Bread, Peace, and Kalashnikovs for Tibet (Not Necessarily in that Order)
Those Tibet protests continue to spread, although more outside Tibet proper than inside. Lhasa looks like an armed camp:
CNN reports on the spread of the protests to other regions:
The Chinese are making the best traction they can by reporting on the excesses of Tibetan protestors, while effectively keeping their own excesses off the TV screens. One thing the Chicoms do with great efficiency is censorship. They’re blacking out CNN, too:
And of course, the usual suspects — U.N., the I.O.C., the E.U., and the State Department — are proving themselves completely worthless yet again. The Tibetans have noticed the same thing. They’re protesting the U.N., which of course is led by the practiced appeaser and Chinese lapdog, Ban Ki Moon:
If the Tibetans had guns, of course, they could take on legitimate military and police targets instead of shopkeepers. If a polite society is an armed society, then an armed world would be a world in which governments would fear to go too far in suppressing the aspirations of their populations, and one in which there would be a consequence for refusing them a peaceful and democratic way to express popular will.
The best single contribution the world could make toward human rights and dignity in Tibet, Burma, Darfur, and North Korea would be the very thing that stopped the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia: guns. Show me how drum circles and “international institutions” are doing any better.
Update: The ChiCom regime and the North Korean regime share one strategy: both have successfully adapted to the disintegration of their socialist systems by playing the nationalism card (there’s nothing original about this; Stalin did the same thing during World War II). In China’s case, it’s casting the uprising as Chinese versus Tibetans, and that strategy works because of (a) there’s an element of truth to it, and (b) the nationalist, even racist, sentiments of many Han Chinese. Here’s a prime example of Han chest-thumping:
Not exactly a subtle message, or one that’s likely to generate much sympathy outside China. Who really knows what this guy thinks of the Chinese political system? But for now, his anger is successfully deflected by an ethnic conflict engineered and exploited by the regime itself. For extra fun, note where his maps draw their borders with Korea….
The Dalai Lama? How many divisions does he have?
I like how his Yuan dynasty map claimed North Korea as part of China. I guess when the collapse happens in North Korea this guy will be making a YouTube video as well about how North Korea has always been part of China since the Yuan dynasty.
For a nation that claims to hate the Japanese for occupying and waging war in China it is interesting to see that the same logic that some Japanese use to this day to justify their colonial occupation of China and Korea is being used by the Chinese now to justify their colonial occupation of Tibet.
So let me get this straight. Tibetan rioters out burning private property owned by Chinese individuals and murdering said individuals because of racially motivated reasons are not in the least bit racist or nationalist. A self-proclaimed exile government claiming territory that it had never ruled (see “Greater” Tibet) as it’s own while simultaneously demanding the ethnic cleansing of all “auslanders” from said territory is just all peachy keen hippy fun.
Wow that video churns out a load of crap.
Yes Tibet was incorporated into China in the (Mongol-ruled) Yuan and (Manchu-ruled) Qing dynasties – both northern “barbarians” who the Han actively fought against when they invaded and expressed racial prejudice against when their respective dynasties collapsed. That map of the Ming dynasty and Republic of China is a load of crap. China never controlled those western territories during those times, they simply claimed them.
Oh and those lovely images of Lhasa with its shining new facilities were great. Shame the Tibetans are too poor to take the train out of the region because the Han Chinese who pour in take the best jobs. Shame that the Tibetans have to learn Mandarin over Tibetan in order to have any chance at getting a vaguely decent job. And then the guy wonders why there is a backlash against Han Chinese shops in Lhasa?
The main reasons why Tibet was a more willing subject during the Yuan and Qing dynasties was because the imperial family were Tibetan Buddhists. Thus they respected the Dalai Lama and allowed Tibet lots of autonomy. They didn’t interfere with its religious affairs and in return Tibet accepted Chinese de facto sovereignty. Today you have an atheist government openly telling people how to practice Tibetan Buddhism.
When the Qing dynasty collapsed other nations within the empire INCLUDING MONGOLIA declared independence. Now I don’t hear any Chinese voices calling for Mongolia to be readmitted into China despite the fact that all the arguments they use towards Tibet apply to it except it was the Russians who held influence over Mongolia not the British.
Oh and the Dalai Lama wanting to restore slavery? Actually he was not in political control of Tibet until he was 15 (in 1950). Previously a conservative regent had been in power. The Dalai Lama had also had access to Western ways of thinking as he was tutored by Heinrich Harrer (read Seven Years In Tibet) and was far more aware of major changes to be made upon his ascendency to power. Yes Tibet was a very backward nation prior to Chinese occupation but considering the Dalai’s willingness for change and the fact that Tibet was a sovereign nation does not justify Chinese colonialism.
However the problem lies much deeper than just colonial control. Ask any Han Chinese person whether Tibet should be part of China and they won’t hesitate to say yes. Tibet is not even an issue for them. Even the average waiter at a Chinese restaurant in the West ferverently believes that Tibet is part of China. Personally I put this down to Han superiority. Although they boast about a multi-ethnic nation of 56 nationalities they comprise over 90% of the population. As such they (possibly subconsciously) believe they have a right to control regions that were once under their control. China is thus the world’s most successful empire and defies the theory that all empires collapse (so far).
Oh and Koryo was only independent from Yuan in name only. The ruling family had to have a pro-Yuan foreign policy and even built the ships for the Mongols to attack Japan with.
You’re burning a straw man, Jing. Who ever condoned attacks against civilians or private property? What I said is that China has denied the Tibetans any peaceful or democratic way to express their will not to be a Chinese colony; therefore, Chinese police and soldiers would be legitimate targets. Shopkeepers aren’t.
Violence against unarmed civilians is always wrong, even by a small minority of Tibetans. I’m sure most would prefer to express their desire for independence peacefully, if the Beijing regime would allow it. For that matter, I’d bet the Chinese in Lhasa were mostly shoveled in there by the same regime that oppresses the Tibetans. They’re all victims of the same thugs.
If it weren’t for the fact that the Chinese government crushes any hint of peaceful dissent behind the screen of a news blackout, if China had the rule of law instead of rule by law, there wouldn’t be violence all over China. In China, peaceful dissent is suicide, so things like this happen. And in the vast majority of occasions these days, the rioters are Han Chinese peasants who are driven off their land or poisoned by industrial waste.
I’d also like to note how rich it is to hear you of all people denouncing racism.