Comments (37)

It's not "internal security." Tibet was never controlled by China until 1959. China is lying about it's alleged historical control of Tibet. They are very different: in traditions, language, dress, cuisine, looks, and livelihoods.

It's not "internal security": Tibet does NOT belong to China. It's one of the leftover problems from 1959 and ever since then.

The truth is Tibet, before 1959, was never controlled by China. That is a fabrication made after the fact.

Independence: The right of the Tibetan people

By *Cao Chang-Ching, a visiting fellow at Columbia University, who argues that a detailed look at the history of Tibetan-Chinese relations presents irrefutable proof of the independent historical development of Tibet.

THE Chinese government on both sides of the Taiwan Straits hold opposing political views on most issues, often resorting to tit for tat policies and verbal attacks. On the Tibet issue, however, the two sides cling to the same viewpoint: both claim Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, emphasizing that Tibet has been a part of China since ancient times.

Over the past several decades, these official viewpoints have been instilled in the Chinese people by means of large scale propaganda campaigns waged by the Beijing and Taiwan governments. As a result of this brainwashing, the majority of the Chinese people have lost the ability to discover the truth. However, through a brief review of Chinese history, we can clearly see that Tibet was never a part of China until it was invaded and occupied by China in the 1950s.

In the Tang Dynasty, China and Tibet signed a peace treaty, clearly stating their borders and positions. During Song Dynasty, China and Tibet had almost no contact. China's claim to Tibet is based primarily on the assertion that Tibet was once ruled by the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). During the Yuan Dynasty, Mongolia occupied most of Asia, including China, Tibet, Vietnam, and Korea. The Mongolians established a capital on Chinese territory to rule over the conquered lands of their empire. Firstly, if such a military occupation qualifies as historical basis for ownership, it should he made by the Mongolians, not the Chinese. Furthermore, if the fact that Tibet was once ruled by China in this fashion forms a legal basis for their claim on Tibet, why have the Chinese never made the same claim on Vietnam, Korea and other parts of Asia which were annexed and ruled over by the Mongols at the same time? Clearly, it is illogical to only claim Tibetan territory.

Since China's Ming Dynasty had minimal relations with Tibet, the Qing Dynasty(1644-1911) is the only other historical ground for the Chinese to dem-onstrate their claim to Tibet. However, unbiased history books do not substan-tiate this claim.

It is true that the Qing Empire had relations with Tibet. Upon the request of the Dalai Lama, the Qing military entered Tibet four times to help settle internal rebellions and to defeat external invasions. However, it is clearly groundless for the Chinese to claim ownership of Tibet because the Qing Army helped to maintain stability in the region. This is as absurd as the United States claiming rule over Kuwait just because the U.S. army helped defeat the Iraqi invad-ers.

Later, an "Imperial Resident in Tibet" was sent by the Qing Emperor as a special envoy to aid Tibet with administrative works. Due to their admiration for the Dalai Lama's spiritual power, the Qing Emperors intended to help strengthen Tibet. However, all regulations and statutes clearly state that the Dalai Lama and the Resident in Tibet had equal positions and seniority, and that important matters should "be solved after the consultation made by and between the Dalai Lama and the Resident." The Dalai Lama and the Qing Emperor had reciprocal seniority during that time period. If Tibet was one of the Empire's provinces, the right of the Emperor's envoy would have been greater than that of the Dalai Lama.

Several historical examples clearly demonstrate the equality of the Dalai Lama and the Qing emperor. In 1632, the Qing Emperor, Shunzhi, invited the Fifth Dalai Lama for a friendly visit to China. Upon the Dalai Lama's arrival, the Em-peror himself went as far as 20 kilometers out of the capital to meet him. The Emperor would never have met a leader of his subordinate territory with such an honourable, grand rite. Historical records show that there had never been an em-peror to do so, not even to meet a king of a foreign country. Furthermore, in the book, A Biography of Dalai Lama, written by Ya Hanzhang, a Chinese expert on Tibet, and published by the official Chinese publishing house, there are prints of two mural paintings depicting Emperor Shunzhi and the Fifth Dalai Lama, and Empress Dowager Ci Xi and the Thirteenth Dalai Lama sitting side by side on the throne. This friendly relationship lasted almost 260 years through the whole period of the Qing Dynasty.

