Regarding the situation in Tibet.
Apr. 12th, 2008 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusRegarding the situation in Tibet.
I was asked to do a post on Tibet. I'm glad you asked.
A friend of mine works for Radio Free Asia and they received cell phone calls from Tibetans in Lhasa that haven't made the news. As an Asian studies major I'm also in contact with students who specialize in China who've recently returned from western China. I've also taken a bit of ancient Chinese history, and I'm in the process of researching a paper on Tibetan history.
This itself is not a scholarly paper, merely an outline, so I do not have footnotes. If you're interested for the source for any particular fact, just let me know. I should probably at least provide a bibliography and will do so on request. Later. For right now I'm electing to work on Out Of Bounds instead.
This is a lot of information, so I've broken it into four sections:
- The history of the relationship between China and Tibet, 2nd century to 20th century
- The invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the Lhasa uprising on March 10th, 1959
- The current situation in Tibet leading up to the protests and riots this month
- The protests and riots that began March 10, 2008
This is gleaned from western scholarship on the region, western scholarship on China, and from the Tibetans themselves. In China students are taught a very different picture. Chinese scholars are accused by Japanese, Korean, and western scholars of agressively cherry-picking and "renovating" Chinese history, directly serving the political purposes of the PRC. I've been reading the Beijing Review. Information is presented to the Chinese "pre-chewed." There are blanket statements backed by decontextualized cherry-picked facts.
The history of the relationship between China and Tibet, 2nd century to 20th century
- China claims that Tibet has been part of China for hundreds of years. Some Chinese assume this goes back to the earliest foundation of the Chinese Han dynasty, the 2nd century B.C. China's rewriting the history of Asia to suit itself has been a problem, angering Korean and Japanese scholars with self-serving inaccuracies.
- The classical Confucian Han dynasty did not extend to Tibet, which was far too remote a region, although China did have Taoist legends of Chinese goddesses living in the Himalayas.
- After China's Han dynasty fell apart in 220 C.E., China's next major dynasty was the Buddhist T'ang Dynasty in the 7th century. The T'ang dynasty was at war with the Tibetan empire as well as with Korea, the Turks, and various northern steppe tribes. The Tibetan empire seized Chang'an, the capital of China, but couldn't hold it.
- The Tibetan empire fell apart 200 years later in 842. The king of Tibet was assassinated by his older brother at the same time the northern Uigur tribes were conquered, causing a massive influx of refugees Tibet couldn't handle. Tibet divided into several states until 1247, none of which had anything to do with China. China, after the collapse of the T'ang was broken into "Ten Kingdoms and Five Dynasties," and then the smaller but finally centralized again in the Song dynasty of China. The very thorough Chinese histories have virtually no mention of Tibet.
- Then the Mongols came. The Mongols conquered both China and Tibet.
- In 1247 the Mongols conquered Tibet, while in 1276 they conquered China. The Mongols left local governmental systems intact, but the Tibetan government was still broken into several states. So the Mongols elevated a Tibetan Lama as the only central authority they could locate. No, not the Dalai Lama; the Sakya Lama. But this began the centering of religious and political authority in one person. Originally Tibet and China were assigned to two different Mongol leaders, but the Mongol leader of Tibet died, and so Kublai Khan was left in charge of both.
- When China fell, Mongols began the Yuan dynasty. The Mongols imported outsiders to help run China's government because they didn't trust the Chinese, hiring Marco Polo at one point and bringing in Tibetans. Chinese now say that Tibet was part of China at this time. It's more accurate to say that China and Tibet were part of Mongolia. The Mongols were eventually "sinefied" becoming indistinguishable from Chinese. Tibetans believe that they converted the Mongols to Buddhism.
- In China, the Mongol Yuan dynasty was overthrown by a popular revolt leading to China's Ming dynasty in the 14th century. Meanwhile, control of Tibet by the Mongols simply faded as they were too involved in trying to keep their prized China and didn't seem to care much about Tibet. After the overthrow of the Yuan, Tibet kept up a nominal relationship with the Mongol leaders in Mongolia. It was a Mongol leader who supported the first of the Dalai Lamas.
- The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) pretty much had nothing to do with Tibet, which went its own way for the next 300 years. Chinese histories barely mention Tibet.
- The Manchurian Qing dynasty (1644-1911) under emperor Kangxi attempted to incorporate Tibet into China by installing a pro-China Dalai Lama as the head of the state in 1720, leaving a garrison and a Chinese resident. The Tibetans viewed this as Chinese fealty to the Dalai Lama rather than the other way around. Under emperor Qianlong, Turkestan was defeated and incorporated by the Chinese, and China also captured outer Mongolia. Emperor Qianlong fought two wars with eastern Tibet, while Tibetan Buddhism spread throughout Mongolia. The installation of the (I think this was the 5th Dalai Lama but I'll have to check) Dalai Lama is the foundation of China's legal claim, which is a little like the UK claiming the US as historically theirs.
- In the mid-to-late 1700s, during sectarian in-fighting in Tibet, the Chinese again sent a garrison to Lhasa to support the Dalai Lama, but after that they gave up. Apparently realizing the perception that his support was viewed as fealty to the Dalai Lama, Qianlong changed tactics. He had religious images made of himself as a more important incarnation than the Dalai Lama.
- During the opium wars the Chinese were way too distracted by Britain to pay attention to Tibet (if they'd intended to). A Chinese resident continued to live in Tibet, but his influence was so negligible that the British empire negotiated with Tibet in the early 1900s without even being aware of his existence. China continued to be absorbed in its internal issues from 1911 on, and did not show an interest in Tibet again until the late 1940s.
- In Tibet, from the late 1800s, power rested with the Panchen Lama who was regent until the young Dalai Lama grew up. But three young Dalai Lamas mysteriously died just before reaching their age of majority (most Tibetans believe the Panchen Lama, or factions supporting him, poisoned the boys so he could stay in power).
- The young thirteenth Dalai Lama, the predecessor to the current Dalai Lama, survived thanks to some loyalists. He inherited a post-1911 Tibet with war boiling in China, Britain and Russia vying for control of the entire region in "the great game" as they called it, India uniting behind Gandhi and bucking the British Empire, and a Tibetan government riddled with corruption and intrigue. The Panchen Lama was exiled to eastern Tibet but he still had supporters in Lhasa. The 13th Dalai Lama started a balancing act of inviting US representatives, and then British representatives, but he did not have the absolute authority of the current Dalai Lama (largely created by a common enemy, China, since historically the Dalai Lamas have had to contend with many competing factions).
The invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the Lhasa uprising on March 10th, 1959
- With the death of the 13th Dalai Lama (from old age this time), the successor to the discredited Panchen Lama had to be recalled from exile to lead Tibet. I could add detail here, but suffice it to say there was a power vacuum while the current Dalai Lama grew up (he was put through an accelerated Tibetan version of Buddhist doctorate, keeping him cloistered in study his entire childhood) because of near-universal distrust of the Panchen Lama. This gave China its opening to slowly encroach into Tibet.
- In 1950, at age 15, the current Dalai Lama finished his Geshe degree (a seven year post-secondary school Buddhist program) defending the Tibetan version of a dissertation in debate against the top scholars in Tibet, in front of thousands of spectators. No pressure. At that point he was qualified to take leadership of Tibet. The normal age to finish this degree is in one's late 20s. No, it contains no political training whatsoever.
- In 1950, China began its "peaceful liberation" of Tibet. The garrisons they sent were very, very polite, practically carrying daisies in their rifles as they took up positions throughout Tibet, easily capturing Tibet's top general and his 8,000 man army. China had had to move slowly because the roads into Tibet were goat tracks. There's good reason the famous Silk Road circled around Tibet.
- Tibet panicked and tried three simultaneous solutions: 1) they sent agents over the mountains to India to plead to the fledgling UN for help (by yak, I think, there was only one car in Tibet); 2) they contacted various governments for military aid; 3) they met with Indian officials to see if they could evacuate the Dalai Lama to India. The US under Eisenhower responded, providing military training and supplies for Khampa mountain tribesmen in eastern Tibet. Tibet tried to negotiate with China, meeting with Mao. After being turned down by the UN, Tibet admitted they couldn't fight an overwhelming force, capitulated and signed the 17 Point Agreement which declared Tibet a part of China but provided for complete political and cultural autonomy.
- The Khampas kept right on fighting, furious at the central government for giving in. Kham is sort of the Texas of Tibet: part of Tibet, but they'd once been a sovereign state. There was something of a serf system in central Tibet (not quite, homes and property were passed down through individual families, but your legal complaints were settled by the local Tibetan noble). Kham had a completely different system where extended families owned ancestral grazing lands, individuals owned their own animals, and legal issues were settled by the head of the family. If you didn't like it, you could strike out on your own.
