Tibet
I had a rather interesting discussion with a bird watcher called Malcolm about Tibet when I was in Honduras and some of the points that came up did I find worth sharing. People who were unfortunate enough to get into a discussion about Tibet with me, know that I have issues with the attitude of many of the "Free Tibet" activists.
My greatest issue with them is that they take a problem which involves millions of people and is therefore quite complex and force it into a narrow black and white narrative, usually reacting quite aggressive when one does not agree. I had been shouted at that I do not support human rights, something I found deeply insulting and ridiculously been told that my stay in China had brainwashed me. Yes, the CCP is that good.
To clarify, I do not think the Chinese invasion of Tibet was justified, but that we have to deal with the situation as it is now, even if we don´t like it. You´ll understand when I start talking about Australia in a bit.
Anyway, for anyone needing a reason to get angry at me, here are some of my points.
1. Why does everyone focus on Tibet?
China has an unbelievable diversity of ethnical minorities, why do only Tibetans get all the attention. If the invasion and annotation of Tibet was unjustified, so was the annotation of Heilongjiang , Xinjiang and parts of Guangdong and Guangxi province, as they all have a history of not belonging to the Chinese empire.
In a way the whole of China has a history of not being part of China as there were always Warlord periods, where the Empire had fallen apart, the last being before and during the Second World War. China has also not always been ruled by Han Chinese, there were Mongolian rulers (they did make it over the Wall, shows there is no point of building walls) and the last dynasty came from Heilongjiang.
Countrys are more often than our minds desperate to identify ourself with a group of people wants to believe most of the time just a line drawn on a map because two rulers decided that is where they want their land to end. People interact with each other over these artificial lines, cultures and cultural identities do not stop at them.
The Tibetan religious elite always had quite a lot of influence in China, Tibetan Buddhism was defacto the state religion, one can find the influence of this culture all over China, in monasteries or just the huge amount of Tibetan people living in Szechuan province, just like there are pockets of traditional Muslamic Chinese found all over China, such as in Xi´an, not only in Xinjiang province, because of the silk road.
The province of Tibet today is also just a line drawn in the sand, the historical Tibet sometimes extended further than that, in-cooperating parts of Szechuan and Yunnan province, so when people talk about a free Tibet, do they include these parts? Or do only the Tibetans in the modern province of Tibet deserve to be free?
2. The historical Tibet was a feudal state, ruled by a religious elite, in many ways even more undemocratic than the Vatikan ever was. The Dalai Lama was never voted to be the leader of his people, he was chosen by the religious elite, because "signs" told them he was the incarnation of the previous Lama. Reminds me a bit of the Constitutional Peasant of Monthy Python. Last year he finally resigned and exiled Tibetans voted for the first time. This happened after 60 years, it does not seem to be that the Tibetan leaders, most who were associated with the religious elite were too keen on democracy.
3. If I do not have much trust in the political leaders of the movement, I even less believe that the countries supporting them, especially India, have any other motivation than geopolitical ones. And I cannot believe that once Tibet would be free of Chinese influence, it would not be replaced by maybe more subtle, but still significant influence from these countries, just like Mongolia is officially an independent country, but its economy is almost 100% dependent on Russian oil and therefore its leaders are heavily under the influence of Moscow.
4. Millions of Tibetans live today in China (outside of what we know as Tibet today). In the same way the Chinese government made an effort to bring Han Chinese to Tibet. Yes, this was colonisation, just like Australia was colonised by Britain by bringing prisoners there. And all of the Americas were colonised.
But the people are there now and do not have a home they can go back to, so what to do with these people. And we are talking about millions. And this is were most "Free Tibet" activists show their ugly side. They propose to simply displace these people. If I ask them if they want to do the same with Australians or most of the Americas for that matter they say it is not the same thing. But in a way it is, just a few years further down the road. Being displaced is not a fun situation, as millions of fugitives can tell and these people would be send back into a dictatorship. Because only Tibet deserves to be free. If we include the regions of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang we are talking about even more displaced people, maybe starting to be close to the population of Australia. But I guess as long as they are Han Chinese this is ok. Malcolm even gleefully told me that many Han Chinese experience miscarriages in Tibet, because of the high altitude. I guess miscarriage is a good thing as long as it happens to the right ethnicity. Just imagine we were talking about Australians and you might see why this kind of talk makes me angry.
I believe everyone deserves freedom, no matter which ethnicity.
I don´t think you can punish people for their government, especially if the government is oppressing them as well as the minority in question.
