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DarkCrawler posted:I've just never understood why the PRC has such a problem with independent Taiwan, as in the state being called "Taiwan" without "China" written anywhere in the laws or the constitution or the declaration of independence or whatever. If they have a hard-on for "One China", then let them have exactly that? I just find it ridicolous that we have this developed, populated and rich first world state that nobody recognizes officially. Part of the problem is that the Communist Party has staked a lot of its legitimacy on 'reunifying the motherland' and bringing 'China' back together, and Taiwan is the last major bit that they haven't fulfilled. Note that they still maintain claims to areas like NEFA in India that have never been administered directly by Beijing, just because of claims based on Qing-era treaties between China and its suzerain states. There's also a lot of value to be had in keeping Taiwan as something to rile up mainlanders. Given that they can blame Taiwans current status on both of the usual suspects- Japan and the USA- while gradually deemphasizing the role of the KMT, it works as one huge thing to unite all the things that get people riled up and nationalistic. Of course, theres definitely a bit of blowback now, because decades of using Taiwan to get people riled up has produced a populace that is easily riled up in regards to Taiwan, and might get legitimately pissed if Beijing did the reasonable thing and took steps to deescalate the situation and maybe bring about peace between China and Taiwan.
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Feb 15, 2012 22:32
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Claverjoe posted:The general impression I have is that instead of papering over the huge wealth inequality that we do here in the U.S.A, China is going on a building/investment spree and forcing loans from the national banks to make it happen. When it all crashes, I suppose that China will have some infrastructure for people to hop into and make use out of it, while the credit system unfucks itself. For a lot of this infrastructure they may as well be building pyramids, though- full-size airports in tiny rural districts, cities in the middle of nowhere, development districts running at like 1% capacity. I don't know if it'll be as apocalyptic as some people are saying, but anyone who thinks China is just gonna coast through the end of the bubble is... really optimistic, to say the least.
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Feb 17, 2012 04:06
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Hong XiuQuan posted:You've posted a video from the province during the riots. That's a video from a few days ago, not 2008. Right now most of Kardze and Ngaba prefectures are under de facto martial law, and areas like Ngaba town have been for months. And yeah, there are far more insidious things happening than the overt military presence, but abusive militarized police deployments have been heightening tensions everywhere they go recently. The han chauvinism of the military and your average PAP member means they treat locals like poo poo, and that has a huge effect on whether or not these conflicts escalate. Electro-Boogie Jack fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Feb 18, 2012 |
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Feb 18, 2012 01:30
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french lies posted:Do you think democracy is feasible in China, considering the scope and size of the country? Yes? Obviously a democratic system would need to be tailored to China, but the idea of some one-size-fits-all 'western' democratic system is already a strawman employed by the CCP. Of course it's going to be different in China- China itself is ringed by Asian democracies employing vastly different designs. The suzhi argument is one step removed from outright racism, at the very most. Honestly, the idea that Chinese people are somehow inherently unable to deal with democracy, due to some unspecified mix of nature and race and culture, would sound racist as hell coming from a foreigner... for good reason! edit: crap, hadnt refreshed this page since this morning as it turns out.
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Feb 21, 2012 23:51
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BrotherAdso posted:Why dismiss the whole thing out of hand as an unproductive argument? Because suzhi arguments are racist nonsense. If you want to talk about different conceptions of the self in relation to society or how 'western' democracy would work in China, then talk about that! Suzhi sounds a lot like American Civil War era slavery advocates saying that 'negroes are naturally developed for the position of slave, and are unable to hold any higher station in life.' It isn't being used as an opening to discussions of what Chinese democracy would look like, but rather as a rejection of the idea that Chinese are capable anything other than paternal, authoritarian government- an idea that has already been well refuted and shouldn't need consideration to begin with.
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Feb 22, 2012 05:13
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Barto posted:It's a question of background, social norms, and economic factors None of these factors are unique to China. The particular combination of them might be, but every country on earth is different, so why is it that we hear suzhi in relation to China? Over time suzhi arguments get vaguer and vaguer until eventually it's just 'yeah, Chinese people, they just can't deal.' I'd call that racism, but like Cream_Filling said, it's pretty undeniably classism. Is China the only country on earth with some uneducated people in the countryside? Is China the only country with some people that act like assholes? No? Then lets drop suzhi and actually discuss whatever it is people want to use suzhi as a proxy for. I'd put in that all the talk about democracy would be sidelined if the Communist Party would just embrace the rule of law. China would be a radically different country if it was run according to the laws that are already on the books, instead of by a party obsessed with control over everything else.
