This is a post in response of a comment to my previous post Human Right & China. He/She is very sad because he believes the Tibet culture is being destroyed. This post tries to look deeper into the issue and tries to make the following points:
- The Tibet culture could have been hurt, but it is not being intentionally wiped out, far from that;
- Both side must work together constructively to avoid the situation escalating into a self-fulfilling prophecy;
The full rely is posted below. I titled it as “Tibet Culture is not Dying” in the hope that in deed the current crisis can be properly solved.
As always, your feedback is very much appreciated. However don’t be so sad yet. It appears that you have assumed that their culture is or will indeed be completely destroyed, which in my opinion is not the case --- far from that.
Culture and "human rights" are two very different things. While they do sometimes overlap, the two are not equal and definitely does not necessary to have the kind of conflict as you are now seeing in Tibet. Otherwise by the same theory you could predict that the Han Chinese culture is close to extinction as the government does not appear to rule Han any “better”. Han Chinese culture obviously is not going extinction any time soon.
Past Chinese government has indeed tries to destroy cultures when they are viewed as “incompatible” for political and ideology reasons. But that is not the case for the current government. Culture is one of the least concerns for the current Chinese government as long as you do not use it as a way to go against the government. As I have explained in my post, the current Chinese government focuses on economy, any kind of conflict is costly to them and they pretty much do everything they could to avoid it, this even include encouraging you to keep your own culture. You want to worship your own god, fine. Worship in your closet and don’t get your followers together to try to change the government policies in the name of religious freedom. Many temples that have been destroyed during the culture revolution are now even restored or renovated. Their current position is pretty much if you have a way to enjoy yourself without causing trouble for others or the government, go for it, you are happy and I am happy, why not? The tipping point at here is they will have a problem with you when culture/religious leaders become political leaders. It’s the same idea as separating the church and the state in U.S., they however do it more forcefully.
Culture itself became a very complicated issue and often the victim when it is being tied together with human rights and other political issues, and most west people, in my view, blindly falls into this trap. Tibet and Dalai Lama has been a very sensitive point for China. There are deep mistrust between them. When Dalai Lama says: I don’t want independence, I want autonomy. That is being interpreted by the Chinese as: That’s what you say, once you get autonomy, you will keep pushing. And the fact that Dalai Lama worked with CIA for many years during the 60s and 70s trying to organize violent uprising against the Chinese government and he holds an exile government till today makes this even so. Of course, whatever the Chinese says, Dalai Lama won’t believe either as it was indeed the Chinese government that made him go exile. The Chinese would say: fine, keep your culture, just live happily and don’t give me trouble. Dalai Lama would laugh: How can I keep my culture when you are sitting on my land? And that started the question of who is the legitimate government. From that point on, it turns political and goes straight into a dead end. On that regard, the Tibet culture does becomes a card that Dalai Lama plays.
You are absolute right about that the Chinese economy development plan itself doesn’t have to hurt the culture, it should not. More Han Chinese settles in might have a negative impact, but so many people around the world now gets the see Tibet, which was not possible before. This can be a very positive thing for the culture. The Tibet population is much larger than before. They live a much better material life than before. All those help the culture, not destroy it. With all the money that they poured in, when used appropriately, it can help build a neutral beneficial relationship between the Tibetan’s and Hans ---- only if it wasn’t all these activists and Dalai Lama agitating it. Just imagine, if the situation is indeed as horrible as some says, so many people around the world have visited Tibet in recent years and none of them have noticed such a horrible situation that the culture is being wiped out? Why for years there hasn't been tourist who visited Tibet and come back saying "hum..actually there is not much to see there....it appears all wiped out." It only means the situation is not as bad as what those activists described. As you have pointed out, “there is no reason why China's economic development requires it to pull the wings off the butterfly.” There is absolute no reason for that. What would they gain by doing that? Absolutely nothing. It is very well possible that some Tibetan’s interests are being hurt unintentionally, but by pulling the wings to torture the butterfly…for what?
Obviously that’s not to say that the Chinese government is doing great on Tibet --- on the contrary, probably every one will say they are doing horrible. In a way China has enjoyed a Han majority by a large margin (over 90%) that does not result in a lot of ethnic conflicts (think middle east), but that also means the government has much less experience handling such conflict when it occurs --- as it has learned again dearly this time. One thing I do believe they should be doing is to have less Han Chinese going into the region. It’s Tibetan’s home land and it indeed needs to be respected. In the wake of the Tibet unrest, they do need to adjust to better accommodate Tibetan’s spiritual needs in addition to material needs. That should give the Tibetans some real benefits. Of course the larger problem is whether this is enough to calm down the rest of the world. Mostly likely it won’t as long as Tibet is not an independent state. But an independent Tibet state is not something political doable, it would be something like local Indians started to ask the U.S. federal government to “return their land” and “set them free”. So both sides need to compromise some.
In order to have any real progress, both sides need to work constructively. And for that to happen, everybody has to calm down first. They current climate is still far from that, when the whole world has already decided who is “right” and who is “wrong”, putting the “right” and “wrong” on the same table would be just another political show. After quite some political rhetoric at the very beginning, China seems to be doing its best to confine violence these days. Dalai Lama on the other hand is doing his best to continue pressing, in a way that is viewed by many Chinese as attempting “agitating” and “escalating” the situation. It is this very way of dealing with the situation makes him a much resentful figure by most Han Chinese within and outside of China. He is viewed by many Han Chinese by taking advantage of the situation because as soon as anything bad happens, even with the cost of innocent lives, regardless it is Tibetans or Han, it’s always the Chinese to take the blame.
If Dalai Lama and all those activists do get their way, the situation can be very dangerous, both for the Chinese and for the Tibetans and their culture. Putting the Chinese government aside, the simple fact here is the more Dalai Lama and the activist try to push or maneuver, they more resistance and resentment they are going to get from Han Chinese, which happens to be the absolute majority. And they are resented by Han Chinese not because of the Chinese government’s propaganda. Many Chinese aboard, who have been “propaganda free” for years or even decades share the same feelings. This makes it even less political likely for the Chinese government to make any concession. When you consider this and the fact that the Chinese government is not particular good at managing conflict and PR, much uglier things can happen. What Tibetans would gain in that case? Absolutely nothing. For the Chinese? Nightmares. So in a way what Dalai Lama and the west activists are doing now is directing a self-fulfilling prophecy. No need to say it is absolutely important to avoid this from happening.
China is at a very crucial stage of development and it faces many difficulties and challenges that the outside world can not image or understand. In the long run it would benefit everyone involved if people in the west can try to understand their real motivation rather than blindly regard them as pure evil. There are no doubt ugly things, and in fact they are all over, but there are a lot of good inside both the Chinese people and the Chinese leadership, it’s just unfortunately when all these misperception and reality mixes together, it appears as an even uglier picture. The bottom line at here is that the Chinese government is the one that is carrying this enormous weight of feeding their people and the west is not. So whatever breaks there, hundreds of millions of Chinese, and millions of Tibetans are going to suffer. Neither the west nor Dalai Lama bears such a serious consequence when they say “you should do this you should do that”. They say what they want to say, and many of them deep from their heart, but whether it helps is the real big question.