowed ONE baby and some of those are now in their mid twenties and are also only having one child. But the majority of these babies are still children so, the future demand for ‘Real Estate’ is unlikely to be greater than it was, thirty years ago, when families had five or six children.

What this means is that for every child in China, over the next twenty years or so, there will be up to six older (non working) family members that will need looking after. In other words the ageing population will be massive as the population is shrinking. Making the excess of real estate a larger problem than it is currently.