(link) As a people, the Uighurs look more like Afghans than ethnic Chinese. Ethnically, they are a Turkic race whose homeland is at the meeting point of Asia and Europe. The area now called Xinjiang was annexed by the Chinese Empire in the 19th century, although it briefly achieved independence before the Communist victory in China in 1949.

Hello?!! I can’t believe this comes out from a westerner who’s supposed to represent the current global atmosphere of trumpeting for multiculturalism and diversity. The blacks look more like Africans than ethnic whites in the US, so they are not Americans??? Ethnically, I look more like a Chinese than ethnic whites, do you say I’m not a taxpaying, honest Canadian?? Again, it shows how selfish the west is.

Look at what this paragraph says: “Xinjiang was annexed by the Chinese Empire in the 19th century”.,.. annexed?? Hong Kong was annexed by the British during the 19th century too. Should it become an independent state under the British Empire?

More from the well-respected media of the former Empire where the Sun never Sets:

(link) The Urumqi riots also call into question Han nationalism, increasingly China’s ideological glue as communism loses its fervour. This platform, appealing to more than 90 per cent of the population, seeks to convince all Chinese that they are one ethnic family and represses any minority dissent. Its flaw is that it denies China’s cultural and human diversity and blinds Beijing to rights that it should admit. Money is no panacea: that the authorities have to focus on these minority resentments, rather than the army of unemployed migrants, should send Beijing a message about where policy is failing. The Uighurs may not be challenging Communist control as much as they are Han hegemony. The riots in Urumqi should force a change. Instead, the likely outcome is denial, repression and a step farther away from basic rights and greater self-expression.

This time, the writer is correct. The Chinese government IS wrong about its ethnic policy. Instead of promoting one rule for all ethnicities, the Chinese government allow ethnic groups to enjoy preferential treatments which Han Chinese could only dream of. For instance, ethnic groups do not need to follow the one-child policy; their children are accepted to universities with lower grades than Han students would need to achieve; some groups are allowed to carry knives (as part of their traditions) etc etc… (Perhaps that’s why Han Chinese could be killed so easily by these peoples whenever there are “ethnic uprising”.)

Imagine if Canada has such preferential treatments for ethnic groups…. I can’t even think of going to universities with less than perfect grades! Or ethnic groups like us should pay less taxes because we in general earn less that white Canadians (even 2nd, 3rd generation Chinese Canadian) as tonnes of research (such as here, here, and here) have concluded?

The west likes to say the ethnic groups are prohibited from practising their own tradition and customs, quoting examples that there are restrictions going to religious places etc. True, there are restrictions under the Communist rule. But that’s NOT about not respecting ethnic customs or traditions, it’s about controlling political atmosphere as a whole. In China, any large gathering places/events are seen as potential threats to public security and/or political stability. The CCP is particularly alert to religious gatherings as we have seen in history and in contemporary events that religion IS the root of the majority of human conflicts — Christianity definitely one of them. Religious followers are encouraged to follow the orders from their religious leaders but not the rules of the states. (For instance, ppl whom should be extradited from Canada can stay on the soil perpetually if a church gives them refuge. Isn’t that church is above the law?) Why shouldn’t the atheist Chinese be higly alert to religions and religious setups? Until religions completely disappear in the human race, they are always a source of turbulence and threat to lives.

Say if the mentality of church/mosque goers is that of someone visiting a restaurant, having dim sum AND not about following the order of the restaurant owner, I bet the government would be more relaxed. I’m not saying the Chinese government is correct to prohibit “freedom” of religion. What I’m trying to say that in the eyes of the CCP, restriction to religious places is not about “Hanification” or not respecting ethnic minorities. It’s about politics. The reason why the west would believe the Han Chinese are trying to “Hanify” ethnic minorities is because this is what the west did — they used to force Christianity onto Aboriginal peoples and “westernize” them. On the other hand, as many China experts have said, the Chinese are proud of their civilization more than the land called “China”. Throughout Chinese history, there has been a constant theme that the Chinese civilization was so supreme that foreigners would fall for it, adopt it naturally (in general term, not talking about specific periods or events). There was no need to use force (comparatively to western history). I’m sure I am attracting attacks by pointing this out. Han Chinese “immigrating” to Tibet and Xinjiang not because they want to “Hanify” the places (such as what Israelis have been doing). For the forever money-thirsty Han Chinese, they are motivated by economic prospects than anything else (ask any of them if they would go to the desert if there is no natural resources to dig out).