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Feb 22, 2012 17:19
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Barto posted:Look, man, I addressed all your points in my post. You can't just snip one sentence and repeat what you already said. It seemed to me that the center of your argument is that suzhi isn't racist, but instead predicated on backgrounds, social norms, and economic factors- am I wrong? That's why I quoted that part. Barto posted:Of course it's a classist argument, it's one class of people (city dwellers) vs. another (rural inhabitants): that is by definition a question of class. But they are the SAME people. As soon as a rural person is urbanized they stand on the other side of the argument and are accepted there: how could that even possibly be racism? Great job explaining why it's classism I guess? Race comes into it when suzhi arguments start to fray and people start getting really non-specific about why the suzhi of Chinese people isn't up to par- and actually come to think of it, I don't think the suzhi of Chinese people from the countryside is always even mentioned, rather than the suzhi of Chinese people as a whole. Either way if you really aren't seeing it then lets drop the racism and just address it as classist nonsense, ok?  Barto posted:Is it some kind of hosed up white guilt thing you're injecting into this because we're talking about this in English? This has nothing to do with colonialism, imperialism, or white people- don't think you're the center of the world. Haha, what is this? Has anyone 'injected' anything like that? I don't think you're normally supposed to build strawmen and knock them down quite so obviously. Barto posted:The problem exists, it's a problem involving two groups of Chinese people (of not different races), and pretending "these obstacles to democracy are just racist excuses" (???) is not only delusional, it is wrong. See here we're getting real vague again. The problem exists? What is the problem? Is it a background problem, a socio-economic problem, something else? If so, we should talk about it in those terms. I'm pretty sure the reason we aren't talking about it in those terms is because then it would be debunked, so instead the discussion is centered around suzhi. Also I'm pretty sure that quote isn't mine, so (???) right back at ya bud. Barto posted:Here is how you could frame your argument reasonably: That post would be truly exquisite! Barto posted:Each person making their individual argument will imbue this sort of word with their own viewpoint- so it's rather pointless to address the entire concept as a whole, because the word is a sum of arguments and viewpoints, and just how we are to discuss it depends on whose utterance of it we are talking about. This might be a difficult conversation to have here- but what I want to point out is that there's a very real danger of super-simplification of the idea and the arguments surrounding it to the point that its real position in Chinese discourse is misunderstood. This is a part of why I don't like suzhi! In my experience it is either a deliberately vague pile of concepts (many of which are quite insulting to Chinese people!), or you finally manage to untangle it and you end up with arguments that don't stand up on their own. Barto posted:But in this case, what the CCP means by it is They have a point, but not a very good one IMO. I guess that's where the CCP and I differ. I don't think suzhi is ever a very satisfying argument, and given the sources that employ it either directly or in coded language (CCP-controlled media outlets and 'anti-western' academics) I suspect it is that way by design.
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Feb 22, 2012 21:22
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Farecoal posted:Notice his large red custom title. Pro-PRC Laowai as his username really should have told you all you need to know. The dude personally is really cool and will tell you all you need to know about the realities of living in China as a foreigner... but politically he takes all of his cues from the shittiest parts of Chinese politics. Harmful rumors are a larger problem than a government stranglehold on information, the CIA is the main reason Tibet isn't a harmonious part of the motherland, etc. mei banfa.
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Mar 17, 2012 01:30
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I saw "we want to eat" written on banners at a (much smaller) protest in Wuhan last fall. Oh and "the subway is a monster." Nice slogans.
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Apr 11, 2012 20:17
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Ervin K posted:How big is social unrest against the government in China? I've seen many news stories of massive protests at various factories across the country, but I also hear about major political apathy amongst most civilians. How much of a grip does the government have? That's kind of a big question. Beijing likes to use the lack of a unified anti-government movement as proof that Chinese are extremely happy with the way things are going, but given how much time, money, and effort they have to use to prevent anything like that from coalescing, that doesn't really seem like valid evidence. People are also very much aware that the cost of dissidence is really high, and there are (fairly successful) mechanisms in place to keep people angry at local politicians instead of the national-level structures that are responsible for the way the game is played in China. "But you see it's those bad guys at the local level" doesn't really make much sense as an excuse when Beijing reserves ultimate power for itself only. CCP apologists still try it, with one hilarious example recently being claims that Chen Guangcheng is a victim of local politics that Beijing couldn't possibly do anything about. Apathy is certainly a real thing, although talking to a ton of random young people in China started to disabuse me of that- for anyone who truly didn't seem to care about politics, there were others who did want some kind of change but just didn't have any kind of forum for discussion or avenue for action. I guess it's just really hard to tell in an authoritarian country that goes to such great lengths to manufacture political consent and inaction. Even in the major factory protests you referred to, or things like the Wukan Uprising last year, people tend to appeal to the Communist Party to set things straight- although how much of that is from a genuine belief that the emperors in Beijing are really unaware of their plight and how much is from an understanding that you have to phrase your request that way if you want to make it out of a protest alive is a mystery, I think. Certainly netizens seem to be increasingly aware that Beijing knows and either doesn't give a gently caress or actively approves and supports local governments, but whether that correlates with a change in the rest of the population is a question whose answer I don't know.
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Apr 13, 2012 21:10
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whatever7 posted:
The dude has been imprisoned for years and been under illegal house arrest for a year and a half, his case has almost certainly been raised with people from Beijing multiple times and he's been in the news frequently over the last few years. Beijing has had plenty of opportunities to do something about CGC and they chose not to do anything, this isn't some thing where local offices hosed it up and Beijing was caught by surprise- I mean Christian Bale getting manhandled last year made international news for shits sake, and they did exactly nothing afterwards. Sure, the local guys are the active antagonists here, but they're playing by rules written and signed off on in Beijing, because this is the way Beijing wants the game to be played.
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Apr 29, 2012 21:14
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Fangz posted:I cannot believe the CCP would so openly ask a foreign government to relay such a flagrantly illegal and atrocious threat. My guess is that there has been a failure of communication - someone's speculation got misinterpreted as a message, perhaps. They seem to have told the US that Chen's family was going to be returned to Shandong, which Chen and company interpreted as a threat- and given how long Beijing allowed Chen and his family to be abused in Shandong and exactly how much egg is currently on the Shandong and Linyi governments faces, that's probably a pretty accurate interpretation.
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May 2, 2012 20:07
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Vladimir Putin posted:He had to have known that his family was in jeopardy even if somebody did not explicitly spell it out for him. Right, and Chen Kegui is already in a lot of trouble for fighting back when thugs stormed the house after they realized Guangcheng had escaped- but essentially being told that he better get away from American officials or his family would be sent back to Shandong is about as open of a threat as you're going to get.
