Covering Tibet

I stole this image of Chinese news coverage of the situation in Tibet from James Fallows; do make sure to check out his whole post on the subject. Obviously, the PRC government puts a premium on information control. For a long time the hope has been that growing connectivity through the internet will start to undermine its information-control capabilities. And to some extent that's happened, but it also seems that The Great Firewall of China has generally been more effective than I would have thought ten years ago.

Comments

Seriously, why does that government bother printing this crap in an English-language paper for foreign consumption? It's not like we'd be taken in by it.

Posted by chipfat | March 15, 2008 12:00 PM

You mean when you were sixteen?

Posted by AJ | March 15, 2008 1:09 PM

More seriously, the free market determinists have consistently over estimated the ability of economic liberalization to loosen the Communist Party's hold on power. The Communist Party views economic liberalization as a means to hold onto power not as an end in of itself, pretty much everything going on in China should be looked at through that lens.

Posted by AJ | March 15, 2008 1:10 PM

Fallows' site doesn't have comments, so I just wanted to comment on his remark that the majority of (presumably Han) Chinese have no sense of the status of Tibet being disputed. I can recall around a half dozen conversations about Tibet that I've had with friends in China and they were all aware of the separatist movement - expressing opinions ranging from indifference to support. I don't know how representative my experience is, but I would question what Fallows is drawing this conclusion from. Yes the official history supports the government line, but I have found the average Chinese to be more aware of their government's propaganda than the average American. (That isn't to say that they're more sophisticated, but that their government's propaganda is a lot less slick than ours)

Posted by justaguy | March 15, 2008 1:15 PM

If Chinamen let liberals roam their country freely (instigating wars of national liberation) millions will die.

Posted by ethnic riot | March 15, 2008 1:33 PM

Well, I'd say that the "objective realism" of the Chinese media coverage of "controversial" issues is pretty close to the "objective realism" of the American media coverage of "controversial" issues.

Obviously, the controversial issues are different in the two cases, so Americans can laugh at the ignorance of the Chinese, while Chinese can similarly laugh at the ignorance of the Americans.

Kind of like Rev. Wright's views suddenly manifested just a couple of days ago, although they'd been out there all along.

Remember the crucial phrase, "if it isn't on TV, it doesn't exist"...

Posted by RKU | March 15, 2008 1:33 PM

My experience with Chinese postdoctoral fellows suggests that many of them view the Dalai Lama as an evil force bent on destroying China (as absurd as that sounds). In 2005, the Dalai Lama gave a talk at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, DC (it was intended to be a talk about effects of meditation and the brain, but it was more religous and political than scientific, as you would expect) and the Chinese postdocs were debating boycotts and more vocal objections. I was somewhat shocked by their acceptance of this propaganda, but they really did believe it.. And these are the most knowledgable of Chinese citizens, exposed to American press for years, so I'd say that this article likely reflects the beliefs and attitudes of the vast majority of the Chinese population.

Posted by Crusty Dem | March 15, 2008 1:46 PM

Crusty --
Your Chinese post-docs are also people with future upward career paths in the Chinese establishment, who no doubt suspect their behavior abroad is no secret from the Party. Their knowledgeability may have less to do with it than their prudence.

Posted by SqueakyRat | March 15, 2008 2:21 PM

I'll admit I've never followed the Tibet controversy very much, but aren't the Dalai Lama's supporters basically arguing that Tibet should be allowed to "secede" from China.

Now admittedly, most of the people in Tibet are Tibets rather than Han, so it's not quite as sharp as the Taiwan controversy, but how would American politicians react to (say) Russian support for a "free the Alaskan Eskimos" Movement, aimed at secession there, or Japanese support for a "Free Hawaii" secessionist movement.

Offhand, I'd say that Alaska and Hawaii were "grabbed" by the U.S. in much the same way Tibet became part of China, have been part of the U.S. for roughly the same length of time, and are roughly of comparably divergence culture and ethnicity.

Now admittedly, a large fraction of today's Alaskans and Hawaiians are "colonists" from the Continental U.S., but the same is true of the very large number of Han who were relocated into Tibet over the last fifty years.

