Letter from Beijing: China and Tibet

Here's an op-ed I wrote for the Poughkeepsie Journal which should come out sometime this week.

April 13, 2008

LETTER FROM BEIJING

It’s been almost a year since I wrote in these pages. I had just arrived in Beijing and the major issues were safety concerns about Chinese exports to the U.S., environmental pollution, and the Beijing Olympics. The first two issues are still there but have been eclipsed by the protests in Tibet, and their effect on the Beijing Olympics.

We will be here for the Olympics and are watching this global drama unfold with great interest, and some anxiety. We have an uneasy feeling that there may be more than sporting events taking place in Beijing for our entertainment come August.

The Chinese government now has its huge propaganda machine at full throttle. In the first days of the Tibet protests, there was little news and many Beijing residents knew nothing about the protests. Then suddenly, the news about Tibet began to appear with every conceivable spin on the protests and the response by the international community.

In the eyes of the Chinese media, the Tibetan protests were violent, the Dalai Lama was behind this violence, and pro-Tibetan protests abroad were the work of a small number of Tibetans. Most Chinese here accept this view, although a small group of Chinese intellectuals did call for an independent investigation of the protests.

For those of us here with access to other sources of information, a very different picture emerged. In this picture, the Tibet protests started off peacefully before turning violent, the Dalai Lama called for dialogue, and the outrage over China’s treatment of Tibet was not limited to a small number of Tibetans. Instead, we were hearing from a wide range of human rights activists, political leaders, and other prominent voices in the West.

Some of these anti-Chinese protests and criticisms have been thoughtful, but others have engaged in China-bashing that borders on racism. One CNN commentator has called the Chinese a bunch of goons, and said that China hasn’t changed at all.

Complicating these two contrasting images is a third picture of Chinese around the world rallying in support of the Chinese government. These Chinese do not understand why the world is picking on China just when it’s having its big coming-out party. They point out there are other oppressed groups, and dictatorships much worse than China. They ask why China is being portrayed as the big bully when not long ago it was a poor country picked apart by Western and Japanese imperialists? Why doesn’t China get credit for expanding opportunities and freedoms for a billion plus people and bringing hundreds of millions out of poverty?

This response by Chinese who have access to other sources of information should make us think twice about how we in the West respond. This event is unlike the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests where Western critics were joined by many Chinese at home and abroad. In the case of Tibet, any Western criticism must contend with a unified front consisting of the Chinese government and Chinese people. Tibet is also unlike the food safety scares where international criticism prompted the Chinese government to make changes in its regulatory system. The Chinese government is unlikely to budge on Tibet which it sees as an issue of territorial integrity.

So am I saying that we should not criticize China, stand by and do nothing? No, I would encourage people to make their voice heard but to do it in a way that will both apply pressure and promote dialogue. China does care about its image and international opinion. But I would advise against China-bashing, which is counterproductive and will only make the Chinese government dig in its heels. It is important that we express our outrage, but more important that we do so in ways that engage China and the Chinese rather than turn them away.

The one thing I would add to my closing words is that we could all benefit from learning more about the history of Tibet and China. For a short primer, see this New York Times editorial by Elliot Sperling, a Tibet specialist, in the April 13, 2008 New York Times.

Don't Know Much About Tibetan History

By ELLIOT SPERLING

Bloomington, Ind.

FOR many Tibetans, the case for the historical independence of their land is unequivocal. They assert that Tibet has always been and by rights now ought to be an independent country. China's assertions are equally unequivocal: Tibet became a part of China during Mongol rule and its status as a part of China has never changed. Both of these assertions are at odds with Tibet's history.

The Tibetan view holds that Tibet was never subject to foreign rule after it emerged in the mid-seventh century as a dynamic power holding sway over an Inner Asian empire. These Tibetans say the appearance of subjugation to the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries, and to the Manchu rulers of China's Qing Dynasty from the 18th century until the 20th century, is due to a modern, largely Western misunderstanding of the personal relations among the Yuan and Qing emperors and the pre-eminent lamas of Tibet. In this view, the lamas simply served as spiritual mentors to the emperors, with no compromise of Tibet's independent status.

In China's view, the Western misunderstandings are about the nature of China: Western critics don't understand that China has a history of thousands of years as a unified multinational state; all of its nationalities are Chinese. The Mongols, who entered China as conquerers, are claimed as Chinese, and their subjugation of Tibet is claimed as a Chinese subjugation.

Here are the facts. The claim that Tibet entertained only personal relations with China at the leadership level is easily rebutted. Administrative records and dynastic histories outline the governing structures of Mongol and Manchu rule. These make it clear that Tibet was subject to rules, laws and decisions made by the Yuan and Qing rulers. Tibet was not independent during these two periods. One of the Tibetan cabinet ministers summoned to Beijing at the end of the 18th century describes himself unambiguously in his memoirs as a subject of the Manchu emperor.