Ethnic cleansing by immigration is a western concept.

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(on the video) The man initially rode up Beijing Donglu slowly, with apparently no idea of what was happening. When an initial stone was thrown at him, he slowed his bike down and stared behind him quite naturally, probably wondering why anyone would throw a rock at him. That is when he realized the entire street was trying to peg him, and he sped up for a few seconds before coming to a complete stop and pleaded with the crowd on the north side of the street to stop attacking him. This is when the other man rushes up to him and the video begins.

Afterwards when we were in the hotel we also wondered how the crowd was able to identify this man as Chinese. Some believed that the crowd were basically attacking anything that drove past but I remember seeing a truck drive through Beijing Street that no one stoned and people actually waved at, so in my opinion the crowd was able to tell between friend and foe somehow. I think it is very possible the man-with-the-knife is an undercover police officer but I am less sure about the motorcyclist attack being staged (unless the main attackers were undercover police officers just attacking an innocent bystander to get the crowd riled up). The attack was vicious and brutal, and very similar to the attack that left the man in the suit bleeding on the ground a few minutes later (there’s a picture of him from “Willie” in the original ‘Lhasa Burning’ post). It seemed like everyone on the street were throwing stones at the motorcyclist, so unless they all were Chinese agents I have trouble believing it was staged (though only a few people took part in the more vicious hand-to-hand assault). I suspect maybe the way he was dressed or the type of bike he was riding tipped the crowd off to his identity, or the fact he had a helmet, when very few Tibetans use one according to the YouTube expose on Jotman’s post. Or maybe the crowd really were just attacking everyone and everything and somehow the truck had managed to communicate it was on their side, or they had been throwing stones at it and I just didn’t see this. Anyways, after he escaped the attack apparently the man went back to retrieve his bike but it was taken from him again and one of the bigger fires was then started using it (“Willie” witnessed this, not me).

This is what he has to say about “media bias”:

I wouldn’t say I believe Western news organizations actively lied about what happened in Tibet. I will stick with the weaker position that they certainly did not actively try to report all parts of the story. That the rioters were violent was not well reported in the initial hours (and to an extent, still isn’t): there was much more emphasis on the Chinese crackdown when to our knowledge, they did not even yet have basic control of large parts of the city. No matter what, I think the evidence against the Western media isn’t good: they have definitely cropped pictures that have given the protests a more peaceful feel (I’m thinking of the infamous trucks photo) and they have definitely used pictures of Nepalese riot police responding with force against Tibetans in stories about what was happening in Tibet. Sure, the Chinese news agencies might be doing the very same (if not worse), but as I have said to Blogdai, I and others rightfully hold the Western news media to a higher standard.

It made me uncomfortable to learn that this young man, Kadfly, would have received so many negative responses for only reporting on what he saw. Does that mean the pro-Tibet sect cannot admit they have done anything wrong? Does that mean that they believe the level of violence should be accepted?

Having said that, though, as I wrote my buddy’s blog UglyChineseCanadians, the blindness I recently see in those “patriotics” also scares me. Their nerves are so sensitive that anyone who express a slight variation from what they say would be considered “traitors”. (believe it or not, Jin Jing, the one-legged woman fencer who protected the torch with her body, who had been hailed as a “hero” and an “angel”, was declared a “traitor” by Chinese netizens recently after she talked to Reuters, expressing she’s against boycotting French store Carrefour.)

This kind of irrational patriotism is the last thing we want to see. It’s stupid and destructive. And it reminds me of the Boxer Rebellion during the end of the Qing dynasty. I’m against the media bias thing too. But the recent crazy patriotic sentiments of the Chinese is making me nervous.

BTW, here’s a good and balanced piece of commentary published on The Guardian’s website:

China’s incompetence in its treatment of the crisis in Tibet should come as no surprise. The Chinese regime is, quite simply, a victim of its inability to reform itself. China saw in the Olympics a symbolic opportunity to consolidate and celebrate its new status in the world. Caught by surprise in Tibet, and by the virulence and popularity of what they described as “anti-Chinese” sentiments, China’s rulers have resorted to the traditional tools of authoritarian regimes, turning their citizens’ deep nationalism and sense of humiliation against western critics.

….

But the west’s hypocrisy nearly matches the Chinese regime’s incompetence. The moment the international community “bestowed” the Olympics on China, the west demonstrated how little consideration it actually gives to human rights and democracy. The idea that the Chinese regime would quickly reform the country into an open, moderate, and benevolent giant was either a fraud, a gigantic misperception, or wishful thinking.