After the deaths of Emperor Guangxu and Empress Dowager Ci Xi, the Qing army took over Lhasa by force and soon occupied all of Tibet. But they were driven out by Tibetans in less than three years. In 1913, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama clearly announced: "Tibet is an independent country."

During the period of the Republic of China (1911-1949), President Chang Kai-shek twice sent his special envoys to Lhasa to persuade the Tibetans to become subjects of the Republic. But the Tibetan leaders never consented. In 1990 a total of 478 correspondences between China and the Tibetan government were published in Beijing, clearly demonstrating that Tibet was an independent country during the time of the Republic of China.

The rest of Tibetan-Chinese history is simple. In 1951 the Chinese Army took over Tibet by forcing a delegation from the Tibetan government to sign the so-called "Seventeen-Article Agreement" The Tibetan government signed this treaty under duress. Later in 1959 the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government denounced the agreement.

If Tibet had always been a part of China, why did the Chinese insist on the signing on this agreement? Why haven't the similar agreement been signed with Xinjiang Uygur Autono-mous Region and the Three Provinces in the Northeast, the then "Manchukuo"? The "Seventeen-Article Agreement" has been used to prove China's rule over Tibet since its signing. Yet this clearly demonstrates that before the Agreement, China did not have a valid claim to Tibet.

Although I was a journalist in China, I did not know the above mentioned historical facts until I came to the United States. Like my fellow Chinese, I had always thought that Tibet was a part of China. All of my knowledge concerning the Tibetan situation has been based on the official Chinese history texts, newspapers, books, and movies. It was only after coming to the USA and reading unbiased history books that I began to understand the truth about Tibet.

The Chinese should pay due heed to the reality of the situation in Tibet today. Since the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the human rights of the Tibetan people have been wantonly trampled upon. Furthermore, the Tibetan people are systematically discriminated against and persecuted by the Chinese colonialists.

*Cao Chang-Ching is a visiting fellow at Columbia University and a reporter for the biggest Chinese language news-paper in North America. In the 1980's he was a reporter for Shenzhen Eco-nomic Times, and one day he dared suggest that Deng Xiaoping was too old to hang on to power and that he should retire. Instead, Cao says, he was retired.

"political scientists, economists and grand strategists, many of them schooled at U.S. universities -- are providing China's engineers with the framework for a novel political system"

Obviously democracy is not a major subject in U.S. universities. Anyway for this system with Chinese characteristics, as the saying goes in America, "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!"

China's "The Great Leap Forward", 1958-60 was a man-made disaster.

In 1959 and 1960, the gross value of agricultural output fell by 14 percent and 13 percent, respectively, and in 1961 it dropped a further 2 percent to reach the lowest point since 1952. Widespread famine occurred, especially in rural areas, according to 1982 census figures, and the death rate climbed from 1.2 percent in 1958 to 1.5 percent in 1959, 2.5 percent in 1960, and then dropped back to 1.4 percent in 1961. From 1958 to 1961, over 14 million people apparently died of starvation.

http://countrystudies.us/china/88.htm

While letting you bashing Mao, let me also remind you it was under Mao's rule that China made so much history of its own, e.g., built the first bridge across the Yangtze, built the first road to Lhasa, dig the first oil well, built an independent industry that years of embargo couldn't shake, set off the first atomic bomb, shoot the first satellite, established a health care system that at a fraction of US cost, achieved a comparable lifespan among a much larger population. And it was also Mao who envisioned the three gorges dam as well as channeling the south water to northern China.

Meanwhile, what have your holiness achieved during these years? Set off a few more curses that triggered the quake? Let me know.

And what a change from 1976! Now China is officially governed by these geeks, and it's officially the world's workshop and economic powerhouse.