- China almost immediately broke all the terms of the 17 Point Agreement, instituting communist "reforms" all over Tibet. The communists began instituting "land reform" in Kham first, taking land away from the "nobles" (i.e., the local tribesmen).
- In 1956, with support and training from the CIA (Khampas were flown to Colorado to train in mountain guerilla warfare) – the Khampas struck back. The Chinese military at first was inappropriately equipped for Tibet's harsh conditions, didn't carry enough food, and found themselves caught in mountain bottlenecks with a better armed and trained force than they'd experienced before. The monasteries in Kham acted as message relay points, hid Khampa fighters from the Chinese, and even allowed storage caches of weapons. The eldest son of every Khampa family was sent to the monastery to become a monk and receive an education, you see, so generally speaking, the fighters were the younger brothers of the monks. (In the 1959 uprising China shelled the Khampa monasteries in retaliation.)
- I'm sure you already know about the 1959 uprising in Tibet against China, when 20,000 Tibetan civilians surrounded the Dalai Lama's Potala palace and the Dalai Lama fled to stop the bloodbath as China shelled the crowd. My friend Christine's father worked for the CIA at Langley during that period and he was one of the ones responsible for getting the Dalai Lama to India. The CIA is damned proud of that.
- Refugees poured out of Tibet into India, where Nehru welcomed them. Tibetans continued guerilla warfare. The Khampa refugees were the hardest hit because they had the farthest to walk. I heard from one of the survivors of the exodus that of nearly 100 people that left Kham with him, only a little over a dozen survived. The others were taken out by Chinese snipers, starvation, and exposure.
- Under Kennedy, the CIA was not given the go-ahead to continue operations to support the Khampas even though weapons drops, everything was in place. Several thousand Khampa fighters were massacred by the Chinese as a result. Johnson resumed support of the Khampa rebels, but they no longer trusted the US. In 1972, Nixon changed US policy towards China, abandoning the struggling Khampa resistance for a second time.
- The cultural revolution in the late 60s, well... a friend of mine, a Tibetan nomad named Kyid-pe, went through China's cultural revolution in the late 60s in Tibet. He still hasn't been able to find any living relatives. The Chinese took him at the age of seven from his family and put him in a Chinese boarding school, gave him a Chinese name, and tried to indoctrinate him into communism. There he was beat up and harassed by the Chinese students because he was Tibetan, which is considered racially inferior to the Han Chinese. He was not permitted to talk to the other Tibetans at the schools so that he'd "integrate" and "become Chinese." He's now a Tibetan monk. His is a fairly typical story. The harsher the Chinese were, the more aggressively "Tibetan" the Tibetans became. Becoming a monk in Tibet these days is a political message in and of itself.
- On Capitol Hill in 1987 I attended the congressional hearings on Tibet, so I heard the stories of the abuses of the Chinese during the 60s, 70s, and 80s first-hand from survivors. If you ask me, I'll repeat them, but they're too horrible. I hope the general headings of torture, raping nuns, putting Tibetan monks into work camps breaking rocks with little food, simply because they were monks ... I hope that will suffice. One Lama I know can barely walk because the Chinese broke the bones in his feet so often during torture, his feet are mush. He's very gentle and peaceful so I guess his Buddhism is working for him.
- Amnesty International reports that the Tibetan work camps continued into the late 80s, early 90s.
- More recent stories out of Tibet since Deng Xioping in the late 80s and the growth of the Chinese version of capitalism is one of Tibetans overwhelmed by Chinese immigration and economic disadvantage. The Chinese view their policies as incorporating Tibet into China economically, bringing Tibetans out of their outmoded ideas into the 20th century. Tibetans view these policies as a means to make them a minority in their own country where the Chinese are the only ones who benefit.
- Tibetans are now allowed to become monks but only after they receive a communist indoctrination. They're so tightly controlled (only allowed to practice a few hours a day, only allowed to have a certain number of monks, etc.), it's mostly a dog-and-pony show for the westerners, where Chinese run the Tibetan Buddhist tourist business.
- It's true that the Tibetans have not benefited economically. The Chinese who've moved to Tibet are sending their money back to central China. They are not investing locally. Tibetans are turned away from modern Chinese-oriented hospitals. The Chinese have plumbing and toilets while the Tibetans do not. The Chinese have modern housing while the Tibetans live in slums. Most of the businesses in Tibet are owned and run by Chinese, while Tibetan businessmen struggle with a Chinese bureaucracy that requires bribes and Chinese political connections that they don't have. Tibetans are given a substandard education and discouraged from pursuing higher education. Those Tibetans who go to Chinese universities are unable to get jobs in their field because they lack Chinese political connections, even when they're able to provide the right bribes.
The current situation in Tibet leading up to the protests and riots this month
- The Olympic torch is scheduled to cross Tibet as part of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics. Tibetans view this as both an opportunity to speak out, and an insult suggesting that Tibet is an inalienable part of China.
- China took control of Tibet on March 10th, 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled, but the Tibetans have fought this for the last 50 years. Tibetans don't even use the names that China uses for Tibetan provinces that have been in effect for 50 years.
- China re-wrote the boundaries of Tibet, taking two of three provinces and making them part of existing Chinese provinces, calling the third province the "Tibetan Autonomous Region," or TAR.
- The religious freedoms of Tibetans are severely restricted. Monks-to-be have to undergo Communist training before they are allowed to become monks, and China restricts the number of monks (something they did in China during the T'ang dynasty as well; there's some deep history here). The numbers of monks are strictly controlled, as is the amount of time spent in spiritual practice. Tibetans are not allowed to gather to protest and face arrests if they do. It's illegal to have a picture of the Dalai Lama or a copy of the Tibetan flag. Amnesty International's reports are largely about the abuse, torture, and summary executions of jailed protesters. The families of those arrested are not told where the prisoners are being held, and prison sentences for protesting have beeen as high as 14 years. Tibetans are second-class citizens in their own country, regarded as aborigines by the Chinese.
- The other two provinces that are now considered "China" actually have more freedoms than the TAR. In eastern and northeastern Tibet (called Kham and Amdo by Tibetans; Sichuan, Abe, and Gansu by Chinese) they've been rebuilding the monasteries with money from Buddhists in Taiwan. Ethnic Chinese in those regions began attending Tibetan Buddhist services over the last ten years, which caused the Chinese government to create more restrictions, and in some cases bulldoze houses. China's okay with a minority tourist attraction religion, but not a popular movement.
- The Dalai Lama has operated the Tibetan Government in exile in Dharamsala India since 1959. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. He's in his 70s now and is talking of a successor, whom he wants to be democratically elected.
- Traditionally a Lama's successor is found through the instructions left by the dying Lama and then verified through a series of tests (the child recognizing the belongings of the previous incarnation, etc.). The verification is then certified by at least two or three high-ranking Lamas, and the child is trained to be a Lama from an early age (which I think is the most important part). I suspect the Dalai Lama wishes to avoid what the Chinese did with the young incarnation of the Panchen Lama in 1995. The Chinese "recognized" their own Panchen Lama, while the Dalai Lama recognized a five-year-old Tibetan child. At the age of nine, the child disappeared and hasn't been heard from since.
- While originally in 1987 the Dalai Lama called for freedom for Tibet, he has stated repeatedly since the early 90s that he doesn't feel independence is feasible and has been lobbying for Tibet's political and religious autonomy within China. The Chinese ignore what he says and claim that the splittest "Dalai clique" agitates for Tibetan independence. Most of the western pro-Tibet organizations are pro-independence, and many Tibetans who follow the Dalai Lama are pro-independence. He's a moderate.
- The young Tibetan generation say that the Dalai Lama's conciliatory approach has accomplished nothing in the last 50 years. A group of them recently released a movie called "We Are Not Monks."
- China has given incentives to Chinese businessmen to move into Tibet from the 1980s onward.
- Throughout China there is endemic corruption and graft at the local level of government, with lower level bureaucrats taking advantage of even water supplies to make a buck. The central government seems to have no power to stop this without resorting to extreme measures. The rural areas of China are very poor, without basic infrastructure like running water and toilets. A couple of years ago an NGO with a grant and support from the PRC tried to bring running water to Gansu, which is the formerly eastern Tibet. The NGO employees discovered that if they went through with the project, the local government would cut off the poor from having water at all unless they were bribed. The project was shelved. Two years later, another NGO tried to do the same thing. They couldn't get around the corruption either and the project was shelved again.
