you mean the real one who was kidnapped as a child by the gov't and is now either dead or secretly in jail -- or the fake puppet one the CCP put in his place?
where did you hear that? regardless, what is real what is fake? picking the lamas is almost like a lottery. if the kid gets picked, his entire family will be rich or something like that.
Google is your friend - actually not in china because it's blocked and censored. What do you guys believe, that Gedhun Choekyi Nyim magically disappeared or was abducted by aliens?
My father was ordered to change his last name when he went to college, in Anhui province I believe. While this might have just been one university official's policy you have to understand that we see the doings by any single government official to be the policy of the Chinese government. My name was changed by by my teacher in the 3rd grade, by a teacher who was Han and transfered to Tibet. From my memory I believe he said this was for communication reasons, and we where told to put this name down on all homework and official paperwork. My memory of him was that he was a very kind, intelligent man, and all the kids respected him and we did as he told us without question. Well there wasn't exactly much choice in schools, all the official schools where ran by the Chinese government, and all education standardized with the rest of China. I have never said the education was bad, and it really did improve the lives of a lot of Tibetans. In retrospect a lot of Tibetan parents back then kept their kids out of school because of distrust of the Chinese government, and thats one of the reasons why there are so many poor people in Tibet. Well I am not familiar with Mongolian culture so I really can't comment on that. But about your son, he is in another country and going to school there, while we are schooled in the places we where born in. For us its like if all schools in china only taught english.
One issue clearly missed by many here is that China doesn't have a lot of resources of qualified teacher who speaks Tibetan. The ones government send in from eastern provinces clearly can't speak Tibetan. So, if Tibetans who can speak the native language refuse to study in Chinese language schools, they clearly missed opportunity to build up manpower who are both qualified and can speak the language.
Tracy Hong this will be the last question I answer from you. Simply because I won't have time to answer every question you ask, and the fact that no matter how I answer it you already sees something a certain way, and nothing I will say will change that, so while I respect your beliefs I have to say I disagree with them. I assure you that the Chinese government assigned people to jobs in Tibet from other parts of China. While this has been cut down, it is still happening. If you have read any of my prior posts you can see that most Tibetans have no hate for Han people. The riots that targeted Chinese owned establishments was due to economical reasons, from the huge inflation in the price of food and other goods, and if I am not mistaken there are also many protests around the world because of the huge inflation of food and the Haiti government was even overthrown because of it. The reason that Han establishments where targeted by the mobs was because they represented most of the upper class in Lhasa. If you been to any parts of China you can see that there is a huge gap in economics between the upper class and lower class, and in Tibet this gap is even bigger. You keep on repeating "why should the Chinese government do this???". Well if ones government does not follow the wishes of the people it governs, what good is that government? In the same question you can ask why should the Tibetan follow the rules of the Chinese government "???". Thats just a looped question going absolutely nowhere. We ask for dialog and discussion. While I am not childish enough to expect Tibet to all the suddenly change to a autonomous state, I would really like to see that there are at least some steps taken, that there would actually be some dialog and discussion that will keep the Tibetan people optimistic with the situation there. But as of now the Chinese government seem to have the same view as you, under such views I can not expect that its willing to sit down for a civil discussion.
you didn't address the CIA part. okay, forget about it anyway, it's the willingness of tibetans who living in the Tibet that's most important....and the rest of China my stance is that hopefully chinese governent would do a better job to win over the tibatens....exiled government won't be the answer at least in the near future, considering the ugly past history and the current PR crisis on both parties
you guys are asking for two things that can't coexist. by preserving tibetan theocracy and related culture, it's basically not allowing people to improve their lives. modern world and the old system won't exist at same time. if your goal is to improve the lives of tibetan people, then you should go with the trend. if your goal is to continuing have a very large % of population remains to be unproductive monks and such, the society won't improve at all. it sounds like some of you want to take a ride with china without giving up anything. china was forced to abolish its theocracy by force from the western invaders. we kept our mouth shut and worked hard to get to today. instead of complaining, why don't people work towards a better future? and why would china invest anything if we are not getting anything in return?
Not to hit you over the head with the obvious, but five pages ago everybody was talking about how nobody at all was destroying Tibetan Culture, it was all a western myth, and now suddenly it's destruction is inevitable and Tibetan Culture must be destroyed for the good of modern China. Can you see how this change looks from outside? And can we now say that you are pro-destruction of Tibetan Culture without being called Imperialist Western racists?
not really. i was still a kid. it was basically a job move. nothing else was the motive. US needed my dad's expertise in science. and he helped developing a lot of science here. so it goes two ways.
i don't know who said that. but i sure didn't say that. and i'm not talking about the way people dress, or the food they eat. that's fine. if they want to keep that way, good for them. i'm talking about the system. some parts of the culture has to go (theocracy). i sure didn't complain about how the west forced china to change. it was just time for change, otherwise, you are done for. i don't appriciate the way we were forced, but if you are weak, what can you do. just work hard and catch up. if tibetan culture was so superior or strong, then they won't be in this situation anyway. it's clear that they were lacking in all fronts. just the reality of how this world is run. if you are weak, you are told what to do. people "told" China what to do, and we did it. again, not talking about how people dress, worship, eat, live etc.
no. there are too many posts in this thread, some of the stuff probabaly got flooded out real quick. we appriciate the opportunity give to us and we support US in anyway that we think is correct. i think this is a very good place. its citizen needs to figure out where to go. but overall it's great, especially for science. well, there are a lot of foreign scientists here to help out too.