The dilemma posed by China for democratic regimes is understandable. Caught between their desperate need for finance and markets and their need to respond to their citizens’ sentiments, they oscillate between condemnation and reassurance of China, struggling to find a coherent path that defends the West’s principles without damaging its economic interests.

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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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Richard M Bennett is an intelligence and security consultant, AFI Research. He recently wrote in Asia Times and Journey to the East exploring the possibility of an “orchestrated plan” to recent riots in Tibet, which was planned by the international Free Tibet movement and the US intelligence.

China has been accusing the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the riots. However, the accusation remains in the rhetoric but China has been charged for “demonizing” the Dalai Lama because China did not present any proof. Bennett’s analysis may provide a glimpse of what may have happened.

Given the historical context of the unrest in Tibet, there is reason to believe Beijing was caught on the hop with the recent demonstrations for the simple reason that their planning took place outside of Tibet and that the direction of the protesters is similarly in the hands of anti-Chinese organizers safely out of reach in Nepal and northern India.

Similarly, the funding and overall control of the unrest has also been linked to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, and by inference to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) because of his close cooperation with US intelligence for over 50 years.

Indeed, with the CIA’s deep involvement with the Free Tibet Movement and its funding of the suspiciously well-informed Radio Free Asia, it would seem somewhat unlikely that any revolt could have been planned or occurred without the prior knowledge, and even perhaps the agreement, of the National Clandestine Service (formerly known as the Directorate of Operations) at CIA headquarters in Langley.

Respected columnist and former senior Indian Intelligence officer, B Raman, commented on March 21 that “on the basis of available evidence, it was possible to assess with a reasonable measure of conviction” that the initial uprising in Lhasa on March 14 “had been pre-planned and well orchestrated”.

Could there be a factual basis to the suggestion that the main beneficiaries to the death and destruction sweeping Tibet are in Washington? History would suggest that this is a distinct possibility.

F. William Engdahl recently wrote in Canada-based Global Research that George W. Bush is playing geopolitical game with China as “part of an escalating US strategy of destabilization of China which has been initiated by the Bush Administration over the past months.”

Engdahl describes that Washington is playing the ‘Tibet Roulette’ with China.

As the Chinese government itself was clear to point out, the sudden eruption of anti-Chinese violence in Tibet, a new phase in the movement led by the exiled Dalai Lama, was suspiciously timed to try to put the spotlight on Beijing’s human rights record on the eve of the coming Olympics. The Beijing Olympics are an event seen in China as a major acknowledgement of the arrival of a new prosperous China on the world stage.

The background actors in the Tibet “Crimson revolution” actions confirm that Washington has been working overtime in recent months to prepare another of its infamous Color Revolutions, these fanning public protests designed to inflict maximum embarrassment on Beijing. The actors on the ground in and outside Tibet are the usual suspects, tied to the US State Department, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the CIA’s Freedom House through its chairman, Bette Bao Lord and her role in the International Committee for Tibet, as well as the Trace Foundation financed by the wealth of George Soros through his daughter, Andrea Soros Colombel.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the latest unrest to sabotage the Olympic Games “in order to achieve their unspeakable goal”, Tibetan independence.

Bush telephoned his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao, to pressure for talks between Beijing and the exiled Dalai Lama. The White House said that Bush, “raised his concerns about the situation in Tibet and encouraged the Chinese government to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama’s representatives and to allow access for journalists and diplomats.”

President Hu reportedly told Bush the Dalai Lama must “stop his sabotage” of the Olympics before Beijing takes a decision on talks with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

In fact, a colleague of mine did a research last night and discovered that the lamas who were responsible for stirring up the riots were all of the “Yellow Hats” sect, which is directly under the Dalai Lama. Some “Black Hats” lamas refused to participate were even threatened by their Yellow Hats colleagues.

Engdahl continues to analyze:

The events in Tibet since March 10 have been played in Western media with little regard to accuracy or independent cross-checking. Most of the pictures blown up in European and US newspapers and TV have not even been of Chinese military oppression of Tibetan lamas or monks. They have been shown to be in most cases either Reuters or AFP pictures of Han Chinese being beaten by Tibetan monks in paramilitary organizations. In some instances German TV stations ran video pictures of beatings that were not even from Tibet but rather by Nepalese police in Kathmandu.

