Tibet, China and the West: Back to
stereotypes By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - For China watchers who hope
that mutual understanding and tolerance between
Beijing and its Western counterparts will both
broaden and deepen as China's international
coming-out party - the Summer Olympic Games -
approaches, the riots in Tibet have proved a
sobering disappointment. And for all those hoping
that the Beijing Olympics will not be politicized
- it's too late, they already have been.
Once again, Chinese and Western leaders
have shown us that when things get really tough in
China - and the separatist-inspired riots
targeting not just the central government but also
innocent Han Chinese now living in Tibet and
nearby provinces qualify as just that - both
parties revert depressingly to form.
The
Chinese government has attacked the Western media,
the
Dalai
Lama and all those taking part in the protests in
language reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution
while Western powers, led by Speaker of the US
House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, have used
the violence in Tibet as yet another excuse to
demonize China's leaders.
Where we go from
here is crucial for both sides, and China clearly
has a plan: control Tibet and welcome the world to
a peaceful, orderly and, yes, more open China for
the Games. "Give us a break," the rising but
troubled country all but cries out to the world.
"Let us find our own way," pleas the nation of 1.3
billion. But is anybody in the West listening?
Western-inspired protesters, not to
mention election-year politics in the largely
China-ignorant United States, could very well
derail the Chinese plan. Let's hope not. China has
earned - and should be granted - its international
debut at the Olympics, which can serve not only as
a grand entertainment for the sporting world but
also as an education to the ignorant about the
daunting challenges it faces as a still-developing
nation with its massive population. Meanwhile,
however, Chinese leaders need to drop the
throwback language of Mao Zedong and truly engage
the West.
The trouble in Tibet reportedly
started with a protest on March 10, the
anniversary of a failed 1959 Tibetan uprising
against Chinese rule, at Tibet's most sacred
shrine, the Jokhang Temple in the capital of
Lhasa. After riots broke out in the Tibetan
capital on March 14, Tibet's China-appointed
governor, Champa Phuntsok, got the rhetorical ball
rolling for Beijing, denouncing the protestors as
a "small group of separatists and criminals" and
threatening harsh penalties for those who did not
turn themselves in by a deadline established last
week.
"No country would allow those
offenders or criminals to escape the arm of
justice, and China is no exception," said Champa
Phuntsok, an ethnic Tibetan.
Foreign
Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao went a step
further, characterizing the protests as
"atrocities of the Tibetan independence forces"
revealing "the hypocrisy and deceit of [their]
peace and non-violence propaganda".
In
case anyone was wondering to whom Liu had
referred, Premier Wen Jiabao clarified in remarks
of his own. "There is ample fact and we also have
plenty of evidence proving that this incident was
organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited
by the Dalai clique," the premier said at a
televised news conference on March 18.
Before that, the Dalai Lama, Tibet's
spiritual leader, had condemned China's crackdown
on the protesters as part of the ongoing "cultural
genocide" perpetrated by Beijing in Tibet, an
autonomous region that he fled during the 1959
insurrection for exile in India. Chinese leaders
have seized on the violence in Tibet, the worst in
20 years, as another opportunity to vilify the
Dalai Lama, whom they regard as a dangerous
"splittist". The Dalai Lama has employed some
incendiary language of his own, but has also
repeatedly called for peace in the region and made
a point of supporting the Beijing Olympics despite
the crackdown.
After rounding on the Dalai
Lama, Beijing condemned the Western media for
"biased reports" on Tibet and has done its best to
push its own version of the story, which goes like
this: a small, extreme group of splittists -
organized by the Dalai Lama and his followers -
sparked a hate-filled rampage in Lhasa, smashing
vehicles and looting and burning more than 100
stores; the violence in Lhasa then led to a few
copycat incidents in three neighboring provinces:
Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu. Reports in state
media, supported by photographs and TV footages,
described angry Tibetan crowds in Lhasa attacking
innocent bystanders who were Han Chinese.
Beijing has also gone out of its way to
underscore factual errors committed by Western
news organizations, including the BBC, CNN, Fox
News and the Washington Post. For example, state
media pointed out that the BBC mistakenly
described an online photo of an ambulance as a
police vehicle involved in the crackdown on
rioters in Lhasa. And The Washington Post was
pilloried for running a photo of Tibetan
protesters battling with police in Nepal's capital
of Katmandu with a caption describing Chinese
police thwarting demonstrators in Lhasa. Germany's
RTL TV was forced to apologize for a similar
error.
This has further fueled
nationalistic sentiments among Chinese (presumably
the majority Han people). Many Chinese netizens,
in China and overseas, have expressed their
support of the crackdown on riots in Tibet,
condemning Western media for its "biased" reports
to demonize their country.
"I was angered,
as a media researcher, by their reporting," Zhang
Kai, a professor at Communication University of
China, told the official Xinhua News Agency. "They
violated the fundamental journalistic principle of
truth ... I was ashamed of my Western
counterparts."
Indeed, the official
Beijing line on the Tibet story involves two
putative conspiracies, one propagated by the
immoral "Dalai clique" pushing for an independent
Tibet and the other supported by Western
governments and media who want to sabotage the
Olympics. The palpable anger that bubbles to the
surface of remarks made by Chinese officials can,
in part, be explained by the fact these
embarrassing protests occurred during the annual
session of the National People's Congress (NPC),
the country's Parliament, in Beijing.
