August 13, 2008
An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama
August 7, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
When the Olympics open on Friday, the Dalai Lama won’t be there. Each
side put out feelers about his attendance and was tantalized by the
idea, but in the end the mutual distrust was too great to overcome.
Tibet is one of the major shadows over the Olympics and over China’s
rise as a great power, sullying its international image and triggering
unrest that is likely to worsen in coming years. Yet that doesn’t have
to be.
In June, I sat down for a private meeting with the Dalai Lama, and we
talked at length about what kind of a deal he and China might be
willing to accept. He was far more flexible and pragmatic about a
resolution of the Tibet question than public statements had led me to
believe. But he also wonders if his engagement policy with China is
getting anywhere: If the stalemate continues, he may just give up on
Beijing.
I have continued the discussion with Tibetan officials since then
(just as I have had similar discussions with Chinese officials), and
China’s perception of the Dalai Lama as sticking rigidly to old
positions is mistaken. The Dalai Lama recognizes that time is running
out, and he is signaling a willingness to deal — comparable to the way
President Richard Nixon sent signals to Beijing that he was ready to
rethink the China-U.S. relationship before his visit to China in 1972.
One signal is this: For the first time, the Dalai Lama is willing to
state that he can accept the socialist system in Tibet under Communist
Party rule. This is something that Beijing has always demanded, and,
after long discussion, the Dalai Lama has agreed to do so.
“The main thing is to preserve our culture, to preserve the character
of Tibet,” the Dalai Lama told me. “That is what is most important,
not politics.”
That is a significant concession, and China must now reciprocate. The
present track of talks between the Communist Party’s United Front Work
Department and the Dalai Lama’s representatives will never get
anywhere. The only hope is for Beijing to pluck Tibetan affairs from
the United Front officials and hold direct talks between the Dalai
Lama and either President Hu Jintao or Prime Minister Wen Jiabao,
negotiating until a deal is reached.
In one sign that Chinese leaders are also thinking creatively about
new approaches, Beijing secretly raised the idea of the Dalai Lama
visiting China and participating in a memorial service for those who
died in May’s Sichuan earthquake. That was bold; the Dalai Lama has
not entered China since 1959. Both sides should now aim for a visit to
mark the earthquake’s six-month anniversary in November, followed by
serious negotiations.
It’s possible to devise an agreement that leaves both China and the
Tibetans much better off — if they hurry. Once the Dalai Lama dies —
he is 73 — then a deal could be impossible for another generation
because no one would be able to unify the Tibetan people behind a new
plan. By then much of Tibet is likely to have been drowned in a sea of
Chinese migration, and some frustrated young Tibetans may have turned
to terrorism. In my interviews in Tibetan areas of China this year,
young people told me repeatedly of their frustration that the Dalai
Lama is too conciliatory and that a violent liberation movement would
be necessary after his death.
Here is one plausible outline of what a settlement might look like,
although both sides would surely flinch at some terms:
The Dalai Lama would dial back to some degree on demands for political
autonomy for Tibet, while the Chinese government would offer more
cultural and religious freedoms. There would be no “one country, two
systems” approach as there is for Hong Kong, and the existing
Communist Party control mechanisms would remain in place.
As the Dalai Lama has said, he would play no political role after a
settlement, but he would be free to enter and leave China with his
aides and to communicate freely. He could travel within Tibetan areas,
in coordination with the Public Security Ministry, to ensure that
there are no upheavals. China would also release all Tibetans
imprisoned for political offenses — though not for crimes of violence
— upon the signing of a deal.
Much more sensitive is the Dalai Lama’s call for all Tibetan areas to
be placed under one administration. That is usually interpreted to
mean a huge expansion of the political boundaries of the Tibet
Autonomous Region to encompass about one-fourth of China, taking in
parts of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. Chinese leaders
were open to redrawing the boundaries in the past, but today China is
as determined not to make such changes as Tibetans are to get them.
One way to bridge that gulf would be to create a Regional Authority
for Tibetan Affairs that would administer key aspects of life in all
Tibetan areas, particularly education, culture and religion. Already,
for example, Tibetan-language school textbooks are harmonized in
different provinces, and this regional authority would likewise
oversee practical aspects of life in areas with Tibetan populations,
all under Chinese law. This would allow Tibetan areas to be placed
under a single administration without changing political boundaries.
