Forbes – Ooh la la. In one horrifying moment on the red carpet, Sharon Stone has shown the world what a gamble fashion labels can take when they plaster a famous face on their branding campaigns. Christian Dior has dropped Stone from its Chinese ad campaign after the long-legged Basic Instinct star let slip in a TV interview–now on YouTube–that China’s recent earthquake may have been “bad karma” for the country’s actions actions against Tibet.

Stone has now apologized for her remarks, saying in a press release via Dior’s Shanghai office that she feels “deeply sorry and sad about hurting Chinese people.” But the damage has been done–China’s official Xinhua News Agency said Thursday that Stone was the “public enemy of all mankind,” while myriad blogs have labeled the actress with epithets like “heart of Stone.”

This is all unhelpful PR for Christian Dior, which is already reeling from the a Chinese boycott against French goods because of the Olympic torch’s recent chaotic run through Paris. The view of a handful of analysts who did not wish to be named is that the fashion label would be looking very carefully at its contract with Stone now. Christian Dior could not be reached for comment.

Stone has been part of a worldwide print and television campaign to promote Dior’s Capture skincare line–part of the company’s perfumes and beauty division–since 2006 and was chosen, according to unit president Claude Martinez, because of her “worldwide appeal as a beautiful and desirable woman in her forties, who is clever and independent.”

Christian Dior is the main holding company for LVMH, controlling 42.4% of its shares and 60.0% of voting rights. LVMH’s billionaire boss Bernard Arnault has already insisted that China’s boycott against French goods has had “no effect” on his own profits. (See: “LVMH Boss Shrugs Off Beijing Boycott”)

But Arnault will be worried about this latest business with Stone. China is a key market for LVMH particularly as consumer spending in Western Europe slows down. HSBC analyst Antoine Belge wrote in a recent note to clients that China would become “the most profitable region for luxury companies in the long run.”

LVMH has been expanding its presence in China by buying 55.0% of Wen Jun Spirits, a producer of high-end alcohols, and last October its fashion brand Fendi staged a show at the Great Wall of China.

Stone, who is a recipient of the Harvard Foundation’s 2005 Humanitarian Award for her AIDS-awareness work made her controversial comments last week during a Cannes Film Festival red-carpet interview.

“I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else,” Stone said. “And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?”

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….Although the protests may be stage-managed, as some have suggested, there is every indication that the depth of nationalistic fervour in China has taken even the government by surprise. Restraint is being urged at every step, though the government has stopped short of outright condemnation. In any case, these protests are as legitimate as those in Paris or London. Portraying the outcry as merely a sham is to ignore the danger that an alienated China poses to the world. If the Chinese are feeling offended, perhaps it is time for the rest of the world to try to understand their grievance.

Pushing China into a corner is unlikely to help the world. It will merely achieve a growth in militant Nationalism that will, in a sense, allow the government to continue its human rights violations. In other words, an image of China as a nation beset by unfair attacks might lead to it becoming even more hostile to the views of the western world.

The divide between how the Chinese view themselves and how they are perceived in the world should be narrowed instead of making it wider. It will be wise, therefore, to engage China on different terms and avoid tensions from spiralling out of hand over the Olympics, which the Chinese are justifiably proud of being called upon to host.

Compared to a commentary appeared in Time:

The biggest risk for the Chinese government is that the protests simmer until the Beijing Summer Olympics begin in August. The authorities hope to show the world how China has changed in the three decades since Deng Xiaoping launched economic reforms. But it will be difficult to present a friendly, progressive face to the world if citizens are indulging in anti-foreign antics.

Okay.

When Chinese protest, it’s indulgence. When Tibetans protest, it’s for freedom.

This is how the Wall Street Journal portrays the protests:

Condemnation of Chinese government policies is being received in China as attacking the nation as a whole, arousing public resentment. The most vocal responses are seen overseas as government-sanctioned nationalism run amok, further reinforcing negative images of China.

When Chinese protest, they further reinforce negative images of China. When Tibetans protest, they put China’s human rights record into the light.

From NYT:

In a sign that the government was still allowing anti-foreign sentiment to spill over into rare street demonstrations, thousands of people rallied on Sunday in front of Carrefour markets in six cities, including two, Harbin and Jinan, where there had not been protests earlier.

…In recent days, the government has called on citizens to temper their fury at the West, but it has not acted to halt public demonstrations, which have been stoked by newspaper editorials, Internet postings and text messages sent to millions of cellphones.

On Sunday, the state-run People’s Daily newspaper called for a cooling of passions, although it stopped short of condemning the demonstrations or the spreading boycott campaign against French goods. “As citizens, we have the responsibility to express our patriotic enthusiasm calmly and rationally and express patriotic aspiration in an orderly and legal manner,” the newspaper said in a front-page editorial.