I trust you being honest from the disccusion we have here. But I think you can also look it in different way. The education system was basically none existent in Tibet before the PRC central government took over. So they had to send teachers to Tibet. Beleive me most Chinese would take Tibet as the last place they want to live. Still there were some young people answered the government's call to help to develop Tibet. Those teachers do not speak Tibetan and while it would be nice to have them lean Tibetan before start teaching the math and other courses, it is just not realistic. I can see they ask you to have a name easier for them to remeber, nothing else. Many of the prestige Chinese universities have American/British to teach their English class. The first thing these teachers do in the class is to let the student pick up their English name. And I have not heard anyone have problem with that. As for there wasn't much chioce, that is the problem. But is there any better way for the PRC to do it? They have lowered the standard for Tibetan(and other minorities) to enroll into college. Given the facts there was very limited higher education resouces in China, the Hans have been complainning about their spots taken by the minorities. Guess what, most of those minorities do not want to go back where they were from once they finished the school. I do not blame them for wanting better life. But that leaves the problem in circle. Tibet does not have enough Tibetan schools not because the government does not want to, but because there are not enough Tibetan teachers. I am glad to see you seem appreciate your teacher and he indeed deserve it. Going Tibet to teach? That is a big sacrifice. Some people clapse simply because of its high altitude. I think the fact your father did not change his name untill he went to college shows it is more of a personal thing than a political thing. And since you said you were born in the 80's, I would guess your dad went to college in 70's. Keep in mind, less than 1% of the total Chinese had the opportunity to go to college at that time. Based on that your grandpa was in lower class, it was very likely your dad would not have even got a chance to enter elementary school had Tibetan was still ruled under Dalai, not to mention college and eventually have you go to school in this country.
Thank you for your posts and offering your first hand knowledge of the situation. A lot of what you say is the Dalai Lama's position and I'm glad to hear that younger Tibetans are heeding his peaceful and reasonable position and not giving into violence or despair. I'm not Tibetan but ethnically Chinese and while the US is my nationality I still feel a tie to China and Asia. I've said this several times but I think the PRC is missing a huge opportunity here and far from destroying the PRC by taking up the Dalai Lama's offer of peaceful negotiation and accomodation they are missing a golden opportunity. In an age where ethnic conflicts are often marked by violence and religious leaders openly speak about bringing fire and death to their opponents the Dalai Lama is markedly different in that non only does he continue to preach peace he is also agreeing to the key demand of the PRC. There is pretty much no other ethnic leader engaged in a conflict with a stronger power who will give that sort of offer. I have been accused by pro-PRC posters of being brainwashed by the Dalai Lama and I will admit that I admire him greatly but for those who argue brainwashing and ignorance I would ask that they read the Dalai Lama words and compare those to the picture that the PRC has been trying to paint of him. If they don't believe him then what does the PRC have to fear with negotiating with him? If he doesn't live up to his rhetoric then the PRC can expose him for a fraud. The sad truth is that they want and the fear of splittests is too great but that only makes them and their supporters seem like the ones who are paranoid. I know Chinese history and I know about the great fear of chaos and subjugation of the Chinese by foreigners. In my opinion though that fear is blinding them to a possibility of resolving the Tibetan situation to the benefit of both the Tibetan people and the PRC. To bring it back to your main point though even with negotiations it will be unlikely that all of the demands of the Tibetan government in exile will be met, particualarly turning over parts of Sichuan and other provinces to a Tibetan region. That said though those terms are the starting position and not the end point of a negotiation and its my hope that the PRC does eventually take them up on it.
Because its only theirs as long as the majority of people, actually much more than just a bare majority, of the people consent to live peacefully. In an age where a handful of men in a cave can mastermind killing 3,000 people on the other side of the World there is a real danger of assymetric warfare. The Dalai Lama is exceptional in that he preaches peace and is willing to accomodate the PRC's main demands. Given the size and range of the Tibetan diaspora if the Tibetans chose to follow Hamas or the Tamil Tigers they could do a lot of damage to the PRC and PRC interests both inside and outside of the PRC. To argue that negotiations aren't necessary since might makes right is the same mistake that occupiers of all stripes have made historically including the US in Iraq.
^^^ There are ongoing negotiations between China and Tibet exile government as I know. From what I understand, DaLai wants religious freedom in Tibet so that he can be the spritual leader in Tibet without any ties to the Chinese government and he probably also wants to keep the Tibet religous tradtion under his control etc. DaLai claims that he does not want to seperate Tibet from China. This is a reasonable request by western standards, but not so in China, where the govenment has trouble to lay an iron fist on religious practice. It's not just in Tibet that people cannot practice their religon as they wish(Well, the Chinese government claims they can, but being from China, I know what that means), the vast underground Christians, the Muslims, the Taoists, they all have to practice their beliefs under close monitoring of the government. Religious leaders are chosen by the government. Certainly the Chinese government is not going to relent that control. This is where the difficulty lies for the negotiation to resolve the difference. There is no common ground as I can see. DaLai most definitely doesnt want to come back as a puppet of the Chinese government and that was the reason why he exiled. In this dispute, the Chinese government is the 800 pound guerrilla. It's tough for the Tibetans and I dont think forms of military organization towards the Tibetan's goal would help them postively either. I dont think majority of Tibetans want to be independent of China for economic considerations in the first place. And I think bloodsheds will only set the course in favor of the Chinese government. It's not even close at this point.