The western media complicity simply further underlies that the actions around Tibet are part of a well-orchestrated destabilization effort on the part of Washington. What few people realize is that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was also instrumental, along with Gene Sharp’s misnamed Albert Einstein Institution through Colonel Robert Helvey, in encouraging the student protests at Tiananmen Square in June 1989. The Albert Einstein Institution, as it describes itself, specializes in “nonviolence as a form of warfare.”

Colonel Helvey was formerly with the Defense Intelligence Agency stationed in Myanmar. Helvey trained in Hong Kong the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques which they were to use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989. He is now believed acting as an adviser to the Falun Gong in similar civil disobedience techniques. Helvey nominally retired from the army in 1991, but had been working with the Albert Einstein Institution and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation long before then. In its annual report for 2004 Helvey’s Albert Einstein Institution admitted to advising people in Tibet.

Ultimately, here’s why the US has to destabilize China:

Washington policy has used and refined these techniques of “revolutionary nonviolence,” and NED operations embodied a series of ‘democratic’ or soft coup projects as part of a larger strategy which would seek to cut China off from access to its vital external oil and gas reserves.

The 1970′s quote attributed to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a proponent of British geopolitics in an American context comes to mind: “If you control the oil you control entire nations…”

The destabilization attempt by Washington using Tibet, no doubt with quiet “help” from its friends in British and other US-friendly intelligence services, is part of a clear pattern.

It includes Washington’s “Saffron revolution” attempts to destabilize Myanmar. It includes the ongoing effort to get NATO troops into Darfur to block China’s access to strategically vital oil resources there and elsewhere in Africa. It includes attempts to foment problems in Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and to disrupt China’s vital new energy pipeline projects to Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia just as the encirclement of Russia controls pipeline and other ties between it and western Europe, China, India and the Middle East, where China depends on uninterrupted oil flows from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries.

What is behind the strategy to encircle China? Engdahl says:

In this context, a revealing New York Council on Foreign Relations analysis in their Foreign Affairs magazine from Zbigniew Brzezinski from September/October 1997 is worth quoting. Brzezinski, a protégé of David Rockefeller and a follower of the founder of British geopolitics, Sir Halford Mackinder, is today the foreign policy adviser to Presidential candidate, Barack Obama. In 1997 he revealingly wrote:

‘Eurasia is home to most of the world’s politically assertive and dynamic states. All the historical pretenders to global power originated in Eurasia. The world’s most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or economic challengers to American primacy. After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there, as are all but one of the world’s overt nuclear powers, and all but one of the covert ones. Eurasia accounts for 75% of the world’s population; 60% of its GNP, and 75% of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia’s potential power overshadows even America’s.

‘Eurasia is the world’s axial super-continent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world’s three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy….”.

This statement, written well before the US-led bombing of former Yugoslavia and the US military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, or its support of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, puts Washington pronouncements about ‘ridding the world of tyranny’ and about spreading democracy, into a somewhat different context from the one usually mentioned by George W. Bush of others.

It’s about global hegemony, not democracy. It should be no surprise when powers such as China are not convinced that giving Washington such overwhelming power is in China’s national interest, any more than Russia thinks that it would be a step towards peace to let NATO gobble up Ukraine and Georgia and put US missiles on Russia’s doorstep “to defend against threat of Iranian nuclear attack on the United States.”

The US-led destabilization in Tibet is part of a strategic shift of great significance. It comes at a time when the US economy and the US dollar, still the world’s reserve currency, are in the worst crisis since the 1930′s. It is significant that the US Administration sends Wall Street banker, former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulson to Beijing in the midst of its efforts to embarrass Beijing in Tibet. Washington is literally playing with fire. China long ago surpassed Japan as the world’s largest holder of foreign currency reserves, now in the range of $1.5 trillions, most of which are invested in US Treasury debt instruments. Paulson knows well that were Beijing to decide it could bring the dollar to its knees by selling only a small portion of its US debt on the market.

Copyrights are those of the authors. These paragraphs are posted here only for the readers’ convenience.

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The negative feedback so shocked the BBC that its Asia bureau chief Paul Danahar, who is based in Beijing, felt it necessary to respond to this criticism and explain the BBC’s challenges of reporting in China.

Danahar acknowledged that the BBC’s reporting on Tibet drew much ire from Chinese readers. He defended the BBC by pointing out that it was the first foreign broadcaster to obtain pictures showing the ethnic violence against Han Chinese by Tibetans in Lhasa. He claimed that as a direct result of the BBC’s broadcast of these pictures, the Dalai Lama called for an end to the violence.