When Chinese protest — peacefully — they are brainwashed nationalists. When Tibetans protest — violently — they are fighters against oppression.

When China says the Dalai Lama is behind the Lhasa riots, it is China’s attempt to vilify His Holiness. When Chinese protest, it is China who master-minding the whole thing.

So what do you want? You want to see the protesting Chinese being shot down as the way the Tibetan propaganda told you the Tibetans were? (I’m not saying China’s state-owned media aren’t hammering out propaganda. But please be aware that propaganda is from both sides; another article on propaganda in here.)

As the above Times of India editorial suggests, many westerns still believe these massive protests are sponsored by the Chinese government. The Chinese are still being seen as brainwashed nationalists with no ability to think independently. How sad.

On the Tibet issue, WSJ says:

Protests advocating Tibetan independence mystify most Chinese, who have been taught all their lives that Tibet has long been part of China. And the deeply emotional Chinese response to the Tibet protests has also surprised some Westerners.

The western media should also asked if they have been taught all their lives that Tibet has never been part of China.

The following paragraph seems to be used as balancing, but the phrase “albeit still limited” is still judgemental. “Limited” in what standard? Who set those standards? Why can’t you reflect on the fact that China has made a lot of progress in merely 30 years? Compare the current state with what it was…. not comparing with the West who has enjoyed industrialization and economic development for over 100 years.

Many Chinese who are critical of their own government also feel Western condemnations of China fail to acknowledge its advances in recent decades, from lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty to expanding the freedoms — albeit still limited — that Chinese enjoy.

To the West: please try to understand why we are angry. Think about if you were us.

More readings:
China should be careful in making use of nationalistic feelings
Han Chinese not humans?
A big blue earth for all of us
Have the media missed the real Tibet story?
Here’s maybe proof of ‘orchestrated violence’ in Tibet

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BTW, the Globe and Mail earlier reported that:

Last May, the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan government-in-exile put together a meeting in Brussels of all the major Tibet organizations — there are hundreds, and they’re organized under a Washington-based umbrella group, the International Tibet Support Network. There, the exiled Tibetans decided that the Olympics should be the single focus of their activities for the next 15 months, and they hired a full-time organizer for the Olympic-disruption campaign.

Let’s go back to the German-Foreign-Policy.com article:

• Conference reports and the research of a Canadian journalist reveal that a German Foreign Ministry front organization is playing a decisive role in the preparations of the anti-Chinese Tibet campaign.

• According to this information, the campaign is being orchestrated from a Washington based headquarters. It had been assigned the task of organizing worldwide “protests” at a conference organized by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (affiliated with the German Free Democratic Party – FDP) in May 2007.

• The plans were developed with the collaboration of the US State Department and the self-proclaimed Tibetan Government in Exile and call for high profile actions along the route of the Olympic Torch Relay and are supposed to reach a climax in August during the games in Beijing.

• The campaign began already last summer and is now profiting from the current uprising in the west of the People’s Republic of China that is receiving prominent coverage in the German media. The uprising was initiated with murderous pogrom-like attacks by Tibetan gangs on non-Tibetan members of the population, including the Muslim Chinese minority. Numerous deaths of non-Tibetans provoked a reaction of the Chinese security forces.

• According to the research by a Canadian journalist, a conference organized by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNSt) gave the impetus to the current anti-Chinese Tibet campaign that violently forced the interruption of the Olympian Torch Relay in Paris last Monday. The conference was the fifth “International Tibet Support Groups Conference,” that was held from May 11 – 14, 2007 in Brussels.

• According to FNSt information this conference was supposed to do nothing other than the four preceding conferences – “coordinate the work of the international Tibet groups and consolidate the links between them with the central Tibetan Government in Exile.”

• The German foundation, which is largely state financed, began the conference preparations in March 2005, and coordinated its plans with the Dalai Lama at his headquarters in the self-proclaimed Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala, India. More than 300 participants from 56 countries, 36 Tibetan associations and 145 Tibet support groups were represented at the conference.

• After several days of consultations the conference ended with a concerted “plan of action”. The paper is entitled “Roadmap for the Tibet Movement for the Coming Years” covering four areas of interest: “political support for negotiations”, “human rights”, “environment and development” and “the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing.”

• The results of the conference are directed to the Tibetan people as well as “their supporters around the world.” Rolf Berndt, a member of the FNSt’s executive council in Brussels, declared that the Olympic Games “are an excellent opportunity” to publicly promote the cause of the “Tibet Movement”. The conference participants agreed to make the Olympics the single focus of attack for their activities for the next 15 months.[6] They hired a full-time organizer for their campaign, who has since been directing the worldwide Tibet actions from their Washington headquarters.

