So you say the conditions in Tibet were like the middle ages and that's what justified China's treatment of Tibet? If the people of Tibet needed better care, food, medicine, transportation, etc. Why not work out some trade deals rather than just take over the country, exhile their sovereign leader, and oppress them? I'm all for helping people out, but do you think annexing a peaceful sovereign country is the best way to do that?
first of all, tibet was not a 'peaceful sovereign contry' then, as you claimed. please read some facts then come back to discuss. even if there is some truth in your statement, it happened 50+ years ago and you're still b****ing about it? what happens to bush invading iraq for their freedom and democracy? which is this tread about.
1. The Tibetans care. You're saying its too long ago to matter, there's a statute of limitations on invasions now? Good advice. Again, I put this question to you and anybody else who is trying to defend the PRC here: Who was the PLA liberating them from in 1950 and why did they kill 100,000 plus Tibetans while doing it? 2. What happened to the threads about Bush and Iraq? The very same thread that you're posting in is one, along with countless others on this page. The PRC's actions in Tibet are pretty damned indefensible any way you slice it. You can compare it to Iraq all you want, but it just makes you look worse, considering that there is already more political freedom for Iraqis than the TIbetans have had for 50 years.
ahem. the chinese civil war ended 50+ years ago too... look on CNN, is that the chinese premier Wen Jiabao i see still "b****ing about it?" before criticising others, i suggest you look in the mirror.
Sorry for the late response. I was responding to the exile of Dalai Lama. An impotent dictator pretending to be living God being replaced by another dictatorship that has improved the local people's living standard isn't necessarily a bad thing. Tibet hasn't been a sovereign country for hundreds of years, Tibet's nominal independence between the gap of Chinese regime transition was never acknowledged by China. The Tibet province was a part of China that declared independance in the collapse of China right after the Qing Dynasty, as did some other provinces of China, and a regrouped China taking back those nominally independent provinces, including the Tibet province later by PRC is, therefore, domestic reunion. The sovereignty of Tibet is history long long time ago. As is the sovereignty of the Native Indians. The fact is, the current territories of all countries are the products of hundred of years of mutual invasion, expansion, and annexation . China, Russia, the USA.... no exceptions. To deny the current order is to deny all territoial rights of each and every single country in the world, which I don't think is practical. My point is, the Tibetan Chinese, although along with other Chinese who suffered under wrong decisions of the Chinese government, has not been treated with discrimination and double standard. The Han Chinese, the Mongolian Chinese, the Manchurian Chinese, the Tibetan Chinese, along with 52 other ethnic groups in China, has suffered as a whole as Chinese citizens, and will prosper as a whole in the rise of China. After all, that's what being a country is all about.
You really haven't addressed very many salient points at all. I want to know again: Who, in 1950, when the PLA invaded Tibet, were they liberating Tibet from? And why did so many Tibetans die int the ensuing 10 years? Why did the Chinese sign the 17 Point Agreement in 1951, promising not to interfere with existing Tibetan government and society, and not honor it and formally repudiate it in 1959? The invasion of Tibet was, and is, no different from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait: completely illegitimate. It's no different than if the US had annexed Korea, or the Phillipines. However, we didn't. You keep bringing up native Americans; that's a completely different context from a bygone era. Eisenhower did not invade the Cherokee nation; Hell, most indians on a reservation have far more civil rights than any Tibetan does. China wants to be treated as a superpower in the modern era, well then it should act like one and realize that the era of colonization ended last century.
Well I did, but my points seemed to keeping bouncing back from an impenetrable wall. Well, if you don't care to scroll back and read carefully, I already explained that it was domestic reunion. I already explained the reasons to some Tibetan Chinese's misery, as well as other Chinese's misery at the time. Part of it being the cold war, part of it being blind loyalty to a king wannabe and "living Buddha" known as Dalai Lama, and part of it, being that China was a developing communistic country at the time. That was on condition of Dalai Lama renouncing his claim to independence, which he didn't back up later on. I disagree. The differences are staggering. The nominal independence declared by regional dictators, the Tibetan Lamas in this case, of the Tibet province was never acknowledged by China. China's domestic reunion was further legitimized by the acknowledgement of international community, recognizing the Tibet province as part of China, including your country. The Soviet and Iraqi invasions had none of these elements. The US annexed over half of a million square miles of Mexican land after the war at 1846-48 against Mexico. As to the annexation of the native Indians, you are evading the basic fact that the native Indians were conquered by the Americans, driven away from their homeland, herded to reservation areas time after time while being treated as second-class citizens under the pretext of civil enlightenment, and you think that's better than domestic reunion of another country. How about getting off your moral high horse on which your ancesters herded the native Indians around? See, what is bygone is bygone, the current world order, in which every country's territories has been acknowledged, is the foundation of world peace at present. Therefore, respect to the current order surpasses finger pointing to the past. Colonization was a western invention and a foreign concept to Chinese, and Tibet is a formal province of China, not its colony.
Last time I checked, there is no cease fire agreement signed, so the status quo is a prolonged stalemate.
This much I can answer: The Army is called the People's Libration Army, so it's only natual they call a domestic takeover libration also. If you are so fond of playing with words. They were librating Tibet from feudalists, theocrats etc. When the PRC was founded, they said "China is librated". Clear? I'm not sure your numbers are correct, but have you checked how many people died in the whole China in that same period? Let alone during the civel war? Number of death certainly doesn't make your case even its true.
