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China and Tibet ?
MindGate
United States Veteran
I know very little about the going abouts of other nations other than my own. I am young as well and know little political history that occurred before I was born. So, of course, I know little of the struggle between Tibet and China. I hear of China causing religious suppression. Mind explaining this to me? I thought China was perfectly fine with Buddhists. Why are they suppressing them? Or is it more a political suppression?
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In the case of Tibet, you're right, it's intertwined with political oppression. China believes that the monasteries are the last vestiges of Tibet's privileged class, and that therefore, they represent the main bulk of the resistance to the current regime. And as religious institutions, they have an obvious interest in supporting the Dalai Lama.
Because Tibet used to be independent (a fact that's hotly debated), China's also afraid of separatist movements, meaning independence movements by Tibet and potentially other ethnic minorities, especially the Uighurs north of Tibet in Xinjiang, and the Mongols in Inner Mongolia. So the religious repression is more about politics. The Chinese have allowed monasteries to operate, but are watching them closely, especially after the protests of 2008.
Yes, China invaded and declared Tibet now part of China in the 1950s. Before that, Tibet was invaded or did the invading through most of its history, from the Mongols and British and once Tibet actually invaded and made a huge hunk of China part of its kingdom. And after the latest invasion, China and Tibet were actually getting along pretty good and China left the temples alone during its great cultural revolution until the CIA got involved and manufactured a guerilla resistance out of the ex-aristrocrat class that no longer owned all the land and ran the country. In other words, cold war business as usual.
Now the buzword is "cultural genocide". What does that mean? It means anything China does is called an attempt to wipe out Tibet's culture. Now, China does have a history of heavy handed enforcement of their laws. However, the "Free Tibet" side always neglects to admit that some of Tibet's culture needed changed.
Here are a few examples of the way China changed the Tibet culture:
When China invaded Tibet, the first thing they did was outlaw slavery, free the many slaves that rich Tibetans still owned, and declared the feudal system that Tibet clung to illegal. This system forced people to live on and work the land and get the landowner's permission to move. All this went on under the direction of the Dalai Lama and the Buddhist temples. Not exactly an enlightened theocracy, was it?
China built public schools, something the temples had refused to do until then, because they had a monopoly on education. Unless you were rich and could afford a private tutor, the average Tibetan could not read or write. These public schools are now held up as an example of "cultural genocide", as is the cheap public housing campaign China instituted and the land reform that took the available farmland out of the hands of a few rich Tibetan families.
Very little thought is given to what Tibet should go back to, if China simply packed up and left. So it's a vastly complicated mess left over from the same old cold war politics. Add to that the literal worship of the Lamas and emotions rule. In the meantime, the average Tibetan just tries to make a living and feed the family, as they have always done. It doesn't matter to a serf who owns the land, because it's just another face giving the orders.
They came to a little house up in the mountains with a child of 3 and he picked out the relevant objects and they performed other tests which I forget now. He was in a big family of children but he was wisked off along with his family to the kingdom and was pretty much put on a high horse. In his young years he was not interested in buddhism, more of crashing cars and playing with cameras etc. It was later that he started to study the dharma to a great extent.
The chinese invaded Tibet trying to declare it as a part of china and there was mass blood shed, mainly on the tibetans. The dalai lama managed to escape one night unknown to the chinese army. That is basically what happened there in brief lol.
1. Read, read, read, read, read, read. Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it, a wise person once said.
2. The Chinese government are not "perfectly fine" with any religion other than Communism (or their perverse version of it) and rampant Capitalism. They tolerate some, but they are tightly controlled and monitored. Step outside the boundaries set by the Communist Party, and you'll disappear.
And a third one, just for the heck of it:
3. Read, read, read, read, read.
"Cultural genocide" in international law refers to forced assimilation. This became a "buzzword" after it became part of International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 169 on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (1989), and after work began on the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (throughout the 1990's). Denial of the right to learn or even speak one's Native language, denial of the right to practice one's spiritual tradition, denial of the right to wear traditional dress and practice healing customs and traditional celebrations, removal from one's traditional homeland (as in the creation of reservations), that kind of thing, is defined as cultural genocide. It's true, one can split hairs. Some Native Americans still consider education to be a tool of assimilation. But to deny educational opportunity would violate another international convention. Chinese schools in Tibet do teach Tibetan. I don't know if they have from the start, or if that was a later addition.
The international community (read: the UN) does have a firm policy stating that any kind of abuse cannot be protected under the rubric of "tradition" or "culture". Examples are female circumcision and, obviously, involuntary servitude. So the Tibetans don't have a leg to stand on if any of them (the former ruling classes) are using the abolition of slavery and serfdom to claim cultural genocide.
I agree that the "Free Tibet" movement has not explained what their vision for a Free Tibet is. Free Tibet for whom, for what? For a reinstated and highly abusive theocracy? Free Tibet for democracy? The answer to that question would make all the difference in my decision whether to support a Free Tibet movement. But the Tibetans don't have an answer, in my experience.
On an historical note: the irony of Chinese claims that Tibet has always been part of China is that they rest on the fact that Tibet was part of "China" during the Yuan Dynasty (approx 1200's, 1300's). The Yuan Dynasty was the period of Mongol rule over China. In other words, China had been annexed to Mongolia at the time. So if the Chinese want to be consistent and accurate in using the Yuan Dynasty as their standard, they should give China back to Mongolia. Tibet at one time had captured the Chinese capital (that was before the Mongols, IIRC), and dominated a huge chunk of Inner Asia from near Kabul, Afghanistan, far north into Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang Province now) almost to Siberia, and west, well into China. The Chinese claim to Tibet is very shaky, and depends on cherry-picking which historical periods to use for propping up their claim. And as we've seen in the case of the Yuan Dynasty, they haven't even done a good job of choosing the right period.
Curious thing about the school-building issue. Tashi Tsering, born into a poor peasant family, but through sheer willpower miraculously managed to get himself to the US for a university education, says in his book, "The Struggle for Modern Tibet", that a lot of rural Tibetans saw no need for education. They were born farmers or herders, expected to be farmers or herders for generations, and so saw no point in getting an education. Even now, Tibetans in India notice that Indian families all encourage their kids to do well in school, whereas most Tibetan parents are completely uninvolved in their kids' education. When Tashi Tsering returned to Tibet and pushed to build schools in rural areas (the Chinese have neglected the rural areas), Tibetans accused him of only wanting power and fame.