On the Chinese side, the crucial concession would be to restrict
migration into all Tibetan areas, inside and outside the “autonomous
region,” through China’s existing system of residence permits. The
Chinese authorities would stop issuing resident permits, known as
hukou, to non-Tibetans for any Tibetan area, and would grant temporary
residence permits, or zhanzhuzheng, only when no Tibetan is available
to take a job. This would halt the flood of Han Chinese into Tibetan
areas.
The Chinese government would also ease restrictions on monasteries and
on the intake of monks, and curb the mandatory “patriotic education”
campaigns that only leave Tibetans feeling less patriotic. Young boys
would be allowed to enter monasteries, but the monasteries would then
be obliged to teach the boys the Chinese state curriculum, including
Chinese language, in addition to religious education.
The Tibetan language would also be used in government offices in all
Tibetan areas, alongside Chinese, and there would be a new push (as
there was in the 1980s) to increase the proportion of ethnic Tibetans
holding government and party positions. The upshot would be a Tibet
that remains politically under the control of the Communist Party. It
would not be a democracy or a multiparty system, but it would be able
to preserve its character indefinitely as a distinctly Tibetan and
Buddhist region, both inside and outside the formal Tibet Autonomous
Region. And Tibet can be free only if it is first preserved.
For the Chinese, such an agreement would resolve the Tibet question
and end an international embarrassment, as well as prevent the rise of
protests and terrorism for decades to come.
My conversations with both sides make me think that this is
achievable. The Dalai Lama recognizes that his past efforts haven’t
worked in the face of increasingly hard-line Chinese policies, so he
is willing to try new approaches.
As for China, it has raised Tibetan standards of living impressively
over the last 20 years, but its repression has lost Tibetan hearts and
minds. Vicious Chinese denunciations of the Dalai Lama, and
particularly the contempt that some local Chinese officials display
toward Tibetan culture, exacerbate the resentment. As a start, China
should remove the hot-headed Communist Party secretary for Tibet,
Zhang Qingli, who brightens any room by leaving it.
The Dalai Lama knows that other peacemakers have broken the ice with
bold initiatives to prove their seriousness; we discussed Sadat’s
visit to Israel as one such move. So the Dalai Lama is reaching out.
That is one reason he agreed that I could report his acceptance of
Communist Party rule.
“On account of Buddhism’s emphasis on rational thinking, the Tibetans
are capable of embracing reality by accepting some of the de facto
situation on the ground,” added Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama’s envoy to
talks with China.
The senior Chinese leadership should respond by expressing serious
interest in talks at the presidential or prime ministerial level. In
ancient days, the Olympics were a time to suspend conflict. In that
spirit, the two sides should get to work to prepare for a visit by the
Dalai Lama in November, followed by top-level negotiations aimed at a
historic resolution of the Tibet question.
The ball is in the Chinese court.
Join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Posted by google at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)
July 31, 2008
TALKING WITH THE DALAI LAMA
by Lingxi Kong*
The Far Eastern Economic ReviewJuly 30, 2008 Ten students are gathered round a table in a seminar room at Columbia Universitydiscussing whether greeting scarves should be presented with one hand or two. Six
of the students in the group, including me, are Chinese. We are getting a crash course in basic Tibetan etiquette from four Tibetan students because the next dayall of us are going to meet privately with the Dalai Lama at a hotel in New York.
I had been at Columbia for three years, studying Latin and Greek as an undergraduate,when I became interested in Tibet. After the riots in Tibet this spring, I wantedto know more about the thinking of Tibetans, and I was able to meet the Dalai Lama
shortly afterward, a meeting that I found impressive and informative. So togetherwith a Singaporean Chinese student at Columbia, Kiat Sing Teo, I asked the DalaiLama's office if we could bring a larger group to meet him. This time we wanted
to include Tibetan students as well as Chinese, so the two sides would get to knoweach other as well as the person who some officials in my country have describedas "the wolf in monk's clothing."
The Dalai Lama was passing through New York this month on his way to Aspen, but as soon as we asked, he changed his schedule so that he could meet us in the hourbefore leaving the city for the airport. We had only a few hours to form a group
of Chinese and Tibetans who would want to join us. Although the world's press has been full of stories about "angry youth"in China railing at the Western media, and the Chinese press has been full of talk
about Tibetan "terrorists," by the end of the day many Chinese and Tibetanshad asked to come with us to the meeting. Some couldn't get to New York in timefor the meeting, but others went to considerable lengths. One Chinese undergraduate
booked a flight from Chicago just to be with us; he returned the same day. A youngTibetan schoolboy, barely 16 years old, postponed a flight out of New York so hecould accompany us and help discuss the issues with us afterward.