Not mentioned in his article is the fact that before the publication of these pictures, the Western media were uniform in their condemnation of Chinese brutality and the crackdown. Even after the pictures’ publication, the West is still critical of China’s handling of the situation in Tibet.

When casualty figures were reported, Chinese official figures were put in juxtaposition with the figures provided by the Tibetan government in exile, always worded in a fashion that suggested the official figures are less trustworthy. What is not clear is that if the Dalai Lama learned of the Tibetan violence against ethnic Chinese only through BBC broadcasts, how was he able to provide any casualty figures?

Our own media are not immune to this bias when it comes to China. Reports of faulty toys, trade imbalance, labour practices, environmental issues, paint China as a hellish place. Reports of economic boom, military build-up and nationalistic sentiments describe China as a menacing superpower soon to challenge the West for a dominant and dominating position in the world.

The result of all this sensationalist, biased reporting is a very badly understood China.

The cover of a recent issue of Maclean’s magazine showed a police officers beating up an escaping Tibetan monk. Splashed across are these words: “Butchers and Monsters,” promoting an article written by John Fraser titled: “The brutality in Tibet is no surprise. Communist China will never change.”

The article was a standard anti-China diatribe. The author is, however, entitled to his opinion. What was disingenuous about the picture is that the policeman in question was not Chinese. In a small caption at the bottom of the picture, the magazine acknowledged that the photo depicted a Nepali police chasing away a Tibetan demonstrator in Katmandu.

China’s population size makes it a formidable economic entity. In reality, China is a poor Third World country just starting out on its road to development. At this beginning stage of development, it encounters much systemic difficulty. Its political system is totalitarian although no longer communist except in name; it lacks a well developed judicial system; there is rampant corruption; labour standards are minimal and recent. These problems need to be acknowledged, criticized and corrected. However, we need to understand that they cannot be corrected overnight.

China’s Tibet policy can be seen only in this context. It is not a perfect policy. It might even be a bad policy. It is however a policy derived from a national objective of economic development. As a nation, China and its people have elected to rid themselves of poverty by embracing market reform. Along with success, however, economic development has also brought an increasing income gap, environmental degradation and rampant corruption. In Tibet, these negative consequences might well have been magnified through the lens of ethnic tension.

Here in the West, we need to recognize that the negative consequences of China’s development need to be solved gradually but persistently through continued dialogue and engagement. Reporting should be balanced rather than sensational.

Ethnic-based riots and violence should be condemned. Dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Beijing should be championed.

Finally, a word on the Olympics and the call for boycott by some in the West. China’s handling of Tibet, though often hamhanded, has basically stayed the same over the last 20 years. It has certainly not worsened since the Olympic committee awarded the Games to Beijing.

Ethnic riots planned by some Tibetans with a certain political objective have been quite effective with the help of sympathetic Western media. However, any boycott of the Games or its opening ceremony will be interpreted by the Chinese people (ordinary people who are understandably proud of their collective achievement) as hypocritical and antagonistic.

A confident, prosperous, and accepted China is more likely to become a liberal democracy than a humiliated, rejected, and paranoid People’s Republic.

By John Chen, associate professor of medicine at McGill University.

More readings:
Western media bias and ‘Tibetan complex’
Global TV fabrication
CTV, TorStar blasted for biased reporting on Tibet issue
We demand honesty from our ‘free’ press: activist
Mainstream media bias against China is live and thriving: US tourist
Biased media reports ‘unite all Chinese’
More on media bias
Evidence of Western media bias

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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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Here’re a few quotes from his articles. Full credit to the author and Journey to the East.

• Somehow the recent opening of the remarkable 1,142-km, 5,000-meter-high railway line into Tibet is also sinful because it opens Tibet to Han Chinese influence. So it would be better to keep Tibetans in backward isolation forever?

• The Han Chinese are supposed to be guilty of creeping genocide in Tibet. But since Beijing allows Tibetans, like other minorities, to have as many children as they want while Han Chinese are restricted to only one child, it seems we need a new definition of genocide.

• China, it seems, is also guilty for failing to protest atrocities the West condemns in Sudan’s Darfur and in Myanmar. Maybe it sees hypocrisy in the way the West not just fails to protest similar atrocities elsewhere, but actually helps to create them, as in Iraq, Somalia or Afghanistan. U.S. free-fire zones in Vietnam forcing villagers to live in underground tunnels for years make Darfur’s Janjaweed killers look like a bunch of amateurs.