But although Tibet did submit to the Mongol and Manchu Empires, neither attached Tibet to China. The same documentary record that shows Tibetan subjugation to the Mongols and Manchus also shows that China's intervening Ming Dynasty (which ruled from 1368 to 1644) had no control over Tibet. This is problematic, given China's insistence that Chinese sovereignty was exercised in an unbroken line from the 13th century onward.

The idea that Tibet became part of China in the 13th century is a very recent construction. In the early part of the 20th century, Chinese writers generally dated the annexation of Tibet to the 18th century. They described Tibet's status under the Qing with a term that designates a "feudal dependency," not an integral part of a country. And that's because Tibet was ruled as such, within the empires of the Mongols and the Manchus. When the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, Tibet became independent once more.

From 1912 until the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, no Chinese government exercised control over what is today China's Tibet Autonomous Region. The Dalai Lama's government alone ruled the land until 1951.

Marxist China adopted the linguistic sleight of hand that asserts it has always been a unitary multinational country, not the hub of empires. There is now firm insistence that "Han," actually one of several ethnonyms for "Chinese," refers to only one of the Chinese nationalities. This was a conscious decision of those who constructed 20th-century Chinese identity. (It stands in contrast to the Russian decision to use a political term, "Soviet," for the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.)

There is something less to the arguments of both sides, but the argument on the Chinese side is weaker. Tibet was not "Chinese" until Mao Zedong's armies marched in and made it so.

Elliot Sperling is the director of the Tibetan Studies program at Indiana University's department of Central Eurasia Studies.

Chinese Nationalism and the Nanjing Massacre

So what is Chinese nationalism, and what does it have to do with the Nanjing Massacre which is the subject of the podcasts that you will be listening to? This is a much bigger topic of course than I can take on in this one blog, but let me try to provide a little context. First of all, most scholars agree that Chinese nationalism (and nationalism as a general term) is a modern invention. Nationalism is closely tied with the emergence of the nation-state. Both concepts have their origins in the European experience. Here the nation refers to a group of people who enjoy a common cultural or ethnic bond, and the state refers to an independent country with a sovereign government, clear territorial boundaries and a loyal population. Nationalism refers to pride in and loyalty to the nation-state, or a desire to establish a nation-state. Nationalism is a particularistic force that sees one’s people as distinct from other peoples or nations.

These concepts of nationalism and the nation-state become relevant to China after its encounter with European powers in the Opium War of 1840-42. Prior to this time, China saw itself as a civilization based on a set of universalistic principles that other civilizations could adopt. Chinese culture, not the nation-state, was the focus of people’s loyalty. But the Opium War and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-85 forced China’s integration into the modern interstate system. China no longer saw itself as a universalistic civilization superior to all others, but as one nation-state among a community of states. Chinese elites in the early 20^th century began to use norms associated with nationalism and the nation-state – sovereignty, territorial integrity and the equality of states – to defend its own borders from the incursions of imperialist powers. Nationalist discourse occupies a prominent place in the Revolution of 1911, in Sun Yatsen’s writings, in the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and in the formation of both the KMT and the CCP. (Not surprisingly, we also see nationalism on the rise in the rest of Asia during this period.)

Thus, Japan’s invasion of China in 1936 occurs just when nationalism is on the rise in China. By this time, nationalism had become an effective way to gain popular support and unify the masses, certainly more effective than other ideologies that were being debated at the time such as liberalism, fascism, anarchism, and perhaps even Marxism. Indeed, some scholars have argued that appeals to nationalism, rather than to Marxist principles, were a major reason for the CCP’s rise to power in the 1930s and 1940s.

Chinese Nationalism and Tibet: Take the Chinese seriously

In the last few weeks, the headlines here in China and abroad have been inundated with news about the uprisings in Tibet, and the international and domestic response to these uprisings. A major leitmotif that runs through many of these stories is Chinese nationalism. What we are seeing in these media reports, and in the blogosphere, is an outpouring of nationalism and patriotism on the part of Chinese both in China and abroad. These Chinese resent the way that the Chinese government and the Chinese themselves have been portrayed. They complain that Westerners are quick to jump on China for problems with human rights and food safety without recognizing the tremendous progress China has made in the past few decades. They support the Chinese government’s position on a unified China, and point out that people in the West use a double standard with regard to Tibet. Westerners, they say, get all riled up about Tibetan independence, but remain silent on independence for Palestinians, Kurds, and other oppressed peoples around the world. Why should all their anger be directed at China, particularly a China that has developed so successfully, lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and restored a sense of pride and dignity to the Chinese nation?