• The anti-Chinese Tibet campaign, initiated under the direction of a German Foreign Ministry front organization (Friedrich Naumann Foundation) and a high-ranking representative of the US State Department, is developing its full efficacy in the aftermath of the uprisings in West People’s Republic of China that began only a few days before the start of the Torch Relay.

• The pogrom-like mob-violence not only created the necessary media profile for the current Tibet campaign, initiated with the help of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, it also permits an insight into the character of Tibetan separatism. The “prime minister” of the Tibetan “Exile Government,” who had participated in the formulation of the plan of action at the May 2007 Tibet Conference in Brussels, had already at the end of the 1990s, expounded in the German media on his views of the future of non-Tibetans, who had immigrated to Tibet over the past 50 years. In the case of a successful secession, they will have to “return to China, or if they would like to remain, be treated as foreigners.”

• He explained the planned measures: “they will, in any case, not be allowed to participate in the political life.” The prospect of discrimination against all non-Tibetan members of the population was anticipated in mid-March by mobs in their bloody attacks on Chinese and members of the Muslim minority.

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• Not least among the consequences, the Tibet campaign is also stimulating an anti-Chinese atmosphere in Germany leaving a dwindling amount of room for criticism. Opinions that are at variance with the anti-Beijing mainstream are, in the meantime, being punished. In Cologne a sinologist’s lecture on the theme of Tibet had to be cancelled at the last minute. The organizers had criticized the one-sided western media reporting and sought to initiate a differentiated debate of the conflict. This intention led to the cancellation on short notice of the rental contract for the location in the Cologne Community Center. Those responsible for the community center made it known that no “anti-Tibetan” events would be tolerated.

• Several front organizations of German foreign policy have for years been supporting the Tibetan exile structures in Dharamsala, India. This includes support for organizational measures enabling the “government in exile” in Dharamsala to orchestrate its activities against the People’s Republic of China worldwide. Particularly the Free Democratic Party (FDP) affiliated Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the Heinrich Boell Foundation (affiliated with the Green Party) are cooperating with the “government in exile” and other exile Tibetan institutions.

• Front organizations of US foreign policy are working toward the same objectives. Already in the 1950s Washington was intervening in Tibet with millions of dollars, at the time, even supporting Tibetan armed uprisings against the People’s Republic of China. German organizations took up the question of Tibet around the end of the 80s, at a time when China was beginning its rise to become a global competitor of the west. The current activities are apt to greatly weaken China. These supplement other German-US measures aimed at thwarting the rise of their East-Asian rival.

• The US logistical and military support for the armed Tibetan rebellions, beginning in 1957, was aimed at destabilizing the communist government. The intervention outlasted the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile in Dharamsala, India, where, after 1959, a Tibetan “government in exile” was called into being. According to official documents from the government in Washington, during the 1960s the CIA was paying up to $1.7 million per year to maintain “operations against China.” Up to $180,000 was given directly to the Dalai Lama.

• German organizations have become intensively engaged in the Tibet question since the 1980s, when the People’s Republic of China began an economic upswing that has now placed it in the top ranks of global commercial statistics. Already at that time political strategists were predicting the possibility of China’s rise to becoming a major power and foresaw rivalry between China and western powers. Using contacts to Tibet by “alternative” political circles, who had converted to Buddhism, the Green parliamentary group, through hearings and parliamentary resolutions, placed the questions of autonomy and the demands for secession in that region of China on the political agenda of the Bundestag in 1985.

• Tsewang Norbu, a former assistant of the Dalai Lama, helped shape policy on Tibet, first as an employee of the Green parliamentarian Petra Kelly and, since 1992, as an employee of the Green Party affiliated Heinrich Boell Foundation. In addition, Norbu founded the German-Tibetan Cultural Society and, over an extended period of time, presided as its vice-chairman. He also works as a “special correspondent” for the US financed “Radio Free Asia” (RFA). RFA is among the news sources of western reporting on the recent uprising in Tibet.

• German foundations’ activities around Tibet touch one of the most sensitive spots in Chinese policy. Not only do they represent interference into the domestic affairs of that nation, they also threaten the People’s Republic’s territorial integrity. “To a certain extent, Tibet is the cornerstone of a fragile multi-ethnic state,” writes a policy advisor at the Institute of Asian Studies of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. “A horror scenario for Beijing is that beginning with Tibet, a conflagration develops.” One finds “designated on a map published in a 1990 autobiography of the Dalai Lama (…) alongside Greater Tibet also ‘East Turkestan,’ as the area where Moslem Uygurs settled, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria.”[11] The secession of these regions would have drastic consequences: “the remaining Chinese settled areas would have shrunk to a third of the People’s Republic.”