• Today few criticize Singapore, or Japan for that matter, both of whom chose one-party autocracy during their early growth periods. China’s blend of local democracy with reasonably responsible collective leadership from the top could well be a model for many other struggling societies.

• Singapore’s continuing one-party rule suggests that even advanced Chinese culture societies could prefer Confucian-style benign autocracy to Western-style democracy. Democracy is supposed to be about freedom of choice. But our moralists complain when a nation makes a choice they do not like.

• China crushed Tibetan independence in 1959? But no one, the previous anticommunist Chinese regime especially, has ever recognized Tibet as independent. And we now know that the CIA and India were deeply involved in fomenting the 1959 uprising that China felt it had to crush.

• True, Chinese leaders have been far from angelic. They have yet to explain their largely unprovoked 1979 attack on Vietnam. Their mishandling of domestic policies led directly to the Tiananmen incident of 1989, and the many other localized riots that continue to occur. But post-Maoist Beijing has been trying hard to reform itself. It deserves more encouragement, less brickbats.

• China is accused of air pollution and gobbling up world energy resources. But when it dams the Yangtse River to produce over 22,000 megawatts of clean energy in an engineering feat that no Western nation can even begin to match, the Western media complain about the unforeseen erosion of mountain slopes upstream forcing villagers to be evacuated.

• So it would have been better not to build the dam, force China to continue to rely on pollution-intense, coal-based energy, and go back to the days when tens of thousands died from flooding in the Yangtse’s heavily populated lower reaches?

• Recent criticisms of China seem aimed to neutralize the kudos Beijing hopes its 2008 Olympics will bring. For some reason the British have long been the most diligent. As proof of Beijing’s continuing authoritarianism the BBC recently went to some lengths to show a young reporter speaking execrable Chinese being refused entry to the closely guarded Chinese leadership housing and office compound in Beijing. Perhaps the guards remembered what happened the last time the British arrived there – the looting of invaluable treasures while crushing the 1900 Boxer Rebellion.

• Coming from the nation that launched the two Opium Wars of the mid-19th century – wars that were to lead directly to many of China’s later troubles, including the loss of Hong Kong – the criticisms seem a bit indulgent.

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I agree that China’s foreign affairs ministry should ask CNN to apologize over a host’s comments calling the Chinese a “bunch of goons and thugs”. They deserve it. Here’s CNN’s statement issued yesterday:

In a statement, CNN said: “It was not Mr. Cafferty’s nor CNN’s intent to cause offence to the Chinese people, and we would apologise to anyone who has interpreted the comments in this way.

In response, China Daily said today: “The statement failed to assuage the feelings of many Chinese netizens, who think the “apology” lacks sincerity.” The article quotes:

Spokesman Liu Jianchao said a statement issued by CNN on Tuesday failed to apologize for Jack Cafferty’s remarks, which “maliciously attacked the Chinese people and seriously violated the professional ethics of journalism”.

“CNN’s ulterior motive in targeting the Chinese government, continuing to mislead public opinion as well as deceiving the Chinese people will never succeed”, Liu said in a written statement.

“Journalists should abide by ethics, and don’t have the privilege to slander or rail at anybody or any government”, Liu said in the statement, noting that CNN’s recent reporting programs completely went against the principles of being objective and balanced – which the network often claimed as its basic standards for news coverage.

I would interpret the use of strong wordings like these are trying to further stir up nationalistic feelings of the Chinese. Chinese netizens are already outraged enough (eg. call to boycott French goods), the government does not need to pour oil onto fire. If nationalistic feelings are unleashed to the extreme it might become too late for the government to harness.

As China obviously has gained over the PR battle on the torch run disruption, it should also bear in mind an old Chinese saying that “the water can float a boat but it can also sink it.”

History tells us when blind, ultra nationalism is manipulated by the ruling powers as a tool to fight foreign invasion or infiltration – no matter in what form – the ultimate sufferers would always be the ruling powers themselves. Remember the Boxer Rebellion and Cultural Revolution in China, Nazism in Germany and ultra patriotism in Japan in the last century?

We should keep a cool head on any discussion, not allowing emotions to blur our eyes, especially when addressing hotly debated issues like Tibet.

As “Anonymous” said in a comment left on my previous post: “Is there a way we can work things out without antagonism?”

I invite your input.

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“We see China in a totally false way, ” Schmidt said in a recent interview with German newspaper Westdeutschland Zeitung.

The former chancellor’s remarks came as major German television channels and newspapers adopted an anti-China tone, even with false pictures and deliberate selection of video grabs.