Since China spent about a century being brutalized, dismembered, colonized, oppressed, and massacred by a wide range of competing foreign powers, the Chinese are also more sensitive about these sorts of things.

Posted by RKU | March 15, 2008 2:32 PM

Dear RKU--You are so right!

That the US has engaged in human-rights abuses in the past which can (with sufficient stretching) be compared to the situation of the Chinese in Tibet--well, of course, that makes China's actions entirely justified and excusable! Well played, sir!

Posted by James Gary | March 15, 2008 2:41 PM

Squeaky,

Or he's making the mistake of assuming that more educated people are more rational, and rational people would obviously agree with his view of the world. Is there a contradiction between someone being very educated and very nationalistic? (Does Watson's recent statements suggest that you can be both a genius and an idiot at the same time?) Are their nationalist assumptions that you - or 'most Americans' hold that your Chinese colleagues might find irrational?

That isn't to say I agree with Chinese nationalism - I don't - but on more than one occasion I've made the mistake of criticizing Chinese treatment of ethnic minorities when my home town police department had just shot an unarmed black man seemingly for no good reason (actually, twice it was after they shot unarmed black men, the other time they just sodomized him with a toilet plunger).

I agree that China's treatment of Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang has been pretty reprehensible. I would not, however, like to compare it to my own country's treatment of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and, by proxy, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. during the same period of time. Maybe our violence and political repression has been more enlightened, who knows?

I guess what I'm asking is, what makes (Han) Chinese nationalism special? The suggestions have been that Chinese people are nationalistic because of coercion or propaganda. Is that exclusive just to China? I suspect that its a more general flaw of humans. But what do I know....

Posted by justaguy | March 15, 2008 2:53 PM

RKU's comments above are frankly weird. As anyone who knows ANYTHING about history will understand, Tibet and China are different countries and always have been. Their languages are different, their cultures are different, and their ways of life are different. China has ruled Tibet in the past, yes... but Tibet has also ruled large parts of China. And if China is arguing that it deserves to rule Tibet because it ruled it in the past, I hope they are planning to send tribute missions to both the Mongols and the Manchus, who ruled THEM in the past.

The Chinese presence in Tibet is doubly artificial in that Chinese colonization has been very much a forced affair. Take off the government pressure, and most of the Chinese in Tibet would hightail it back to what they consider the "civilized world."

Last, but certainly not least, the Chinese government does not even have a right to rule China, let alone Tibet. It is not elected. It is a dictatorship. We deal with it as a matter of pragmatism, and because trying to change other people's governments from the outside is usually a bad idea (cf: Iraq). In the end, this is a problem for the Chinese people to solve. But its moral standing to criticize others or defend its own actions is precisely zero, and anyone who defies it or rebels against it, Tibetan or Chinese, deserves at least to be spared our criticism.

Posted by sunsin | March 15, 2008 3:27 PM

the Chinese government does not even have a right to rule China, let alone Tibet.

Yep, I think this is a really, really, REALLY good sort of argument for Americans to be making these days about China and most of the other governments in the world...

And pardon my already emphasized ignorance about Tibetan history, but hasn't the Chinese government---rightly or wrongly---ruled Tibet for the last couple of hundred years or so?...

Incidentally, how long has the *American* government ruled most of the continental United States?...

Posted by RKU | March 15, 2008 3:34 PM

more than one occasion I've made the mistake of criticizing Chinese treatment of ethnic minorities when my home town police department had just shot an unarmed black man seemingly for no good reason

Unless you approved of your police department doing that -- I presume you didn't -- I don't see what your problem is.

And why the linkage anyway? I am assuming you have some abstract sense of morality. How does the badness of this American police department make the badness of the Chinese action any better? When you think about it, your comment above is ridiculous.

But in a way, it's very American. When I lived in China and Japan, I used to love watching the locals play the American students with silly tricks like this. When they tried it on me with variations for context -- "Aren't you afraid that Quebec will separate from Canada?" -- I'd say, "They go, they go. And?" That shut them up really quickly. Nothing like trying to push someone's buttons and discovering they aren't connected.