• In fact, the current Tibet campaign, with the participation of German organizations, is but an example of Berlin’s and Washington’s growing anti-Chinese policy. In Africa, Germany and the USA are now openly agitating against China. Aggressive competition is being practiced also in Latin America as well as in Central Asia. India is seen as a possible counter-balance for the containment of the People’s Republic.

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Published in Global Research, Canada

Barker’s article details the secrets behind the Free Tibet movement:

• Jim Mann (1999) notes, "during the 1950s and 60s, the CIA actively backed the Tibetan cause with arms, military training, money, air support and all sorts of other help."
• According to formerly secret US intelligence documents (released in the late 1990s), it turned out that ‘[f]or much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama".
• By 1969, however, it appears that covert support for the Tibetan cause had either served its geopolitical purpose (or it was decided that these operations were simply no longer effective), and the CIA announced the withdrawal of its aid for the Tibetan revolutionaries.
• That said, support for the Tibetan freedom fighters was still provided by the Indian and Taiwanese governments ‘until 1974, two years after President Richard Nixon normalized U.S. relations with China" (as were the U.S. subsidies for the Dalai Lama, which also continued until 1974): however, thereafter – especially once the Dalai Lama urged the fighters to put down their weapons – the violent resistance collapsed and the ‘CIA quietly paid to resettle the survivors".

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was established in 1984 with bipartisan support during President Reagan’s administration to "foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities" around the world. Considering Reagan’s well documented misunderstanding of what constitutes democratic governance, it is fitting that Allen Weinstein, the NEDs first acting president, observed that in fact "A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA".

So for example, it is not surprising that during the 1990 elections in Nicaragua it is has been estimated that "for every dollar of NED or AID funding there were several dollars of CIA funding".

By building upon the pioneering work of liberal philanthropists (like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations’) – who have a long history of co-opting progressive social movements – it appears that the NED was envisaged by US foreign policy elites to be a more suitable way to provide strategic funding to nongovernmental organizations than via covert CIA funding.

Indeed, the NED’s ‘new’ emphasis on overt funding of geostrategically useful groups, as opposed to the covert funding, appears to have leant an aura of respect to the NED’s work, and has enabled them, for the most part, to avoid much critical commentary in the mainstream media.

The seminal book exposing the NED’s ‘democratic’ modus operandi, is William I. Robinson’s (1996) Promoting Polyarchy, which as its title suggests, lays out the argument that instead of promoting more participatory forms of democracy, the NED actually works to promote polyarchy.

Robinson argues that the NED’s active promotion of polyarchy or low-intensity democracy "is aimed not only at mitigating the social and political tensions produced by elite-based and undemocratic status quos, but also at suppressing popular and mass aspirations for more thoroughgoing democratisation of social life in the twenty-first century international order."

His book furnishes detailed examples of how the NED has successfully imposed polyarchal arrangements on four countries, Chile, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Haiti; while similarly, Barker (2006) has illustrated the NED’s anti-democratic involvement in facilitating and manipulating the ‘colour revolutions’ which recently swept across Eastern Europe.

More recently, both Barker and Gerald Sussman (2006) have provided detailed examinations’ of how the NED works to promote a low intensity public sphere (globally) through its selective funding of media organizations. This article will now extend these three initial studies by critically examining the NED’s support for Tibetan media projects from 1990 onwards.

Here is a list of Tibetan groups funded by the NED uncovered by Barker:

• The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT)
• The Tibet Fund
• Tibet Information Network
• The Tibetan Literary
• Tibet Multimedia Centre
• Tibetan Review Trust Society
• The Voice of Tibet

In conclusion, Barker says:

This article has demonstrated the close ties that exist between the Dalai Lama’s non-violent campaign for Tibetan independence and U.S. foreign policy elites who are actively supporting Tibetan causes through the NED.

This finding is particularly worrying given the high international media profile of many of the groups exposed in this article, especially when it is remembered that the NED’s activities are intimately linked with those of the CIA.

This funding issue is clearly problematic for Tibetan (or foreign) activists campaigning for Tibetan freedom, as the overwhelmingly anti-democratic nature of the NED can only weaken the legitimacy of the claims of any group associated with the NED.

In this regard it seems only fitting that progressive activists truly concerned with promoting freedom and democracy in Tibet should first and foremost cast a critical eye over the antidemocratic funders of many of the Tibetan groups identified in this study.

Only then will they be able to reappraise the sustainability of their work in the light of the NED’s controversial background.

Once this step has been taken, perhaps progressive solutions for restoring democratic governance to Tibet can be generated by concerned activists, so that Tibetan people wanting to reclaim their homeland will able to be more sure that they are bringing democracy home to Tibet, not polyarchy.