- Chinese businessmen tell the Wall Street Journal that Tibet is a frontier and a great place to do business, that they have done very well. Knowing the level of corruption in areas far from the central government, like Gansu, these statements suggest corruption is extensive in the TAR.
- Throughout China there is a rising gap between the urban rich and the rural poor. The impoverished farmers are usually illiterate, or taught by teachers who have less than a high school education. If they come to work in urban areas as porters (called bang-bang) they are not allowed to live in urban areas. A few of these urban poor have "made it"—a fact that's lauded by the Chinese press—but only with the help of connected Chinese. There's a valorization of the poor right now in China, narratives of simple farmers who've become successful, although these successes are rare, and these men become isolated. They are not accepted by the upper class urban Chinese except as curiosities, and they invariably attempt to separate themselves from their poor relations.
- There is an even larger socio-economic gap between the Tibetans in Tibet, who are poor, and the Chinese businessmen, that is compounded by the Chinese attitude that they are racially superior to Tibetans. The Tibetans live in slums, receive a substandard education compared to Chinese in Tibet. Tibetans who've received college educations in China can't get jobs because they lack Chinese connections.
The protests and riots that began March 10, 2008
- Starting March 10th, Tibetans peacefully protested on behalf of monks who'd been arrested the year before for championing Tibetan independence.
- March 11th, police fired tear gas in Lhasa to disperse the protestors, who returned to demand the release of those arrested the day before as well as the monks arrested last year.
- March 14th, in Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet, Tibetans turned violent when Chinese policemen entered a Tibetan slum to look for monks who'd protested. They found themselves outnumbered and facing a crowd who'd been hearing rumors the missing monks had been killed (Amnesty International has reported several hurried cases where Tibetan political prisoners have been executed, and China has used work camps and torture on Tibetan dissidents, who are often monks). Once the Chinese police realized they were surrounded, they ran, and Tibetans chased them into the Chinese business district. A crowd of over 900 Tibetans attacked the Chinese businesses, government buildings, and a hospital (Chinese hospitals turn Tibetans away, so Tibetans are served by rudimentary monastery hospitals), marking Tibetan-owned businesses with white scarves so they wouldn't get damaged. They beat up any Chinese caught out in the open, as well as Chinese ethnic minorities from other regions of China. Foreigners went unmolested, so it was the Chinese they were targeting. Western observers say that the Chinese police did nothing.
- On March 15th, Tibetan protests spread to all three of the historical Tibetan provinces where they burned the Chinese flag. Tibetan students broke windows on government buildings. Monks lead a rally of 4,000 in Gansu, with various disorganized calls for either freedom for Tibet, talks with the Dalai Lama, more autonomy for Tibet. They were able to walk up to government buildings unmolested while police officers fell back and took pictures, as part of that same lack of response from China that first day in Lhasa. In Kham, eastern Tibet (western Sichuan) Tibetan nomads protested, racing back and forth on horseback.
- March 16th, a group of Tibetan students in Gansu protested, chanting slogans and carrying the Tibetan flag. In Lhasa, China began house-to-house searches, where all those with photos of the Dalai Lama were arrested. Several thousand Tibetans protested in Aba, where they smashed windows at a police station. Four protestors were killed by sniper fire.
- March 17th, tour guides report that police were confiscating digital cameras and deleting photos of the protests before returning the empty cameras. Protestors in Seda raised a Tibetan flag. British journalists attempting to sneak into Tibet reported all roads blocked. Tourists were ordered out of western China. Smaller protests of 40 here, 200 there, continued throughout the two Chinese provinces of Tibet, vastly outnumbered by Chinese PAP, while Lhasa remained under martial law. Foreign businessmen were permitted to remain in Lhasa.
- March 18th, 300 monks in Guoluo marched peacefully, unmolested by the 40 local police, who just took photos. The protestors demanded the release of prisoners and the police complied. Then the protestors tore down Chinese flags at the hospital and local school and raised Tibetan flags in their place. Four trucks of paramilitary troops arrived later, arrested a half dozen monks, while the others fled into the mountains. The troops surrounded the monastery, locking monks who hadn't participated in the protests inside.
- March 20th, the Tibetan city of Litang was shut down by Chinese police after a Tibetan girl led a protest of 300 Tibetans, holding up a picture of the Dalai Lama. She was arrested. In Amdo, 2,000 monks and lay Tibetans protested in a more organized fashion, calling specifically for talks between China and the Dalai Lama. In Ganzi, a monk was shot as Chinese police stopped a protest heading into the center of the city. Students at a Tibetan studies program chanted slogans and threw thermoses out of windows until officials called a halt, and students were required to submit a written confession and threatened with being removed from the communist party (the death knell for a career in the future). 400 students in Qinghai protested, taking down Chinese flags and setting them on fire and were issued a warning. Approximately 1,000 Tibetans protested peacefully in Serthar. Several were shot when they refused to take down a Tibetan flag. House-to-house searches began in the two Chinese provinces of Tibet. Those arrested were told they would be held until after the Olympics after which time they'd be dealt with. The dead and wounded from protests outside the TAR were brought to Tibetan monasteries as Tibetans feared to seek treatment at Chinese hospitals.
- March 20th in Lhasa, arrests continued, regardless of whether the individuals had papers or participated in riots. Police instituted full body searches. Tibetans report angry Chinese forces beating Tibetans, regardless of whether they participated in the riots. Chinese police stole 10,000 yuan from one family in the process of their search. Prisons in Lhasa were filled to capacity and families were not told where arrested individuals were sent. Nomads in Tibet (who do not carry ID) were arrested for not carrying ID. Lhasa began a clean-up, although foreigners were not allowed to walk around the city. Lhasa police seized the bodies of dead Tibetans from families, saying they were going to do a mass cremation of all the bodies from the riots.
My opinion on Tibet is informed, although I don't speak for the Chinese perspective by any means. But voices of the Tibetans in Tibet are almost totally absent in the media because of crackdown. We can't get independent verification.
I need more classes on modern China to feel I have a well-informed view of China's internal political climate. But in my opinion, China's version of capitalism has been marked with the return of the corruption seen in imperial China. The system of bribes and milking local political positions for money goes as far back as the 11th century Song dynasty. Communism eliminated the Imperial elite but seems to have simply replaced it with a new elite, and corruption has made it such that minorities like Tibetans, Yi, Hui, Mongols, as well as poor rural Han, have no access to the booming Chinese economy. Add the lack of personal freedoms continuing from communism, and you have a population that's cornered. As the famous military strategist Sun Tzu says, "If you want to see how hard a man can fight, leave him with no route of escape."
My estimation? The Dalai Lama is the only force that can keep a lid on the boiling anger in Tibet, and he's in his 70s. If the PRC was smart, they'd meet with the Dalai Lama while he's alive to build symbolic cred with the Tibetans. He's offered to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics if China stops the crackdown. But I think the PRC hopes that the next Dalai Lama (or other political representative) will not be as popular. The PRC seems to feel that Tibetan opposition coalesces around the Dalai Lama and that it will go away once he's gone. I don't think that will happen. It's more likely that once he's gone, the restive young Tibetans may turn to terrorism modeled on the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Which would be a disaster for everyone.
I was asked to do a post on Tibet. I'm glad you asked.
A friend of mine works for Radio Free Asia and they received cell phone calls from Tibetans in Lhasa that haven't made the news. As an Asian studies major I'm also in contact with students who specialize in China who've recently returned from western China. I've also taken a bit of ancient Chinese history, and I'm in the process of researching a paper on Tibetan history.
This itself is not a scholarly paper, merely an outline, so I do not have footnotes. If you're interested for the source for any particular fact, just let me know. I should probably at least provide a bibliography and will do so on request. Later. For right now I'm electing to work on Out Of Bounds instead.
This is a lot of information, so I've broken it into four sections:
- The history of the relationship between China and Tibet, 2nd century to 20th century
- The invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the Lhasa uprising on March 10th, 1959
- The current situation in Tibet leading up to the protests and riots this month
- The protests and riots that began March 10, 2008
This is gleaned from western scholarship on the region, western scholarship on China, and from the Tibetans themselves. In China students are taught a very different picture. Chinese scholars are accused by Japanese, Korean, and western scholars of agressively cherry-picking and "renovating" Chinese history, directly serving the political purposes of the PRC. I've been reading the Beijing Review. Information is presented to the Chinese "pre-chewed." There are blanket statements backed by decontextualized cherry-picked facts.