Posted by sunsin | March 15, 2008 3:37 PM

hasn't the Chinese government---rightly or wrongly---ruled Tibet for the last couple of hundred years or so

And?

You seem to think that holding an area militarily makes you the rightful ruler. I suppose the United States could on that principle call Iraq the 51st state, especially if McPain succeeds in his dream to keep troops there for a hundred years.

Most of us would say that sovereignty comes from the will of the people freely expressed. You, on the other hand, seem to think it derives from the diktat of a dictatorship. Practicality puts very severe limits on how much foreigners can do in a situation like this, but the principle remains.

And let's not have any silly ramblings about Hawaii or Alaska independence movements. Who cares if anyone sponsors one? Such movements will only succeed if they gain majority support over a prolonged period of time, and if that's the case, guess what -- they deserve to succeed.

Posted by sunsin | March 15, 2008 3:51 PM

And let's not have any silly ramblings about Hawaii or Alaska independence movements. Who cares if anyone sponsors one? Such movements will only succeed if they gain majority support over a prolonged period of time, and if that's the case, guess what -- they deserve to succeed.

Looks like we have an absolutely hard-core Southern Secessionist on this liberal blog!

Hurray for President Jeff Davis, and the overwhelming majority of Southern voters who backed him! Clearly, Britain and France should have provided financial aid and even military backing to defend the democratic will of the Southern people...

Dixie Forever!!

Posted by RKU | March 15, 2008 4:00 PM

I hope that after lurking on this and similar debates, Chinese readers have even stronger awareness of the utmost importance of keeping China centralized, and the government of China all-powerful. If the Chinese state ever weakens, their country will be torn apart and millions will die in the process.

Posted by ethnic riot | March 15, 2008 4:24 PM

AJ: "You mean when you were sixteen?"

Well done, sir.

Posted by Korha | March 15, 2008 5:22 PM

Uh, RKU, you are aware of the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950? And that prior to that Tibet has been independent for nigh on 40 years?

Posted by Meh | March 15, 2008 5:38 PM

Why is there an assumption, sunsin, that we can act like China is being a meanie and take our ball and go home?

We cannot, because the People's Bank of China could and would destroy our economy, since they have been funding it for the last 8 years.

You might retort "ah but that would devastate their economy!"

So what? They were a dirt poor third world country only thirty years ago. My Dad was one of the first people the Fed sent over to talk to the first capitalist People's Bank of China, and he did this at the time my mother was pregnant with me. That means that about 22 years ago. They are (a.) more able to cope with poverty and (b.) better equipped to obliterate dissent.

Meanwhile, we probably *aren't* willing to accept the lowered standard of living, so what would we gain from needlessly antagonizing them over a deserted plateau thousands of miles inland from the Pacific?

Posted by Greg | March 15, 2008 6:00 PM

>Meanwhile, we probably *aren't* willing to accept the lowered standard of living

The difference between Chinese and Americans is not what they are capable of enduring in general, but what they are willing to endure for this particular cause.

Americans would certainly be willing to accept lower standard of living and much more, if national integrity of USA was on the line.
They are just not willing to sacrifice (more or less) anything for the rights of strange people in foreign lands.
That's why the advocates of humanitarian interventions and other types of elected wars have to minimize the costs of such adventures to ever get any traction with American people.

Posted by ethnic riot | March 15, 2008 8:06 PM

Yes, and to the Chinese, the issue of Tibet, like Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Taiwan, is one in which the national integrity of the Middle Kingdom *is* on the line.

For that reason we should be wary of picking fights over such issues and then wondering why they react so angrily and forcefully to our meddling.

It's like hearing about Iranians operating in Iraq. Well of course they are, you fucking idiots! When Mexico experienced civil war we intervened all the fucking time.

Jesus.

Posted by Greg | March 15, 2008 8:46 PM

Greg,
we are in wild agreement.

Posted by ethnic riot | March 15, 2008 8:57 PM

chipfat:

Seriously, why does that government bother printing this crap in an English-language paper for foreign consumption? It's not like we'd be taken in by it.

It's for local ESL and expat consumption. Back in '77-'78, you'd never had known from the Irani english language press that a revolution was growing around us. When rioting broke out in the major cities, and the govt declared martial law, it was because of lawless elements. Parents were urged to control their kids.

