This is bizarre. The recent two summits (APEC and G20) have, I would argue, ended up as a disaster for the US and its allies (see here, here and here) while Russia, China and the rest of the BRICS are clearly in control of the situation, yet there are still those who believe the western corporate media which wants to portray Putin are Russia as “weak”.
I suppose in our age of virtual reality perceptions are everything, and in this case such perceptions are clearly molded by exposure to the western corporate media whose brainwashing skills are nothing short of amazing. But let’s look at the facts.
The single biggest development which came out of these two summits is that Xi Jinping has clearly and, for the first time, openly shown that he fully support Putin and Russia.
I remember how earlier this year there were many who were doubting China’s policies towards Russia, many were saying that the “Walmart-effect” (the magnitude US-China economic ties) would never allow China to side with Russia against the US and yet this is exactly what has happened on at least three levels:
1. Economic: not only have Russia and China have signed what can only be called mega-contracts, but the Chinese were more than happy to offer Russian banks (under US/EU sanctions) access to Chinese credits. China is also helping Russia to replace SWIFT.
2. Political: if anything, the Chinese went out of their way to show that not only was Russia not isolated, but that Putin was the guest of honor at the APEC – thereby openly defying the US/EU.
3. Military: Russia and China are now engaged in regular large size joint military exercises including naval and ground operations. Not only are these two training together, they are regularly practicing the creation of joint staffs.
This really should not have come as a surprise to anybody: Russia and China are truly *ideal* partners, and they perfectly complement to each other. What one needs, the other has, and vice-versa. Not only that, but both have been – and still are – bullied by the USA so much that I would argue that the Empire is literally pushing them into each other’s hands. Obama has repeatedly and openly threatened both Russia and China, send them all sorts of ultimatums, tried to assemble coalitions against them and, of course, surrounded both with military bases and US anti-missile systems.
What Obama and his advisors have failed to realize is this: Russia and China (backed by the BRICS, SCO, CSTO, EEU) are far more powerful than the US/EU block in political, economic and military terms. This is the big news, the major strategic development, the geopolitical tectonic shift, which the Empire’s corporate media is trying so hard to obfuscate. As for western leaders, they are simply delusional and they have manifestly fallen into the old trap of believing their own propaganda. But, as the expression goes, “when your head is in the sand, your butt is in the air” and reality has now reasserted itself with a very powerful and painful bite.
The most ridiculous moment of last week’s summit came when Obama, after having failed to achieve any of his objectives against Russia or China, made a speech where he seriously spoke of the importance of “American leadership”. It was comical to the point of being embarrassing. On Russian TV the commentators where literally laughing when reporting this.
As for Putin, obviously sure of his position, he openly poked fun at the idiocy of the US/EU leaders: “Have they thought about what they are doing at all or not? Or has politics blinded them? As we know eyes constitute a peripheral part of brain. Was something switched off in their brains?”. Combined with now an open warning that Russia would not allow the US/EU to crush the Novorussian resistance, Putin’s message is blunt and clear: western leaders are driving their empire into a wall. [If you have not done so already, I urge you to carefully parse Putin’s recent interview with ARD].
The AngloZionist Empire has truly become an “Empire of Illusions” (to use Chris Hedges expression) where facts matter much less than spin, where the normal way to cope with a challenge is to deny its existence, were self-deception is a way of life.
The writing is on the wall. It has been there for a long while.
The problem is that nobody wants to read it.
The Saker
re: China’s territorial claims.
Taiwan:
Taiwan was indeed Chinese territory but it is the refuge of a Chinese population that had another worldview. And they do not want to be invaded – how about that?
India:
I do not know too much about these areas but it seems to me that the Chinese claims in this area are not related to recent history. And IMO the last few centuries (if not more) have clearly established the Indian presence there. Why should the PCR have the right to say “once mine always mine”? This looks a bit like the the Zionist approach which says “This was our land 2000+ years ago so we want it back now and we do not care what happened since”.
South China Sea:
I believe the maps that the PCR uses for these claims are ~500 years old. But maps are not an argument for possession – otherwise the first European world maps would mean possession of the world wouldn’t they? Additionally the local cultures (Vietnam, the Philippines,, Malaysia, Indonesia) have developed in the last 500 years and according to internationally accepted norms certain parts of the South China Sea are considered their territorial waters. So what gives a country the right to come after 500 years and say “I considered this mine 500 years ago so please move out of my way”?