Western hostility towards China is largely rooted in the strong perception of many westerners that China should develop according to the “democratic mode” represented by the United States or Western European countries, said Schmidt.

“Why should it have to?” he asked.

Schmidt, who has visited China 15 times, said many westerners have no idea about China’s history and culture, or the complicated political and social issues that the country is dealing with, including Tibet.

China is the world’s “historic experiment” and “it has to go its own way,” he said.

“I do not say this,” he added, “to defend the current Chinese communist leaders or to make the political situation (there) look better.”

“There is no judgment in what I have said so far,” said Schmidt.

Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the Research Institute of the German Council on Foreign Relations, said many westerners’ fear of China is largely attributed to their uncertainty about what effect the country’s rapid development may have on the Western world.

“I firmly believe it makes no sense to have fears about China,” said Sandschneider, one of the most prominent China experts in Germany.

China does have social, economic and environmental issues, some of them deeply challenging, he said.

Germany and other nations should stop their interference in China’s affairs as long as what China does is “legitimate,” Sandschneider said on an online chatroom of Germany’s ARD TV.

“It is too cheap at this point to only criticize China instead of raising questions about ourselves, something we must do to deal with global challenges,” he said.

Referring to a potential boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games, Sandschneider said it makes more sense in the long term to engage with China, including on the Olympics, rather than reacting emotionally to what happened in Tibet, which has long been a part of China.

Adrian Geiges, a correspondent for the German weekly Stern, said in a recently published story entitled “Dalai Lama is no innocent angel” that he was “outraged” by the one-sided perception of many Westerners regarding Tibet.

What happened in Tibet, including arson and assaults on innocent civilians, was “racial violence,” which can by no means be justified, said Geiges, who was among the few foreign journalists in Tibet during the violent unrest in March.

“However, many westerners are under the impression that the Chinese attacked the Tibetans,” he said. “Where does this misunderstanding come from?”

One of the reasons, Geiges said, is the idealization of the Dalai Lama and Tibetans, who many westerners believe are innocent and non-violent and should receive sympathy for the alleged human rights violations.

However, the violent and deadly attacks on civilians by the rioters have instead “violated the human rights of the Han Chinese,” said Geiges.

Moreover, Tibet was no paradise under the rule of the Dalai Lama, the German journalist pointed out.

About 95 percent of the Tibetans under the rule of the Dalai Lama were serfs who were not even allowed to learn to read or write, he said.

The Dalai Lama, who has been traveling around the world since going into exile in 1959, has managed to convince many westerners that the Chinese government was responsible for the so-called “cultural genocide” in Tibet, which did not happen.

In this sense, “the Dalai Lama is no innocent angel but a successful diplomat,” Geiges said.

The deliberate distortion of the recent unrest in Tibet by Western media has raised grave concerns abut professional ethics as well as its potential political and social repercussions across the world.

The Chinese public is venting its spleen online over some Western media groups’ inaccurate reports about the Tibet riots.

Various inaccurate photos from Western media claiming to portray the Lhasa riots of March 14 have been collected and uploaded onto the Internet by some Chinese overseas students.

The collection comprises dozens of pictures and footage broadcast by well-known Western media outlets, with netizens highlighting the misleading captions accompanying the images.

The Germany-based RTL TV and N-TV have made corrections on their websites on March 23 and 24 respectively, and also apologized to the public.

The Washington Post published an editor’s note on March 24, saying the caption for an earlier version of a slideshow on the Tibet riot was incorrectly associated with a photo from Nepal where Nepalese uniformed police were dispelling Tibetans. The caption on the new version was corrected.

On www.anti-cnn.com, netizens continue to pressure Western media, including CNN and BBC, to apologize to their Chinese audience.

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————————————————————————-

The Macleans.ca Interview: Susanna Ng

An influential Chinese-Canadian blogger on Olympic protests, media bias and how Tibet has become a fantasy land for Westerners

Ken MacQueen | Apr 14, 2008 | 6:29 pm EST

The Chinese-Canadian community is remarkably unified in condemning the protests that have dogged the Olympic torch run and politicized the Beijing Summer Games, says Vancouver blogger Susanna Ng. Ng is assignment editor for Ming Pao, B.C.’s leading Chinese-language daily newspaper. She also writes a perceptive and provocative English-language blog, Chinese in Vancouver. She spoke with Ken MacQueen, Maclean’s Vancouver bureau chief.