A lot of us fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

Posted by cmholm | March 15, 2008 9:29 PM

"For that reason we should be wary of picking fights over such issues and then wondering why they react so angrily and forcefully to our meddling."

I don't know who the we you're talking about is - the US Government? Are they currently meddling? I sure as hell hope somebody starts meddling something fierce before the shit hits the fan. Hu Jintao cut his teeth with a military crackdown in Tibet, and its starting to look like something very ugly is about to happen.

Posted by justaguy | March 15, 2008 9:57 PM

Huh, 25 comments into a thread about minority unrest in China and no dark mutterings from 'abb1' about the obvious hand of the CIA in the protests? Huh, my favorite internationalist must be asleep at the wheel.

Posted by Doctor Memory | March 15, 2008 10:02 PM

Well, it did start on the anniversary of a CIA backed uprising...

Posted by justaguy | March 15, 2008 10:07 PM

The vast majority of Chinese people I've met here, including well-educated ones with experience living in the West, backs the Party line on Tibet, and would even if they were privy to the full nature of the current crisis. As Matthew wrote, even with the proliferation of blogs and bulletin boards in the country, the press as a whole is considerably less free than it was in the late 1980s, immediately prior to the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Westerners like to imagine China as full of a billion budding Thomas Jeffersons who would love to overthrow their government and install a liberal democracy. For the most part, these types of people don't exist.

Posted by Matt Schiavenza | March 15, 2008 10:40 PM

Isn't this the sort of stuff we get from Camp Clinton? and a sign of the spin we could expect from their government, here in America.

Posted by ian | March 16, 2008 12:44 AM

"The vast majority of Chinese people I've met here, including well-educated ones with experience living in the West, backs the Party line on Tibet, and would even if they were privy to the full nature of the current crisis."

I have to second that. When I hear the Chinese names for certain locations uttered, I generally just walk away or change the subject to avoid getting into an unwinnable argument. The surrealist experience was when a friend of mine from Beijing was trying to convince a Taiwanese-American friend that the PRC should be ruling over Taiwan. My educated Beijinger friend couldn't really seem to get why my other friend didn't seem rather enthused over that prospect.

"Seriously, why does that government bother printing this crap in an English-language paper for foreign consumption? It's not like we'd be taken in by it.

Posted by chipfat | March 15, 2008 12:00 PM"

I do get the feeling sometimes that they think if they keep on repeating it that we'll believe it. The government does seem to often believe its own propaganda. For instance, during the Deng era some political controls in Tibet were relaxed, leading to Tibetans using that greater freedom to protest. The state seemed genuinely surprised by this before cracking down. You also hear a lot of people repeat the weirdest things about China's minorities while living here, like that Tibetans just love to dance and sing and like bright colors. I bet it's looking like not such a good idea to have included a Tibetan animal as one of the five annoying Olympic mascots as a way to avoid controversy. Oops.

Posted by Reality Man | March 16, 2008 7:32 AM

SqueakyRat, late reply here. Most of the Chinese postdocs don't ever want to go back. While underpaid and underappreciated (at least by our standards), they are living much better here than they can in China. Plus they can send dollars back home (worth less than they once were, that's for sure) to help family. It's more the case that they've genuinely bought the Chinese media's version of Tibet and the Dalai Lama than that they're hoping for some high position in the government.

Posted by Crusty Dem | March 16, 2008 8:14 AM

Saddam Hussein behind 9/11
The Bush Administration said on Friday that there was enough evidence to prove that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were "organized, premeditated and masterminded" with the assistance of Saddam Hussein. The evidence, which is classified, is clear on the Iraqi government's involvement, an official said, adding that the United States was lucky to be led by a Great Leader capable of seeing through the nefarious plot-making of Osama Bin Laden and his Axis of Evil.

Or: "how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye?" Matthew 7:4.

Posted by Hans B | March 16, 2008 11:37 AM

Hans B:

Yep! And it's a little peculiar for Americans to be denouncing the Chinese government for killing (maybe) 30 rioting Tibetans in their own country, when the U.S. government has killed about ONE MILLION Iraqis in *their* own country.