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The lawsuit was initiated by the 13th Kundeling Rimpoche in the high court of Delhi. According to the petition, the Kundeling Rimpoche is a reincarnate Lama believes in “the freedom of worship as guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, and is opposed to the ban on the worship of Dorje Shugden, as being illegal and unconsitutional.”

The worship of Dorje Shugden has been controversial in Tibetan Buddhism since the Fifth Dalai Lama, who tried to repress his competitor, who worshipped Dorje Shugden, to claim the title of the de facto ruler of the Tibetan government by painting Dorje Shugden as an evil deity.

In the present petition, Dorje Shugden is said to have been for centuries worshipped as a protector of religion in the Gelugpa tradition, one of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Legend has it that the Dorje Shugden, a human being who lived in the 17th century, was the strongest contender for selection as the Fifth Dalai Lama, but was foully murdered. His spirit then emerged and took on the role of a Dharmapala, who vowed to protect the Gelugpa traditions.

The deity of Dorje Shugden is worshipped in the Indian Buddhist tradition prevalent in Himachal Pradesh, Laddakh, Uttaranchal, West Bengal and Sikkim. Dorje Shugden is also worshipped in all areas of the world where the Gelugpa tradition is followed, such as Bhutan, Nepal, Mongolia, parts of China, parts of the former USSR, various countries in Europe, U.K. and U.S.A.

According to the Kundeling Rimpoche, the Dalai Lama realized in the mid-1970s that he had to reconsider his options after the thawing of Sino-US relations and thus a withdrawal of the funding of the Free Tibet movement by the Central Intelligence Agency of the USA.

“Therefore, in view of the sudden paucity of funds, a stratagem was devised whereby the call for a Free Tibet was to be slowly given up, and in order to divert the opinion of the public (especially Tibetans) from this, a controversy was created regarding the worship of Dorje Shugden,” court documents say.

Against such a background, the Dalai Lama was accused to have used his dual role as the temporal head of the Tibetans in exile and as a spiritual guide. He issued numerous statements to the effect that the continuance of the worship of Dorje Shugden would be directly harmful to his health.

In a full-strength propaganda against the worship of Dorje Shugden, the Dalai Lama allegedly adopted a logic that read:

1. The Dalai Lama embodies Tibet.
2. People who dare criticize the Dalai Lama must be Chinese agents
3. The Dalai Lama does not approve of worship of Dorje Shugden
4. Therefore Dorje Shugden worshippers must be Chinese agents

The Kundeling Rimpoche quotes a study saying that while acknowledging that the worship of Dorje Shugden in Tibet goes back to over three centuries, the Dalai Lama has now been making statements against the worshippers of Dorje Shugden. He states that the worship of Dorje Shugden is harmful for the cause of Tibetan unity and is harmful to his own personal self.

“The website of the Respondent No. 4 [the Dalai Lama], www.dalailama.com, from which these Annexures have been downloaded, reveals that the Dorje Shugden issue takes up more webspace than any other issue,” the petition filed in court says.

It is argued that the Dalai Lama, through his right-hand man who is a minister of the Tibetan government in exile, refuses to issue various documents, such as identity cards, to the Tibetan refugee community unless the applicants sign a form declaring renunciation of worship of Dorje
Shugden. These forms are not handed out, but are required to be signed there and then.

The Dalai Lama is accused of blackmailing Dorje Shugden worshippers into giving up their religious beliefs. At the same time, Indian citizens who worship Dorje Shugden are reviled and condemned as non-Buddhists and Chinese agents.

Dorje Shugden worshippers are branded as criminals and offenders by the Dalai Lama and his government. This has resulted in a situation where the District Administration is not even prepared to consider any complaints made by the worshippers of Dorje Shugden in respect of the violence committed against them by the supporters of the Dalai Lama. By 1996, Dorje Shugden worship was effectively outlawed.

The sworn affidavit says that Dorje Shugden worshippers have made numerous attempts since 1996 to bring about a rapprochement, but every time they have been spurned by the Dalai Lama, who amazingly still proclaims himself to be a reincarnation of Avalokiteshwara, i.e., the Buddha of Compassion. The acts of the Dalai Lama in this regard are more like that of a totalitarian dictator and not that of a Buddha of Compassion.

Many monks who believed in that practice went and settled in Mundgod in Karnataka, with the express intention of carrying out their religious practices without interference from the Dalai Lama. However, in January, 2008 the Dalai Lama visited the Mundgod area and gave speeches against the worship of the Dorje Shugden. This eventually led to an attack by the followers of the Dalai Lama upon the worshippers of the Dorje Shugden.