South china sea is the name that gives you clue if you want to learn.
re: China’s expansion.
“Chinese territory over the centuries has grown at the rate of most continental states.”
If you look at the language maps of China’s minorities en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China you can see that more than 50% of the PRC’s territories are conquered territories – f.ex. if memory serves Tibet represented ~40% of the PRC’s surface at the time of conquest (1950). If that is not expansion then what is?
Just to make my overall position clear: I believe that RU is at the present time the only barrier to the AZ nightmare. And I’m also in favor of the current rapprochement between RU/China (although I would like – for reasons of equilibrium – a similar rapprochement with Europe). But my personal experience with the Chinese tradition has taught me a lot – and I would not want to exchange an AZ nightmare for a China nightmare. The only thing that gives me (a little) hope is Song’s statement about “some aching uncertainty about how much of the Chinese culture is “backward” and not suitable for the present world situation.” If this feeling should grow maybe planetary humanity will have a chance. Chinese tradition is very old and very strong – will it accept change? And how prevalent is this feeling? And in what social groups does it exist? Government? the Mercantilists?
Thank you, NotSoFast, for the information about Tibet. As a Buddhist in the US, I owe it to my Tibetan teachers and those who fled the occupation for, well, as I regard it, everything. I had thought everything you said, but didn’t have the material facts to offer to the group here.
I agree about the CIA – the Dalai Lama is not an “asset” in the sense we use that word. He’s established relations with the US government, and been recognized by western leaders. He’s a popular author and figure in the West. What else could he do? Where else could he turn? I am familiar with some of the vows he’s taken, and I do believe his every thought is turned to the well being of his people, and all the beings in the universe – as equally as his training can achieve.
And although we sometimes hear that the doctrine of non-violence is itself a psy-op – and well may be, I’m not arguing against that – the Dalai Lama believes it is the only path that succeeds. The Buddha himself taught this, and one could spend a lifetime trying to find flaws in the Buddha’s teachings, and never succeed. When violence breaks out in Tibet, the Dalai Lama is genuinely anguished, because he sees the chance of success fleeing away.
In a forum that honors the spirituality of Russia, I trust we can afford to accept that there are people in this world who train in the goal of holiness.
It can’t be an easy thing to burn yourself to death. Being Buddhist doesn’t in itself confer any peacefulness to the agony. But as a Buddhist, to me the shock of monks setting themselves on fire is less the fact of death than the fact of suicide, and what this does to their spiritual path – it’s completely proscribed, completely wrong, within the Buddhist path. For Tibetan monks to reach such acute levels of desperation to me is a message greater than any other message I could hear.
So, I’m rooting for Russia. And Russia draws great advantage in league with China. And the western empire is a cruel dark thing. I guess I put my thinking for the suffering of Tibet in a different compartment sometimes, in order to continue thinking the other things. I have no answer to this quandary. I have some vows myself, nothing close to the Dalai Lama’s. Even so, I have to be sad for all beings as they strive only for happiness and with every move dig themselves only deeper into misery.
re: Immolation by fire in Tibet.
“It can’t be an easy thing to burn yourself to death. Being Buddhist doesn’t in itself confer any peacefulness to the agony. But as a Buddhist, to me the shock of monks setting themselves on fire is less the fact of death than the fact of suicide, and what this does to their spiritual path – it’s completely proscribed, completely wrong, within the Buddhist path. For Tibetan monks to reach such acute levels of desperation to me is a message greater than any other message I could hear.”
Yes – this is a very important part of the message: although their life (and their whole culture) is dedicated to their religion they ignore this basic interdict out of pure desperation. Up to now about 130 Tibetans have perished in this way, mostly men, some women, even some laypeople.
And for those who are not informed about daily life in Tibet here is how they do it:
A Tibetan who has decided on this fate surrounds his body first with a layer of wool followed by an outer layer of barbed wire. The last precaution (used by many of them) is to ingest poison – so as to avoid being beaten and tortured to death by the Chinese troops who fill the streets surrounding the remaining Tibetan monasteries. He then ingests as much petrol as he can, lights it and recites the final message that he has decided on – which up to now has always been a message of love for Tibet and for the Dalai Lama.
Those who speak German can check this description at igfm-muenchen.de which is a very honest German site with extensive archives – and it’s the only site that I still follow.
