articles like the following almost never get published in mainstream American media because it counters the notion of "peaceful monks vs dictatorial commie" and readers wouldn't like to be confused. =========================================== Protests in Tibet and Separatism: the Olympics and Beyond {expanded version of a letter submitted to the South China Morning Post, by Barry Sautman} Recent protests in Lhasa and other Tibetan areas were organized to embarrass the Chinese government ahead of the Olympics. The Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), the major Tibetan exile organization that advocates independence for Tibet and has endorsed using violent methods to achieve it, has said as much. Its head, Tsewang Rigzin, stated in a March 15 interview with the Chicago Tribune that since it is likely that Chinese authorities would suppress protests in Tibet, “With the spotlight on them with the Olympics, we want to test them. We want them to show their true colors. That’s why we’re pushing this.” At the June, 2007 Conference for an Independent Tibet organized in India by “Friends of Tibet,” speakers pointed out that the Olympics present a unique opportunity for protests in Tibet. In January, 2008, exiles in India launched a “Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement” to “act in the spirit” of the violent 1959 uprising against Chinese government authority and focus on the Olympics. Several groups of Tibetans were likely involved in the protests in Lhasa, including in the burning and looting of non-Tibetan businesses and attacks against Han and Hui (Muslim Chinese) migrants to Tibet. The large monasteries have long been centers of separatism, a stance cultivated by the TYC and other exile entities, many of which are financed by the US State Department or the US Congress’ National Endowment for Democracy. Monks are self-selected to be especially devoted to the Dalai Lama. However much he may characterize his own position as seeking only greater autonomy for Tibet, monks know he is unwilling to declare that Tibet is an inalienable part of China, an act China demands of him as a precondition to formal negotiations. Because the exile regime eschews a separation of politics and religion, many monks deem adherence to the Dalai Lama’s stance of non-recognition of the Chinese government’s legitimacy in Tibet to be a religious obligation. Reports on the violence have underscored that Tibetan merchants competing with Han and Hui are especially antagonistic to the presence of non-Tibetans. Alongside monks, Tibetan merchants were the mainstay of protests in Lhasa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This time around, many Han and Hui-owned shops were torched. Many of those involved in arson, looting, and ethnic-based beatings are also likely to have been unemployed young men. Towns have experienced much rural-to-urban migration of Tibetans with few skills needed for urban employment. Videos from Lhasa showed the vast majority of rioters were males in their teens or twenties. The recent actions in Tibetan areas differ from the broad-based demonstrations of “people power” movements in several parts of the world in the last few decades. They hardly show the overwhelming Tibetan anti-Chinese consensus portrayed in the international media. The highest media estimate of Tibetans who participated in protests is 20,000 -- by Steve Chao, the Beijing Bureau Chief of Canadian Television News, i.e. one of every 300 Tibetans. Compare that to the 1986 protests against the Marcos dictatorship by about three million -- one out of every 19 Filipinos. Tibetans have legitimate grievances about not being sufficiently helped to compete for jobs and in business with migrants to Tibet. There is also job discrimination by Han migrants in favor of family members and people from their native places. The gaps in education and living standards between Tibetans and Han are substantial and too slow in narrowing. The grievances have long existed, but protests and rioting took place this year because the Olympics make it opportune for separatists to advance their agenda. Indeed, there was a radical disconnect between Tibetan socio-economic grievances and the slogans raised in the protests, such as “Complete Independence for Tibet” and “May the exiles and Tibetans inside Tibet be reunited,” slogans that not coincidentally replicate those raised by pro-independence Tibetan exiles. While separatists will not succeed in detaching Tibet from China by rioting, they believe that China will eventually collapse, like the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and they seek to establish their claim to rule before that happens. Alternatively, they think that the United States may intervene, as it has elsewhere, to foster the breakaway of regions in countries to which the US is antagonistic, e.g. Kosovo and southern Sudan. The Chinese government also fears such eventualities, however unlikely they are to come to pass. It accordingly acts to suppress separatism, an action that comports with its rights under international law. Separatists know they can count on the automatic sympathy of Western politicians and media, who view China as a strategic economic and political competitor. Western elites have thus widely condemned China for suppressing riots that these elites would never allow to go unsuppressed in their own countries. They demand that China be restrained in its response; yet, during the Los Angeles uprising or riots of 1992 -- which spread to a score of other major cities -- President George H.W. Bush stated when he