The torture history does reflect a side of Tibetan religious system that is far from the pristine and peaceful image painted in western media. There is a very large percentage of the population (20%?) in Tibet who are monks, and they have to tax the general population heavily to sustain that high number of non-working population. Right now the Chinese government essentially taxes from the non-Tibet region to support the Tibet religious class, basically to appease them in the hope that they’ll be complacent and not care about what Dalai Lama wants them to do. But if this outside support goes away, either someone else has to come in to fill in the financial hole (would the US do this in such a scenario?), or there would be huge tension between the taxing class and the taxed class, and life wouldn’t be good for a long time over there. This is just one of the many realistic problems one has to worry about in a TI scenario if one truly cares about the well-being of our Tibetan friends.

The trick is that as we become older we doubt the efficacity of giving up local pleasures to ensure distant survivals; and we doubt that our government is telling us the truth. If Bush were to say “faith initiative,” I would respond, “bloated church budgets and child-sodomizing priests.” If a government were to tell me, “You’re getting less of something so that someone else can have more,” I’d say, “Prove that they’re getting it and that you’re not pocketing the difference.”

Just a screed to let you know liberalism isn’t dead, but it’s tempered by middle age.

When I visited my sister in India, I think it was in the mid 80’s, she had a great and eclectic collection of books. One book was a picture book that showed illustrations of absolutely horrible tortures carried by Tibetan monks on Tibetan peasants, i.e., skinning them alive etc. I’m not sure who published this book or how it got to India, let alone my sister’s collection. I think it was published in China. Anyway, my reaction when reading it was to feel loathing and disgust for Tibetan monks.

Some years later, I met two people who personally met the Dalai Lama, and told me of their wonderful (to them) religious experiences. I’m not sure where the truth lies. The tortures I saw depicted in the book were so incredibly cruel that it’s hard to imagine any human being carrying them out. I started to wonder if the Tibetan monks were really evil. It’s certainly possible that someone made up this book to further their cause. I wouldn’t put it past the Chinese government. Of course, I wouldn’t put it past the Indian government to do similar things if it suited their purpose, such as the hiding their implicit support for pogroms against sikhs and muslims, and I wouldn’t put it past the US government for whitewashing the genocide of American Indians.

I don’t know what the truth is about Tibet, whether it was liberated or occupied. However, I am certainly learning a lot by reading this post. I had no idea of the sacrifices made by ordinary Chinese for ethnic minorities. That’s way different from India or the USA — I can’t imagine Indians giving up food for Sikhs, Muslims or untouchables, or in the USA people sacrificing anything at all for Blacks, Hispanics, or American Indianans.

I was just re-reading the part of the French scholar’s book in which the author describes the sources she sought and had access to, and what sort of access she was allowed, by both Tibetan and Chinese officials – both sides are somewhat reticent. I thought about you a lot.

I am, alas, not surprised by how much passion people pour into things they know nothing about, and have no stake in; look at (plenty of) Americans on gay marriage, abortion, etc. In fact, they seem to get more impassioned about evils presented to their imaginations than to the evidence of their senses. Why get worried about Tibetan rights when you can see the crumbling schools in your own neighborhood? (But I will refrain from launching into my usual school-based diatribe.)

What I’m really astonished about is the sheer amount of rudeness that people are willing to point at their friends and acquaintances. I am so sorry. It is NOT meant to further discussion, but to quash it. Thanks, Rush Limbaugh.

Unfortunately, it looks as though xgz has an excellent point – NOBODY trusts the Chinese gov’t to do the right thing, even when they’re trying hard – and how do you overcome that? How can the U.S. gov’t overcome that kind of perception that we’ve also been cultivating during the GWB years? Very hard to fix this.

Unfortunately, in a perverse way, because of Chinese people’s general mistrust of the government, the act of banning the book was perceived by the population that the book was telling the truth about the Tibetan culture, even though they didn’t even read the book. The author thus established his standing in the literacy circle and eventually immigrated to the West. He now lives in London.

Here are a couple reviews of the English translation of the book:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/stick-out-your-tongue-by-ma-jian-trans-flora-drew-522165.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/04/AR2006050401654.html

This is reflected in my personal experience, too, while talking to my western friends about Tibet related issues. There are two typical reactions I get in these conversations. If I appeal to facts/reason, the response I get is usually “well you have been brainwashed, therefore your facts are automatically wrong, and your reasoning is just the communist ruler’s reasoning. QED.” To me, it’s an amazing display of intellectual laziness, but you can see the futility of continuing to say anything after such an assertion, especially if I don’t want to lose a friendship. If I appeal to personal experience and emotional connection, basically saying “we ARE the same people, we have always been, and we get along and care for each other, and we (especially Tibetans) are better off together than divorced”, then I usually get something like “well that’s all fine, and I’m sure you mean well, but you have no right to care, since Tibet is another country! Even if they want to go away and die alone, it’s none of your business” Again, a response aimed to shut off the communication.