Ethnic minorities cover large parts of Chinese territory because they have not been assimilated into the Han Chinese majority culture. I find it very strange that many Western observers assume that China is supposed to be a mono-ethnic state. China is not Korea, it is a ethnically heterogeneous society and has been so since antiquity. Chinese Emperors have fought wars against neighouring states to compel vassalage but such states, if defeated, were generally not annexed. China has historically been insular land power that fights wars to secure its periphery. In 1945, FDR actually offered Chiang Kai-shek to have Vietnam annexed by China and Chiang turned him down. Likewise, Mao made no efforts to annex North Korea after the Korean War even though the North Korean army was practically non-existent at the time of the armistice and large Chinese forces were stationed in North Korea until the late 1950s.
Furthermore, while there is much debate as to whether the Ming dynasty exercised sovereignty over Tibet, it is without question that the succeeding Qing dynasty did until it was so weakened in the late 19th century that it was no longer able to do so. While the Mongol Yuan dynasty had some features of a foreign occupation of China, the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, by the time of the Kangxi Emperor, was a Chinese empire ruled over by a largely Manchu elite. At the time of the dynasty’s most severe challenge in the Taiping Rebellion of the 19th century, the Qing throne was saved by the loyalty of the vast majority of the Han Chinese literati who organized provincial militias to defeat the rebels where the Manchu and Mongol bannermen had failed. In the late 19th century, majority military power under the Qing dynasty in China was held by Han Chinese officials. It was only after the failure of reformist efforts in the court involving the Guangxu Emperor along with the spread of the European Social Darwinist ideas that many Chinese intellectuals (briefly) came to see the Manchu again as non-Chinese.
The Qing ruled Tibet loosely through a tripartite structure involving the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama (both offices effectively appointed by the court) and Qing representative. The Qing representative handled serious military matters and over time the court tightened its grip on the border regions like Tibet as it perceived Russian and British efforts to dilute Chinese sovereignty. Chinese effective sovereignty was lost in 1911 with the chaos of the Xinhai Revolution but no Chinese government that followed ever renounced Tibet. Both Chiang and Mao always insisted that Tibet was part of China though only Mao in 1950 was in a position to re-assert that claim. It had little if anything to do with acquisition of mineral wealth.
As for Taiwan again, the Chinese population and their descendents that fled to the island in 1949 are generally supportive of eventual unification with the mainland. It is only a large part of the prior Chinese settler population that began arriving in Taiwan in the 1600s and which lived through Japanese rule that has come to see itself as “non-Chinese”.
As for the Sino-Indian border, I find it odd that many supporters of Indian claims take the borders of the British Raj for granted while denying China the legitimacy of its Qing dynasty borders. When was Sikkim ever part of an Indian state? To carry Notsofast’s argument about Mongol rule in China over to India, one would also have to say that there was no Indian state in northern India for a thousand years prior to British rule, only a succession of Afghan and Turco-Mongol occupiers.
As for the Dalai Lama, if he does not wish to spend the rest of his life in exile, he can ask to return to China and renounce any dilution of Chinese sovereignty in Tibet. The Dalai Lama in recent years has claimed that he only seeks significant autonomy for Tibet within China. However, the arrangement he proposes is one where Chinese rule is only formal and China would have no military presence on the Tibetan plateau. If the Dalai Lama wants to help restore the best of the Tibetan tradition in the face of the steamroller of modernity, he would be much better placed to do so in China as an ally rather than outside of China as an enemy. For all of its faults, the CCP is trying to build a modern but non-liberal civilization and if the Tibetan lamaism can contribute to that, all the better. What exactly does the Dalai Lama think that post-modern Western elites are going to absorb from Buddhism?
Thanks Song for this very great information that I have not ever learned, here in the West.
I agree with your comment about the Dalai Lama being wiser to accept China the way it is…
NotSoFast said…@ 18 November, 2014 01:59
“I’ve had 30+ years of good relationships with Chinese immigrants in Europe”
Perhaps this is the key upon which you extrapolate.
Immigrants by definition tend not to have direct daily immersed experience in the culture/country which they have left since they are elsewhere being immigrants.
Immigrants have left the former country for reasons, and hence their attitudes may not reflect attitudes held by those who did not emiigrate from the previous culture/country.
I note that like me you have not met and talked with everyone who would represent themselves as Chinese.
Consequently at best your extrapolations generalise from a small sample.
As Heraclitus remarked you cannot step into the same river twice.