send in thousands of soldiers, that “There can be no excuse for the murder, arson, theft or vandalism that have terrorized the people of Los Angeles . . . Let me assure you that I will use whatever force is necessary to restore order.” Neither Western politicians nor mainstream media attacked him on this score, while neither Western leaders nor the Dalai Lama have criticized those Tibetans who recently engaged in ethnic-based attacks and arsons. Western elites give the Chinese government no recognition for significant improvements in the lives of Tibetans as a result of subsidies from the China’s central government and provinces, improvements that the Dalai Lama has himself admitted. Western politicians and media also consistently credit the Dalai Lama’s charge that “cultural genocide” is underway in Tibet, even though the exiles and their supporters offer no credible evidence of the evisceration of Tibetan language use, religious practice or art. In fact, more than 90% of Tibetans speak Tibetan as their mother tongue. Tibet has about 150,000 monks and nuns, the highest concentration of full-time “clergy” in the Buddhist world. Western scholars of Tibetan literature and art forms have attested that it is flourishing. Ethnic contradictions in Tibet arise from the demography, economy and politics of the Tibetan areas. Separatists and their supporters claim that Han Chinese have been “flooding” into Tibet, “swamping” Tibetans demographically. In fact, between the national censuses of 1990 and 2000 (which count everyone who has lived in an area for six months or more), the percentage of Tibetans in the Tibetan areas as a whole increased somewhat and Han were about one-fifth of the population. A preliminary analysis of the 2005 mini-census shows that from 2000-2005 there was a small increase in the proportion of Han in the central-western parts of Tibet (the Tibet Autonomous Region or TAR) and little change in eastern Tibet. Pro-independence forces want the Tibetan areas cleansed of Han (as happened in 1912 and 1949); the Dalai Lama has said he will accept a three-to-one Tibetan to non-Tibet population ratio, but he consistently misrepresents the present situation as one of a Han majority. Given his status as not merely the top Tibetan Buddhist religious leader, but as an emanation of Buddha, most Tibetans credit whatever he says on this or other topics. The Tibetan countryside, where three-fourths of the population lives, has very few non-Tibetans. The vast majority of Han migrants to Tibetan towns are poor or near-poor. They are not personally subsidized by the state; although like urban Tibetans, they are indirectly subsidized by infrastructure development that favors the towns. Some 85% of Han who migrate to Tibet to establish businesses fail; they generally leave within two to three years. Those who survive economically offer competition to local Tibetan business people, but a comprehensive study in Lhasa has shown that non-Tibetans have pioneered small and medium enterprise sectors that some Tibetans have later entered and made use of their local knowledge to prosper. Tibetans are not simply an underclass; there is a substantial Tibetan middle class, based in government service, tourism, commerce, and small-scale manufacturing/ transportation. There are also many unemployed or under-employed Tibetans, but almost no unemployed or underemployed Han because those who cannot find work leave. Many Han migrants have racist attitudes toward Tibetans, mostly notions that Tibetans are lazy, dirty, and obsessed with religion. Many Tibetans reciprocate with representations of Han as rich, money-obsessed and conspiring to exploit Tibetans. Long-resident urban Tibetans absorb aspects of Han culture in much the same way that ethnic minorities do with ethnic majority cultures the world over. Tibetans are not however being forcibly “Sincized.” Most Tibetans speak little or no Chinese. They begin to learn it in the higher primary grades and, in many Tibetan areas, must study in it if they go on to secondary education. Chinese, however, is one of the two most important languages in the world and considerable advantages accrue to those who learn it, just as they do to non-native English speakers. The Tibetan exiles argue that religious practice is sharply restricted in Tibetan areas. The Chinese government has the right under international law to regulate religious institutions to prevent them from being used as vehicles for separatism and the control of religion is in fact mostly a function of the state’s (overly-developed) concern about separatism and secondarily about how the hyper-development of religious institutions counteracts “development” among ethnic Tibetans. Certain state policies do infringe on freedom of religion; for example, the forbidding, in the TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region), of state employees and university students to participate in religious rites. The lesser degree of control over religion in the eastern Tibetan areas beyond the TAR-- at least before the events of March, 2008 -- indicate however that the Chinese government calibrates its control according to the perceived degree of separatist sentiment in the monasteries. The Dalai Lama’s regime was of course itself a theocracy that closely regulated the monasteries, including the politics, hierarchy and number of monks. The exile authorities today circumscribe by fiat those religious practices they oppose, such as the propitiation of a “deity” known as Dorje Shugden. The cult of the Dalai Lama, which is even stronger among monks than it is