All the students in our group were diligent and well-informed. The Tibetan studentswere open-minded, receptive, keen to know us and to exchange ideas and experiences.One left Tibet eight years ago and has been studying mathematics in the U.S.; two
are still at high school in New York, but eager to learn more about their own country.Among the Chinese, Henry Hu is a doctoral student in political science who grew up in a well-to-do family in Anhui Province; Thomas Huang, who finished his high
school as the top one student in Guangdong Province, is a fourth year undergraduatestudying political science and physics at Grinnell College in Iowa. Shanshan Zheng,after her high school in Wuhan, came to New York with her immigrant parents, and
is in her fourth year studying British literature at Hunter College. Vivian Liu,a psychology major, is the daughter of a leading official in China who deals withTibet policies -- she has met Tibetan officials in the Chinese Communist Party many
times at her home, but this was the first time she met an exile official, let alonethe foremost Tibetan leader. Vivian told me even among her friends in China, peoplehave very limited ideas about the Tibetan issue. She wants to help them know what's
really going on. She called it "closing the gap of misunderstanding." Our meeting with the Dalai Lama lasted over an hour. We spoke mostly in English,to save time, though his Tibetan-Chinese translator, Kunga Tashi, was there to help
us if we wanted to speak in Chinese. We asked him questions, some tough, some generous,and we made suggestions. His answers and comments ranged widely. He told us thathe sees new hope behind the often disappointing news in the press of failing talks
or angry public sentiment. He reaffirmed his life-long commitment to democracy anduniversal values. It is "our common goal," he said, to have "an opensociety that enjoys rule of law and freedom of speech." He thinks that Confucian
ideas, starting with family values, are beneficial to our huge country of 1.3 billionpeople. But most striking was his unfailing trust toward the Chinese people and his viewthat the future of Tibet does not lie in the hands of the current Chinese leaders
nor in his own, but in the hands of the next generation of Chinese and Tibetan studentswho, born after 1980, will assume important roles in Chinese society – people notunlike those in our group. He even humorously suggested that "one of you may
become Chinese prime minister, if possible [smiling at Vivian], one lady prime minister." In the short run, China's government may claim triumph over this great, old sage: They might force him to live out the rest of his life in exile, or they might
leave him with no option but to return to China as a private citizen, without evenpermission to live in Lhasa. He may well comply, perhaps to avoid large-scale bloodshed.But his life-long commitment to democracy and openness is sure to remain a creative
force in the national life and thinking of our generation: It is planting seeds of hope and vision among the next generation of Chinese and Tibetan youths. In thefuture, though nationalism will still persist, I see in our small group and our
brief meeting signs that young leading intellectuals and activists from this generationare emerging in China who will grow up with an active engagement in public life and with a lasting respect for reason, tolerance and cultural diversity.
*Lingxi Kong is a Chinese inventor and classics graduate of Columbia University;he is currently doing research on ancient literary criticism.
Posted by google at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2008
Tibetan writer, a rare outspoken voice against Beijing's policies, sues Chinese government
AP[Wednesday, July 23, 2008 15:58]
By AUDRA ANG,
Associated Press Writer
BEIJING, July 23 - The poet Woeser has long been a rarity _ a Tibetan living in China who doesn't flinch from publicly criticizing the Chinese government. Now the activist is taking another unusual step.
After being repeatedly denied a passport for three years, the Beijing resident has sued the government demanding to be given the document she needs to travel outside the country, hoping the fight will draw more attention to China's tight grip on Tibet and its people.
Woeser's willingness to openly confront authorities makes her stand out. Most Tibetans are reluctant to do that, even more so than environmental and human rights activists. If they complain at all, they often do so in hushed tones and under the cloak of anonymity.
Their reticence speaks volumes about the harshness of Beijing's repression in their Himalayan homeland _ which communist troops took control of in the 1950s _ and its policies aimed at diluting Tibetans' culture and identity.
Woeser, who like some Tibetans uses only one name, says China's clampdown in Tibet has worsened since violent protests against Chinese rule in March that Beijing says killed 22 people, but foreign activists claim took many times that number.