Your response is very very polite. Some of my other western friends can get quite rude on this issue, and I’m tired of losing friendship over something that I don’t even have any control over. It took me a long time to respond this time, since it’s a friendship I really do care about. It’s certainly not because of a habitual tendency to not communicate! I sympathize with the Chinese government’s silence treatment, since anything they say/publish would be given treatment #1 above, so it wouldn’t do anyone any good. I think they are actually careful about this because they don’t want facts to be labeled “propaganda” just because they said it, so they choose not to say it. It’s much easier to get the facts through if a western person discovers them and writes about them.

There is a Chinese guy who wrote a good book on the very complex issue of Tibet. The name of the book is Sky Burial by Wang Lixiong (< 天葬>王力雄)(http://gangjanba.googlepages.com/tianzang1). It is a recommended reading by pro-Tibetan-independence people (the link goes to a pro-TI website), so one cannot accuse him of being a propaganda tool of Chinese government. Reading this book would help my western friends understand the issue, and not have a knee-jerk reaction of “Propaganda! Free Tibet!” whenever the issue comes up. But very few of my western friends actually go read up on these things, or search for more info (not even on the pro-TI websites), even as they are passionately accusing me of various offenses just for saying I don’t agree with TI movement. It’s amazing to me how much righteous passion people can display over something they have so little knowledge, so little stake, and for which they have suffered so little inconvenience on.

The food rationing policy during my childhood was for all ethnic minorities, not just for Tibetans. We all learned that there were 56 ethnic groups in China, and we sang about it, and so on. The minority families got almost twice as much meat and egg allowance as the Han families. It wasn’t a big deal anymore after Deng Xiaoping took power, as the economy improved and food wasn’t nearly as scarce. Kids 4-5 years younger than me wouldn’t have remembered the rationing years.

Thanks for the discussions. I usually don’t get to say this much before i get the “brainwashed!” treatment.

Hey, I don’t know any Tibetans, either. Nor did I know about 70s sharing of food between people in China and Tibet. I asked my badminton partner, who was brought up in Harbin and is a few years younger than Mei, if she’d been brought up encouraged to love and share with her Tibetan fellows and she said no. All she knew was that her brother reported (ten years ago) that Tibetan students in Beijing seemed very wealthy – he figured this because they flew home every holiday break, instead of staying in China or taking the train. All most westerners know is what they see on TV (or the movie “Kundun,” which doesn’t do the Chinese any favors), or what they read about/by the Dalai Lama. Pretty one-sided, and of course not presented by either native Tibetans or Chinese.

So, as happens so very often when I’m making a fool of myself in Chinese cultural matters, I need some (lots of) context and explanation. It doesn’t help when you hear reports of deaths in Tibet, then a news blackout by Chinese authorities. This is the same knee-jerk reaction that the folks in Beijing resort to too often, (cf. Tianamen Square), with a usual litany of “stop interfering in our internal affairs.”* In a world dominated by news satellites and the internet, wouldn’t it be smarter to come out and try to EDUCATE the ignorant westerners? It would be a change, at any rate, and perhaps make some progress towards international understanding. If wise and loving people like Mei can be so upset by their friends’ uninformed (but not intentionally malicious) casual remarks that they can’t communicate with them, correct or inform them, just imagine what happens at national levels. Something is going to fill the news void – could be a good idea if the officials in Beijing took the initiative and did some pro-active responsible reporting.

As it happens, I’m currently editing a book by a French scholar who spent about 14 years interviewing Chinese and Tibetans about the Ninth Panchen Lama, the guy who after a disagreement over taxes with the 13th Dalai Lama (the previous one; the current one is #14), fled to Mongolia, then China and lived there for the remainder of his life. And after reading through the manuscript I finally understand why China has some very valid claims to Tibetan territory, just how feudal and primitive political and economic life was under the Lamas, and why that old way of life had to come to an end. Really! China looks pretty good, now that I know some of the context!

But who produced that context? Was it some forward-looking soul in the PRC’s propaganda wing? Heck no, it’s a French scholar who learned both Chinese and Tibetan to try to figure out what was going on. It would be wonderful if we could see trustworthy histories of China, written by Chinese, translated into English and aimed at well-meaning nonspecialists.

*I know that China’s not the only country to have killed its own student protesters; the U.S. did that in 1968 at Kent State University in Ohio. The difference I’m trying to get at here is the attitude to the public (domestic and foreign)’s right to know. If you try to shut down all news reports, you look like a despotic regime – that’s what Myanmar and North Korea do. If you want to look credible and concerned, you field your own reporters and investigators, knowing that it’s unlikely that the truth will remain buried forever, and wanting to get your story out there to compete with the one-sided version that the “Free Tibet” people are undoubtedly going to put out. You do a proper investigative series, with backgrounds on the situation, budget figures, and credible mortality rates; you prove your opponents wrong with logic and evidence, and intelligent presentation. You engage the opposition. Either that or you work like mad on the Great Firewall of China, now and forever.