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NOT!! !!

No, I am not kidding. As a Singapore citizen who has lived for some years in the United States and travelled extensively through China, I hold an opinion that is at least not entirely based on what I read in the newspaper. Despite its autocracy the Chinese government has improved the lives of hundreds of millions of impoverished Chinese. Travel through South Asia and much of South East Asia and the achievement becomes irrefutable. New roads, power lines, telecommunications links, water, sewage, schools, and hospitals and so on – the sorts of things that people in the developed world take for granted that are usually lacking in the developing world. In the last thirty years, the Chinese government has brought the gifts of modernity to all parts of China, including Tibet.

It has literally been an undertaking of tears, sweat and blood to build a railway through the permafrost to reach Lhasa and yet instead of celebrating this feat of engineering marvel, the media has hounded it as an attempt to destroy the culture of Tibet. Without efficient transportation links, how is Tibet ever to develop economically? The lamas who speak out against the railway line do so because they want to keep Tibet in feudal darkness. How else would they get to control the minds of the population? When was the last time any of you did what a pastor of priest told you to do simply because he said so?

Put aside your ethnocentrism for a minute and ask yourself if you can really support a break away regime that seeks to keep an entire people under the shackles of feudal terror and to grind them away with serf like slavery. That was Tibet prior to the 1959 when China reasserted control. Even though mistakes were made, especially during the Cultural Revolution, at least Tibetans as a minority group thrives in today’s China. Can the same be said for Native Americans, African Americans or Latino Americans?

I'm Canadian and we have arguably the best democracy on the planet, but it is FAR from perfect. Every political model ever conceived is flawed and undesirable. Why? Because human beings are imperfect. Communism, democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, it matters not.

The question is not, Who stinks?

The question is, Whose stink is the least offensive?

Be careful of how you use those pronouns. I am ethnically Chinese but not a Chinese citizen. If you did not know this, Singapore is NOT a part of China (for that matter we are NOT a part of America either but sometimes American leaders seem to forget).

The history is not as important as some people would like to make it out to be but even so you have gotten it completely wrong. For heaven’s sake, Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information for touchy historical debates unless you believe that a partisan’s perspective is impartial. I will not go into it but even Tibetan academics admit that based on the historical record alone, the question of Tibetan independence can go either way. Mongolia and Nepal are independent because of the machinations of the Russians and the British. Neither is doing well and it can be persuasively argued that both states would do much better in the folds of a stronger state. Mongolians for instance are migrating en masse to China in search of economic opportunity. Vietnam’s history is complicated but it was independent of China just as Thailand and Burma was, although it forged very close links with China until the French brutally occupied it.

What is important however is that whilst the British supported Nepal’s and Bhutan’s independence and insisted on grabbing Sikkim as a part of British India, they adamantly refused to support Tibet’s independence even though the 13th Dalai Lama had declared independence following the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. Their refusal was in the face of repeated entreaties from one of their own officers, the renowned adventurer Francis Younghusband, who actually fell so in love with Tibet that he moved to Lhasa to become a trusted advisor to the 13th Dalai Lama. And even though the Russians supported Mongolian independence (for their own selfish reasons), they refused for decades to contemplate Tibetan sovereignty. It was not until the Communist takeover of China that America actually became interested in the Tibetan question. Prior to that, the American position was that Tibet was, is and always will be a part of China. You should ask yourself why has the tune changed?

Aww... but for your own good you shouldn't.

How are Tibetan's being rubbed out? Do you have any proof to back up such a statement? Since you do not know allow me to enlighten you. The one child policy does not apply to Tibetans because as an ethnic minority they are allowed have at least two kids.

Japan managed to modernize without the same brutality. And you could similarly point to impressive accomplishments of Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, or even Hitler. Heck, Hitler took a dirt-poor nation that had been defeated, humiliated, and dismantled and built it up into the single greatest power in the world. So he had to kill a few millions Jews along the way. By your logic he should still be praised. Incidentally, your rhetoric really reminds me of the kind of writing Eric Blair talked about in his essay, "Politics and the English Language." The specific example he gives is a college professor defending Soviet rule; you might want to give it a perusal. The Chinese may have improved the lives of some people, but they have ended the lives of others.


Do the people of Tibet want a railway? Do they want to be a part of Communist China? I will take feudal darkness over communist oppression.


All right, I'll concede the Native Americans. They pretty much got screwed. But blacks and Latinos aren't exactly being repressed now. We aren't killing them off or really oppressing them in any way. Latinos in America certainly are a thriving minority, and on the rise at that. Blacks are doing just fine, we even treat them better than whites when it comes to higher education.

Never underestimate how the people of wealthy countries take for granted the perquisites of their middle class existence. When you are born into a world where everything was already there, you can of course make believe that it has always been and always will be there. Alas, the people of the developing world do not have the luxury of such indulgences.

Japan and Germany are poor examples and Iraq and Cuba cannot really be said to have improved the lives of their citizens by much. Before expressing an opinion, it helps to have given the matter some thought. Some basic grounding in theory and facts would be invaluable.

You would really accept feudalism? You understand that you have actually advocated slavery as preferable to collectivism. Now that China has moved decidedly away from communism towards free market capitalism or what the Chinese calls harmonious socialism, you, like many others, actually call for Tibetans, willing or not, to be yoked to the heavy irons of feudal peasantry instead of embracing the liberation of free market enterprise all for the sake of preserving the power and status of lamaist religious extremists. Why would you do that? Why would you fight Al-Qaeda over the principle that the state must be separate from religion and yet support the violent terrorists who seek to overthrow the basis of civil society in China?

What exactly do you stand for?