The lawsuit is another way to draw attention to Tibet's treatment, she said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"I'm not expecting to win. But if you don't take action, there's no chance to let the outside world know the truth," Woeser said. "It's an opportunity to talk about the unfair treatment of Tibetans over the years."
The 42-year-old woman, who stands barely 5 feet tall, has sought to be a channel for her people's voices.
In 2005, she started blogging on issues rarely discussed in Tibet: AIDS, prostitution, environmental damage and a new railroad that critics say is flooding that region with Chinese migrants.
"She went into unknown territory. I think no Tibetan had ever spoken out so openly in print or in the media," said Robbie Barnett, an expert on modern Tibet at Columbia University in New York.
"When she first started to write about these things, I think everyone assumed that her position would be impossible to sustain. But she has never faltered. ... The risks she took were off the chart," he said, calling Woeser "a poet who forgot to be afraid."
Her essays and poems are filled with colorful and sometimes brutal detail about the Tibetan way of life. They provide a glimpse into a deeply religious culture that has been shut off to much of the world.
Her stance is not without cost: Her books are banned in China, and security agents watch her apartment. At one point, she was confined to house arrest. Authorities shut down three of her blogs.
The fourth was one of the few sources of news coming out of the sealed-off region during the March crackdown. Then hackers posted threats against her on the blog and rendered it unusable. She has since started a fifth blog that is still running _ for now.
That Woeser has become a symbol of dissent is an unlikely turn. Her parents were loyal communists, and her half-Chinese, half-Tibetan father was a deputy commander in Tibet for the People's Liberation Army.
Born in 1966 _ the start of Mao Zedong's radical and devastating Cultural Revolution _ Woeser spent her childhood in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.
"I was devoted to Chairman Mao," she recalled.
She began questioning that view when she left Lhasa to go to high school and university in Chengdu, the capital of neighboring Sichuan province.
For the first time, she was a minority and often felt discrimination. She read banned translations of the Dalai Lama's autobiography and John Avedon's "In Exile from the Land of Snows," which chronicles the lives of Tibetan exiles and Chinese persecution of Tibet's Buddhists.
"There were things in there that were the opposite of what we had been taught," Woeser said.
After school, she became an editor of a literary journal in Lhasa, where she met monks who described the protests and subsequent crackdown in Tibet in 1989 while she was away. Those conversations further radicalized her views.
In 2004, the government literary association expelled her for "political errors" after she published a collection of essays which mentioned that the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader vilified by China's leadership, is revered by Tibetans.
The stigma and loss of her job drove her to Beijing, where she married Wang Lixiong, a Chinese democracy activist and author.
It was in Wang's hometown of Changchun that Woeser applied for a passport in 2005 after police officials in Lhasa told her she would never get one in her homeland.
When Woeser sent friends to make inquiries, police told them she posed a danger to state security, the reason often given for keeping dissidents in check.
Woeser dismisses the label.
"I'm an author who writes from home all the time. If I really am posing a threat to society, doesn't it make the great country of China seem very weak?" she said with a laugh.
For Tibetans, it is nearly impossible to get a passport, and many risk their lives trying to flee across Himalayan mountain passes into Nepal and India.
"It's hard to say whether she will win or not," said her lawyer, Mo Shaoping, who has made his name defending China's dissidents. "Both Woeser and her husband are sensitive figures ... but no matter who they are, they should enjoy their basic rights as citizens."
Earlier this year, Woeser was unable to accept a Freedom of Expression prize from the Norwegian Authors' Union in person because she does not have a passport. Her husband accepted the award in Oslo on her behalf.
"I still have hope in China, which is such a strong nation," Woeser said. "I hope it will be strong enough to give me a little space."
Posted by google at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2008
A website by my friend
Posted by google at 02:05 PM | Comments (0)
July 14, 2008
No progress in dialogue as crisis in Tibet deepens
International Campaign for Tibet
July 5th, 2008
World leaders gathering for the annual meeting of the Group of Eight industrial nations on the Japanese island of Hokkaido on Monday must raise Tibet with Chinese President Hu Jintao, given the disappointing results of the seventh round of dialogue with the Dalai Lama's envoys in Beijing last week and the ongoing crackdown in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama's Special Envoy, Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, said today that the latest round of talks with China were disappointing and difficult, and had failed to lead to any breakthrough. This round of talks were particularly crucial due to the deteriorating situation in Tibet � since protests swept across the plateau from March 10, the Chinese government has imposed a wide-ranging crackdown, leading to thousands of disappearances and detentions, and has virtually sealed off the region to outsiders.