among Hollywood stars, nevertheless mandates acceptance of his claim that restrictions on religious management and practice in Tibet arise solely from the Chinese state’s supposed anti-religious animus. Similarly, the cult requires the conviction that the Dalai Lama is a pacifist, even though he has explicitly or implicitly endorsed all wars waged by the US. The development of the “market economy” has had much the same effect in Tibetan areas as in the rest of China, i.e. increased exploitation, exacerbated income and wealth differentials, and rampant corruption. The degree to which this involves an “ethnic division of labor” that disadvantages Tibetans is however exaggerated by separatists in order to foster ethnic antagonism. For example, Tibet is not the poorest area of China, as is often claimed. It is better off than several other ethnic minority areas and even than some Han areas, in large measure due to heavy government subsidies. Rural Tibetans as well receive more state subsidies than other minorities. The exile leaders employ hyperbole not only in terms of the degree of empirical difference, but also concerning the more fundamental ethnic relationship in Tibet: in contrast to, say, Israel/Palestine, Tibetans have the same rights as Han, they enjoy certain preferential economic and social policies, and about half the top party leaders in the TAR have been ethnic Tibetans. Tibet has none of the indicia of a colony or occupied territory and thus has no relationship to self-determination, a concept that in recent decades has often been misused, especially by the US, to foster the breakup of states and consequent emiseration of their populations. A settlement between the Chinese government and Tibetan exile elites is a pre-condition for the mitigation of Tibetan grievances because absent a settlement, ethnic politics will continue to subsume every issue in Tibet, as it does for example, in Taiwan and Kosovo, where ethnic binaries are constructed by “ethnic political entrepreneurs,” who seek to outbid each other for support. The riots in Tibet have done nothing to advance discussions of a political settlement between the Chinese government and exiles, yet a settlement is necessary for the substantial mitigation of Tibetan grievances. For Tibetan pro-independence forces, a setback to such efforts may have been their very purpose in fostering the riots. Tibetan pro-independence forces, like separatists everywhere, seek to counter any view of the world that is not ethnic-based and to thwart all efforts to resolve ethnic contradictions, in order to boost the mobilization needed to sustain their ethnic nationalist projects. They have claimed that China will soon collapse and the US will thereafter increase its patronage of a Tibetan state elite, to the benefit of ordinary Tibetans. One only has to look round the world at the many humanitarian catastrophes that have resulted from such thinking to project what consequences are likely to follow for ordinary Tibetans if the separatist fantasy were fulfilled. -- Barrry SAUTMAN, JD, LLM, PhD Associate Professor Division of Social Science Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
if, by articles, you mean letters to the editor by pro-CCP sympathizers, you're right. The guy has never been to Tibet obviously though - Go to a state-run school and see how much written Tibetan they are taught. The answer is zero. I have seen it myself.
When you've seen must've been really different from what i've seen then. I went to a junior high school which had an exchange program with Tibet. Every year about 100 6th grade students enrolled in our school, and after finishing 9th grade they either go back or continue education elsewhere. They were taught both Tibetan and Chinese. Although the majority of the classes were instructed in Chinese (because that's the main reason they came here), they do have classes on Tibetan language. And before they came, they were almost exclusively educated in Tibetan, so they had to spend a year just to learn enough Chinese.
dont beat around the bush son you got something to call me? I stay out of these China vs [whoever] threads for the most part, so I know you aren't insinuating that I have posted some anti-Chinese stuff, so what I would like to know is........... Do you honestly think that you can say that all people of whatever country are the exact same? Are all Chinese the same, do they all think the same and do the same things or say the same things? Are all British people the same, do they eat, drink, think and talk the same? Do all Americans? if the answer to those questions are all NO (as they should be if you have even the LEAST amount of intelligence), then I dont see how you can say that I think and act the same as everyone else, especially moreso since you have never spoken to me or know the slightest thing about me. for all you know, Im asian living in america. Im not, but the point is that YOU DONT KNOW ME. so, unless you have some explanation for your post, please DO go away, this forum wont miss you one little bit. MFW, regardless to what you were responding to, the insults to ALL Americans certainly doesnt incline us to listen to your position....some of us *might* be open-minded enough to check your links and make a rational decision of our own, but then again, why bother since you and your ilk will just pigeonhole us into the imperialist stereotype that fits your own prejudices. You need to think long and hard over whether you honestly believe that every last person in this country automatically has a bias against China. It simply isnt true.