Additional readings:
Of the Dalai Lama and a witch-hunt
The Tibetan Independence Movement: Political, Religious and Gandhian
Dorje Shugden—a threat to the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s life?
Open Letter to H.H. the Dalai Lama by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Advice Book

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I always have problem understanding people doing violent protests like these — the anti-poverty groups, anti-WTO, anti-corporate blah blah blah. I just don’t understand what good they expect their actions would achieve other than a sore throat. Being thrown in jail makes them feel like a hero, I guess… and perhaps they love that feeling?

Obviously the Dalai Lama, who urges support for the Torch Run and the Games, has lost control of his followers. The Tibetan youth congress has taken over the international Tibet campaign. I hope this will send China a message that it’s wise for it to talk with the Dalai Lama before he dies. Given his "middle way" approach, anything he could arrive at with Beijing would almost surely disappoint the youth congress which would not accept anything less than independence. Let the Tibet camp split within itself. Let the "Dalai Lama clique" fall itself. China does not need to crack them down any more. Everybody’s happy.

Talk to the Dalai Lama, dude.

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After a recent string of violent events happened in Tibet which fanned into some seemingly uncontrollable anti-China, anti-Olympic sentiments worldwide, the Dalai Lama is urging for restraint from all sides, saying he does not want to see further deterioration of relationship between the Tibetans and the Hans.

In an exclusive interview with the highly acclaimed news magazine Yazhou Zhoukan (trans: Asia Weekly) titled "Finding a new route to resolve the Tibet issue", the Dalai Lama said everything regarding the issue has nothing to do with the West.

"Leave all the issues of Tibet to China, the Hans and the Tibetans to solve (所有的問題由中國、由漢藏兩個民族自己來解決)," he said. "I do not want to see a confrontation between the Hans and Tibetans, I want to achieve a win-win situation for both of them." (不希望看到漢藏民族對立，希望漢藏民族能互利互贏).

I’m translating a portion of the article here, hopefully it can provide some light for both the Chinese and the West. Just a note, though, as I’m not very into the issue of Tibet and my interest on Tibet came only after the recent riots in Lhasa, some of my translation might look shallow (plus, its 2 a.m. and I’m very sleepy). Please read as a reference only. (The original links are here, here, and here. They are in Chinese and subscription needed) (oh, and yes, I just paid for one-year subscription for the magazine because I wanted so much to read this week’s articles.)

YZZK: The recent riots in Tibet have had the West roaring all over. Not only has the relationship between Tibetans and Hans been torn, so has that among the international community. Have you noticed that?

DLLM: Our position has always been to find a win-win solution for both the Tibetans and the Hans. As you know, I’m not looking for independence. I have always wanted to stay within the People’s Republic of China. I am only advocating self-autonomy.

All the problems we have today have nothing to do with the West. The Tibetans and Hans need to sit down and solve the problems. Of course, it is also important for the West and the mainstream media to continue showing their concerns on the issue, but at the end of the day, it’s between us the two peoples.

(我們的立場自始至終在漢藏民族能互利互贏。如你所知我並不尋求獨立，我自始至終希望留在中華人民共和國內，是尋求自治。現在的所有的問題，與西方沒有關係，需要我們兩個民族去面對和解決。當然，包括西方在內的世界輿論對此問題的呼籲和關注，配合都是很重要的，但不管怎麼說，這個問題的解決，最終是在我們兩個民族之間。)

YZZK: You have emphasized that Tibet should not leave China and you also said sticking with China is beneficial (to the Tibetans). Can you elaborate on that point and why?

DLLM: The entire world knows the Dalai Lama does not want independence. First of all, we have to make sure that Tibet is not going to be an independent country. The reason is that the economic development of Tibet is still backward, and it needs to depend on the PRC. At the same time, the Tibetans have their own language, religious traditions and characteristics. These are the things that we need to preserve. In order to preserve these, we need to be autonomous. The world knows it. Quite an irony, this actually is the reason why many people criticize the Dalai Lama for selling out Tibet.

The weekly news magazine also looks at how China thinks on the issue. Here are a few translations:

The Dalai Lama has left Tibet for 50 years. For the first 20 years, he was dreaming for an independent Tibet.

In1979, the then ruler of China, Deng Xiaoping, said: "We can talk about anything if the Dalai Lama abandons his pursuit for independence." Since then, the Dalai Lama claims that he has given up the idea of a Tibetan country. But why does Beijing remain so skeptical and just doesn’t believe that the Dalai Lama is genuine when he says "no independence? "

Some experts explained that the Dalai Lama has been flip-flopping in previous talks with Beijing, leading the latter could only be suspicious of his real motive. In January 1989 when the Panchen Lama passed away, the Chinese government invited the Dalai Lama, through a Buddhist association, to come to Beijing for Panchen’s funeral.

That was a perfect time for the Dalai Lama to visit Beijing and thaw the ice. But the Dalai Lama rejected the invitation.