ICT's Vice President of Advocacy, Mary Beth Markey, said: "This round of talks clearly has not met the expectations of the international community, which has repeatedly called upon Beijing for results-based dialogue with the Dalai Lama's representatives. These leaders are now compelled to press Chinese President Hu to wrest the dialogue from the grip of hardliners who are holding onto a failed policy in Tibet and blocking an achievable solution."
The Dalai Lama's Special Envoy Lodi Gyari said that during the meetings in Beijing with United Front Work Department Director Du Qinglin and colleagues he countered China's accusations that the Dalai Lama planned to sabotage next month's Olympics and was behind the protests against Chinese rule that swept the Tibetan plateau from March onwards. He called the discussions "one of the most difficult sessions" the two sides have had in the latest round of talks, that have been ongoing since 2002 after a decade of diplomatic stalemate, saying in a statement today: "In the course of our discussions we were compelled to candidly convey to our counterparts that in the absence of serious and sincere commitment on their part the continuation of the present dialogue process would serve no purpose." (www.tibet.net)
Lodi Gyari, who briefed the Dalai Lama today in India on the talks, said today in Dharamsala, India: "This meeting took place at a crucial time in our relationship. The recent events in Tibet clearly demonstrated the Tibetan people's genuine and deep-rooted discontentment with the People's Republic of China's policies. The urgent need for serious and sincere efforts to address this issue with courage and vision in the interest of stability, unity and harmony of all nationalities of the PRC is obvious. In addition even though His Holiness the Dalai Lama is seeking a solution to the issue of Tibet within the PRC, it is a fact that it has become an issue of great international concern. In this context, we had hoped that the Chinese leadership would reciprocate our efforts by taking tangible steps during this round. On the contrary, due to their excessive concern about legitimacy the Chinese side even failed to agree to our proposal of issuing a joint statement with the aim of committing both parties to the dialogue process."
The G8 brings together several of the governments that have been most engaged with both the Tibetan and Chinese sides in urging progress to resolve challenges to peace and stability in Tibet, including the US, Germany, Japan, Australia and France.
French President Sarkozy has pinned his attendance at the Olympics opening ceremony to progress in the dialogue and specifically to addressing the unrest in Tibet that began this spring, with a wave of at least 125 mainly peaceful protests against Chinese rule across the plateau.
Mary Beth Markey of ICT said: "With the failure of the dialogue to move forward, the French President is in a difficult situation, as is the Dalai Lama who, as a supporter of the Beijing Olympics, would not wish to be an obstacle to Sarkozy's full participation. Of course, China's leaders have made this calculation and deliberately forsaken an opportunity to build international goodwill directly tied to the Olympics."
http://www.savetibet.org/news/newsitem.php?id=1334
Posted by google at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2008
Tibet Envoys Knock China But Vow To Continue Talks
Two envoys of the Dalai Lama, in meetings with Chinese officials, criticized Beijing's handling of unrest in Tibet and asked China to prove its assertions that the Tibetan spiritual leader orchestrated violent anti-Chinese protests, a senior leader of Tibet's government-in-exile said Monday.
Still, the Tibetan envoys and Chinese officials, who met in Shenzhen on Sunday, agreed to restart talks that halted in mid-2007 on the future of Tibet, according to Samdhong Rinpoche, chairman of the exiled government's Kashag, or cabinet.
Prof. Rinpoche's remarks, made in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, were the first official Tibetan comment on the Shenzhen meetings.
An earlier round of talks between Chinese and Tibetan officials was suspended last summer after failing to bridge deep differences. But fallout from March's anti-Chinese protests in Tibet and a harsh security crackdown that ensued appear to have pushed Beijing and Tibet's government-in-exile to meet again.
'Both sides explained their differences,' said Prof. Rinpoche. 'The process of dialogue will continue.'
The Chinese side was represented by Zhu Weiqun and Sitar, both vice ministers of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party, a top policy-making body on religious and ethnic relations for China's ruling party.
According to China's official Xinhua news agency, Messrs. Zhu and Sitar told the Tibetan envoys the Lhasa riots had 'given rise to new obstacles for resuming contacts and consultations.'