As for "development is the only way", it may not be the only sufficient way but definitely the only necessary way. The biggest triumph of this new thinking, I believe, is Taiwan. Taiwan problem may not be solved only by growth, but without the growth, it can never be solved.

China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-76

Virtually all engineers, managers, scientists, technicians, and other professional personnel were "criticized," demoted, "sent down" to the countryside to "participate in labor," or even jailed, all of which resulted in their skills and knowledge being lost to the enterprise. The effect was a 14-percent decline in industrial production in 1967.

Probably the most serious and long-lasting effect on the economy was the dire shortage of highly educated teachers caused by the closing of the universities. China's ability to develop new technology and absorb imported technology would be limited for years by the hiatus in higher education.

http://countrystudies.us/china/90.htm

Tibet religious circles donate to quake-battered province

http://www.cctv.com/english/20080610/102644.shtml

To Mr. Pomfret and those who always claim China's Tibet policy is a failure, would you also claim India's affirmative action a failure, given its recent tribal violence that killed more people than in Tibet?

When building a railroad is labeled as culture genocide, it does not take a genius to realize what a true racist thinks. His deepest fear is that once exposed to the outside world, his former serfs will no longer want to be his slaves even spiritually. They'll want to be better educated, to move to the inlands, marry to Han people, to learn the skills in order to compete on the job market as every Chinese does instead of burying their heads under the sands of affirmative action. He really fears that the Tibetans would want to aspire a better life, to become scientists, engineers, doctors, managers, instead of chanting all their lives.

The true racist thinks Tibetans only deserves to be slaves and beggars, who not only beg on the Lhasa streets, but also beg on every street corners in the world's big cities. Those beggars cry, plead, telling sad stories, just to get the pennies out of the pockets of a few do-gooders or feel-gooders. Whatever. God knows why I'm wasting my time on them.

Seems the posters who criticise Tibetan culture are non-Tibetan Chinese with racist attitudes.

What Tibetan culture? 10% of the population wrapping themselves up in robes, producing nothing but chanting all day long and govern the land by voodoo and oracle? Monks and nobles living off others' backbreaking work by getting hold of the lands and earning 30% interest rate on loans, which passed on from parents to children and never end?

Give me a break! You call that culture, and some of your beloved western academia even tried to brand that as higher education! But for any modern mind that's no more and no less than parasites (in small scale like the Roman Catholic Church) and cancer (in old Tibet's scale) of the society. While you dream on getting back your old status that all the serfs must bow when you pass by, it's not going to happen. Like it or not, Tibet must and will move pass this medieval mind-controlling cult. The railroad is for sure just a start.

For more information on China got religious, check New York Times op-ed by SLAVOJ ZIZEK at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/opinion/11zizek.html

The 31-year-old single mother, a singer, a member of the local government council and a well-known figure around town, had grown up tending yak in the mountains and hadn't forgotten her nomadic roots. At the nightclub, she and her friends would put on swirling robes and coral beads as fat as grapes and belt out ballads aching with nostalgia for the old Tibetan ways.

On March 30, Chinese authorities arrested Drolmakyi as she was hanging laundry from the balcony of her apartment. She didn't even get to say goodbye to her three children, ages 9 to 13, who were playing outside. They came back and found their mother gone.

At least six other Tibetan cultural figures were arrested in recent months under similar circumstances with no warning or formal charges. Friends and family say they eventually secured their releases by paying large fees and promising to keep quiet.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-singer8-2008jun08,0,3662148.story

--In the bigger picture, the railroad is certainly benefiting Tibetans much more than Han. And that's how the geeks do the math.--

Sure. chinese rail using to flood Tibet with chinese ware and chinese colonists. wich btw. will kill all local tibetan handworkers and smal industries. what a great thing for Tibet and tibetan culture... long time math makes tibetan future looking worse then before. because this rail-line has not many tibetan workers.

about your "thinking".. well, my dear look on youself. you cant even recognise tibetans as people of PRC. you see them like enemies of People Republic of China. But my dear! Tibet is tibetan land, not chinese. if you cant acsept tibetans being a part of People's Republich of China and its population then you should stop to claim on their land and stop to atack their wish to be independent.