I don´t think that a solution which is going to displace millions of people is a solution.
I´m for a free China, not only a free Tibet and I don´t think the common Chinese people are the enemy.
My greatest issue with them is that they take a problem which involves millions of people and is therefore quite complex and force it into a narrow black and white narrative, usually reacting quite aggressive when one does not agree. I had been shouted at that I do not support human rights, something I found deeply insulting and ridiculously been told that my stay in China had brainwashed me. Yes, the CCP is that good.
To clarify, I do not think the Chinese invasion of Tibet was justified, but that we have to deal with the situation as it is now, even if we don´t like it. You´ll understand when I start talking about Australia in a bit.
Anyway, for anyone needing a reason to get angry at me, here are some of my points.
1. Why does everyone focus on Tibet?
China has an unbelievable diversity of ethnical minorities, why do only Tibetans get all the attention. If the invasion and annotation of Tibet was unjustified, so was the annotation of Heilongjiang , Xinjiang and parts of Guangdong and Guangxi province, as they all have a history of not belonging to the Chinese empire.
In a way the whole of China has a history of not being part of China as there were always Warlord periods, where the Empire had fallen apart, the last being before and during the Second World War. China has also not always been ruled by Han Chinese, there were Mongolian rulers (they did make it over the Wall, shows there is no point of building walls) and the last dynasty came from Heilongjiang.
Countrys are more often than our minds desperate to identify ourself with a group of people wants to believe most of the time just a line drawn on a map because two rulers decided that is where they want their land to end. People interact with each other over these artificial lines, cultures and cultural identities do not stop at them.
The Tibetan religious elite always had quite a lot of influence in China, Tibetan Buddhism was defacto the state religion, one can find the influence of this culture all over China, in monasteries or just the huge amount of Tibetan people living in Szechuan province, just like there are pockets of traditional Muslamic Chinese found all over China, such as in Xi´an, not only in Xinjiang province, because of the silk road.
The province of Tibet today is also just a line drawn in the sand, the historical Tibet sometimes extended further than that, in-cooperating parts of Szechuan and Yunnan province, so when people talk about a free Tibet, do they include these parts? Or do only the Tibetans in the modern province of Tibet deserve to be free?
2. The historical Tibet was a feudal state, ruled by a religious elite, in many ways even more undemocratic than the Vatikan ever was. The Dalai Lama was never voted to be the leader of his people, he was chosen by the religious elite, because "signs" told them he was the incarnation of the previous Lama. Reminds me a bit of the Constitutional Peasant of Monthy Python. Last year he finally resigned and exiled Tibetans voted for the first time. This happened after 60 years, it does not seem to be that the Tibetan leaders, most who were associated with the religious elite were too keen on democracy.
3. If I do not have much trust in the political leaders of the movement, I even less believe that the countries supporting them, especially India, have any other motivation than geopolitical ones. And I cannot believe that once Tibet would be free of Chinese influence, it would not be replaced by maybe more subtle, but still significant influence from these countries, just like Mongolia is officially an independent country, but its economy is almost 100% dependent on Russian oil and therefore its leaders are heavily under the influence of Moscow.
4. Millions of Tibetans live today in China (outside of what we know as Tibet today). In the same way the Chinese government made an effort to bring Han Chinese to Tibet. Yes, this was colonisation, just like Australia was colonised by Britain by bringing prisoners there. And all of the Americas were colonised.
But the people are there now and do not have a home they can go back to, so what to do with these people. And we are talking about millions. And this is were most "Free Tibet" activists show their ugly side. They propose to simply displace these people. If I ask them if they want to do the same with Australians or most of the Americas for that matter they say it is not the same thing. But in a way it is, just a few years further down the road. Being displaced is not a fun situation, as millions of fugitives can tell and these people would be send back into a dictatorship. Because only Tibet deserves to be free. If we include the regions of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang we are talking about even more displaced people, maybe starting to be close to the population of Australia. But I guess as long as they are Han Chinese this is ok. Malcolm even gleefully told me that many Han Chinese experience miscarriages in Tibet, because of the high altitude. I guess miscarriage is a good thing as long as it happens to the right ethnicity. Just imagine we were talking about Australians and you might see why this kind of talk makes me angry.
I believe everyone deserves freedom, no matter which ethnicity.
I don´t think you can punish people for their government, especially if the government is oppressing them as well as the minority in question.
I don´t think that a solution which is going to displace millions of people is a solution.
I´m for a free China, not only a free Tibet and I don´t think the common Chinese people are the enemy.