clearly you are one of those people who don't like to be "confused" by facts as your mind is already made up. since you don't agree with what Barry Sautman said, you immediately labeled him as a "pro-CCP sympathizer". Attack the messenger, how quaint. In fact, he's a respected scholar specialized in cultural study and anthropology. you stated it as if it were a fact, even know you have no proof, and you don't even know who he is. Since he has written two books about Tibet, one 13 years ago, one recently in 2005, I dare to guess he's been to Tibet many times and he knows more about what he's talking about then you do. http://www.allbookstores.com/author/Barry_Sautman.html Contemporary Tibet : Politics, Development, and Society in a Disputed Region by June Teufel Dreyer (Editor), Barry Sautman December 2005, Paperback List Price: $32.95 Occasional Papers Reprints Series in Contemporary Asian Studies, No 2, 1995 : The Tibet Question and the Hong Kong Experience by Shiu Hing Lo, Barry Sautman January 1996, Paperback List Price: $10.01 another big fat lie. http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=2732 "92-94% of ethnic Tibetans speak Tibetan. The only exception is places in Qinghai and Amdo where the Tibetan population is very small compared with the broader population. Instruction in primary school is pretty universally in Tibetan. Chinese is bilingual from secondary school onward. All middle schools in the TAR also teach Tibetan. In Lhasa there are about equal time given to Chinese, Tibetan, and English." In contrast, Soutman said, "Tibetan exile leaders in India used English as the sole language until 1994 and only became bilingual in 1994. Schools in Tibet promote the Tibetan language more than Indian schools do in ethnic Tibetan areas--in Ladakh, India, instruction is in Urdu, with a high dropout rate from Tibetans, but India is never accused of cultural genocide against Tibetans." There is an upsurge of the performing arts, poetry and painting by Tibetans, Sautman told the audience. "The exile leaders claim that the Chinese officials suppress Tibetan themes. In exile the Tibetan arts often introduce non-Tibetan themes, but there is no accusation of cultural genocide. Vices such as prostitution are not unique to Tibet under Chinese rule but are common throughout Buddhist lands. There are few aspects of Chinese culture in Tibet, but there are many aspects of Western culture, such as jeans, disco music, etc. The exile Tibetans do not condemn the growth of Western influence at the expense of traditional Tibetan culture."
CNN probably still don't know how bad it was for themselve. The last time I saw Chinese were so angery at media nationwide was 1989. They better come up something better than this.
Nobility of a regime that no longer exist any more is nothing, a commoner. Hence there is no nobility left in China. And that is precisely the point. Those that "trace their ancestor to some sort of kings/queens" no longer form part of a legitimate government. They don't have either the upbringing nor privilege that set them apart from any other commoner.
I agree it is about "splittism" and the PRC is more afraid of that than they are about religion. That said though the Dalai Lama has already agreed to keeping Tibet as part of the PRC.
Except you are forgetting the other part of the story. The Panchen Lama was also imprisoned by the PRC, humiliated by Red Guards and forced to abdicate his position. As for the young Dalai Lama he was only a teenager at the time and has said himself he was swayed by the charisma of Mao who was afterall a very charismatic leader.
