Newsweek, in publishing an article which suggests that Tibet is better off for being under the boot of the Chinese, is suggesting that freedom is not all it is cracked up to be.
So the editors of Newsweek would agree that the main mistake made by the British in the American colonies was that they did not do their utmost to make life comfy for the Colonists? No doubt the editors of Newsweek would concur that the slaves in the Old South would have not yearned for freedom if they were treated better. Oh, if only the Germans had been kind to the people of France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc., etc.!!
The Newsweek article reads like it was a propaganda piece paid for by the Chinese government. The editors should be ashamed of themselves.
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Thursday, February 18, 2010
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Agreed. They are morons. The Tibetans are expected to take a sporting view of forty-plus years of Communist mismanagement, plus the Cultural Revolution, plus losing control over their ancient cultural traditions just because the Chinese have sparked a short-term economic boom? If the economy crashes does that mean Newsweek will reluctantly acknowledge their right to independence?
ReplyDeleteThis is just the kind of lame "even-handedness" that makes people so contemptuous of journalists and academics. The point about Tibet is that the Tibetans have a right to self-determination, regardless of whether or not they make good decisions. It's telling that Newsweek obsesses over recent economic developments. For some people money really is all that matters.
Without the invasion of Tibet we would not have had the Sino-Indian War and long simmering arms race between India and China, and therefore no Indian Bomb, and therefore no Pakistani Bomb. But all that's okay because the Tibetan economy's been doing great during the latest bubble.
How about this for an alternative view? That the Chinese would have been better off without invading Tibet. The country is landlocked and its only commercial outlets go through China in any case. Without the expense, trouble, and political hassles of occupation, China would continue to have de facto control over the Tibetan economy, plus a useful strategic buffer. But their obsession with the crudest interpretation of state power has gotten them into an impossible political situation that has cost them tens of billions of dollars and at least as many headaches.
Well, remember, James, one of those "ancient cultural traditions" was *slavery*. I find the "ancient cultural traditions" of the Tibetan oligarchs to be as repulsive as the "ancient cultural traditions" of the Confederate States of America.
ReplyDeleteThe question of Tibet and self-determination is a good one. China in fact actually tried to set up the sort of de facto client state situation that you mention in the years between 1950 and the final revolt by the Dalai Lama and his monks in 1959, and embarked upon a full-scale invasion and integration of Tibet into China proper only as a consequence of that revolt. Tibet is ideally set up for an Afghan-style insurgency, the terrain is similar and the CIA was similarly interested in running arms to the Tibetans. So why did insurgency succeed in Afghanistan against the Soviets, but not in Tibet against the Chinese? Hint: A majority of the Tibetan people *WELCOMED* the Chinese, who they viewed as nasty characters, but nowhere as nasty as their former rulers. Most of the CIA agents dropped into Tibet during the revolt were actually reported to Chinese authorities immediately by native TIbetans! Indeed, China actually killed fewer Tibetans during the first ten years of their rule than the former Tibetan hierarchy had killed suppressing slave revolts -- they much preferred using "soft power" to hard power, and as a result, the revolt by the Tibetan monks *failed*, because the people refused to support a regime they viewed as even more harsh than that of the Chinese.
In short, we don't know what would happen if self-determination were granted to Tibet. But one thing we do know -- the Dalai Lama and his monks would *NOT* be welcomed back to resume their rule of Tibet. We already have the judgement of history on that one -- the Tibetan people not only refused to fight on behalf of the Dalai Lama and his monks, but, indeed, actually *HELPED* the Chinese drive off the Dalai Lama and his monks. I have no idea what a Tibetan state would look like if the Tibetan people had true self-determination, but it would look nothing like what the Chinese overthrew, that much is for sure -- the Dalai Lama and his monks had worn out their welcome with the Tibetan people long before the Chinese came upon the scene.
- Badtux the History Penguin
Isn't Newsweek owned by the Washington Post. Need we say more?
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