The history of the relationship between China and Tibet, 2nd century to 20th century
- China claims that Tibet has been part of China for hundreds of years. Some Chinese assume this goes back to the earliest foundation of the Chinese Han dynasty, the 2nd century B.C. China's rewriting the history of Asia to suit itself has been a problem, angering Korean and Japanese scholars with self-serving inaccuracies.
- The classical Confucian Han dynasty did not extend to Tibet, which was far too remote a region, although China did have Taoist legends of Chinese goddesses living in the Himalayas.
- After China's Han dynasty fell apart in 220 C.E., China's next major dynasty was the Buddhist T'ang Dynasty in the 7th century. The T'ang dynasty was at war with the Tibetan empire as well as with Korea, the Turks, and various northern steppe tribes. The Tibetan empire seized Chang'an, the capital of China, but couldn't hold it.
- The Tibetan empire fell apart 200 years later in 842. The king of Tibet was assassinated by his older brother at the same time the northern Uigur tribes were conquered, causing a massive influx of refugees Tibet couldn't handle. Tibet divided into several states until 1247, none of which had anything to do with China. China, after the collapse of the T'ang was broken into "Ten Kingdoms and Five Dynasties," and then the smaller but finally centralized again in the Song dynasty of China. The very thorough Chinese histories have virtually no mention of Tibet.
- Then the Mongols came. The Mongols conquered both China and Tibet.
- In 1247 the Mongols conquered Tibet, while in 1276 they conquered China. The Mongols left local governmental systems intact, but the Tibetan government was still broken into several states. So the Mongols elevated a Tibetan Lama as the only central authority they could locate. No, not the Dalai Lama; the Sakya Lama. But this began the centering of religious and political authority in one person. Originally Tibet and China were assigned to two different Mongol leaders, but the Mongol leader of Tibet died, and so Kublai Khan was left in charge of both.
- When China fell, Mongols began the Yuan dynasty. The Mongols imported outsiders to help run China's government because they didn't trust the Chinese, hiring Marco Polo at one point and bringing in Tibetans. Chinese now say that Tibet was part of China at this time. It's more accurate to say that China and Tibet were part of Mongolia. The Mongols were eventually "sinefied" becoming indistinguishable from Chinese. Tibetans believe that they converted the Mongols to Buddhism.
- In China, the Mongol Yuan dynasty was overthrown by a popular revolt leading to China's Ming dynasty in the 14th century. Meanwhile, control of Tibet by the Mongols simply faded as they were too involved in trying to keep their prized China and didn't seem to care much about Tibet. After the overthrow of the Yuan, Tibet kept up a nominal relationship with the Mongol leaders in Mongolia. It was a Mongol leader who supported the first of the Dalai Lamas.
- The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) pretty much had nothing to do with Tibet, which went its own way for the next 300 years. Chinese histories barely mention Tibet.
- The Manchurian Qing dynasty (1644-1911) under emperor Kangxi attempted to incorporate Tibet into China by installing a pro-China Dalai Lama as the head of the state in 1720, leaving a garrison and a Chinese resident. The Tibetans viewed this as Chinese fealty to the Dalai Lama rather than the other way around. Under emperor Qianlong, Turkestan was defeated and incorporated by the Chinese, and China also captured outer Mongolia. Emperor Qianlong fought two wars with eastern Tibet, while Tibetan Buddhism spread throughout Mongolia. The installation of the (I think this was the 5th Dalai Lama but I'll have to check) Dalai Lama is the foundation of China's legal claim, which is a little like the UK claiming the US as historically theirs.
- In the mid-to-late 1700s, during sectarian in-fighting in Tibet, the Chinese again sent a garrison to Lhasa to support the Dalai Lama, but after that they gave up. Apparently realizing the perception that his support was viewed as fealty to the Dalai Lama, Qianlong changed tactics. He had religious images made of himself as a more important incarnation than the Dalai Lama.
- During the opium wars the Chinese were way too distracted by Britain to pay attention to Tibet (if they'd intended to). A Chinese resident continued to live in Tibet, but his influence was so negligible that the British empire negotiated with Tibet in the early 1900s without even being aware of his existence. China continued to be absorbed in its internal issues from 1911 on, and did not show an interest in Tibet again until the late 1940s.
- In Tibet, from the late 1800s, power rested with the Panchen Lama who was regent until the young Dalai Lama grew up. But three young Dalai Lamas mysteriously died just before reaching their age of majority (most Tibetans believe the Panchen Lama, or factions supporting him, poisoned the boys so he could stay in power).
- The young thirteenth Dalai Lama, the predecessor to the current Dalai Lama, survived thanks to some loyalists. He inherited a post-1911 Tibet with war boiling in China, Britain and Russia vying for control of the entire region in "the great game" as they called it, India uniting behind Gandhi and bucking the British Empire, and a Tibetan government riddled with corruption and intrigue. The Panchen Lama was exiled to eastern Tibet but he still had supporters in Lhasa. The 13th Dalai Lama started a balancing act of inviting US representatives, and then British representatives, but he did not have the absolute authority of the current Dalai Lama (largely created by a common enemy, China, since historically the Dalai Lamas have had to contend with many competing factions).
The invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the Lhasa uprising on March 10th, 1959
- With the death of the 13th Dalai Lama (from old age this time), the successor to the discredited Panchen Lama had to be recalled from exile to lead Tibet. I could add detail here, but suffice it to say there was a power vacuum while the current Dalai Lama grew up (he was put through an accelerated Tibetan version of Buddhist doctorate, keeping him cloistered in study his entire childhood) because of near-universal distrust of the Panchen Lama. This gave China its opening to slowly encroach into Tibet.
- In 1950, at age 15, the current Dalai Lama finished his Geshe degree (a seven year post-secondary school Buddhist program) defending the Tibetan version of a dissertation in debate against the top scholars in Tibet, in front of thousands of spectators. No pressure. At that point he was qualified to take leadership of Tibet. The normal age to finish this degree is in one's late 20s. No, it contains no political training whatsoever.
- In 1950, China began its "peaceful liberation" of Tibet. The garrisons they sent were very, very polite, practically carrying daisies in their rifles as they took up positions throughout Tibet, easily capturing Tibet's top general and his 8,000 man army. China had had to move slowly because the roads into Tibet were goat tracks. There's good reason the famous Silk Road circled around Tibet.
- Tibet panicked and tried three simultaneous solutions: 1) they sent agents over the mountains to India to plead to the fledgling UN for help (by yak, I think, there was only one car in Tibet); 2) they contacted various governments for military aid; 3) they met with Indian officials to see if they could evacuate the Dalai Lama to India. The US under Eisenhower responded, providing military training and supplies for Khampa mountain tribesmen in eastern Tibet. Tibet tried to negotiate with China, meeting with Mao. After being turned down by the UN, Tibet admitted they couldn't fight an overwhelming force, capitulated and signed the 17 Point Agreement which declared Tibet a part of China but provided for complete political and cultural autonomy.
- The Khampas kept right on fighting, furious at the central government for giving in. Kham is sort of the Texas of Tibet: part of Tibet, but they'd once been a sovereign state. There was something of a serf system in central Tibet (not quite, homes and property were passed down through individual families, but your legal complaints were settled by the local Tibetan noble). Kham had a completely different system where extended families owned ancestral grazing lands, individuals owned their own animals, and legal issues were settled by the head of the family. If you didn't like it, you could strike out on your own.
- China almost immediately broke all the terms of the 17 Point Agreement, instituting communist "reforms" all over Tibet. The communists began instituting "land reform" in Kham first, taking land away from the "nobles" (i.e., the local tribesmen).
- In 1956, with support and training from the CIA (Khampas were flown to Colorado to train in mountain guerilla warfare) – the Khampas struck back. The Chinese military at first was inappropriately equipped for Tibet's harsh conditions, didn't carry enough food, and found themselves caught in mountain bottlenecks with a better armed and trained force than they'd experienced before. The monasteries in Kham acted as message relay points, hid Khampa fighters from the Chinese, and even allowed storage caches of weapons. The eldest son of every Khampa family was sent to the monastery to become a monk and receive an education, you see, so generally speaking, the fighters were the younger brothers of the monks. (In the 1959 uprising China shelled the Khampa monasteries in retaliation.)
- I'm sure you already know about the 1959 uprising in Tibet against China, when 20,000 Tibetan civilians surrounded the Dalai Lama's Potala palace and the Dalai Lama fled to stop the bloodbath as China shelled the crowd. My friend Christine's father worked for the CIA at Langley during that period and he was one of the ones responsible for getting the Dalai Lama to India. The CIA is damned proud of that.