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May 2, 2012 21:12
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Vladimir Putin posted:If Chen is unhappy with the outcome, then I can only say that he had a poorly thought out plan. Before he even set foot into the US embassy he had to have known that if he was given asylum to America, he would have to say goodbye to his family forever, and they might have been harmed. Poorly thought out, perhaps, although after a few years in the hole and no prospect for anything beyond random beatings and continued 'house arrest' stretching on into the future I don't know if the alternative really seemed much worse. He seems to have thought that calling on the central government to honor the 'bad local governments' fiction and bring an end to the immediate ordeal would work, but Beijing may not be able to rebuke the local government in this case without making other local governments worry about whether or not Beijing will support them in similar cases in the future, and thus potentially destroy their entire model of outsourcing shittiness to local govs. Going back to what Whatever7 said last page, if the local gov did indeed poo poo the bed it was just by allowing him to escape, and thereby creating a situation where Beijing has to visibly make a decision on a case like this. If nothing else that plan was doomed to fail because he was going to get in trouble wherever he goes- you can't press the communist party to follow the rule of law without having them come to destroy you, and that won't change whether you're in Shandong or Beijing or fuckin' Xinjiang. If he can get Beijing to allow him to leave for America under 'medical release' rules he could potentially get them to allow his immediate family to leave too, or at least move them to another city where the local gov wouldn't be quite as vengeful. Leaving the embassy was a mistake if he wants them all to leave China together, though, because getting back now will probably be extremely tough.
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May 2, 2012 21:51
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Fangz posted:50 cent etc do exist, true, but there's an irritating tendency to just dismiss anyone saying anything sufficiently opposed to whatever a particular person believes as paid propaganda. That could be, although 50 centers reuse the same narratives, spin, and phrases to the point where if you start using them your posts become practically indistinguishable from them. PPL's post up there was a great example, with the usual victim-blaming, blanket dismissal of pro-reformists/dissidents/lawyers as American pawns, invocation of the CIA, "interference in domestic issues." Presumably PPL actually believes this stuff and isn't typing it up on the SA forums in exchange for money, but if he actually was would the post have been any different? Yeah, doesn't really help to call anyone wumaodang, but if you start using their content and style sheet for your posts it just might happen.
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May 3, 2012 15:46
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It sounds like it wasn't a literal threat like that- just a statement that they would be forced to return to Shandong, which just happens to be the place where they've endured extra-legal house arrest and severe beatings for the last two years. Someone from Linyi might have threatened to beat her to death, but that isn't exactly the same as Zhou Yongkang leaning over and whispering that in his ear or something. Still ludicrously lovely, but you know... How can someone defend that? Well you see he had it coming and therefore by proxy so did she, NED CIA CNN RFA etc, gross interference in Chinese affairs, *voice gets less and less distinct and eventually fades away*
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May 3, 2012 16:37
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BrotherAdso posted:Obviously they could take a hard line, but even then, the US did basically turn Chen back over to them, after doing their duty and giving him shelter for a few days, so they can only accuse the US of a limited amount of meddling. Also, Chinese domestic politics are such a shitstorm right now that they have to tread carefully in deciding what narrative to use with this thing. I don't know, when you have as close to a monopoly on information as you can have short of going full North Korea, and a sizable group of hardcore nationalists who will start repeating whatever you say, you really don't have to limit how much meddling you accuse the US of having done. Some netizens might grumble about how you're overstating the case, but this is the same China that just compared the Dalai Lama to Hitler- reality doesn't really have much relation to what you're going to hear on Xinhua. And current domestic politics might make it worse if one group or another is afraid of being outflanked from the left and feels like going hard at America for interference is a known crowd-pleaser. Osheaman posted:The sizeable domestic problems aside, could a perceived loss of global Chinese clout affect things like Taiwan's gradual integration with the mainland or drag up issues like Tibet? Nah? I mean unless there's a serious economic meltdown the conditions will probably remain the same- Taiwan getting closer to China in some ways but farther in others, and other countries judging that even a weakened China has more to offer them than whatever limited returns they would get from championing Tibet.
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May 3, 2012 23:42
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dj_clawson posted:Nepalese, and it has to do with Nepal's deteriorating relationship with the West and its increasing relationship with China, post-Maoist revolution. The Nepalese kingship had a very pro-Tibetan stance. Not in military action, but they made special allowances, particularly in the 1960's, for Tibetans fleeing Tibet, to either stay there or to go on to India. When the king was deposed and the Maoists, who are anti-religious in a pretty devoutly religious Hindu/Buddhist country, came to power, China essentially said, "Don't let Tibetans flee into your country, and if they get there, hand them back to us." And Nepal said, "OK." This is pretty much right, although allowing Chushi Gangdruk to operate out of Lo-Monthang for a few decades is pretty relevant to this discussion. Obviously Nepalese politics have changed and the Chinese grip on Tibet has gotten a lot stronger than it was back in the 1960's, though, so chances for a Tibetan insurgency from Nepal are at pretty much 0% now. Oh, IIRC India has/used to have a few units of ethnically Tibetan troops that were pretty obviously kept trained and armed with the idea that they would go behind Chinese lines in the case of another sino-indian fight and work with Tibetans there to mess with China, although I'm not sure if these even exist anymore. edit: Also, as for Nepal actually returning escaped Tibetans, cases of refoulement are actually still pretty rare, although coordination between Chinese border police and Nepalese police has made it a lot harder for Tibetans to leave over the last few years. The number of Tibetans successfully making it out every year has gone from a few thousand to a few hundred, despite general unhappiness with Chinese rule being as high as it's ever been among Tibetans. Electro-Boogie Jack fucked around with this message at 19:04 on May 6, 2012 |
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May 6, 2012 19:00
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Ronald Spiers posted:I love that argument. Might as well say a quarter of the world should belong to Mongolia. Yeah, apparently Chinese people don't find the "China is and always has been an inseparable part of the Mongolian Empire" argument very funny. You could always spice it up by claiming that Chinese people firmly support Ulaan Baatar and reject the splittist local government in Beijing, but it still might not fly.