The 'One Child Policy' is a necessity for China. It relieves the burden on China's resources. If it is not implemented, what basically happens would be worse economy, even lower quality of living for Chinese people in the rural area etc. Of course, if the United States of America would provide approximately thirty million vacancies for Chinese immigrants each year, the policy can be loosened.
However, despite being a Chinese, I do not like the way the one child policy is implemented, but neither can I think of another method to implement this important policy.

Like D1nk0 said, Tibet would definitely fare a lot worse without China's support. During the protest, do you expect the Chinese government to do nothing when the protesters are carrying knives and setting fire and killing innocent civilians?
I will be honest here, I do not know much about Tibet even though I'm Chinese, this is because I do not trust information from the west, neither do I trust information from China. But one thing I'm certain, the protest was definitely not 'peaceful', and when innocent civilians are harmed, it should definitely be suppressed.

I know my reply sounds naive, but my point is, people in the west should stop blindly trusting the western media, do not think that just because you are more advanced in terms of implementing human rights, that what you see on the newspaper must be true. China is advancing in terms of human rights as well, the western media seems to have missed that.

Okay Zeno, please answer me this: if Chinese rule is so great for the Tibetans then why are they rioting and demanding their independence? If they want their country back then why shouldn't they have it? And you must also keep in mind that Chinese occupation was never wanted or asked for by the Tibetans. China just forced themselves in and took it over.

BwaHAhahahahahahahaha!


Thats the DUMBEST thing Ive heard yet on this subject. You obviously now NOTHING about Japanese history from 1865-1945.
ESPECIALLY World War II! Japans occupation of China makes Chinese rule of Tibet seem pretty tame. Even before the 2nd World War the Japanese used slave labor in coal mines on its souther islands(mostly KOREANS). Im sorry,I really DONT feel sorry for Tibet and I think the Chinese have a DAMN good reason for being their.The Dalai Lama is in reality a dictator in exile .I mean think about it:it could be MUCH worse-China could imprison Tibetan women and use them as sex slaves for the military as Japan did with Korea.

Are you so sure that every Tibetan is rioting? The regime in Dharamsala does not represent all Tibetans and if you make out the thugs who killed wantonly to be representative of every Tibetans, then it is you who belittles the Tibetans.

Demand for independence and love for the lamaist state is an assumption that you have shoved down the throats of Tibetans. It is an opinion that is as offensive as say for a European to assume that all Americans despise Mexicans and wish to see to it that no illegal immigrants can ever get through the border alive. It is the ignorance that is unbearable.

Ever heard of the Nanjing Massacre? Not only did the Japanese cruelly killed over 200,000 (some say it's up to 300,000) people in that massacre only (not including the number of people killed in other places of China), they even deny the number of people killed then, they 'conveniently' omitted much of the history of the massacre in Japanese history textbooks nowadays, and try to justify their reasons for invading China.

Conjecture.



Well, thank the Chinese government for being so gracious as to allow you to breathe air Of course every Tibetan should get on their knees and thank the Chinese for everything they've forced upon them.



Demand for subservience and joy for modernization by the communist state is an assumption that Chinese have quite literally shoved down the throats of Tibetans.

I seriously doubt China has Tibetans best interest at heart.

I don't support either regime, any regime for that matter.



No one has the whole puzzle, they only have pieces. So ignorance is unavoidable. It is determining and dictating another's life from a distance through ignorance that is unbearable. I believe they call it oppression.



I would like to hear this/these rose-tinted reason/s.



And then they could chop them up and make them into meat buns.

hummm. . .When I was a little girl, Tibet was a sovereign country and an independent kingdom, which later was invaded and made a part of China. The government of the People's Republic of China and the Government of Tibet in Exile, however, disagree over if Tibet is a part of China, and whether this incorporation into China is legitimate according to international law.

This struggle still goes on, and the troubled Bejing Olympics (drought and heavy pollution) is a world class political stage for the struggle to play out.

So yes, I think they have a just cause.
Merle

Thank you for pointing out that Tibet had in fact declared independence from China following the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and it did exist as a quasi-sovereign state for almost 50 years. From 1911 to 1949, China was wrecked by civil war and later invaded by the Japanese. During the period of the Japanese occupation, the only way in and out of China was via Tibet and Tibetan traders were known to have made a killing on the caravan trade. If the Tibetans had in fact been half serious about forming a state, they would have built an army capable of defending the country using the revenue from this highly lucrative trade.

Like Afghanistan, Tibet is a land of rugged mountains. Even today, there are few roads which an army can use to invade. With even a small but properly equipped force to defend the vital entry points, the Chinese invasion would have been foolhardy and all but impossible. You must remember that China’s army then was really a light arms brigade. Are people not surprised that when the Tibetans surrendered, all they had were some rusty WWI rifles and a small stash of ammunition? In fifty years as an independent kingdom, the Tibetans failed to build even a modest army that was capable of fighting guerrilla warfare. Look at how hard it is to quash the Taliban and you will get an idea of how corrupt and inept the Tibetan polity must have been to have been pushed over with such ease. What would it have taken to purchase radios, modern rifles and mortars? They did not even do this absurd minimum because the feudal lords who ruled their respective fiefs refused to consider the idea of sharing revenue with Lhasa. Religion made the people obeisant, freeing these lords to indulge without end in the luxuries their feudal wealth brought. And that was what these local warlords sought in their relationship with Lhasa.

If you knew the misery of the peasants who were liberated by the communists, you would not be so unreserved in your support for the Tibetan regime now hiding in Dharamsala. It would be like siding with the White farmers who wanted to keep their slaves in the Antebellum South. Why would you do that?