- Refugees poured out of Tibet into India, where Nehru welcomed them. Tibetans continued guerilla warfare. The Khampa refugees were the hardest hit because they had the farthest to walk. I heard from one of the survivors of the exodus that of nearly 100 people that left Kham with him, only a little over a dozen survived. The others were taken out by Chinese snipers, starvation, and exposure.
- Under Kennedy, the CIA was not given the go-ahead to continue operations to support the Khampas even though weapons drops, everything was in place. Several thousand Khampa fighters were massacred by the Chinese as a result. Johnson resumed support of the Khampa rebels, but they no longer trusted the US. In 1972, Nixon changed US policy towards China, abandoning the struggling Khampa resistance for a second time.
- The cultural revolution in the late 60s, well... a friend of mine, a Tibetan nomad named Kyid-pe, went through China's cultural revolution in the late 60s in Tibet. He still hasn't been able to find any living relatives. The Chinese took him at the age of seven from his family and put him in a Chinese boarding school, gave him a Chinese name, and tried to indoctrinate him into communism. There he was beat up and harassed by the Chinese students because he was Tibetan, which is considered racially inferior to the Han Chinese. He was not permitted to talk to the other Tibetans at the schools so that he'd "integrate" and "become Chinese." He's now a Tibetan monk. His is a fairly typical story. The harsher the Chinese were, the more aggressively "Tibetan" the Tibetans became. Becoming a monk in Tibet these days is a political message in and of itself.
- On Capitol Hill in 1987 I attended the congressional hearings on Tibet, so I heard the stories of the abuses of the Chinese during the 60s, 70s, and 80s first-hand from survivors. If you ask me, I'll repeat them, but they're too horrible. I hope the general headings of torture, raping nuns, putting Tibetan monks into work camps breaking rocks with little food, simply because they were monks ... I hope that will suffice. One Lama I know can barely walk because the Chinese broke the bones in his feet so often during torture, his feet are mush. He's very gentle and peaceful so I guess his Buddhism is working for him.
- Amnesty International reports that the Tibetan work camps continued into the late 80s, early 90s.
- More recent stories out of Tibet since Deng Xioping in the late 80s and the growth of the Chinese version of capitalism is one of Tibetans overwhelmed by Chinese immigration and economic disadvantage. The Chinese view their policies as incorporating Tibet into China economically, bringing Tibetans out of their outmoded ideas into the 20th century. Tibetans view these policies as a means to make them a minority in their own country where the Chinese are the only ones who benefit.
- Tibetans are now allowed to become monks but only after they receive a communist indoctrination. They're so tightly controlled (only allowed to practice a few hours a day, only allowed to have a certain number of monks, etc.), it's mostly a dog-and-pony show for the westerners, where Chinese run the Tibetan Buddhist tourist business.
- It's true that the Tibetans have not benefited economically. The Chinese who've moved to Tibet are sending their money back to central China. They are not investing locally. Tibetans are turned away from modern Chinese-oriented hospitals. The Chinese have plumbing and toilets while the Tibetans do not. The Chinese have modern housing while the Tibetans live in slums. Most of the businesses in Tibet are owned and run by Chinese, while Tibetan businessmen struggle with a Chinese bureaucracy that requires bribes and Chinese political connections that they don't have. Tibetans are given a substandard education and discouraged from pursuing higher education. Those Tibetans who go to Chinese universities are unable to get jobs in their field because they lack Chinese political connections, even when they're able to provide the right bribes.
The current situation in Tibet leading up to the protests and riots this month
- The Olympic torch is scheduled to cross Tibet as part of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics. Tibetans view this as both an opportunity to speak out, and an insult suggesting that Tibet is an inalienable part of China.
- China took control of Tibet on March 10th, 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled, but the Tibetans have fought this for the last 50 years. Tibetans don't even use the names that China uses for Tibetan provinces that have been in effect for 50 years.
- China re-wrote the boundaries of Tibet, taking two of three provinces and making them part of existing Chinese provinces, calling the third province the "Tibetan Autonomous Region," or TAR.
- The religious freedoms of Tibetans are severely restricted. Monks-to-be have to undergo Communist training before they are allowed to become monks, and China restricts the number of monks (something they did in China during the T'ang dynasty as well; there's some deep history here). The numbers of monks are strictly controlled, as is the amount of time spent in spiritual practice. Tibetans are not allowed to gather to protest and face arrests if they do. It's illegal to have a picture of the Dalai Lama or a copy of the Tibetan flag. Amnesty International's reports are largely about the abuse, torture, and summary executions of jailed protesters. The families of those arrested are not told where the prisoners are being held, and prison sentences for protesting have beeen as high as 14 years. Tibetans are second-class citizens in their own country, regarded as aborigines by the Chinese.
- The other two provinces that are now considered "China" actually have more freedoms than the TAR. In eastern and northeastern Tibet (called Kham and Amdo by Tibetans; Sichuan, Abe, and Gansu by Chinese) they've been rebuilding the monasteries with money from Buddhists in Taiwan. Ethnic Chinese in those regions began attending Tibetan Buddhist services over the last ten years, which caused the Chinese government to create more restrictions, and in some cases bulldoze houses. China's okay with a minority tourist attraction religion, but not a popular movement.
- The Dalai Lama has operated the Tibetan Government in exile in Dharamsala India since 1959. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. He's in his 70s now and is talking of a successor, whom he wants to be democratically elected.
- Traditionally a Lama's successor is found through the instructions left by the dying Lama and then verified through a series of tests (the child recognizing the belongings of the previous incarnation, etc.). The verification is then certified by at least two or three high-ranking Lamas, and the child is trained to be a Lama from an early age (which I think is the most important part). I suspect the Dalai Lama wishes to avoid what the Chinese did with the young incarnation of the Panchen Lama in 1995. The Chinese "recognized" their own Panchen Lama, while the Dalai Lama recognized a five-year-old Tibetan child. At the age of nine, the child disappeared and hasn't been heard from since.
- While originally in 1987 the Dalai Lama called for freedom for Tibet, he has stated repeatedly since the early 90s that he doesn't feel independence is feasible and has been lobbying for Tibet's political and religious autonomy within China. The Chinese ignore what he says and claim that the splittest "Dalai clique" agitates for Tibetan independence. Most of the western pro-Tibet organizations are pro-independence, and many Tibetans who follow the Dalai Lama are pro-independence. He's a moderate.
- The young Tibetan generation say that the Dalai Lama's conciliatory approach has accomplished nothing in the last 50 years. A group of them recently released a movie called "We Are Not Monks."
- China has given incentives to Chinese businessmen to move into Tibet from the 1980s onward.
- Throughout China there is endemic corruption and graft at the local level of government, with lower level bureaucrats taking advantage of even water supplies to make a buck. The central government seems to have no power to stop this without resorting to extreme measures. The rural areas of China are very poor, without basic infrastructure like running water and toilets. A couple of years ago an NGO with a grant and support from the PRC tried to bring running water to Gansu, which is the formerly eastern Tibet. The NGO employees discovered that if they went through with the project, the local government would cut off the poor from having water at all unless they were bribed. The project was shelved. Two years later, another NGO tried to do the same thing. They couldn't get around the corruption either and the project was shelved again.
- Chinese businessmen tell the Wall Street Journal that Tibet is a frontier and a great place to do business, that they have done very well. Knowing the level of corruption in areas far from the central government, like Gansu, these statements suggest corruption is extensive in the TAR.
- Throughout China there is a rising gap between the urban rich and the rural poor. The impoverished farmers are usually illiterate, or taught by teachers who have less than a high school education. If they come to work in urban areas as porters (called bang-bang) they are not allowed to live in urban areas. A few of these urban poor have "made it"—a fact that's lauded by the Chinese press—but only with the help of connected Chinese. There's a valorization of the poor right now in China, narratives of simple farmers who've become successful, although these successes are rare, and these men become isolated. They are not accepted by the upper class urban Chinese except as curiosities, and they invariably attempt to separate themselves from their poor relations.
- There is an even larger socio-economic gap between the Tibetans in Tibet, who are poor, and the Chinese businessmen, that is compounded by the Chinese attitude that they are racially superior to Tibetans. The Tibetans live in slums, receive a substandard education compared to Chinese in Tibet. Tibetans who've received college educations in China can't get jobs because they lack Chinese connections.
The protests and riots that began March 10, 2008
- Starting March 10th, Tibetans peacefully protested on behalf of monks who'd been arrested the year before for championing Tibetan independence.
- March 11th, police fired tear gas in Lhasa to disperse the protestors, who returned to demand the release of those arrested the day before as well as the monks arrested last year.