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May 9, 2012 03:46
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:
As someone who isn't even in the country at the moment I'm kinda worried about whether or not that's true, though- soooooo much potential for abuse if you're essentially telling different police and management authorities that they can run wild on foreigners, especially in the midst of so much anti-foreigner baiting. Fenqing barely need a reason to blow a gasket as is, if they have public figures openly calling for a cleanup of 'foreign scum' and consequences for people who criticize China then it may not even just be police that you need to worry about. Maybe it'll all blow over, but it'd suck to have that edgy violence that a bunch of us saw during Chinese New Year become a thing more than once a year.
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May 20, 2012 18:09
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Modus Operandi posted:This sort of situation seems inevitable when you have a stream of 20 something white westerners partying it up like China is Ibiza which is followed up by an even worse crowd of 30-50ish y.o. expat men creating a pub culture. The locals eventually get fed up. Yeah, I could see that in some cases, although I feel like the foreigner party crowd isn't something that the vast majority of Chinese have any contact with. The people I've met who were angriest about foreigners tended not to be hanging out in foreign bars, but rather just ultra-nationalists who had spent a little bit too much time reading Century of Humiliation nationalism porn or browsing Anti-CNN with their pants around their ankles. If foreigners are vandalizing stuff or causing fights that's fair game, but laowai-related problems seem like they're pretty rare in the vast scheme of things in China. Then again, I've never spent much time in Beijing. I assume drug trade is still mostly handled by Chinese there, not actually by Africans or whatever I heard a few people saying?
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May 20, 2012 19:16
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Speaking of China Daily Show, their latest on the foreigner crackdown:quote:
Staring at papers for a long time before announcing that there's some huge problem, if you haven't gotten through a few of those then you haven't really been in China.
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May 23, 2012 17:50
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Oh crap, wrote up a megapost. WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH TIBET? THE POST Tibet is probably one of the topics that people get most worked up about in regards to China. From Tibetan exiles protesting at Chinese embassies across the world to the Chinese nationals coming out to protest them in turn, we’re left with irreconcilably different takes on the situation. Foreigners tend to support the Tibetan cause, although there’s also a strain of ‘but you see, the Uyghur have it much worse and by the way, did you hear Tibetans sometimes exaggerate the number of kills China has racked up in Tibet?’ thought among some China watchers. The truth might technically lie somewhere in the middle between Hu Jintao and Richard Gere, but in the end I don’t think you can reasonably dispute that the truth is far closer to the Tibetan side than to Xinhua. In this post I would like to explain what the fuss is all about. To do that we need to start somewhere, so let’s take a look at exactly what Tibet is.  WHAT IS TIBET? If you look at a Chinese map today, you’ll see a large province in the southwest labeled ‘Tibet,’ or Xizang in pinyin. Right from the start we’ve hit a snag, though, because this term doesn’t line up at all with any word in Tibetan. Tibetans (bodpa) come from Tibet (bod), which is a far larger entity than what exists today in China. Sometimes people will fall back and refer to Xizang province as ‘central Tibet,’ but even this is really inaccurate! Xizang today is a weird Frankenstein province stitched together with random pieces of Tibet: U-Tsang, Ngari, and a sizeable chunk of Kham. Tibetan doesn’t even have a word for this amalgamation, or at least it didn’t until China foisted one upon it. The piece of Kham in Xizang is particularly indicative of how much Xizang is a weird fiction of a province- if Xizang is central Tibet, why are there Khampas in it? And if part of Kham is also Tibet, then why is the rest of Kham divided into prefectures in Sichuan, Qinghai, and Yunnan provinces? The reality is that Xizang today is more or less modeled on the areas of Tibet directly administered by the Ganden Phodrang dynasty at the time of the Chinese annexation. Their reluctance to acknowledge even the existence of the previous Tibetan government frequently leaves Beijing unable to come up with a good reason for why Tibet is divided like that today. The rest of Tibet, which was ruled by a mixture of monastic institutions, local monarchies, nomadic clans, and (especially around the edges) Chinese or Hui warlords, was split into the surrounding provinces in a way that seems to violate Chinese laws forbidding the unnecessary division of ethnic minorities. IS IT TRUE THAT THE TIBETAN EXILES CLAIM HUGE CHUNKS OF CHINA AS THEIR TERRITORY? Not really! This is a misunderstanding that Beijing has worked hard to promote, but one glance at a Chinese map dispels it. Go ahead, check it out: starting from Xizang province we have an unbroken contiguous territory of Tibetan autonomous prefectures stretching through Qinghai, southern Gansu, western Sichuan, and northwestern Yunnan. If you line up the areas claimed by Tibetans with the areas designated ‘Tibetan Autonomous’ by Beijing, you’ll see that they are almost identical. Is Beijing itself promoting separatism these days?! The gap between Xizang and Tibet has been the largest sticking point in the negotiations between the Dalai Lama and Beijing, with Beijing claiming that the Dalai Lama has no authority to talk about anything, and especially not the areas outside of Xizang. Again this is another point where they get weirdly roundabout, because explaining why Tibetan areas outside of Tibet aren’t his domain would involve admitting that Ganden Phodrang existed, so this is the point where they tend to start mumbling and looking for exits. Does the Dalai Lama really have the authority to negotiate over an area larger than Xizang? I would say that Tibetans in Amdo and Kham have made it very clear that the answer to that is yes, but they’ve been systematically denied a voice by China so I guess you could