The ****trait of a Nationalistic ( NAZI Incarnate? ) "Olympic Host" --
Nationalism at core of China's angry reaction to Tibetan protests / IHT
International Herald Tribune
Nationalism at core of China's angry reaction to Tibetan protests
By Jim Yardley
Sunday, March 30, 2008
BEIJING: Like so many Chinese, Meng Huizhong was horrified by the
violent Tibetan protests in Lhasa. She cringed at videos of Tibetan
rioters attacking a Chinese motorcyclist. Her anger deepened as Tibet
dominated her online conversation groups, until it settled on what might
seem like an unlikely target: the Communist Party.
"We couldn't believe our government was being so weak and cowardly,"
said Meng, 52, a mother and office worker, who was appalled that the
authorities failed to initially douse the violence. "The Dalai Lama is
trying to separate China, and it is not acceptable at all. We must crack
down on the rioters."
For two weeks, as Chinese security forces have tried to extinguish
ongoing Tibetan protests, Chinese officials have tried to demonstrate
the party's resolve to people like Meng. They have blasted the foreign
media as biased against China, castigated the Dalai Lama as a terrorist
"jackal" and called for a "People's War" to fight separatism in Tibet.
If the tough tactics have startled the outside world, the Communist
Party for now seems more concerned with rallying domestic opinion by
using and responding to the deep strains of nationalism in Chinese
society. Playing to national pride, and national insecurities, the party
has used censor****p and propaganda to position itself as defender of the
motherland - and block any examination of Tibetan grievances or its own
performance in the crisis.
But the heavy emphasis on nationalism is not without risks. With less
than five months before the opening of the Beijing Olympics, China's
sharp criticism of the foreign media comes precisely when it wants to
present a welcoming impression to the outside world. Instead, Chinese
citizens, including many overseas, are posting thousands of angry
messages on Web sites and making crank calls to some foreign media
offices in Beijing.
Chinese state media have also inundated the public with so many re****ts
from Lhasa about the suffering of Han Chinese merchants and the brutal
deaths of Chinese victims - but with no coverage of Tibetan grievances -
that critics have accused the government of "fanning racial hatred." In
the recent past, nationalist upsurges have focused on outsiders,
especially the Japanese, but Tibet is part of China, so the effect is to
sharpen domestic ethnic tensions.
"When a big crisis happens here, they show their true nature," said Liu
Xiaobo, a liberal dissident and government critic. "I am really shocked
by the language they used concerning the Dalai Lama. They are talking
about a 'People's War.' That is a phrase from the Cultural Revolution."
Analysts have long debated how often the Communist Party steers and
inflames nationalism versus how often nationalist public attitudes are
beyond the party's control. In the run-up to the Summer Games, the
steady attacks against China on issues like Darfur, global warming, air
pollution and human rights abuses have increasingly been interpreted by
many Chinese, including those overseas, as an unfair attempt to
undermine China's Olympic moment.
But the Tibet crisis has touched directly on the raw nerve of separatism
at the core of Chinese nationalism. Tibet is usually a low-profile issue
within China, especially compared with Taiwan. But most Chinese,
influenced by the government, are interpreting the Tibetan crisis as an
attempt to split China.
On Sunday, Xinhua, the official news agency, released an article titled
"Dalai Clique's Masterminding of Lhasa Violence Exposed." It cited an
"unnamed suspect" who confessed that the "Dalai clique" had organized
and incited the protests to force China to allow the Dalai Lama to
return and achieve more autonomy for "Greater Tibet."
The statement came on the same day that activists disrupted the ceremony
in Athens in which Greek officials handed over the Olympic flame to
organizers of the Games.
Evading massive security to unfurl protest banners, the demonstrators
shouted "Free Tibet!" and charged into a police cordon, trying to block
the flame from making its final 100-meter, or 330-foot, run into
Panathinaiko Stadium.
Backed by riot squads, scores of police officers detained 10 of an
estimated 15 demonstrators, whisking them off to Greece's national
police headquarters minutes after the ceremony kicked off.
The torch is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Monday before taking off
on the longest, most ambitious round-the-world relay in Olympic history:
a 137,000-kilometer, or 85,100-mile, 130-day route that will cross five
continents and climb to the summit of Mount Everest before finally
arriving at the National Stadium in Beijing for the Aug. 8 opening
ceremony.
In Beijing on Sunday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao reiterated China's
position that it was open to talks with the Dalai Lama if he gave up his
desire for independence and acknowledged that Tibet and Taiwan were
inseparable from China, The Associated Press re****ted.
For now, Chinese public anger about the Tibetan protests is mostly
confined to the Internet, but the enormous domestic media attention on
Tibet has also focused the public on how the issue is being treated
abroad.
"If Bush meets the Dalai Lama right now, or if the Congress does
anything, the Chinese people might do something," said Tong Zeng, who
helped organize anti-Japanese protests in the last major nationalism
campaign in 2005. Tong said the Internet was filled with angry comments
about the recent meeting between the speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and the Dalai Lama.