The existence of the invitation was confirmed by a spokesperson (sorry I don’t know how to translate his name) of the Tibetan government in exile, who is also the brother-in-law of the Dalai Lama. He said the invitation arrived just one week before the ceremony and they couldn’t get ready to go to Beijing with that short a notice. "We didn’t mean to decline going, we just couldn’t be ready on time."

He admitted that the Dalai Lama talked about independence between 1959 to 1979. But after that, he has ruled out the pursuit and since been seeking autonomy.

However, some experts said Beijing’s distrust of the Dalai Lama stems from the inconsistency in what he has been saying. For instance, in the early 90s, he once denounced the suggestion that he would not seek independence and would return to pursuing separation.

Moreover, in a number of talks between China and the Dalai Lama, Beijing felt "cheated and fallen into his trap" and "manipulated", according to some experts on the Tibet issue.

But the spokesperson of the Dalai Lama explained that his Holiness said it was the proposal in 1987 that the Dalai Lama had denounced, "but he’s not denouncing the ‘middle way’ or his position on not splitting from China."

Another possible explanation for the distrust, according to the spokesperson, might be due to some inaccuracies in early translations. Before 1995, many documents translated from Tibetan into Chinese were done by some Taiwanese followers. But there were quite a number of mistakes, for instance, the Tibetan word of "freedom" was translated into the Chinese word of "independence" in many instances. However, many of these mistakes have been corrected, the spokesperson said.

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Now we know that the problem of media bias extends beyond English media, but also Dutch and German. Quite an inspiring post:

Thanks to the help of my friends here who could understand Dutch, I have now collected 17 pieces from Dutch media De Telegraaf, Volkskrant, Trouw, and NRC. After a rough review, I came across similar problems such as the misuse of pictures.

For example in this article by De Telegraaf, a picture featuring Nepali police was shown to illustrate Beijing’s crack down in Lhasa. The first paragraph read: “The Chinese authorities have tried on Friday with violence to end demonstrations in Tibet.”

Is it simply a problem about objectivity and professional standards? Or it might have something to do with the general “Tibetan complex” in western society. With the help of popular culture, from Lost Horizon to Seven Years in Tibet, Tibet has been frequently and constantly constructed as a far-away sacred place with all idealized fantasies. Dalai Lama, the religious and secular leader of Tibetan government in exile, managed to use this western utopia and gained great symphathy about his current political situation. As Australian scholar Peter Bishop once pointed out, “Tibetan refugee group might be the most successful minority in the world since it’s the only one that actually mobilizes mainsteam media”.

Back to the issue. Lack of transparency – as usual not of any surprise – in China’s government action also contributes to this misunderstanding. China does have a lot to improve regarding its policies in Tibet, and should be blamed for some of that. But this doesn’t give excuse to bias rooted in media discourse.

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Since the Vancouver Sun wrote an article yesterday carrying my name on the same topic, I guess I’ll make a further response on the topic here. I’ll also post this on the BBC website.

(BTW, the Vancouver Sun said I couldn’t be reached on Monday for a response but I didn’t think I got any phone messages or emails. I’m usually good at responding to emails, especially I’ll be getting a Windows Mobile (yey, a new toy!) which would enhance my response time further :) But for cell phone, I admit I’m not too good at that coz I’m receiving too many spam calls each day…(oh yes, if anyone know how to stop those marketing calls from spamming my cell, pls kindly let me know).)

First of all, I do think China is unwise to expell all foreign reporters, including Hong Kong’s who are usually seen as “part of the family”. I read reports from various sources that at least during the initial phase of the crackdown, the para-military and cops were ordered to exercise extreme restraint and not to “fight back even being attacked”. At least one western tourist’s report said that the first casualty in the crackdown could very possibly be that of a young Chinese cop.

If the authorities have given such an order, they should have allowed foreign reporters to shoot some pictures of the dead cops. Again, as I said previously, it’s a cultural thing that China has to catch up with learning about the rules of game in world politics and propaganda. Take the initial phase of the US invasion of Iraq for example, the Bush administration has successfully conveyed a message to the world that the US was really fighting a “war on terror”. They did this by allowing embedded reporters to cover the war in a highly restrictive fashion… no matter how, they were able to control the messages publicized to their advantage (at least during the first few weeks of the war).

For this reason, I strongly believe that China has made a big mistake of not allowing some reporters to stay at Lhasa.

BUT….

There is no excuse for the western media to defend themselves when they failed to even report on the FACTS. That’s what I was talking about media bias. The FACTS are, the western media have been conveniently using photos of Indian and Nepalese police beating up Tibetan monks and protesters and naming them Chinese police or not stating clearly that they were Indian or Nepalese.