While admitting that factual errors have
been made in their reporting on Tibet, Western
media executives also complain about the news
blackout imposed by the Chinese government on the
story, which they claim has made such errors
almost inevitable. If Chinese leaders want
accurate reporting, they say, then let the
international press in and show them what is
really happening.
Beijing has responded by
organizing a tour of Lhasa for a dozen overseas
news organizations, most of which are located in
Hong Kong and Taiwan. But the reporters are
restricted to visits to burnt-out shops and
damaged schools, temples and infrastructure, and
their interviews will go no further than injured
policemen and civilians and families of those
killed in the violence. But that did not stop
a group of about 30 Buddhist monks from disrupting
the tightly controlled tour of Jokhang Temple on
Thursday by shouting out complaints about their
lack of religious freedom. "Tibet is not free!
Tibet is not free!" screamed one young monk, the
Associated Press reported.
Nowhere is
Beijing's distrust of Western media better
illustrated than in the reporting on those killed
in the riots. Beijing says 22 civilians died in
the violence, but Tibetan exile groups, widely
quoted in the West, claim up to 140 were killed.
State media also report that more than 600
rue-stricken protesters, hoping for leniency, have
turned themselves into police in Lhasa.
As
for Western governments, while condemnations of
China's crackdown have been the norm, no
government has even mentioned boycotting the
Olympics, although France raised the prospect of
boycotting the opening ceremony, to be held August
8. The George W Bush administration has been
remarkably restrained in its response to the
violence, with the president reaffirming his plans
to attend the games, but that has not stopped
other prominent American politicians from speaking
out.
If you are running for president in
the US during a Chinese crackdown on anything -
from democracy advocates to separatists to
Falungong worshippers - the script is the same, no
matter your party: stern condemnation is required.
Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican
nominee, along with the two remaining Democratic
candidates - fellow senators Hillary Rodham
Clinton and Barack Obama - have followed that
script, winning easy applause along the campaign
trail but doing nothing to help America understand
its increasingly important and rapidly changing
relationship with China.
To most
Americans, China represents two things:
totalitarian oppression and loads of cheap, often
tainted and dangerous manufactured goods. After
that, there is a huge void that needs to be
filled, but don't count on that happening in an
election year.
The most strident American
response to the crisis in Tibet came from House
Speaker Pelosi, long a fierce critic of China on
trade and human-rights issues. Last week, Pelosi
was the first major foreign official to meet with
the Dalai Lama at his headquarters-in-exile in
Dharamsala, India.
"If freedom-loving
people throughout the world do not speak out
against China's oppression in China and Tibet,"
she told thousands of cheering Tibetans in
Dharamsala in India, "we have lost all moral
authority to speak on behalf of human rights
anywhere in the world."
Pelosi called for
an international investigation into the violence
in Tibet, but clearly she thought the Chinese
government was responsible for most of it.
"Nothing surprises me about the use of violence on
the part of the Chinese government," she said.
Such remarks, of course, greatly pleased
her host while absolutely infuriating Beijing,
which denounced her through Xinhua as "a defender
of arsonists, looters and killers". The prominent
coverage given Pelosi's comments helps to explain
the conviction of Chinese leaders that the Western
media game is a losing proposition for them,
especially in times of crisis. It is no wonder
they expel foreign reporters from troubled areas,
call news blackouts and then mount their own media
campaign against Western powers. To the West, this
is a gross violation of the basic principles of a
free press. To the Chinese, it is a simple matter
of protecting national interests from attacks that
are rooted in ignorance and prejudice.
And
it's true: not many in the West understand China's
concern that separatists in Tibet could feed the
flames of separatism in other places, such as the
large northwestern autonomous region of Xinjiang,
which borders Tibet.
Xinjiang, despite
years of Han Chinese migration to the region,
still has a majority Muslim population and a
sometimes violent independence movement. Earlier
this month, again according to state media,
authorities foiled a terrorist attack on a China
Southern Airlines flight that took off from the
Xinjiang capital of Urumqi for Beijing. Details of
the alleged attack were maddeningly sketchy,
however, so it is hard to say what really
happened.
Nevertheless, it is clear that
Chinese leaders live in constant fear of those who
would break up a nation that it has taken so much
work (and so many lives) to put back together -
and those fears are not confined to sprawling
autonomous western regions but also include Hong
Kong, which returned to the motherland in 1997
after more than 150 years of British rule. Taiwan
- which Beijing claims as another stolen child and
where China-friendly Ma Ying-jeou won a landslide
victory in the presidential election last weekend
over his more independence-minded rival, Frank
Hsieh Chang-ting - also figures into the Tibet
equation.
How much of this complex story
will figure into the ongoing US presidential
debate? Obama has courageously called for an
honest national dialogue on racial differences.
Who will be brave enough to call for an equally
honest dialogue on US-China relations?
Meanwhile, China's glorious plan for the
Olympic torch is under threat. The torch's
137,000-kilometer journey began on Monday in
Olympia, Greece - accompanied by protests, of
course - and will continue for another 130 days.
In June, it will pass through Tibet and the three
neighboring provinces affected by the violent
protests of the last 17 days.
It could be
a long, hot summer in Beijing. And 30,000 foreign
journalists will be there to record the daily
temperature.
Kent Ewing is a
teacher and writer at Hong Kong International
School. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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