"My thinking is that if there is anything passed in the House, the
Chinese people will take to the streets," he predicted.
Communist Party leaders have hoped the Olympics would showcase China as
a modern, confident and nonthreatening emerging world power, while also
validating the party's hold on power. President Hu Jintao has advocated
a "harmonious society" to signal a new government effort at addressing
inequality in society. At the same time, China's soft power abroad is
rising with its bulging foreign-exchange reserves and its increasingly
active diplomatic role on issues like the North Korea nuclear problem.
But the Tibet crisis has shown a leader****p that has seemingly stepped
back into the party's harsher past. Buddhist monks in Tibet are now
being subjected to punitive "patriotic education" campaigns.
Paramilitary police officers and soldiers have swept across huge areas
of western China as part of a broad crackdown. Party leaders, including
the prime minister, have vilified the Dalai Lama and blamed the "Dalai
clique" for trying to sabotage China's Olympic moment.
"The language they are using about everything has been Cultural
Revolution hyperbole," said Susan ****rk, a former U.S. assistant
secretary of state for East Asian affairs and the author of "China:
Fragile Superpower." "This does not look like the reaction of a strong,
confident leader****p."
Last week, a group of prominent Chinese intellectuals offered a rare
contrary voice by issuing a petition that called on the government to
allow Tibetans to express their grievances and to respect freedom of
religion and freedom of speech.
Liu, the government critic, who helped draft the petition, said the
government's attacks on the Dalai Lama and its censor****p of state media
coverage was the same strategy it used during the 1989 Tiananmen Square
demonstrations when it jailed pro-democracy leaders as "black hands" and
did not televise footage of soldiers firing on students.
"You can see the propaganda machine operating in full gear," Liu said.
"That shows the true nature of the government. It hasn't changed at all."
Scholars often describe nationalism as China's state religion now that
the Communist Party has shrugged off socialist ideology and made
economic development the country's priority. Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet
specialist, said modern Chinese nationalism could be traced to Sun
Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary who described the country's main
ethnic groups - the Han, Manchu, Hui, Mongolian and Tibetan peoples - as
the "five fingers" of China.
Today, Han Chinese constitute more than 92 percent of the population,
but without one of those five fingers, China's leaders do not consider
the country whole.
"The Communist Party has used nationalism as an ideology to keep China
together," said Anand, a reader in international relations at
Westminster University in London. He said many Chinese regard the
Tibetan protests "as an attack on their core identity."
"It's not only an attack on the state," he said, "but an attack on what
it means to be Chinese. Even if minorities don't feel like part of
China, they are part of China's nationality."
This logic helps explain why Chinese nationalist sentiment has been
inflamed by perceived Western sympathy for the Tibetan protests - an
anger that has mostly focused on the foreign media.
Chinese media commentators have accused foreign news coverage of being
more sympathetic to Tibetans in Lhasa than to Chinese who lost their
lives and property in the riots. Meanwhile, Chinese from around the
world were infuriated when several Western news organizations mislabeled
photographs of the police beating pro-Tibet protesters in Nepal as being
from China.
Last week, Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, described the foreign
coverage of Tibet as a "textbook of bad examples" - even as the
government refused to allow journalists free access to Tibet or other
restive regions in western China to investigate the crackdown.
Party leaders know the volatility of nationalism from 2005. The
government tried to control - some would say manipulate - the
anti-Japanese protests that escalated during a tense diplomatic tussle
between China against Japan. But the protests became violent and grew so
rapidly that the government finally forced them to end.
Tong, the organizer, said the anti-Japanese movement was continuing
today - if modestly, at a time when the government is trying to improve
relations with Japan. But he said the nationalism that infused the
anti-Japanese movement was deeply rooted and transcended divisions that
can separate people in China.
"In our group, we have the right, we have the middle and we have the
left," Tong said. "It is similar to the Tibet issue. For most Chinese
people, the bottom line is you should never divide China."
Many Chinese people know little about Tibet's different interpretation
of its history and regard Tibetans as having been granted special
subsidies and benefits from the government because of their ethnic
status. For many Chinese, the protests come across as ingratitude after
years in which China has built roads, a high-altitude railroad and other
infrastructure for Tibet.
"Our country is very tolerant to all kinds of religions," said Meng, the
office worker. "And the Tibetans are taking advantage of this."
Meng said she got her information about Tibet from state media and
various postings on the Internet. After the Lhasa riots, she was
infuriated when she saw a photograph of policemen cowering behind riot
****elds without fighting back. But she said her attitude toward the
government's response began to change when she saw Qin, the Foreign
Ministry spokesman, take a tough line on Tibet and also accuse the
foreign media of distorted coverage.
She said she was also pleased to see that President Hu Jintao had
rejected a request from President George W. Bush to open a new dialogue
with the Dalai Lama. Still, she said she wanted even tougher action.
"I want the killers to be executed," she said. "Well, I know it is just
my wish, because the government will not go that far because of the
ethnic issue."
Anthee Carassava contributed re****ting from Athens. Zhang Jing
contributed research from Beijing.
|
