Man, is it ever so hard to keep up with the news.
Latest Observations.
1. The Chinese have already restored order.
2. Tibet is already off the front pages in the mainstream media in
the west.
3. Many western politicians and prominent people who jumped in to
condemn China and who mouth the same of accusations about religious
[persecution, ethnic oppression etc. are going to feel pretty silly in
the coming weeks.
4. Better reprots and analyses will be coming out.
============================================
Spotlight on grievance
Events in Tibet expose China's achilles heel: its inability to
recognise and respect ethnic difference
Martin Jacques
The Guardian,
Monday March 17 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/17/tibet.china
The Beijing Olympics are a huge occasion for China. Ever since the
opium wars, the country has experienced what it describes as a
"century of humiliation". Extraordinarily, the handover of Hong Kong
in 1997 was its first major foreign policy success since the early
19th century.
Western countries are thoroughly accustomed to being the centre of
global attention, which they have come to regard as their natural
birthright. Not so China. It was thwarted in its attempt to hold the
2000 Olympics, which, as a result of American-led pressure, was
awarded to Sydney. For China, therefore, the 2008 Olympics assume a
huge im****tance as its first op****tunity to command the global stage.
The fact that the games also coincide with China's emergence as a
global power only serves to enhance their significance. These
Olympics, not surprisingly, have been long in the planning, with
nothing left to chance.
But the global spotlight not only provides the Chinese government with
an op****tunity to show its wares to the world: it also offers those
with a grievance against the government to do exactly the same. The
fact that the games symbolically mark China's global "coming out" only
serves to make them even more of a target for opposition causes.
The unrest in Tibet, then, is hardly unexpected. It would appear to
have been sparked by a march of Buddhist monks to coincide with the
49th anniversary of China's military intervention in the autonomous
region. With significant numbers dead - re****ts vary from the official
Chinese version of 10 to as many as 100 or more - this is exactly the
kind of event that the Chinese authorities have been dreading.
The other main attack on China in recent months has been for its
policy on Darfur. Whatever the criticisms on this score, and whatever
the future may hold, Chinese policy in Africa is certainly no worse
than that of the west, and, historically speaking, is hugely better
than the latter's miserable legacy. Tibet, on the other hand, raises
much more troubling issues for China's standing in the world and how
it is perceived by others.
The question is not whether Tibet should be independent but the extent
of the autonomy that it is allowed. Tibet has been firmly ensconced as
part of the Chinese empire since the Qing dynasty's military
intervention in Tibet in the early 18th century. The Qing was
responsible for a huge westward expansion of Chinese territory, adding
lands populated by peoples, albeit relatively small in number, who had
no natural affinity with the Chinese. One of the unique features of
China is that, notwithstanding the fact that it has a population of
1.3 billion, around 92% regard themselves as Han Chinese. This is
quite different from the world's other most populous countries, such
as India, the US and Indonesia, which are ethnically diverse. China,
of course, was once the same, but because it is at least two millennia
old, it has experienced a remarkably long period of assimilation,
melding and mixing.
The result is that China has little conception of difference. The
Chinese think of themselves as one race. Their historical experience
is one of slow and steady assimilation and absorption, with population
settlement often a crucial instrument in pacification. In this light,
the Han Chinese migration to Tibet and Xinjiang province in northwest
China is nothing new: on the contrary it has been an age-old
characteristic of Chinese expansion (a large majority of those who now
live in Mongolia and Manchuria, for instance, are Han).
Tibet and Xinjiang, however, are distinguished by two im****tant
differences from other Chinese regions and provinces. First, in both
cases their populations are ethnically very distinct from the Han
Chinese. And second, their effective incor****ation into China is
relatively recent (though still more than two centuries ago). What is
clear from the demonstrations and clashes in Lhasa and elsewhere is
that the traditional Chinese policies of absorption have singularly
failed to suppress the Tibetan sense of identity and desire for
autonomy. Even though Tibetans have experienced major improvements in
their living standards, this has not diminished their desire for
religious and cultural freedom. It would seem, furthermore, that the
huge wave of Han Chinese settlement has only served to heighten their
sense of resentment and fear of loss.
Tibet and Xinjiang aside, it is unlikely that China will face anything
like this kind of unrest in the next few months leading up to the
Olympics. But events in Tibet have served to expose the achilles heel
of modern China: its inability to recognise and respect ethnic
difference within its own borders. As it emerges as a major global
player in a world characterised by exactly such ethnic diversity, this
seems destined to cast China in a rather more negative light, not
least in the developing world.
ยท Martin Jacques is visiting research fellow at the Asia research
centre, London School of Economics
martinjacques@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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