theorize that Amdowas and Khampas don’t actually want to be part of a Tibetan state and I wouldn’t technically be able to prove you wrong. Do note that waving the Tibetan national flag is a big part of protests anywhere in Tibet, not just in Xizang, and that Tibetan nationalism has been growing in all parts of Tibet- not just the parts boxed off by China as “Tibet.” WHEN DID THIS WHOLE THING START? Hard to say! In brief, we can say that China and Tibet have disagreed about how their relationship works for centuries. Chinese emperors have tended to view Tibet as part of their territory but been unable to project force there for extended periods of time, while successive Tibetan rulers have struggled to take advantage of Chinese military strength while also studiously avoiding any implication that Tibet is somehow subordinate to China. This reached a head in 1913, when the 13th Dalai Lama wrote a declaration clarifying Tibet’s position on its relationship with China- namely that of patron-priest, and even that relationship was cancelled due to what the Tibetans viewed as abuses on China’s part (armed incursions, half-hearted attempts to annex Tibet, etc). In 1913 China was obviously in no state to take on challenges like that, and this document has been considered the Tibetan Declaration of Independence by Tibetans. After the conclusion of the Chinese civil war things changed considerably, with the PLA peacefully liberating the poo poo out of most of Amdo and Kham. After defeating the Tibetan army at Chamdo things slowed down, though, while the Chinese negotiated with the 14th Dalai Lama. This pause gave rise to the current Chinese map of Tibet, with the northern and eastern parts of Tibet being integrated into Chinese provinces while soon-to-be Xizang cooled its heels. The 17 Point Agreement made a bunch of promises Mao never intended to keep, and over the years the situation in Amdo and Kham deteriorated while it became more and more clear to the Tibetan government that China was not going to fulfill their promises of sharing power in Tibet. In 1959 Tibet finally exploded, with the Tibetan Uprising in Lhasa and the unified anti-Chinese uprisings in Amdo and Kham leading to harsh reprisals from the PLA and the flight of the Dalai Lama. THIS IS ANCIENT HISTORY! WHAT ARE TIBETANS COMPLAINING ABOUT THESE DAYS? In my experience different sectors of Tibetan society have vastly different complaints, although a few extend broadly between different classes, regions, and occupations. Some of the biggest problems include: -Resettling Nomads The eventual end of nomad life is probably largely inevitable, if the last few thousand years have taught us anything. There’s a reason it’s come to a stop across most of the planet, and why such an end is probably in the cards for Tibet as well. That said, Beijing and the various provincial/prefectural governments have been making an enormous hash out of it, because improving the lifestyle of the people themselves isn’t really their ultimate goal. Other than a handful of successful programs in which houses are built near winter pastures and roads are built to connect grasslands to the stores, schools, and hospitals in towns, the nomad resettlement experience has been a nightmare for Tibetans. Take a trip through the remote parts of Qinghai to see what they’re complaining about : ghettoes, little box houses clustered together in the absolute middle of nowhere. No place to work, no chance to improve your livelihood, no hopes for your children beyond living in a tiny joke of a house. There are many reports of nomads being forced to sell their herds and then being forcibly resettled, and given that many of these families were formerly able to make much more money than the stipend given to them by the government (and were able to provide many of their daily needs from their herd, at that), it shouldn’t be surprising that we’ve seen nomads and formerly nomadic regions at the forefront of recent protests against Chinese rule. Meanwhile grasslands which were cleared in the name of ‘environmental protection’ are being mined for gold and metals, which clearly does far more damage to the land than yak grazing did. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on whether or not removing the herds would even theoretically improve the grasslands because of the importance of grazing to many of the plants and animals on the plateau. -Tibetan Language Right now the oldest generation of Tibetans can still remember a time when Tibetan was the lingua franca of Tibet. No more. The political and ethnic dominance of Han Chinese has also brought the dominance of Hanyu, which is far more important of a language even in Lhasa itself now. Tibetans are angry that this is happening in spite of promises made to them over and over again during the last few decades and in spite of ethnic autonomy laws that were supposed to uphold Tibetan as the ‘national’ language in Tibetan areas. Communist Party officials might congratulate themselves for protecting Tibetan, and big red signs might praise the Party for nurturing the language, but it’s clear to everyone on the ground that Tibetan is being eroded as Han immigration, education policies, and attacks on pro-Tibetan language organizations continue to take their toll. This is one that I’ve heard from almost every Tibetan I’ve ever met. Even my Tibetan tutor last year, a student at a Nationalities University, who never brought up politics, brought this one up. He was angry about seeing Tibetans unable to say basic things in their own language, and the slow creep of Mandarin place names supplanting the Tibetan names that have been used for generations. When Tibetan textbooks were replaced by Mandarin ones in one part of Qinghai last year the students tore the books up and threw them out. The Lhakar movement calls on Tibetans to speak pure Tibetan at least one day a week. If there’s any upside it’s that Tibetans seem increasingly aware of the value of their language to their identity as Tibetans, and of the different means China uses to try and erase Tibetan. -Religion The recent decades have brought a religious revival in China, although Buddhist and Daoist institutes in China proper remain mostly gutted- perhaps rebuilt as money-makers and tourists traps, but very rarely revived as actual places of religious thought and activity. This seems pretty much ideal for Beijing, because the Communist Party isn’t very big on the idea of anyone replacing them at the center of the Chinese altar. Drawing tourists is one thing, but potentially having another source of authority outside of the