Q: What is your reaction to the Olympic torch run mess?
A: While I’m not completely surprised that protests would go on, the scale and the amount of violence are definitely out of my expectation. It’s ironic to see this same group of people were holding signs that read “Peace in Tibet.”

Q: It’s hypothetical but what do you think would have happened had the Olympic torch gone through Vancouver? Will we see similar problems when the Paralympic torch arrives here?
A: If the torch was to run through Vancouver, I’d bet the majority of Chinese Canadians would be chanting along the route, holding parties. I also expect protests to be staged when the Paralympic torch arrives in Vancouver. But the scale will be much smaller, partly because the protesters by then should realize that their violent actions only backfired, and partly because people tend to be more gentle towards people with disabilities.

Q: How would you characterize the internal Chinese-Canadian debate on the issue of the hijacking of the Olympic agenda?
A: So far I haven’t heard anyone in the Chinese-Canadian community who isn’t angry or at least disgusted by all these violent protests. Even some of my friends who are for an independent Taiwan condemn the protests. One told me that pro-independent Taiwanese want to see a successful Beijing Olympics because that would open China more to the world. Plus, Taiwanese want to see their baseball team win the gold medal in Beijing. Bashing China could make it reverse its track back to more conservative, hard-line policies, which would do no one any good.

Q: Are there differing views among the business community or recent immigrants versus those who arrived before the Hong Kong handover?
A: I think overseas Chinese are pretty united on this issue. If they were so angry about Beijing hosting the Olympics, they should have protested eight years ago before Beijing got the bid. Disrupting athletes’ Olympic dreams is irresponsible and self-serving.

Q: Are the increasingly strident attacks on China causing people to say, enough, already, quit ganging up on China?
A: I was discussing the same topic with a colleague this afternoon, who has always been the progressive type and advocates for the poor. Even he said that the Western media bias against China and the Olympics, and the unfair attack on China and all the recent violent protests have forced him to stand on China’s side this time. Moreover, the Western media has a united stand on portraying the Tibetan rioters as venting their anger after decades of repression by Han Chinese. I wonder if they believe Han civilians are human beings worthy of some respect. Is controlling the riots, which targeted ethnic Chinese a crackdown? Were the rioters, stoning and killing Han Chinese, not violating human rights? Does letting Tibetan rioters kill Han Chinese on the streets show respect for human rights? I deduce that the West just plainly doesn’t believe Han Chinese are humans.

Q: Will the criticism drive China, post-Olympics, to change its international approach, and in what ways?
A: We all know the communists are face-saving animals. While the Western media are criticizing China for not being open enough, China believes it already has opened up a lot. People are freer to move, to express themselves, to invest. More foreign corporations have been allowed to do business in traditionally closed industries such as the financial sector. China sees this openness as gestures of friendship and it expects similar kindness be paid back. The Hu-Wen administration, in insisting on an open path, has resisted a lot of pressures from the ultra-conservatives of the party. When friendly gestures are met with irrational bashing and biases, the progressive sect of the party will find it more difficult to open up the country.

Q: There are a substantial number of pro-China counter protestors at events. Are they getting fair coverage in the media?
A: Nope. But I’m seeing progress lately. I think what pissed many overseas Chinese off is that by showing solidarity with China and the Olympics, they are portrayed as the running dogs of the Chinese government, brainwashed nationalists or even communist agents.

Q: You talk about ‘twisted, biased’ reporting in the Western media. What is the motivation for that?
A: I think it’s a kind of knee-jerk reflex of our unconscious prejudice about China. We have been comfortably used to the belief that China is evil and Tibet is saint. It’s a deep-down, unconscious mindset. The demonization of China is automatic. The Western media is still stuck with the Cold War image of China with its bamboo curtain tightly shut. The Dalai Lama has lived in the outside world for long enough to understand the Western culture and he speaks fluent English. He knows how to impress people and his funny style of saying things is attractive and convincing. On the other hand, the Chinese government has yet to understand the international language of diplomacy. Their choice of words, their sternness in tones and postures and repetitiveness turn Westerners away. We are blinded by our prejudice.

Q: Your blog talks of the shallow or non-existent public knowledge your reporters have found on the issue of Tibet. Is Tibet a bit of a fad?
A: The whole Tibet thing has become a fantasy for many Westerners. It’s a place where people can rest their imagination on in order to divert their attention from their disappointments of the modern life–pollution, corruption, wars. In many minds, Tibet looks exactly like what was portrayed in Hollywood movies. But how much do we really know?

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