It’s worth quoting here from Wenran Jiang’s April 4 op-ed piece in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Jiang, a well-respected Chinese-born political science professor from Canada, writes:

“For their part, many in the Chinese diaspora have exhibited a strong sense of nationalism that opposes any Tibetan independence movement and resents any form of boycott of the Beijing Olympics. What is surprising, however, is the very high level of mobilization of Chinese public opinion that is not as much a response to Beijing's rallying calls for national unity as it is a strong reaction to what many Chinese perceive as the one-sided reporting of the Tibetan unrests by the mainstream Western press. Chinese people everywhere want their side of the Tibet story told.

Unlike in 1989, when Chinese all over the world, including scholars and students from the mainland, protested against the government crackdown on students in Tiananmen Square, Chinese people have taken to streets this time in support of Beijing. In the past week, such rallies have taken places in European cities, in Montreal and Calgary, and one is expected in Edmonton this weekend.

While many overseas Chinese believe that Beijing's extremely harsh and hostile words against the Dalai Lama are neither effective nor well received by the Western public, they still see mainstream Western news media as being excessively anti-China. (Many noted errors in the reporting, including the mislabeling of photos of Indian and Nepalese police confronting demonstrating monks as Chinese soldiers cracking down in Tibet.) They have fed their observations back to Chinese cyberspace instantly, and what we are witnessing is an emerging synergy of cybernationalism connecting many Chinese at home and abroad.

But what has propelled this strident nationalism? Why has the disdain for Tibet independence and its ambitions become so highly charged and emotional? Hasn't the Chinese Communist Party simply been using nationalism as a tool of legitimacy for staying in power? Aren't most Chinese brainwashed since childhood?

First of all, there is an overwhelming sense among the Han Chinese (the country's predominant ethnic group) that Tibet has been part of China for centuries. True, Chinese control over Tibet was weakened when China was invaded by Western powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. But the Han have not forgotten the earlier ties. As well, Central Intelligence Agency-funded Tibetan covert operations against China in most of the Cold War years are well documented, stirring further resentment. As such, historical memory ensures that in the minds of the Han, any perceived attempts to separate Tibet from China will be linked with the humiliation the Chinese suffered at the hands of Western and Japanese imperialism. So, to most Chinese, a potential boycott of the Beijing Olympics is viewed as a denial of China's moment in restoring its respectable position in the world.

Second, many Chinese deeply believe to this day that the People's Republic of China has lifted Tibet's people out of a medieval serfdom that was degrading to the majority of Tibetans, especially women. The attitude, felt particularly by the communist and socialist idealists, is not unlike that felt some years ago by many in North America who saw the spread of their European culture as bringing civilization to the native people. Just as aboriginal children were put in boarding schools and forced to learn English, many Chinese thought they were giving emancipation to an oppressed people under the name of socialism and progress. While not denying Chinese policy failures in Tibet over the years, many reacted angrily to the recent charge that they were committing "cultural genocide" in Tibet. They point out that what China did in Tibet is generous in contrast to how native Indians were treated in North America over 400 years.

Finally, many Han Chinese also think Tibetans should appreciate the tremendously high level of financial and other support that has been poured into their region, both from the central government, in the form of subsidies, and from the market adventurists who have invested heavily in the area in recent years. To the Han, such economic development is seen as eliminating poverty and bringing prosperity to the ordinary people of Tibet, as in the rest of China. That's why the shocking images of angry young Tibetans violently attaching Han Chinese and other non-Tibetans made Chinese people recoil in indignation. (Even though they might note that while the gap between the rich and poor in the rest of China is mostly a distribution issue, the division line between the haves and have-nots appears to be drawn along ethnic lines in Tibet.)

Taken together, these historically-conditioned perceptions will continue to shape events. And failing to understand the deep-rooted emotions on both sides will not only hinder potential solutions to the complex issues involved, but may risk generating further divisions.”

Note the connection Jiang makes between the Chinese nationalism on display today and the earlier Chinese nationalism that arose in response to Western and Japanese imperialism. These expressions of nationalism, and the arguments that come out of them, have to be taken seriously by anyone who seeks to understand and deal with a rising China. Otherwise, we risk alienating an important global player, not to mention a major portion of the world’s population. We also risk aggravating already serious misunderstandings and misperceptions between Westerners and Chinese. And indeed, a number of things said about China’s treatment of Tibet by Western media and groups like the Free Tibet movement have been guilty of fanning the flames of Chinese nationalism by portraying China as a big bully, and calling for the international community to boycott the Olympics.