Party isn’t considered acceptable (see FLG and house churches, for example). This is the problem for Chinese authorities, because Tibetan monastic institutions have managed to thrive in the post-Mao era. Restrictions on the major monasteries lead to the growth of places like Larung Gar, which held more than 10,000 students before it was bulldozed a few years ago. Monks complain about government interference in their studies, campaigns against prominent lamas, restrictions on the monastery population keeping them at skeleton crews (for example, Drepung Monastery outside of Lhasa used to hold between 7 and 10 thousand monks. Today it has 300 to 500), midnight raids on monks quarters, and incessant spying and camera installations that leave them feeling like criminals. Restrictions on travel between Tibetan areas has also taken a big toll, with the tradition of monks studying in different monasteries more or less destroyed. This, combined with the language issues I mentioned earlier is one of the main reasons that so many Tibetan parents try to send their children to India, where they can study a number of things which would be impossible to teach in Chinese territory these days. -Marginalization This is pretty much the exact same thing the Uyghur see. Economic marginalization comes with the territory, given the Han-centric nature of Chinese society. Job postings will sometimes outright state Han only, other times Tibetans simply won’t get the job. The end of Tibetan as the main language of Tibet means that Tibetans are disadvantaged against Han immigrants. Hotels are wary of admitting Tibetan guests, passports are a thousand times harder to obtain if your nationality status isn’t Han, police and paramilitary police tasked with keeping Tibet under control are naturally be suspicious of the group they’ve been taught to see as stupid, violent, and treasonous. From all of the Communist Party leaders of Xizang since the creation of the TAR, guess how many have been Tibetan? Nah go ahead, guess. Anti-Tibetan discrimination is a constant reality in Tibet, and Chinese media and education constantly work to present a vision of Tibetans as dumb, easily mislead traitors to the rest of China, if they’re given any thought at all beyond that of a smiling woman in shiny clothes holding a khata out for male Han guests. -Political Reeducation, Denouncing the Dalai Although political reeducation often falls on monks, it can happen to any Tibetan. Take the pilgrims returning from India recently, many of whom were elderly retirees, as an example. After they were given permission to briefly go abroad for a Kalachakra initiation, they were arrested upon their return and assigned to political reeducation, which normally consists of patriotic browbeatings, forced confessions, and demands for denunciations of the Dalai Lama. When people say the Cultural Revolution never ended in Tibet they might be exaggerating, but not by much. Although the Dalai Lama might not still have the position of god-king that he held before, he remains extremely popular among Tibetans and China has consistently created ill-will among Tibetans by forcing them to denounce him in written and oral statements. Personally, I assume that these policies continue because portraying the Dalai Lama as a boogieman is an important part of keeping Han Chinese in support of the current policies towards Tibetans, even if it makes Tibetans angrier as a result. -Restrictions on Tibetan Culture This one has sped up since 2008, when massive protests started in Lhasa and spread out to every corner of Tibet. In the following years Tibetan writers have been arrested, singers have been disappeared, comedians have been beaten, teachers have been blacklisted, festivals and holidays have been cancelled, magazines and literary journals have been shuttered, and any gathering or association of more than four people has been shut down. I probably don’t need to spell it out for you, but Tibetans haven’t really been happy with these developments, especially given their obviously punitive and wide-ranging application. THAT’S IT? Yep. Well, nope, but that’s the end of the big ones I’m going to put in list form. I think it’s important to say something else here, though, which is that taken together these rafts of policies seem to constitute something more than the sum of their parts. Overall they form an attack on Tibetans themselves: their culture, their race, their nation. The end result of the game as it’s played right now will be the destruction of Tibet. That still might be a generation or three away, but that tension is what sets off so many of these protests. Tibetans have merely to look towards Dongbei to see what Tibet might look like in a few decades. WHY SHOULD I CARE? I don’t know, you certainly don’t have to. I admittedly do find it curious when China watchers assume some sort of skeptical attitude towards Tibet, especially when the same people mention Xinjiang as a ‘real’ example of ethnic conflict in China. Perhaps the Tibetan Freedom Concerts and overly strident statements from Hollywood have turned some people off, but merely spending a small amount of time talking to Tibetans reveals a situation that has nothing to do with Richard Gere or Adam Yauch, however wrong or right they may be. In writing this post I hoped to show that there’s a little bit more to the issue than some blazed college kid talking about how the Dalai Lama, is, like, so cooool, man! This is a very real conflict that is playing out right now, all exaggerations aside. BUT WAIT! THE DALAI LAMA WANTS TO INSTITUTE FUEDAL SERFDOM, AND ALSO THE CIA CREATED THE TIBET ISSUE, AND HAVE YOU HEARD OF DORJE SHUGDEN? Fun fact: Tibetan exiles have their own democracy! It has its fair share of issues, but on the whole Tibetans outside of China enjoy democratic processes that their family members could get (and often enough, are) imprisoned for just mentioning. The Tibetan exile administration has put forth a number of proposals to China for how they would like to end the conflict, exactly none of which could ever lead to the recreation of a theocracy. They’re all designed to be implemented by China itself, how could that possible work?! “Ah, poo poo, we were just setting up a local democratic government in Lhasa but on the back of the paper it says the Dalai Lama gets to be super pope of China for all time, wrap it up gongchangdangailures.” As for the CIA, suffice to say that there’s a reason China gets so vague about exactly what they did. While active in the region for years, their contributions were limited mainly to providing arms and