1. I'm surprised that you noticed this so late. Geeks do all the right things, but not necessarily the most popular ones. When the geeks are out and the lawyers, journalists, and especially the professional politicians dominates the scene, that would be the end of the good time for China, at least I think.

2. All these talks about the Tibet railroad benefits Han Chinese more than Tibetans have not done the calculation right. It's not about last year or this year, or 3 to 5 years later. It's about 10, 20, 100 years or even longer period of time. It's not about the several hundreds jobs selling souvenirs along the Lhasa streets. It's about the changes the railroad brings to Tibet. In the bigger picture, the railroad is certainly benefiting Tibetans much more than Han. And that's how the geeks do the math.

+"By 2002, all of the Standing Committee's nine members were engineers, including President Hu Jintao, a hydrologist, and Premier Wen Jiabao, a geologist"+

Wen's geologist skills came in handy for earthquake relief.

We know "Hu" to call for when the damaged dams burst.

Tibetan in Exile--we need money!:

Yes, our Holiness gets all the attention and money (though not from Sharon Stone) from your governments. But what about us who actually do the shouting, grabbing running around in costumes and waving? Sure we are born in the west and never been to China. But that is not the point. The point is that we need the Tibet issue to survive.

The recent events really helped us a lot with more financial support. But is this enough? Certainly not! We have about 30000 Tibetans living in the US. But we have hundreds of local organizations. They are getting very little money. For example, our "Free Tibet" local chapter in Utah only has a budget of just over 400000$. Why so stingy? I think the British is a little more generous. The Germans and French are talking tough but the money doesn't show. Those are peanuts. We get our lion's share from the US.

So please help us. We are really afraid that you will forget us after the Olympics are over. Please!

**You will see different flowers in each side but when reaching the peak, all be the same.**

another stupid chinese fying word..

IF you are reaching the peak. even on the peak nothing is a same, every side is different.

It is easy to convince chinese but hard to change.
From May4th- 90 yrs before to June6th- 19 yrs before, how many tried had been taken. from the "democracy" country ruled by Nationalist partt before 1949 and current "authoritarian" party, the things did not change.
I agree with this article that China is looking another way:++it is creating its own unique system, with an authoritarian government and a mixed economy.++
Maybe, the mountain has two sides. You will see different flowers in each side but when reaching the peak, all be the same.

++It's quite hard to convince China that democracy is better, when Russia's new democracy is not faring very well.++

with all respect sir, but you cant compare those 2 countries. Aside a fact thet most russians are lucky with their actual democracy.

It's quite hard to convince China that democracy is better, when Russia's new democracy is not faring very well.

Europe is not a country.and some of the country is rich,some is poor.

In this book review, it states: How to ride herd over an increasingly complex society? Grow! How to deal with historically downtrodden minorities, such as the Tibetans? Grow faster! As Deng said: "Development is the only way."
This reminds me of what GW Bush's answers to every problems in US: cut tax.

“In developing Tibet, he writes, China's engineers have helped the Chinese, not the Tibetans. Tibetans were shut out even from the low-paying, back-breaking jobs building the railroad. As for mining and other big-ticket projects that are supposed to enrich Tibet, they are uniformly managed and staffed by Han Chinese.”

Can we have a more detailed description of the facts instead of this assertion?

One of the paragraphs in the above book "Social Engineering" shed light on why Tibet's riots arised:

In the early 1980s, China's leaders experimented with a softer policy toward Tibet, but by the time engineers had taken control in the late 1980s, the policy had toughened. The only way to deal with Tibet, China's engineer-leaders believed, was to develop the economy and encourage Han Chinese to migrate into the region, flooding Tibet's population of 2.6 million with a sea of Chinese. As the GDP rose, they assumed, separatist activity would fade.