Still, sending such high-ranking officials to Sunday's meeting shows Beijing's seriousness, said Li Hongbin, a professor in the history department at the Central University for Nationalities. 'I personally am optimistic, but I believe that one or two meetings can't resolve all the differences built up over the decades,' he said.
It's not clear when a new round of discussions with China over Tibet might resume. Sunday's agreement represents a small victory for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile, which had previously pushed for resumption of talks with little success. But resuming the suspended talks is also useful to Beijing, as it tries to deflect criticism of its Tibet crackdown ahead of the Olympics. While agreeing to new talks without conceding anything to the Dalai Lama's envoys, China can still continue its media campaign against Tibetan dissident groups.
The envoys who represented Tibet in Shenzhen -- Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, based in Washington, and Kelsang Gyaltsen, based in Zurich -- were heading to Dharmsala Monday to brief the government-in-exile on details of Sunday's discussion, according to Prof. Rinpoche.
In his political role, the rough equivalent of a prime minister, Prof. Rinpoche heads a Tibetan-government task force on the dialogue with China.
The unrest in Tibet has embarrassed China internationally and has complicated Beijing's efforts to present to the world a more open image as it prepares to host the Summer Olympics and showcase its racing economy.
Since the March turmoil, China has severely restricted travel to Tibet, especially for foreign tourists and media. Chinese officials and state-backed media have bitterly criticized the Dalai Lama for allegedly orchestrating the protests, angering legions of his followers. Partly as a result, anti-Chinese protests have dogged the global relay of the Olympic torch bound for the Beijing games.
The Tibet-related violence inside China has claimed lives of both Tibetans and Chinese, though estimates of the numbers of deaths vary widely. Beijing says 22 people, mostly ethnic Han Chinese, have died in the unrest. Tibetan exile groups say about 200 people were killed. There has been no independent confirmation of the death toll.
The protests in Tibet marked the anniversary of a crackdown on Tibetan political dissenters in March 1959. During that period, the Dalai Lama escaped to India, followed by thousands of refugees. He eventually settled in the north Indian hill town of Dharmsala, where the government-in-exile is now headquartered and where a younger generation of Tibetans has massed in support for full independence from China.
In the interview, Prof. Rinpoche, who was still awaiting a full briefing of Sunday's Shenzhen meetings, said the two Tibetan envoys demanded that Chinese security forces halt arbitrary arrests, release political prisoners and compensate families of people killed in the protests.
He also said the envoys asked the Chinese to stop accusing the Dalai Lama of stirring up violence 'or else share the proof with the international community.'
Despite the pointed criticism, Prof. Rinpoche described the atmosphere at the meetings as good because the Tibetan envoys were given the opportunity to air their grievances. 'They were able to say what they wanted to say,' he noted.
Although it was the first meeting since the most recent unrest, the two Tibetan envoys are familiar figures in China. They spearheaded six rounds of talks over the future of Tibet, held between 2002 and 2007.
But after those talks broke off without any clear progress, members of the Tibetan negotiating team came in for criticism among frustrated exiles who believe the Chinese leadership is dragging its feet, waiting for the Dalai Lama to die and hoping the independence movement fragments without him.
'The reality is the Chinese are playing for time and we are playing into their hands,' said Lhasang Tsering, a former government official who now runs a bookshop with his wife in Dharmsala. 'We already know we can't have 'meaningful' talks with the Chinese.'
U.S. and European leaders have urged China to engage in dialogue with envoys of the Dalai Lama. The Buddhist leader -- who won the Nobel Peace prize in 1989 -- has advocated to Beijing a 'Middle Way' that accepts Chinese sovereignty over Tibet in exchange for more autonomy among Tibetans living inside China.
Prof. Rinpoche, who is also a high-ranking Buddhist monk, said there's been no rethinking the Dalai Lama's approach, despite the lack of headway in dialogue.
'If we remain without contact, what result can be achieved?' he asked. Those who advocate not engaging with the Chinese, he added, don't have much to show for their stand either. Prof. Rinpoche, dressed in crimson and mustard robes, is the first head of Tibet's government-in-exile to be voted into office in an election. He's serving the second of two terms. The Dalai Lama remains Tibet's spiritual leader and also the head of state, but has ceded much day-to-day management of government affairs to Prof. Rinpoche.