OK - here we go, your long-awaited comeuppance, Yaoyi, brace yourself, it is going to be a tremendous battering, the likes of which have not been seen since the battle of Bach Dang in the year 938, when the heroic (and crafty) Vietnamese Warrior-General Ngo Quyen defeated a superior Sung dynasty armada by impaling their ships on hidden stakes planted at low tide. First off, Barry Sautman is a non-tenured humanities professor at a 17 year old university that specializes in science and tech - so let us hold the laurels, the honorary degrees, and the rest.. Second - academics publishing an unused textbook - sorry but even my mom did that, so let us again withhold the accolades. Third - in regard to his utterly unsupported assertions, let's just take a few of his more disingenous claims 1.This is illustrative of a either a total lack of understanding on Associate Profesor Sautman's part, or a deliberate attempt to mislead. Ladakh India - I have been to Ladakh, I spent a week in Leh, the capital and another week in the Stok range. The reason why Tibetan is not taught in Ladakhis schools is.....<drumroll>....BECAUSE LADAKH IS IN LADAKH, WHERE LADAKHI IS SPOKEN, NOT TIBETAN, AND IT IS NOT IN TIBET. Ladakh is in Kashmir, it's OVER the border from Tibet, on the far southwest side. It was it's own kingdom for many years, it's thousands of miles from Lhasa. It's language is descended from Tibetan dialects but not the same, written or spoken. It's like asking why Kazakhstan doesn't teach Uzbek language in schools. Because it's not in the same country. Further, in India most Tibetan exiles don't reside in Ladakh, which is in the militarily controlled Kashmir province, but in Himachal Pradesh (where Dharamsala is) or other parts of India. So that would be one reason why a dialect from another country way to the east is not taught in its schools. 2. Of course by taking us on this Indian detour - Assoicate Professor Sautman evades the real issue, which was confirmed by another poster, that Chinese was taught in the vast majority of schools (to his Tibetan "exchange" student colleagues .... of course to be exchagne, you have to have something go both ways...) 3. More frolic and detour: There are a bunch of hair salons with one chair and suspicious red-lights in them all over Tibetan urban areas, as well as shady KTV joints, anyway I suspect the vast majority of them are there to service the millions of soldiers & workers brought into the province. Sautman's contention is that "hey all buddhists, they has lots of hookers!!!!!!!!!!!!" I don't profess to know anythng about the level of prostitution in Tibet pre-Occupation, but I'm willing to venture a guess that it was lower than it is now, simply because there weren't as many johns. Howver the real joke here is Sautman's reasoning - I'm pretty sure we can find many hooker-free Buddhist enclaves, just like you can find a buddhist shrine in every go-go bar on Soi Cowboy. To assume that there's something inherently hooker-izing about Buddhism is incredibly absurd to the point where I can't help but just laugh.
I can understand your frustration with the pro-PRC posters but lets be fair here as there's been a lot of negative and insulting things said back to them. I feel that many of the pro-PRC posters are being paranoid and overly sensitive regarding anything that remotely smacks of being negative towards China, even joke articles from the Onion, but to an extent I can understand why and I think if more people knew about Chinese history would also. I don't think either pro or anti PRC posters are really doing themselves proud here in these threads.
I can see you are tying to be reasonable here. But I really do not agree with what you said. Take this tread as an example, you started the thread with an article with selected stories and biased opinions. I do not have much problem with it because it is probably one of the relatively "unbiased" you can find or the one you feel like to start a discussion with. If you really read all the replies objectively, you can see many of those "pro PRC" guys were just trying to get the fact straight. I do not understand why you think they are "paranoid and overly sensitive"? Should they just keep silent facing these lies and even personal attacks? In fact, many Chinese in this country have just been doing that for long, long time and they were never thought as "doing themselves proud" either. Do we really have any other choice? You are right in one thing. The surprsing Chinese reaction, on this board or through out the world, does have something to do with history. Take this board as an example, what do you expect them to do when they are finally fed up with the double standard? And this R2k guy's reply just perfectly illustrate what has been happening here. I know he is a "big guy" on this board because the effort he put(though I personally never bothered to watch those videos). Still that does not justify that he should treat others as lesser person and talking from his high horse with absolute biased opinion. "I don't have time/interest to read it all, and the selected ones I read indicate you are the one to blame. Even if I am biased/wrong, I do need to apologize" is not a good way to give your opinion on any subject. Yet we have seen too much of this from the other side. You don't have to say anything. But if you do, try to be fair. I know fairness is a luxury here.
http://itv.ifeng.com/v/200803/msm/ Westen media, how can you let chinese people trust and respect you?!
If by pro-CCP sympathizers you mean non-biased, independent scholars from the West, you're right. Nothing in your long-winded diatribe several posts below proves he's never been to Tibet, though. Even if he never went to Tibet, statements and opinions based on facts and reputable sources carry far more weight than whatever lies and distortions you spewed here. The obvious question is how the hell you sneaked into a state-run school in Tibet when you were on "tourist visa" to China. I dare you to list the date, the name as well as the place of the school you visited, Sammy. The claim that there is ZERO written Tibetan language taught in a Tibetan-majority school in Tibet can easily be verified or DEBUNKED.
A word of advise Sam. I am myself skeptical of certain accolades from HK Universities. However, in typical Sammy Fisher fashion, you wasted all efforts discrediting others as supposed to challenge the points. Perhaps if you were more zealous refuting Sautman's points instead of "qualifications" then others would think of him as the hack job, instead of you. But then again, that is just the unavoidable truth.
Emperor MFW the Merciless, I addressed a number of Assoc Prof Sautman's points, particularly his virulently racist "all buddhists like whores point"