Up to 30 years is a long time for the river to flow even linearly.
However as Mao also said the longest journey starts with the first step.
The distance covered even over years tends to be a function of speed and direction – as in the fable of the tortoise and the hare.
However I note you represent yourself as NotSoFast.
To Anonymous poster #1
response to comment posted on 17 November, 2014 14:58
You do realize that german-foreign-policy.com is run by British intelligence, don’t you? Keep that in mind when visiting that website.
re: Tibet
Tibet has a very movemented history – it was for a while an warrior Empire that ruled even a Chinese province (8th century). Later it became a province of the Mongol empire which ruled also China. After the Mongol defeat China kept up some links with Tibet – these were mostly at arm’s length and tolerated by Tibetans but sometimes China also tried to divide Tibetans by supporting different religious authorities. But Tibet was never colonized by Han populations (the Tibetans would not ave stood for that) and as wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tibet states “in spite of the weakening of central authority, the neighbouring Ming Dynasty of China made no efforts to impose direct rule, although it kept friendly relations with some of the lamas.Tibet would be independent from the mid-14th century on, for nearly 400 years”
So I think that if you cling to the idea of empire you will pick out the elements that favour your expansion and if you don’t want to be colonized you will pick out the aspects that favor your independence. And I’m personally against the idea of empires because I feel that Empires are too often destructive and that the most favorable environment for human progress is the existence of individual nations with their own way of living, tradition, philosophy and religion – as long as they let others live too.
re: the Dalai Lama
“If the Dalai Lama wants to help restore the best of the Tibetan tradition in the face of the steamroller of modernity, he would be much better placed to do so in China as an ally rather than outside of China as an enemy”
The current idea of socialism includes Marx’s hatred of religion and this is IMO the main difference between the positions of China and of the Lama. While I agree that many religions include empire attitudes too ( f. ex. intolerance of other views) I do not believe that Buddhism is a religion in the usual meaning: the way I understand it it has no god(s) but it is rather a way of life (or a philosophy) that promotes an exploration of our inner world by techniques of meditation. Now the West tries to understand our inner world by psychology/psychiatry but so far the results are not overwhelming and so a new technique that may help us to understand ourselves better (before we destroy ourselves out of sheer ignorance) should be more than welcome. And for the Lama to accept the Gulag that China has made of Tibet with the intent to repress its religion is the exact opposite of what the Tibetan culture has tried to achieve for centuries now. And that such a technique of meditation requires quiet surroundings and a not-too-overwhelming military presence seems logical to me too (but this is just my very personal opinion – my own attitude towards religion is mainly agnostic )
re: China expansion and minorities.
Taiwan:
I’m not sure how many Taiwanese are for or against unification with China. Some of them have been influenced by the Japanese, while China has been influenced by Karl Marx so what? There seems to be a new trend of nations going back to their roots and traditions (Catalonia, Scotland, the Swiss gold initiative) and I think that this is part of the “interesting times” that are upon us. So I personally feel that the Taiwanese should decide by themselves what they want (in economic, cultural and diplomatic terms).
Sikkim:
No Chinese populations there as far as I know – so what business has China saying “This is mine?”
Minorities:
According to Wikipedia the % of minorities in China is ~8% while the territories conquered from the minorities is ~60% (my conclusion from the minorities map). To me this means an extremely brutal colonization. And the only minority where I have enough personal information (Tibet) confirms this view. The colonization there is in fact extremely brutal: Tibetans have become a minority in their own country, they are marginalized economically, their language and culture is being systematically destroyed while dissenters and patriots are shot, jailed, tortured and released as wrecks – all in the name of empire. An so I guess that Tibetans will be going the way of the other minorities i.e. a slow and inexorable decline.
Notsofast,
I am sorry to say that the quality of your argumentation is declining.
That ethnicity map of China you refer to shows vast swaths of north and northwest China as being mostly non-Han because those regions are either
1. arid steppe (Inner Mongolia)
2. desert (Xinjiang)
3. mountains (Tibet)
Of course the nomads (Mongols), oasis-dwellers (Uighurs) and mountaineers (Tibetans) will predominant in those areas. What brutal colonization are you referring to? The second most populace ethnic group in China are the Zhuang who number about 18 million. Why aren’t they fleeing the country? Why aren’t the Chinese Koreans all fleeing to South Korea?
