This
is a watershed year for China. The most obvious reason being the Olympic
Games but there is also overt decline of China's great rival - the US.
The Games are important because they will draw China on to the world
stage as never before. Thousands of people from all over the world will
land in Beijing, then wander about the tourist traps of China and in
a stroke they will explode most if not all the anti-Chinese myths they
have been fed by conservative media and governments for a generation.
While the US is still the world's biggest economy it is now clear that
this may only continue for at most a decade, to be replaced by China.
Once this idea has common currency it is as though it was already a
fact. More immediately, this was the year that, in economic terms, America
sneezed and the rest of the world did NOT catch cold. China still attaches
great importance to relations with the US and most Chinese seem to think
that Americans hold the secret to eternal wealth. They are even learning
to speak English with an American accent.
Meanwhile, I am just this a man living in Tasmania with a web site...
but this is the age when everyone gets their fifteen minutes of free
speech. What really concerns me is America's tendency to be a poor loser.
What will they do when they realise they are no longer top dog? In May
2007 The Economist ran a cover story entitled America's
Fear of China The cover picture was a giant panda climbing the
Empire State Building - Ching Kong?
So it must be no great shock that the perennial issues of Taiwan and
Tibet should reappear in China's Olympic year. The only surprise was
the timing. If you really want to embarrass Beijing why not stage your
Free Tibet riots in August when the games are on or Lhasa is
full of tourists? Why in March? - but wait, what else is happening in
March? - The Taiwanese elections. What a splendid opportunity to draw
the link between Taiwan's independence from the Mainland (an issue that
has been quietly dying over the last couple of years) and so-called
"Tibetan Independence". Is this America's revenge for China's
success or just a way of re-asserting diplomatic power lest China should
underestimate it?
The US government
has actually told the Australian government that it considers we are
getting too close to China. Given Australia's 60-year history of cringing,
arse-licking subservience to the US this is a bit rich.
I am always puzzled that no-one, either the Chinese Government or the
hippies with "Free Tibet" stickers on their Subarus, ever
mention that the Dalai Lama is a former slave-owner and that a small
village of them were housed under the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Notwithstanding
I can't accept China's assertion that the Dalai Lama was responsible
for the demonstrations in Lhasa.He is 72, knows Tibet cannot survive
without China and clearly wants an accommodation with Beijing. When
he dies the expatriates in India will lose their franchise and they
are getting desperate. The current controversy has compromised him -
leaving him to appear impotent and irrelevant - or a liar and hypocrit
with the blood of murdered Chinese on his hands.
Notwithstanding the Separatists are a force to be reckoned with. Some
years ago I was living with a friend who used to work in Tibet. It was
our habit to make Friday video night and take it in turns to choose
a video. One night my friend chose a tape purely because she thought
she recognised the woman on the cover. She did; it was a former friend
and colleague in Tibet who had suddenly disappeared from her workplace.
Now here she was in Northern India making a propaganda movie about the
evil, oppressive Chinese Government who were being nasty to the Buddhist
monks when they demonstrated in favour of Independence from China.
So what does "Free Tibet" mean? There are three million Tibetans
in Tibet and another three million in neighbouring provinces (to put
this in perspective China has five million PLA troops). Tibet has very
little apart from scenery, history and the Himalayas. Tibet is a frozen
desert. There is subsistence farming, handicrafts, traditional medicine
and tourism. There is an argument that while China has done much to
improve infrastructure in Tibet it has not done enough to raise education
standards to allow Tibetans to compete with Han Chinese for jobs in
Tibet's booming tourist industry (illiteracy is said to be 40% in Tibet).
Chinese will snap
back that the Central Government has always discriminated IN FAVOR of
Tibetans, that Tibetans are spoiled babies who expect everything for
nothing, and that they murdered innocent unarmed Chinese in the Lhasa
riots out of pure jealousy.
Relations between
China and Tibet have been complex for a millenia, they keep invading
each other then making treaties, but to say Tibetans are not Chinese
is like saying Russians are not Europeans. Witness the legendary diplomatic
marriage of Tang Dynasty's Princess Wencheng into the Tubo royal family
in 640 CE. Modern Chinese are fascinated by Tibetan culture. The tragedy
of this attack on China's games is that at the very least Chinese will
see it as ingratitude for everything China has done for Tibet and oppose
further assistance, undoing any remaining good will between the two
cultures.
Without massive
projects like the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, courtesy of the Chinese Government,
to bring the world to Lhasa they have no real future. Tibet is not sustainable
as an independent country so if China doesn't administer it who will?
Does the US want a strategic interest between India, Nepal and China
or was this all just an attempt to steal some of China's limelight in
the year when the Olympic torch crossed Mt Everest? |
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