Beijing Wide Open

Comment from Lobsang.
Time: August 20, 2008, 3:48 am

Dear Readers :

First of all I want to thank to Lhadon, her tirellesslly work for her nation. I read your blog almost every another hour which really encourage and insire me but same time sadness and emotions come to my feeling. Because I lost my brothers and sisters. I feel extremelly bad for Chinese killing their brothers and sisters.
This message is to China.(Hu) I highlly appreciate your power. basically it took all this years to become China today, so many people sacreficed and lost their lives. From now on we humanbeings understand each other and make everyone’s life peacefull and stable. we are so much better than animals, we are two footed beings. we have special sense and we have use it in special way.

Lobsang.
Tibet.

Comment from The People
Time: August 20, 2008, 4:48 am

The brave tribes always lose. There is but one China.

Comment from tenzin
Time: August 20, 2008, 11:16 am

I want to apologize for abandoning the blog for a while. I was in school and studied the Bible, among several other books. Let’s just say that the Bible is one great piece of literature, but it is really a history book of the Jews, spanning from ancient times to today.
That aside, I want to say that Lhadon, protests are not useless. I don’t know who these people are that are saying this but protests during the torch-rally, and now in Beijing are completely relevant and sensible. And the launch of SFT TV is a great idea. What a great central node to disperse ideas to Tibetans everywhere. Diasporic Tibetans cannot do anything about situations in Tibet, and what I mean by that is that accusations made by people who say that we don’t know anything about that is happening in Tibet is not important. I hope people see that diasporic Tibetans are fighting for their right to their own country. The issue is quite simple, and whether we know about conditions in Tibet or not is beside the point. Just because we are Tibetans, we have the right to do what we want concerning Tibet, and no one has the right of accusing us for doing that. We can be critical of Tibet; we can hate Tibet; we can love Tibet; and we can fight for Tibet. Being Tibetans, we are free to do what we want regarding Tibet.

Since I don’t consider myself American although I have a passport, my views may not be the most patriotic towards America. I hope that people can see the world today in the context of the past. China today is not the most evil country that ever existed it the world. And Tibetans are not subjected to conditions that detainees at Guantanamo face. It bears repeating once more that Tibetans have the right to their own country, and that is the bottom line for all the things that SFT is doing, and what all these different Tibetans are doing. There is no need to drag the history books about anymore, because I am convinced (so are everyone else) that Tibet deserves to be an independent country, because it was an independent nation before, despite the fact that China claims otherwise. And the real enemy is the CCP, and not the Chinese. The Chinese are caught-up in the Olympic moment, and any critique of China is viewed by them as a critique of the Chinese civilization, and the 1.3 billion Chinese people.

I hope that you are all able to see that the spectacle of the Olympics, and of the modern China came as a shock to Americans. Americans are so convinced of their superiority among all the nations and peoples in the world that they never bothered to look at China closely. Americans really think that China is one giant sweatshop churning-out cheap goods for American consumption. And all of a sudden the spectacle of modern China was like opening the floodgates, and the effect was one that of disbelief for Americans, and of the sudden notion that American superiority is under attack was palpable. Right now, with the American economy is in a great mess, Americans are learning to think of the world in a new way, and that is obvious from what you see in television interviews of people in the know, and way they are acting in the media. American companies are being gobbled-up by foreign nations, and sovereign wealth-funds (rich oil-rich Arab nations). And companies are collapsing such as Bear Sterns, and others need the care of the federal government. And worst of all, the housing crisis is not yet over. And who is responsible for all this mess?

This could have easily happened anywhere in the world, but it really came down to greed and ignorance. Greed on the part of home-investors (people who invested in multiple homes to make a quick profit), and ignorance of these same people who thought that real estate values were going to keep on climbing. But this is America today, and Americans don’t like what America has become. Someone on TV said that America has become from a nation that manufactures and exports into a nation that consumes and import. In other words, there is a trade deficit, and I think it is like a Billion dollars a day or something. So the times right now are super-interesting, and we have to wait and see what will happen to America, China, and the rest of the World. What we need to know is that America is pissed at the way things are going, and it will try to change things drastically and dramatically. The coming years will be spectacular to watch.

Comment from Rich
Time: August 20, 2008, 7:08 pm

Tenzin, as an American I agree with lots of your views about America, but I think it’s a mistake to think that China has significantly advanced as a modern nation. Sure that’s the image they want to show the world, but the reality is much different. China is not one giant sweatshop, but it IS a huge empire of impoverished towns and countryside, encompassing around a billion people, churning out labor, food, metal, coal, and so on for the sake of supporting a handful of “modern” cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

When I visited Tibet last summer, I spent a small amount of time in China too, and the poverty and communist backwardness really struck me. For a quick example of the latter: at one hotel I stayed at in Chengdu, after registering at one desk in the lobby, I was sent across the lobby to another desk to have a second worker watch me sign a piece of paper. Just watch. They didn’t even take it but instead directed me to take it to another worker on the floor my room would be on. This person then opened the door to my room for me, but did not give me a key; instead I would have to ask to have the door opened for me each time I went in and out. Each floor had such a person (supposedly) working, and surely enough, they were never around to be found when I needed to get in. This ridiculous level of inefficiency and inconvenience is not the sign of a modern country.

Overall, my impression of China was that, aside from the major cities they like to showcase, it’s much more poor and destitute than Tibet. To me this seems a major source of Chinese misunderstanding of Tibetans’ grievances. Being a culture that’s obsessed with money and material wealth, Chinese look at how much “better off” many Tibetans are than extremely-rural Chinese, in a purely economic sense, and totally fail to grasp the concept that, regardless of economic status, nobody wants to be subjugated to another people.

In some cases the view that Tibetans are better off economically is a fallacy based on the government money poured into Tibet, which of course mostly goes back into the hands of Chinese companies. But in many cases, it’s the result either of the hard work of Tibetans, both inside and outside Tibet, the empower themselves in the face of colonization and marginalization, or of “natural resouces” like yartsa and pimo, off of which Tibetans fortunate enough to live in the right areas can make more money than my American salary.

When I hear people say Tibetans need to wait for China to open up and democratize, and that then they will have the freedoms they desire, it makes me really angry. The truth of the matter is that China was and is an extremely backwards country with all sorts of corruption and administrative problems, which lead to periods of massive poverty and famine. Tibet was doing quite well overall prior to the occupation, and could be doing quite well today if not for the Chinese. China’s backwardsness is China’s problem to deal with; no one has the right to say that Tibetans must suffer through China’s “growing pains” until China works out its own problems. And honestly, I think having to face up to the fact that they lost their empire and their control over Tibet because of their own greed, backwardness, and corruption would be a great wake-up call to China and would lead to the sorts of reforms that would really help the people of China.

Someone who’s guilty of horrible crimes does not become a good person by hiding those crimes forever and maintaining one’s position in society. One must first stop committing the crime, admit to the crime, accept the consequences, and then finally have a chance at being accepted again. And likewise with nations.