For those who've never taken elementary mathematics, 1,000,000 >>> 30!

Posted by RKU | March 16, 2008 12:52 PM

I'll second Matt Schiavenza here. Even the most cosmopolitan Chinese will turn ultranationalist on a dime when the issue of Taiwan, Tibet, or Xinjiang is raised. I don't think it comes from indoctrination so much as a shared sense of China's historical oppression and the need to feel "whole."

For what it's worth, South Koreans exhibit exactly the same behavior when it comes to territorial disputes with the Japanese -- and go the Chinese one further with finger-chopping displays -- and most of us would take South Korea to be a functioning democracy, with a free and open media. I suspect a Japanese nationalist also sounds similar to his Korean and Chinese counterparts, though thankfully I've never had to meet one.

The really funny thing in this is that because of the ultranationalism, the Great Firewall may not even be necessary.

Posted by Matthew Stinson | March 16, 2008 1:01 PM

Matt and Matthew are right regarding popular Chinese attitudes. After four years living in China, I've noticed that while the average highly-educated Chinese has a great amount of angst regarding the ham-handed propaganda and endless, rampant corruption that attains in their government, they are also fundamentally in agreement with most of the policies we find objectionable.

Chinese television is overloaded with an enormous variety of song-and-dance shows that invariably feature Chinese minorities (in traditional garb) singing the praises of the Party and PLA. The extent to which early Chinese education focuses on "Greater China" nationalism and the indivisibility of the State is immense.

The Truth is that even if the CCP were to serendipitously vanish tomorrow, the Chinese would replace it with something very similar.

I find the comments that assert that we (Americans) should not criticize China's behavior because XYZ atrocity kind of confusing. Surely there is room for us to criticize our own State AND the CCP? Furthermore, hypocrisy might be bad personal morality, but it's a necessary condition for good policy. Given the choice between Bush and Co. ravaging Iraq/wherever while pushing for more human rights in China or having Bush and Co. just ravaging Iraq while letting the CCP turn Tibetans into lamp-shades, I'll take the first option any day of the week.

What kind of world would we be living in if no government could exert diplomatic pressure to avert tyranny unless they were themselves utterly blameless?

Posted by K. Larson | March 16, 2008 10:11 PM

I agree that it is silly to suggest that Chinese atrocities are cool because the US isn't blameless. My above comments - which may not be entirely clear - were about the suggestion that Chinese people must be brainwashed in order to agree with their government, or else that Chinese nationalism is somehow uniquely pathological. I think that when you compare it to US nationalism it is - while different - nothing all that special.

Posted by justaguy | March 16, 2008 10:42 PM

re K. Larson: of course it is possible to criticize both China and the US, I didn't mean to say otherwise. Rather, I think that before chuckling disparagingly at the idiotic propaganda in foreign media, it's worth remembering the idiotic propaganda in one's own media.

I don't know the situation in China and I read from these posts that the Chinese are essentially in agreement with the government and the controlled media. That surprises me a little, I must admit, because what I saw in Communist East Europe was very different. Over there, a (say Pravda) article reading like the depicted Chinese one would have been interpreted as an admission that there was an uprising in Tibet, and more precise information would have been gleaned from reading between the lines, e.g. "indignation of... all ethnic groups" might have been interpreted as an indication of ethnic trouble.

And this contrasts with the way the US press handled the pending invasion of Iraq in 2003, with no information hidden between the lines nor readers skeptical enough to look for it. Or to give a more recent example, the way the US MSM unanimously continues to insist that the Iraqis because of their divisions are failing to pass an "oil revenue-sharing law" when the opposite is true (the refusal to pass this obscene law that does not share revenues among Iraqis but largely gives them away to foreign companies, is actually an encouraging sign that Iraqi nationalism is not dead - but I would never have known that by reading the US MSM).

In short, if I had no other sources of information than the Chinese article on Tibet and (for example) a typical Washington Post article on Iraqi oil legislation, I would be better informed by the Chinese article which can be read between the lines than by the American article which cannot and which is simply false.

Posted by Hans B | March 17, 2008 4:31 AM