training to Tibetan guerilla armies that had been operating for years before the CIA arrived on the scene. Chinese accounts tend to purposely attribute everything done by Ganden Phodrang or Chushi Gangdruk to the CIA, as blaming outside imperialists helps paper over the massive holes in the official history of Tibet. Why were the Khampas rebelling in the mid-50s? The CIA did it. Why did negotiations in Lhasa break down? CIA did it. Why is Tibet still an issue, half a century later? Goddamn CIA, dude. Tibetans themselves have no agency or role in the story as written in China, and are reduced to dumb brutes who hulk the gently caress up and start betraying the motherland the moment a CIA spy starts talking to them. This is a massively insulting portrayal of the issue for Tibetans, but obviously the Communist Party isn’t writing it with Tibetans as the intended audience. Dorje Shugden is a thing, and some sad stuff has indeed happened there, but (wow huge surprise!) the entire story has been turned upside down and inside out by Beijing, which is trying to use it as a wedge issue between Tibetans. I don’t think it’s working, but you still see it get dragged up every now and then. WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN NOW? I don’t know! Since the end of the Mao era China has occasionally played nice with Tibetans, although such moments are few and far between. Since 2008 things have gotten a lot worse, too, with the general transformation of Tibet into a police state noticeably accelerating. The self-immolations are a kind of response to that, with every other avenue of expression cut off by a regime that has no idea how to engage Tibetans other than through force. Qinghai province is the one somewhat bright spot, or at least less dark than the other largest Tibetan areas in the TAR and Sichuan, with a provincial government that at least remembers that carrots can be an occasional alternative to sticks. I suspect that Tibet’s future is tied up with general political reform in China, although future leaders who have a better understanding of what will happen to Tibet after the Dalai Lama dies than the current ones might be inclined to engage with him before it's too late. We’ll see.
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May 24, 2012 00:39
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dj_clawson posted:I'm writing up a thing about my experiences in the Tibetan exile community Sorry, can't help with the soldier thing, but curious about this- have you been spending time in Dharamsala and the other big ones in India or Nepal or something? What have you been doing?
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Jun 1, 2012 22:56
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french lies posted:Thanks for this good and informative post, even if it could have used some more pictures. I'm including it in the OP. I do have to admit I felt kind of bad for you when I noticed nobody had quoted it at all. Thanks! I was thinking about fleshing out parts of it (and yes, adding more pictures). You'll probably notice if I repost it!
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Jun 12, 2012 15:40
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Throatwarbler posted:No one is quoting it because it says right there in the OP: No Tibet stuff, so SA doesn't get blocked. Does the OP say that? Didn't remember that, and word searching for Tibet on the first page doesn't pull it up. Anyway, doesn't seem to me like English-language references to Tibet on an English-only comedy site will get SA blocked, but if people are worried I'll pull the post down. Otherwise I'd like to add some more to it some time in the next week or so.
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Jun 12, 2012 17:42
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Alright, getting ready to put some more effort into the Tibet post and flesh it out a bit. Anyone have questions that have been bothering them about Tibet for a while? Let me know and I'll try to address it, or run it past colleagues who can give a good answer.
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Jun 17, 2012 20:29
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whatever7 posted:Is it true that the Tibetan population decrease after the Lama Buddhism became dominate (due to too many young monks)? Tibetan Buddhism has been dominant for a pretty long time, I'll run that past someone and see if they have any ideas. Tibetan films- Pema Tseden has had a few critical successes with The Search and Old Dog, but a lot of people find his movies bleak. 7 Years in Tibet is garbage, Kundun is surprisingly good. The Cup is a fun piece about Tibetan monks in India trying to watch the World Cup. Summer Pasture is a good recent docu about a nomad family in Kham, just following them around for one summer. For the political side, The Sun Behind the Clouds is a good one about the 2008 Uprising and the Tibet movement in exile, and short films like Leaving Fear Behind are on youtube. For books, I'm afraid the only ones I know about tend to be political. "Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk" by Palden Gyatso and "Surviving the Dragon" by Arjia Rinpoche are both pretty accessible, I think, and both describe life before the Chinese annexation and then the tensions of living under China leading to escape, and a life in exile. Oh, and the actual book "7 Years in Tibet" is actually ok, if you skip past the first half where he complains about how cold it is and spends months trying to work his way in to Lhasa.
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Jun 18, 2012 00:01
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Ronald Spiers posted:The ties between Mongolia and Tibet is interesting. I believe it was the Mongols that created the title of Dalai Lama. They bestowed the title on a Tibetan monk, yes- although IIRC the first person to be given that title was retroactively made the third Dalai Lama because of two people who were identified as previous incarnations. At that time the Gelug sect wasn't nearly as powerful as it would be a century later, though. There used to be a ton of Mongolian monks studying in Tibetan monasteries, especially the big ones nearest to Mongolia- Kumbum and Labrang. French Lies- will add that to the list.
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Jun 18, 2012 13:36
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:No level of drainage infrastructure can handle 18 inches of rain all at once... just not possible. That said, having an actual sewer system probably wouldn't have hurt.