Prof. Rinpoche rejected any suggestion that Tibet's struggle for more autonomy in China would die with the Dalai Lama. 'A new generation will carry on the struggle,' he said. Besides, the 72-year-old Dalai Lama is in 'very good health,' added Prof. Rinpoche. 'He can work another twenty years.'
Peter Wonacott
http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/20080506/bch115759.asp?source=email
Posted by google at 06:02 AM | Comments (0)
May 01, 2008
Chinese Students in U.S. Fight View of Their Home
April 29, 2008
By SHAILA DEWAN
Correction Appended
LOS ANGELES — When the time came for the smiling Tibetan monk at the front of the University of Southern California lecture hall to answer questions, the Chinese students who packed the audience for the talk last Tuesday had plenty to lob at their guest:
If Tibet was not part of China, why had the Chinese emperor been the one to give the Dalai Lama his title? How did the tenets of Buddhism jibe with the “slavery system” in Tibet before China’s modernization efforts? What about the Dalai Lama’s connection to Hitler?
As the monk tried to rebut the students, they grew more hostile. They brandished photographs and statistics to support their claims. “Stop lying! Stop lying!” one young man said. A plastic bottle of water hit the wall behind the monk, and campus police officers hustled the person who threw it out of the room.
Scenes like this, ranging from civil to aggressive, have played out at colleges across the country over the past month, as Chinese students in the United States have been forced to confront an image of their homeland that they neither recognize nor appreciate. Since the riots last month in Tibet, the disrupted Olympic torch relays and calls to boycott the opening ceremony of the Games in Beijing, Chinese students, traditionally silent on political issues, have begun to lash out at what they perceive as a pervasive anti-Chinese bias.
Last year, there were more than 42,000 students from mainland China studying in the United States, an increase from fewer than 20,000 in 2003, according to the State Department.
Campuses including Cornell, the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of California, Irvine, have seen a wave of counterdemonstrations using tactics that seem jarring in the American academic context. At the University of Washington, students fought to limit the Dalai Lama’s address to nonpolitical topics. At Duke, pro-China students surrounded and drowned out a pro-Tibet vigil; a Chinese freshman who tried to mediate received death threats, and her family was forced into hiding.
And last Saturday, students from as far as Florida and Tennessee traveled to Atlanta to picket CNN after a commentator, Jack Cafferty, referred to the Chinese as “goons and thugs.” (CNN said he was referring to the government, not the people.)
The student anger, stoked through e-mail messages sent to large campus mailing lists, stems not so much from satisfaction with the Chinese government but from shock at the portrayal of its actions, as well as frustration over the West’s long-standing love affair with Tibet — a love these students see as willfully blind.
By and large, they do not acknowledge the cultural and religious crackdown in Tibet, insisting that ordinary Tibetans have prospered under China’s economic development, and that only a small minority are unhappy.
“Before I came here, I’m very liberal,” said Minna Jia, a graduate student in political science at U.S.C. who encouraged fellow students to attend the monk’s lecture. “But after I come here, my professor told me that I’m nationalist.”
“I believe in democracy,” Ms. Jia added, “but I can’t stand for someone to criticize my country using biased ways. You are wearing Chinese clothes and you are using Chinese goods.”
Students interviewed for this article deplored the more extreme expressions of anger, like death threats against the Duke freshman and the tossing of the water bottle, and pointed out that Chinese students had little experience in the art of protest. But, they said, they could also understand them.
“We’ve been smothered for too long time,” said Jasmine Dong, another graduate student who attended the U.S.C. lecture.
By that, Ms. Dong did not mean that Chinese students had been repressed or censored by their own government. She meant that the Western news media had not acknowledged the strides China had made or the voices of overseas Chinese. “We are still neglected or misunderstood as either brainwashed or manipulated by the government,” she said.
No matter what China does, these students say, it cannot win in the arena of world opinion. “When we have a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet./ When we tried limiting our numbers, you said it is human rights abuse,” reads a poem posted on the Internet by “a silent, silent Chinese” and cited by some students as an accurate expression of their feelings. “When we were poor, you thought we were dogs./ When we loan you cash, you blame us for your debts./ When we build our industries, you called us polluters./ When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming.”
Rather than blend in to the prevailing campus ethos of free debate, the more strident Chinese students seem to replicate the authoritarian framework of their homeland, photographing demonstration participants and sometimes drowning out dissent.