Following several Tibetan families, Lustgarten shows that equation to be false. In developing Tibet, he writes, China's engineers have helped the Chinese, not the Tibetans. Tibetans were shut out even from the low-paying, back-breaking jobs building the railroad. As for mining and other big-ticket projects that are supposed to enrich Tibet, they are uniformly managed and staffed by Han Chinese. After reading Lustgarten's book, it's pretty clear why another wave of Tibetan protests against China's rule -- bigger and even more violent than the protests of 1989 -- swept through the region this March.

Another author arrived at the same conclusion:
http://business.smh.com.au/rivers-of-money-not-flowing-to-tibetans-20080525-2i1r.html

Wow, after rested for 2 weeks, Pomfret is ready for another round of attack after falling into the moral bottom during China's earthquake.

"Is there any person in the world who believes that he/she can have a more intelligent conversation with Bush than with Bill Gates?"

Honestly, intelligence is'nt the only factor.
Bill Gates's big fat wallet plays a big part as well.

>To Hua Shan:
>
>Is that why Hu Jintao on his 2006 US visit, went to >see Bill Gates first, before meeting Bush?

Is there any person in the world who believes that he/she can have a more intelligent conversation with Bush than with Bill Gates?

Is that why Hu Jintao on his 2006 US visit, went to see Bill Gates first, before meeting Bush?

Here are the lists of the leaders of China and the U.S. in the last two decades:

China: Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zeming, Hu Jintao
U.S.: G. Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush

Intellectually speaking, one can easily argue that China has won 2-0-1 (Deng bests Bush I, Jiang evens Clinton, Hu bests Bush II). Maybe Leonard is up to something: Democracies such as the U.S. do not necessarily elect the most capable leaders. They tend to elect the best showmen or maybe the biggest braggers. Deng, Jiang, and Hu would never have a chance in a Western style democracy.

When was the last time the U.S. electing a scientist or engineer? In my humble opinion,
Bill Gates would make a much better President than either McCain or Obama.

It seems like China is consciously or subconsciously using America as a model to follow.

It's aims:
Top the Olympic gold medal tally
Put a man on the moon
Economic rise
Military rise
Cultural rise (ok, not yet)

I wonder if Mr. Pomfret will write something about '89 tomorrow.

China is beginning to sound more and more like Germany pre-WWI. Authoritarian and comfortable with it, technologically and industrially competent, but socially inept, instinctively jingoistic, with chips on its shoulder the size of antarctica.

Which is particularly disconcerting since America is starting to look like the British Empire pre-WWI. Iraq is America's Boer War -- unlosable but unwinnable, exposing the great power's inherent vulnerability.

Since there isn't any rising democratic power capable of stepping up and playing the role of the US pre-WWI (India is one candidate, but as far as power projection goes it's a joke, a kind of modern Argos; Europe, Lustgarten notwithstanding, seems unlikely) this means the 21st century could turn into a replay of 'what would happen if the germans won the war', with hu jintao in the role of hitler.

In the '80s and '90s, the legions of graduate students sent to Western universities mostly stayed. China was afflicted by the same "brain drain" that had long affected India, Africa, and other former colonies, where the best and brightest stayed in the former colonizing powers, where they could lead a comfortable Western life.

Now, the brain drain has slowed considerably. It's not stopped, but it's no longer a problem given the quantities involved. You'll now find plenty of Chinese armed with US PhDs returning to China, both to multinational firms, and to Chinese universities and academies. These aren't sinecures, either -- they're still publishing in American scientific journals. They're not even Podunk State PhDs -- even people with degrees from Harvard or Stanford are returning to China. To some extent, this has to do with the job situation for PhDs in the US (not good). But it's a two-faced coin: they wouldn't be going to China if there weren't good positions available there as well.

Yup, the generally accepted numbers for returnees is between 13 and 30 percent. David Zweig of Hong Kong University is the best source on the returnee issue.

Benjamin: most successful Chinese students went back to China. Suckers (I am one of them) stayed in the United States, worrying about $4.2/gallon gas price and housing slump.

Right... but the vast majority of these Chinese "patriots" stay overseas

Chinese students are sent to universities around the world so that they can return to contribute to China's rise.