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Jul 25, 2012 14:02
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Fangz posted:Don't they censor social media websites as a first knee-jerk reaction to literally everything? Yep. Well, at this point social media websites censor themselves as a knee-jerk reaction to literally everything, existing in a weird truth-free vacuum with censorship ministries having complete power over you does weird things to companies. It certainly could be the hurt back thing, though. One particular habit the Communist Party never really outgrew is the excessive secrecy regarding the health of Dear Leader. Xi could stub his toe in the morning and toe, foot, hurt, ouch, and pain would all disappear from weibo. Or it could be something else, hard to tell. I think the speed at which rumors have taken over the narrative is really telling though, the way the Communist Party maintains a stranglehold on information is really corrosive in the long run. Everyone is so used to be lied to by the government that whatever ridiculous rumor you make up will sound more believable than the official denial.
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Sep 12, 2012 14:36
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whatever7 posted:There is no news because negotiation for the spots of the new standing Poliburo is still under going. It doesn't mean people are being fed lies. Once the member list of the new standing committee is finalized, you will hear it through the unofficial channels. What does this have to do with Xi disappearing- do you think he's working on that 24/7, while other members of the Standing Committee are still making their scheduled appearances?
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Sep 12, 2012 15:19
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whatever7 posted:Working on what? There is no news of Xi. You can't accuse Xinhua for feeding you fake news when there is no news. Admittedly Xinhua has report plenty of fake news. But I am trying to explain to you the message is subtlety sent through what is not reporting the order of the CCP leaders appear on CCTV. That's why I said that it was the effect of long-term corrosion, a history of lying and obfuscation that makes people trust random internet rumors. Pretty sure accusing Xinhua of feeding us fake news over the long term is a reasonably safe charge. Do you think Xi might not come out as #1? Seems unlikely given that he's already taken most of the posts Hu held prior to his ascent, but I guess it isn't impossible given how weird this last year has been.
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Sep 12, 2012 16:04
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Yeah, exactly. I could buy that maybe some of the lower spots are still being finalized, and maybe the switch down to seven people is still in the running maybe? But Xi's absence having anything to do with his spot as #1 changing seems like a stretch to me. Yesterday an analyst was telling me the most involved rumor he'd heard, one claiming that a plane that got turned around a week or two ago had something to do with Xi Jinping, and that his spot is now in trouble because of that. He introduced the story as a ridiculously unlikely one though, and simple medical problem that the Party feels compelled to hush up seems way more likely.
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Sep 12, 2012 17:30
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It's time for laowai governments, organizers, and in this case restaurant owners to start using the China line when these diplomats show up to hector them: "gross interference" in our "internal affairs," "hurting the feelings of .3 billion American people," free speech is a "core issue," etc.
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Sep 13, 2012 14:14
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Adrastus posted:It is Japan that is trying to take what rightfully belongs to Chinese. That also betrays their imperialistic ambitions. Did Pro-PRC Laowai have a kid or something? Pro-PRC 混血孩子? Is that you?
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Sep 17, 2012 23:21
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Fall Sick and Die posted:In regards to China, that would probably mean Tibet and large portions of Sichuan and Qinghai splitting off. Don't forget Gannan from Gansu and whatever random counties in Dechen Yunnan haven't been thoroughly assimilated yet, like poor Gyalthang... er, "Xiang ge li la"! I would love to see that if just for the wild ramblings about the CIA and the NED you'd hear from certain corners.
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Sep 19, 2012 21:00
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Fall Sick and Die posted:I had a fun personal example of this when we were discussing holidays once and I asked my class, "Does everyone in China celebrate Spring Festival?" and every Han person said yes, while every Hui person said no. The Han kids had literally no idea that the Hui kids didn't celebrate Spring Festival, it had never occurred to them that any Chinese person wouldn't despite living with them and being friends with them for their whole lives. When I assigned every student in my classes a different minzu and asked them to come back the next week ready to tell us about how this minzu is different than hanzu, what their customs and history and habits are like, etc, I had to specifically tell them not to just come in and tell me that they like singing and dancing... and like half my students still did  In some cases they're talking about people who have civilizations going back thousands of years, with their own distinct cultural heritage and intriguing histories... but in China, there's only one culture, and it's Han culture shaped by what the Communist Party allows. The only date in any minzus history is the day when they happily joined China, and the only fact we care about now is exactly what level of sublime joy they've achieved under the guidance of the Communist Party. You almost can't blame Chinese people for believing that all trouble in East Turkestan, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet is stirred up by outside anti-China forces, because the notion that any of these groups have legitimate grievances (or even spend enough time not feverishly singing and dancing in cheap colorful knock-off versions of the clothes their grandparents wore to even come up with some grievances) is completely alien to what you know about shaosu minzu if you grew up in the PRC.
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Sep 23, 2012 17:19
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Castomira posted:Did you assign any of the students Ethnic Russians? Because I'd be very amused if they came back the following week saying Russians liked singing and dancing. Only one of my classes was big enough that we actually needed to use every minzu, the dude who got Russians ended up going on some overly long thing about Russians in Russia that he took word for word from wikipedia. That class is on the list of things I really don't miss about China, it was huge and I never managed to cure them of all the bad habits that other classes eventually got over.
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Sep 23, 2012 20:50
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GuestBob posted:
Let me tell you about the small Scottish separatist clique, a group which strives to split the motherland and is thoroughly rejected by the Scottish people, who have risen up as one to uphold the unity of the British Empire. Although they are being used by some foreign governments to upset the harmony of the Scottish region, their influence is very small. Allow me to quote a Scottish peasant, as soon as he finishes singing and dancing...
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Sep 24, 2012 04:08
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