- March 14th, in Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet, Tibetans turned violent when Chinese policemen entered a Tibetan slum to look for monks who'd protested. They found themselves outnumbered and facing a crowd who'd been hearing rumors the missing monks had been killed (Amnesty International has reported several hurried cases where Tibetan political prisoners have been executed, and China has used work camps and torture on Tibetan dissidents, who are often monks). Once the Chinese police realized they were surrounded, they ran, and Tibetans chased them into the Chinese business district. A crowd of over 900 Tibetans attacked the Chinese businesses, government buildings, and a hospital (Chinese hospitals turn Tibetans away, so Tibetans are served by rudimentary monastery hospitals), marking Tibetan-owned businesses with white scarves so they wouldn't get damaged. They beat up any Chinese caught out in the open, as well as Chinese ethnic minorities from other regions of China. Foreigners went unmolested, so it was the Chinese they were targeting. Western observers say that the Chinese police did nothing.
- On March 15th, Tibetan protests spread to all three of the historical Tibetan provinces where they burned the Chinese flag. Tibetan students broke windows on government buildings. Monks lead a rally of 4,000 in Gansu, with various disorganized calls for either freedom for Tibet, talks with the Dalai Lama, more autonomy for Tibet. They were able to walk up to government buildings unmolested while police officers fell back and took pictures, as part of that same lack of response from China that first day in Lhasa. In Kham, eastern Tibet (western Sichuan) Tibetan nomads protested, racing back and forth on horseback.
- March 16th, a group of Tibetan students in Gansu protested, chanting slogans and carrying the Tibetan flag. In Lhasa, China began house-to-house searches, where all those with photos of the Dalai Lama were arrested. Several thousand Tibetans protested in Aba, where they smashed windows at a police station. Four protestors were killed by sniper fire.
- March 17th, tour guides report that police were confiscating digital cameras and deleting photos of the protests before returning the empty cameras. Protestors in Seda raised a Tibetan flag. British journalists attempting to sneak into Tibet reported all roads blocked. Tourists were ordered out of western China. Smaller protests of 40 here, 200 there, continued throughout the two Chinese provinces of Tibet, vastly outnumbered by Chinese PAP, while Lhasa remained under martial law. Foreign businessmen were permitted to remain in Lhasa.
- March 18th, 300 monks in Guoluo marched peacefully, unmolested by the 40 local police, who just took photos. The protestors demanded the release of prisoners and the police complied. Then the protestors tore down Chinese flags at the hospital and local school and raised Tibetan flags in their place. Four trucks of paramilitary troops arrived later, arrested a half dozen monks, while the others fled into the mountains. The troops surrounded the monastery, locking monks who hadn't participated in the protests inside.
- March 20th, the Tibetan city of Litang was shut down by Chinese police after a Tibetan girl led a protest of 300 Tibetans, holding up a picture of the Dalai Lama. She was arrested. In Amdo, 2,000 monks and lay Tibetans protested in a more organized fashion, calling specifically for talks between China and the Dalai Lama. In Ganzi, a monk was shot as Chinese police stopped a protest heading into the center of the city. Students at a Tibetan studies program chanted slogans and threw thermoses out of windows until officials called a halt, and students were required to submit a written confession and threatened with being removed from the communist party (the death knell for a career in the future). 400 students in Qinghai protested, taking down Chinese flags and setting them on fire and were issued a warning. Approximately 1,000 Tibetans protested peacefully in Serthar. Several were shot when they refused to take down a Tibetan flag. House-to-house searches began in the two Chinese provinces of Tibet. Those arrested were told they would be held until after the Olympics after which time they'd be dealt with. The dead and wounded from protests outside the TAR were brought to Tibetan monasteries as Tibetans feared to seek treatment at Chinese hospitals.
- March 20th in Lhasa, arrests continued, regardless of whether the individuals had papers or participated in riots. Police instituted full body searches. Tibetans report angry Chinese forces beating Tibetans, regardless of whether they participated in the riots. Chinese police stole 10,000 yuan from one family in the process of their search. Prisons in Lhasa were filled to capacity and families were not told where arrested individuals were sent. Nomads in Tibet (who do not carry ID) were arrested for not carrying ID. Lhasa began a clean-up, although foreigners were not allowed to walk around the city. Lhasa police seized the bodies of dead Tibetans from families, saying they were going to do a mass cremation of all the bodies from the riots.
My opinion on Tibet is informed, although I don't speak for the Chinese perspective by any means. But voices of the Tibetans in Tibet are almost totally absent in the media because of crackdown. We can't get independent verification.
I need more classes on modern China to feel I have a well-informed view of China's internal political climate. But in my opinion, China's version of capitalism has been marked with the return of the corruption seen in imperial China. The system of bribes and milking local political positions for money goes as far back as the 11th century Song dynasty. Communism eliminated the Imperial elite but seems to have simply replaced it with a new elite, and corruption has made it such that minorities like Tibetans, Yi, Hui, Mongols, as well as poor rural Han, have no access to the booming Chinese economy. Add the lack of personal freedoms continuing from communism, and you have a population that's cornered. As the famous military strategist Sun Tzu says, "If you want to see how hard a man can fight, leave him with no route of escape."
My estimation? The Dalai Lama is the only force that can keep a lid on the boiling anger in Tibet, and he's in his 70s. If the PRC was smart, they'd meet with the Dalai Lama while he's alive to build symbolic cred with the Tibetans. He's offered to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics if China stops the crackdown. But I think the PRC hopes that the next Dalai Lama (or other political representative) will not be as popular. The PRC seems to feel that Tibetan opposition coalesces around the Dalai Lama and that it will go away once he's gone. I don't think that will happen. It's more likely that once he's gone, the restive young Tibetans may turn to terrorism modeled on the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Which would be a disaster for everyone.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-12 08:34 pm (UTC)Permission to link this to my journal? It's something that really, should be read. In depth. And by many, many people.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-12 08:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-12 09:35 pm (UTC)Two corrections: as well as the monk arrested last year - monks
marking Tibetan-owned businesses white scarves - I think you're missing a "with".
no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-12 10:07 pm (UTC)Please do link or post your article once it's done?
no subject
Date: 2008-04-12 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 01:26 am (UTC)To me , the situation in Tibet is very reminiscent of the British behaviour in Ireland. It's colonization coupled with state enforced ethnic dilution. Tibetans are lucky it's not the 17th century and they cannot be "transported" to Jamaica as slaves. From my insulated NYC perch , I see the PRC's long term strategy culminating in a mirror image of the situation in Northern Ireland, with the imported Han population outnumbering the Tibetans and 'democratically choosing' to be a part of PRC.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 04:47 am (UTC)Do you have sources for these? Preferably ones dated before the CIA involvement began, to eliminate the objection of "This is American propaganda; of course they'd want you to think that." Any sort of historical document that documents the Ming dynasty installation of a pro-Chinese Dalai Lama (which, ironically, is exactly what he accuses America of doing)? Or some other hard evidence that he's being lied to when he believes the official Chinese propaganda?
(He looked at me in disbelief when I told him that Xinhua is one of the largest propaganda sources on Earth, and considers Reporters Without Borders to be evil incarnate because they're very anti-Chinese. I'd like to learn more, anyway...)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 08:31 pm (UTC)"The separatist movement is a plot by America to break up China."
His view (while completely in accord with standard Chinese press) conflates America with the aims of the British Empire with no distinctions made between between the policies of various US presidents. US foreign policy is schizophrenic:
- American WWII policy which was largely pro-China because China was against Japan with whom we were at war (Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Bureau, China’s Borderlands: Criteria for Claims, no. 2420, 7 August 1944 Washington DC: National Archives).
- American cold war policy towards "Red" China veered wildly between Eisenhower years (who funded the CIA program to help Tibet), the Kennedy era policy (who stopped the aid to Tibet, resulting in 6,000-8,000 Tibetan fighters dead), and Lyndon Johnson who supported the Tibetans again (but it was too little, too late) as part of the anti-communist "domino theory" that also led to our deep involvement in Vietnam. The US used the Tibetans to harrass the Chinese and gather intelligence. It's a painful irony that the US finally understood China wasn't going to become Soviet based on information gathered by Tibetans. (Roberts, John. "Inside Story of CIA's Black Hands in Tibet." The American Spectator, December 1997. A copy has been uploaded here: http://www.takhli.org/rjw/tibet.htm)
- Nixon abandoned the Tibetans when the US finally figured out that China and the USSR were not going to join forces just because they were communist, with that famous quote, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
- Under Ford and Carter, OPEC and the oil crisis, plus the IBCMs that the US and USSR had aimed at each other focused foreign policy in the middle east and the USSR, especially the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Carter withdrew US troops out of Taiwan in 1978. Tibet was ignored. (of interest, although it concerns the Taiwan-China-US relationship, http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/archives/108/Kri042104.htm; of interest, although I have not read it: Todd Rosa, Department of History, The George Washington University
"The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and its Effect on Carter’s Policy Toward China").