And the same mistake/tactic has been used over and over again across all major mainstream western media…. CNN, German TV, CTV, Global etc. And the BBC has mistakenly named an army nurse lifting an injured man onto an ambulance as proof of “heavy military presence” on the streets of Lhasa.

These are all BASIC, FUNDAMENTAL journalism.

I don’t agree with my colleague of another Chinese media outlet who told the Vancouver Sun that “Chinese readers have to realize that western media are critical of all governments”, and “he conceded his own newspaper sometimes makes factual errors or poorly crops a photograph, but said that doesn’t make Sing Tao Daily a Chinese government pawn.”

Yes, every media outlet make some kinds of factual errors here and there everyday. But for the same, across-the-board mistake made by most major mainstream media in major western countries? Com’on, there must be something going on. And I believe, a quick answer to that is: prejudice.

And, who was talking about being a Chinese government pawn? That’s not the whole point. Being critical is one thing. You can condemn the Chinese government for blacking out and you can question whether they are secretly killing thousands of people because of that.

But there is no either-or on the principle of factual reporting. Being critical of the western media does not translate into one being the mouthpiece of the Chinese government. Canadian peace activist David McIntosh questions about the integrity of the Tibet coverage by the western media too, is he a communist?

Gabriel Yiu was right when he said there are real differences in the English and Chinese media coverage of events in Tibet. Let’s focus on the Hong Kong’s Chinese media, which my colleague emphasized that all “are privately owned” and not subject to the PRC infiltration of propaganda.

Since the Hong Kong media was the last ordered to leave Lhasa, they were able to shoot a bit more pictures of the initial phase of the Lhasa riot than most other western reporters. I saw pretty balanced reporting: they showed visuals of cops searching house by house (in fact, they provided such footage to CNN etc), of rioters burning stores and hitting people. They interviewed witnesses, such as taxi drivers, who described the horror on the streets. Of course, they also showed footage of the Dalai Lama and they reported on the the estimates of deaths by both sides. But most importantly, the Hong Kong media footage have refrained from making quick judgemental decisions/conclusions as many mainstream media have (I’ll try to collect more data on this later).

I attach a copy of the Vancouver Sun article here (for easy reference only).

Tibet coverage ‘twisted, biased’

Unrest in Tibet is not only fuelling controversy around the world. It is also stirring up strong opinions in Vancouver’s Chinese-language media.

One editor at the Chinese-language Ming Pao newspaper has accused western news media of “twisted, biased reporting on the Tibet issue.”

In a blog, titled Chinese in Vancouver, Ming Pao assignment editor Susanna Ng specifically criticized Canadian TV coverage of events in and around Tibet, including clips aired on CTV and Global.

Ng said some TV stations have repeatedly aired video of Nepalese police clamping down on Tibetan protesters, and stating incorrectly that the video was shot in Lhasa, Tibet, implying that it was Chinese police who were beating up protesters.

“Unfortunately, it looks like our Canadian reporters remain ignorant about what’s going on,” she wrote.

However, Victor Ho, the editor-in-chief of Vancouver edition of the rival Sing Tao Daily, said Monday that Chinese readers have to realize that western media are critical of all governments, not only the Communist Party-led government in Beijing.

Ng could not be reached Monday. But she wrote in her English-language blog: “Waves of rage roar over all major online Chinese-Canadian forums, with people angrily posting their angst against ‘another example’ of western media bias.”

Ho said the incorrect identification shows that journalists are sometimes careless, but that doesn’t prove the Western media are necessarily hostile to the government of China.

He conceded his own newspaper sometimes makes factual errors or poorly crops a photograph, but said that doesn’t make Sing Tao Daily a Chinese government pawn.

Ho also rejected suggestions that local English and Chinese-language newspapers’ coverage of the Tibet situation are completely different from each other. Chinese-language newspapers also use western sources such as the Reuters news agency, not just government sources from the People’s Republic of China, he said.

“The Chinese newspapers here are all privately owned, not official organs of the Chinese government,” Ho said in an interview.

Gabriel Yu, a columnist with Global Chinese Press, said he thinks there are real differences in the English and Chinese media coverage of events in Tibet.

Yu said the western media have been relying more on western correspondents and cellphone images taken by western tourists, while Chinese-language media companies based in Hong Kong are using more information and video footage released in China.

As a result, Yu said, viewers of Chinese-language TV news broadcasts see more of the “dark side and violence of the riots,” including assaults against ethnic Chinese in Tibet. The Chinese news media also interviewed injured ethnic Chinese in hospitals.

Yu said the local Chinese-language media have reported some of the comments of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader, but not nearly as much as the western media.

He said English-language television has shown lots of footage of Tibetan protesters in India and Nepal being attacked by police in those countries.

“Many viewers may not be able to distinguish Nepal from Tibet,” he added.

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