A Tibetan student who declined to be identified for fear of harassment said he decided not to attend a vigil for Tibet on his campus, which he also did not want identified because there are so few Tibetans there. “It’s not that I didn’t want to, I really did want to go — it’s our cause,” he said. “At the same time, I have to consider that my family’s back there, and I’m going back there in May.”
Another factor fueling the zeal of many Chinese demonstrators could be that they, too, intend to return home; the Chinese government is widely believed to be monitoring large e-mail lists.
Universities have often tried to accommodate the anger of their Chinese students. Before the Dalai Lama’s visit to the University of Washington, the campus Chinese Students and Scholars Association wrote to the university president expressing hopes that the visit would focus only on nonpolitical issues and not arouse anti-China sentiments. According to a posting on the group’s Web site, the university president, Mark A. Emmert, told them in a meeting that no political questions would be raised at the Dalai Lama’s speech. A spokesman said the university, which opened an office in Beijing last fall, had prescreened student questions before the Chinese students voiced their concerns.
Some experts say that colleges feel constrained from reining in the more extreme protests through a combination of concerns about cultural sensitivity and a desire to expand their own ties with China.
“I think there tends to be a great deal of self-censorship,” said Peter Gries, director of the Institute for U.S.-China Issues at the University of Oklahoma, “and not just among American China scholars but among the whole web of people who do business with China, including school administrators.”
At the U.S.C. lecture, the Chinese students arrived early to distribute handouts on Tibet and China that contained a jumble of abbreviated history, slogans and maps with little context. A chart showing that infant mortality in Tibet had plummeted since 1951, when the Communist Chinese government asserted control, did not provide any means for comparison with mortality rates in China or other countries.
One photograph showed the Dalai Lama with Heinrich Harrer, author of “Seven Years in Tibet” and a one-time member of the Nazi Party — hence the question about the Dalai Lama’s connection to Hitler, who died when the Dalai Lama was nine. The question about slavery referred to the feudal system in place in Tibet until the mid-20th century. Another photograph purported to show a Tibetan drum that, according to the caption, was covered with “a virgin girl’s skin.”
The students said they were frustrated by a sense that many accounts of the recent riots did not reflect the violence and destruction by the Tibetan protesters, who vandalized shops owned by Han Chinese (the ethnic majority in China). According to official Chinese news sources, 22 died in the rioting.
Much of the anger has the tenor of disillusionment. During the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, the Western news media was seen as a source of otherwise elusive truth.
“We thought Western media is very objective,” said Chao Wu, a 28-year-old working on his doctorate in material science, “and what it turned out is that Western media is even more biased than Chinese media. They’re no better, and even more, they’re against us.”
Students argue that China has spent billions on Tibet, building schools, roads and other infrastructure. Asked if the Tibetans wanted such development, they looked blankly incredulous. “They don’t ask that question,” said Lionel Jensen, a China scholar at Notre Dame. “They’ve accepted the basic premise of aggressive modernization.”
That may be, some experts suggest, because the students whose families can afford to send them abroad are the ones who have benefited the most from China’s economic liberalization.
Spring Zheng, 27, another graduate student at U.S.C., dismissed the notion that her patriotism stemmed from the government’s efforts to use the schools to instill national pride, particularly after Tiananmen Square.
Rather, Ms. Zheng said, “We have witnessed with our own eyes about the rapid change of China. China is developing fast, and Chinese people’s lives” are “becoming better and better, fast.”
As the U.S.C. session wound to a close, the organizer, Lisa Leeman, a documentary film instructor, pleaded for a change in tone. “My hope for this event, which I don’t totally see happening here, is for people on both, quote, sides to really hear each other and maybe learn from each other,” Ms. Leeman said. “Are there any genuine questions that don’t stem from a political point of view, that are really not here to be on a soap box?”
At that moment, the bottle hit the wall.
Michael Anti contributed reporting from Cambridge, Mass.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 1, 2008
An article on Tuesday about Chinese students in the United States who have to deal with negative images of their home country misspelled the family name of a doctoral student at the University of Southern California who said the Western news media were biased against China. And a correction in this space on Wednesday gave another incorrect spelling. He is Chao Wu — not Chou Wu or Chau Wu.
Posted by google at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2008
Tibetan Chinese Youth Dialogue Project
facebook group
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11913526595&ref=nf
Online forum
http://www.tibetchinadialogue.org/forum/
Posted by google at 05:58 PM | Comments (0)