- During the Reagan years the US focused on sword-rattling and "standing up to" the Soviet Union. Other than some congressional supporters (Tom Lantos, Paul Sarbanes, Barbara Mikulski), Tibet was ignored.
- Under the first George Bush (George H. W. Bush) the Tienamen Square massacre of students advocating democracy (a popular concept in the US) sparked widespread condemnation. The Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize. These two events created much international interest in Tibet. I would argue that without the Tienaman massacre there would be no popular "Free Tibet" campaign.
- The next big shift was Clinton's policy of including China in the WTO and building global economic ties.
- and then George Bush's current US policy towards China. (Jane's, 29 May 2001, http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid010529_1_n.shtml)
To understand US foreign policy your father must realize that generally, it changes every four-eight years with each new president.
Chinese history references are next....
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 10:07 pm (UTC)It wasn't the Ming who installed the Dalai Lama, it was Kangxi under the Qing (Schirokauer, Conrad. A Brief History of Chinese Civilzation. Thomson Wadsworth, 2006).
There is a claim that the Tibetan Empire was influenced by China through the Chinese princess married to Songsten Gampo, the Tibetan king. That's a rather silly argument, given Songsten Gampo had captured Chang'an for a week and China was involved in ongoing warfare with the Tibetan Empire. The princess was sent there as part of a peace agreement and there are inscriptions indicating the peace treaty between China and Tibet. (Beckwith, Christopher I. The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia. Princeton University Press, (c)1987; Graff, David Andrew. (2002). Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900. New York, London: Routledge, 2002)
As for the claim that Tibet belonged to China under the Yuan, it would be more true to say that the Mongols conquered both Tibet and China. The Mongols had separate Mongols lords for Tibet and China initially, but the Mongol lord of Tibet died, and so Kubilai Khan inherited Tibet. The Mongols didn't want to rely on Chinese officials so they brought in foreigners, Marco Polo and well as some from Tibet, and installed them over the heads of Chinese in China. The Mongols did not incorporate Tibet into a larger Chinese administration (Tibet never had the system of exams, for example), instead locating a Tibetan Lama and making him the head of state. (Shirokauer)
Then there's the claim that Ming inherited Tibet from the Yuan dynasty. This ignores 300 years of reduced territory under the Song Dynasty which not only didn't include Tibet, it also lost the northern part of China to the Jurchen (Schirokauer; also "Recollections of the Northern Song Capital." Hawaii Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture, University of Hawaii Press, 2005).
The territorial losses of the Song aren't anything a China scholar would argue, I mean, it's right there in the dynastic histories. "Well, we should have ruled all of China and Tibet" is not a good historical argument.
Then the case for Tibet being part of China during the Ming is based on the idea that the Ming retook the "rightful" territory of China from the time of the Yuan (we're back to the "we should have..." argument) -- and assumes this included Tibet. The trouble with this argument is that:
1) the Yuan weren't Chinese, they were foreign invaders,
2) neither the Yuan nor the Chinese controlled Tibet during the Song Dynastic period, and finally,
3) the Ming didn't control Tibet.
The Ming controlled all of the Tang Dynasty's China, Xinjiang, inner Mongolia into northern Manchuria. They had a vassal state relationship with Korea and scattered states in Southeast Asia (most historians do not accept that Korea was part of China at this time). The Ming did not garrison troops in Tibet, nor did they have any say in Tibet's government. (Schirokauer)
So there's no historical claim to Tibet until Kangxi during the Qing. This is China's strongest case.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 10:08 pm (UTC)Tibet, during the late 1600s, had a power struggle between religious sects because the sixth Dalai Lama had fallen in love and didn't want to be a monk, yet the Tibetans kept him in that role anyway (most of his literary output is love poems). One Mongol (the Mongols were Buddhist by then) tried to put their own candidate in place instead and enlisted the support of Kangxi, and captured the lovelorn Dalai Lama and sent him to Beijing; the sixth Dalai Lama mysteriously died of "illness" on the way.
The Tibetans appealed to a different Mongol faction, the Dzungzar Mongols. All of these factions had their own "Dalai Lama" to install. The Dzungzars beat Kangxi's Mongol friends, were hailed by the Tibetans -- until they started looting. Oops.
Kangxi sent another garrison in 1720, led by Yongzheng who later became Emperor of China, kicked the looters' tails, and the Chinese were heroes to the Tibetans. Kangxi installed a new 7th "Dalai Lama" (Tibetans don't actually believe this Dalai Lama was legit). Kangxi withdrew his troops in 1763 and civil war broke out again, with more Mongol interventions in Tibet. (Richardson, Hugh E. (1984). Tibet and its History. Second Edition, Revised and Updated, Shambhala. Boston & London.)
That's it. That is the historical basis for China's claim to Tibet. China annexed eastern Tibet (Kham and Amdo) and started posting "ambans" in Lhasa. The argument from there is just how much of a role the ambans played in Tibet. The Tibetans say they were Chinese ambassadors. The Chinese say they they played the role of governors. Kangxi did not maintain troops in Tibet after 1723. (Richardson, Hugh E. (1984). Tibet and its History. Second Edition, Revised and Updated, Shambhala. Boston & London.)
Emperor Qianlong of the Qing intervened one more time (I'd have to look up the exact date, but it was between 1736-1795) sending a garrison and an amban but after that made no further effort to integrate Tibet into China. The Qing were undermined by opium and foreign powers and turned towards their own internal troubles, including a whole series of unequal treaties with the British, the US, and France.
Periodically the Qing were asked for military support by Tibet up until 1911, but Tibet considered China an ally. There was no Chinese administrative system (no Neo-Confucian exams, Tibet collected their own taxes, they had their own stamps, their own system of seals) but they had close ties. You could make an argument for a relationship like that between Korea and China during the Ming, but it takes more than aid and military intervention to make a region a part of a state. (Schirokauer; Chapman, F. Spencer. (1940). Lhasa: The Holy City, p. 135. Readers Union Ltd., London)
From 1911 through 1949, after the Chinese overthrew the Manchus, there were no connections whatsoever between China and Tibet. No one argues this. Even the most fierce proponents of China's ownership of Tibet phrase it as a "reassertion" of China's "right" to Tibet that had been neglected since 1911.
Here's a summary of the views of Chinese vs. the views of the Tibetans on this matter: http://www.rangzen.org/history/views.htm
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 10:10 pm (UTC)Kangxi withdrew his troops in 1723. Not 1763.
He was only there three years.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 12:55 am (UTC)Concerning his characterization of the Tibetans as lapdogs of the CIA, this article pretty well kills that idea: Roberts, John. "Inside Story of CIA's Black Hands in Tibet." The American Spectator, December 1997. A copy has been uploaded here: http://www.takhli.org/rjw/tibet.htm
no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 03:25 am (UTC)"In 1956 the Chinese introduced the so-called �Democratic Reforms� in Kham starting with the eastern region of Tibet. They began to impose communist ideology and destroyed Tibetan religion and culture. They conducted mass arrests and executions of Tibetan religious leaders and other prominent leaders."
http://www.chushigangdruk.org/history/history01.html
Chushi Gangdruk was formed in 1956 and supplied themselves with weapons from their own funds, in one battle taking on a force of 2,000 PLA soldiers. The CIA delayed, wanting the official go ahead from Lhasa.
http://www.chushigangdruk.org/history/history04.html
The Eisenhower administration finally gave the green light in 1959, without Lhasa's support. Initially Lhasa sent an official delegation to attempt to dissuade the Khampa fighters who had now been trained by the CIA. Upon seeing the situation in Kham, the official delegation chose to join the resistance instead, refusing to return to Lhasa.
http://www.chushigangdruk.org/history/history05.html
Thousands were killed in the shelling of the Dalai Lama's palace. The Khampa force was outmatched in a pitched battle with China. "In the second week of April, General Gonpo Tashi and the regiment made it to Lhuntse Dzong, but by then news was also pouring in about defeat and retreats of our troops from many strategic positions." So they focused on protecting the escape route for the outpouring of Tibetan refugees "General Gonpo Tashi wanted to have a full-force battle against the enemy as a parting shot, but his military advisers advised him otherwise. By now the mass exodus of Tibetans had already started, and the only and best thing they could do was to keep the escape routes safe for the masses of Tibetans pursued by Chinese troops."
http://www.chushigangdruk.org/history/history07.html
"Shota Lhosum, having long been the resistance base, drew large numbers of resistance fighters from all over. Within a short period of time, the number swelled to over ten thousand comprised of the local resistance troops and Khampas from other regions."
http://www.chushigangdruk.org/history/history08.html
"Despite the best efforts of the resistance fighters to combat the Chinese, they were clearly outnumbered and outmanoeuvred by the re-enforced Chinese troops."
http://www.chushigangdruk.org/history/history08.html
In the wake of improved Sino-U.S. relations, in 1972 the CIA aid to the guerrilla base was gradually terminated.
http://www.chushigangdruk.org/history/history10.html
1952 photo of the Khampa fighting force Chushi Gangdruk with its founder, General Gonpo Tashi.
Your father is absolutely incorrect in his assumption that the US created the rebellion. They had formed seven years before the CIA became involved, and had already engaged the PLA troops.
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Date: 2008-04-14 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 04:07 pm (UTC)When I way "interesting" without any other comment, it's usually the latter.
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Date: 2008-04-14 08:28 pm (UTC)I can't defend China's human rights record by any means, but sometimes I feel China get so much flack b/c it is China. It's like the anti-Christ of countries; a nation of dog-eating, one-child having, and much wrong-doing. If one more person expresses shock at how I didn't get aborted b/c I'm a Chinese girl, my eyes will freeze into my skull.
Anyways, thank you for gathering all this information. No matter what, though, I'm still really excited about the Beijing Olympics and will still be even if I change my opinion about Tibet.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-15 01:32 am (UTC)The athletes have more in common with each other than they do with the typical person in their home countries.
sometimes I feel China get so much flack b/c it is China
I have a long post about America as it relates to China in a minute. My own personal frustration with Chinese students that I've encountered is that sometimes they're "my way or the highway."
I've had writers contact me from mainland China about some of my fanfic, and they assume an immediate intimacy that's a little uncomfortable -- but okay, cool, no problem, different culture. But when I've made suggestions (at their request), the answer has been, "No, I want you to show me what I tell you to show me." And they were absolutely relentless, just didn't get the brush-off when I told them, "No, if you don't plan to listen we have nothing more to talk about."
Same thing with an editing project I've been working on. It's not universal, but when you encounter that hard-headed stubborn streak, I want to get out a two-by-four and bonk them over the head until they listen. It's as frustrating as all get out.
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Date: 2008-04-15 01:57 am (UTC)People in this country right now blame (or resent might be the better term) China for something that is the fault of the greed of our own corporations, and the unholy marriage between politics and wealth: jobs have been shipped to China, and people have suffered because of it. There have been massive lay-offs in the manufacturing in particular. Everything you buy has "China" on the label, a constant reminder of this. Due to the corporate lack of concern for the long-term welfare of this country (and in some cases blindly following disproved economic theories) and the corruption of Dick Cheney and Bush, our economy is in tatters while China has been experiencing an economic boom based on the industries that used to be strong here.
Then there is the lingering negative feeling from the older generation's feelings about "Red China." From 1950 to the fall of the Berlin wall the US was steeped in rhetoric about the evils of communism vs. American freedom. In the 50s it got particularly crazy. People were black-balled if they were suspected of communist ties (this goes back to the big business anti-union feelings of the 1930s, but I think I'll stick with what the living generations of Americans are carrying around).
So the people who are now in their 70s grew up in a boom time where "communism" was the enemy and was going to take over the world, the way dominoes fall. They all seem to have an assumption that technology can re-make the world, and America is the leader.
Those now in their 60s grew up during the hippie years where Nixon's change in policy towards China was embraced as a sign of brotherhood among nations. China was portrayed as a backward, closed off land, exotic and different. That view was tempered considerably with the Tienaman square massacre. It acted as a reminder that China was still communist (review previous anti-communist bias). This generation lived through the Vietnam war, so has much more distrust of "the establishment," but they tend to imagine an active role of themselves "changing the world." President Clinton's of this generation, and I can see it in his endless participation in UN peacekeeping missions. On the other hand, China supported the other side in Vietnam. The Vietnam vets seem to have a very different view of Chinese: smart little fuckers that you can't trust as far as you can throw them. (Don't shoot the messenger, obviously the guys who were shot at have a reason to be displeased.)
The generation that's now in their 50s was told not that China was opening its doors to the west, but that the US had opened the doors to China. It was really viewed as a one-way conversation. China was just an exotic, odd communist land in the background. There were films of Chinese riding bikes to work, and gathering together to exercises that gave the impression that they were automatons. The oil crisis and the creation of OPEC and the aftermath of Nixon's resignation made people cynical. (This group does an inordinate amount of sitting around and complaining, I’ve noticed.) Most people withdrew in apathy and cynicism, and tend to take a cynical view of all governments -- including China. Tienaman Square seemed to confirm their negative impression.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-15 01:58 am (UTC)The generation that's now entering their 40s (that's my generation) lived during the Reagan years, when President Reagan kept stirring up fear of the USSR. The threat of nuclear war hung over us (my city was in a strike zone) especially with Reagan shaking the rafters. China was on the periphery, an exotic (if backward) nation with “an interesting culture.” Although some people conflated China with the USSR (both were communist and therefore both were a threat). Tienaman Square impacted this generation, too. There was great sympathy for the protesters (they were our age!) and most have a combination of sympathy for the average Chinese and hatred for the Chinese government with its tanks.
The generation coming into their 30s now grew up under a booming economy in the US that suddenly crashed once they hit the job market. They see China's labels everywhere, know that the jobs have been shipped overseas, and see a lot of Chinese students at university. The older generations point to this generation and compare them negatively to the Chinese: not as hard-working, not as good at math and science, pampered and spoiled, America is falling behind ... as if the kids who just finished school are the ones responsible for the state of the country. Who spent more on the military than we ever have on education, for example? That negative comparison has added to the resentment -- at which point this group then turns around and points to the problems in China. The negative view is ameliorated by the internet and the fact that more of this generation (and the next) are in direct contact with actual Chinese people. On the other hand, there's a habit of defensive China-bashing.
Anyway, it's always a problem to make sweeping generalizations. Everyone is different and experiences difference circumstances. But in terms of what the US has said to itself about China, those are the broad brush strokes.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-16 08:48 am (UTC)One guy from mainland China drove me up the wall when he requested beta help but refused to accept the advice I gave -- which was to write characterization, not summary. He insisted that "summary" was his style and that I should still help him. It turned out he wanted me to do all his military research for him, and wouldn't take no for an answer. This went on for months before I finally stopped answering his emails. I think he was a teenager. I've certainly had idiot requests from American kids, too.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 04:39 pm (UTC)I'm trying not to take a particular position on the Tibet issue because I feel like I don't have enough historical context to take an informed position. I'm a computer programmer by profession: I like code because I can try it out and it either works or it doesn't work, and either way I know for sure. You can't really do that with politics: when folks have tried, the results have usually been rather bloody. So I normally try to avoid politics, considering it beyond my sphere of expertise. I have opinions, but don't feel strongly enough about them to avoid changing them.
But your facts have made for some interesting rebuttals at the dining room table. :) And it's gotten my dad to shut up a little (just a little ;-)) about Tibet, although I'm not sure if that's because he accepts them as true or just a reaction to my continued apathy.
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Date: 2008-04-13 07:51 am (UTC)Yeah, I'd like to poke through that bibliography when you have time to post it.
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Date: 2008-04-20 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 04:46 am (UTC)*AND* in a way that could be followed so much more clearly than anything else I've read so far. (also saved to my del.icio.us account for further reading and research) again, thank you :)
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Date: 2008-04-14 03:53 pm (UTC)I agree with you that the Dalai Lama is a moderating influence on Tibetans, and that once he's gone, Tibetans (especially young ones) are far more likely to be confrontational than cowed. It's amazing though that the narrative in China is so vastly different. And whenever I see a report about how students in China score better than US students on such and such test, I want to say, "Yes, but many Chinese students never have a thought outside what they're told to think."
I asked my high school students to write on the question, "Should a country teach its students about the bad times in its history? Or should it only teach about positive things?" Every single student answered that history should be the good and the bad. Every single student used Japan's denial of its WWII history as their example. Tibet, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, corruption now... none of that occurred to them.
I'm rambling. Thanks again for your thoughts.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-15 04:47 am (UTC)