In the case of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, those regions form a continuous flat region with the North China plain. Over the centuries China has had to face nomad invasions from the steppe. Holding those regions was and remains imperative.
For someone who claims to oppose NATO’s efforts to reduce Russia to the old Grand Duchy of Muscovy, you seem quite favourable to reducing China to its frontiers under its First Emperor.
Having soldiers around makes it hard to meditate? Is that your actual argument? Why then did Tibetan lamas frequently call on Mongol or Chinese armies to intervene on their behalf against their rivals? This idea of the Lamaist Tibet as some kind of contempative Shambala is a myth. Lhasa’s palace intrigues rivaled those of Rome under the Renaissance Popes. Most of the Dalai Lamas did not die violently for no reason and no Chinese officials were not pulling the strings, as I said their rule was a loose one until the late 19th century.
By the way, many forms of Buddhism do have deities (the Tibetan variety has lots), the Buddhist philosophy never denied the prior pagan beliefs, just put them in a different perspective.
I never said that Sikkim should be part of China. That was an example to illustrate how you are applying rules to China that you do not apply to India.
The comparison of Japanese influence in Taiwan and Communist influence on the mainland is spurious. The Japanese made significant efforts to indoctrinate the Taiwanese populace to be loyal subjects of Japan. It is this line of thinking in Taiwan that made a comeback in the early 1990s. The parallels with Galicia and Ukraine seem to escape you for some reason. How does that have any parallel with the Communist ideology in China?
Finally, this notion that the Dalai Lama cannot reconcile with China because of Marxist anti-religious animus does not stand up. Religious persecution in China as such ended in the 1980s. What we have now is repression of religious groups who have political agendas contrary to the CCP and the Chinese state overrall. The CCP would have no reason to fear the religious role of the Dalai Lama if he was in China and did not agitate to break up the country.
@ Song…………1/2
„I am sorry to say that the quality of your argumentation is declining. „
I do not doubt for a moment that you find some of my arguments more valid than others – and I am exactly in the same case :-)
Re: Sikkim
„I never said that Sikkim should be part of China. That was an example to illustrate how you are applying rules to China that you do not apply to India. „
I do agree with you that the takeover of Sikkim was probably a manipulation. But India is not an ever-expanding empire: they ceded Pakistan to their Muslim populations (how much of that was their own decision and how much was forced by the British is another moot point) – but as far as I know they have never stated that they want it back („once mine always mine“). They also allow some communist states within their nation – to me this means that they are basically tolerant and peaceful (which is unfortunately a large military disadvantage). And in the final analysis I would guess that the Sikkim people feel lucky by now to be linked to India when they see what is happening in neighbouring Tibet.
Btw why has China felt the necessity to build the very expensive tunnel between Tibet and India? I am sure that China does not expect any form of military aggression from India….
Re: My attitude towards Russia, India and China.
This basically comes down to a strong mistrust of ever-expanding Empires.
Russia:
I feel at ease with RU today because they do not want to expand. Because they really seem to care about the common good of their 99%. Because they accept different philosophies and religions and even seem to care about humanity in general (how long will this last? no way to know.) What I find particularly fascinating is that in today’s RU all values/philosophies/ideologies are intermixing in quite unexpected ways: you have monarchists, socialists, Orthodox Christians and probably others working side by side and trying to fashion a new world. To me this is the clearest sign that a strong current of change is making itself felt.
India:
Not expanding. My visit has left me with the impression that their capitalists are as bad as the US capitalists, but their 99% are peaceful, tolerant, and interesting/civilized people.
China:
For the moment I see China as an ever-expanding empire. Its last conquest (Tibet) is not yet digested but it again has another series of territorial claims. I am also aware through my personal experience that the Chinese tradition has a tendency of not easily accepting limits to their wishes/desires – and I would be surprised if this were only a trait of the mercantile class. And so I feel that if the Chinese tradition will not accept change that 10 years from now (when China will have reached military maturity) the probability is strong that humanity will exchange the AZ nightmare for a Chinese nightmare.
@ Song………………2/2
Re: the 8% minorities.
I do not feel that a 8% is the result of a natural evolution of minorities in China. I know for example that China has sent a large number of Han settlers to Tibet so that by now the Tibetans are a minority in their own country (is it 15 million settlers by now? – not sure). And each and every day ~3000 new settlers arrive by train in Lhassa. And the Han settlers (very competitive, very greedy) will certainly not be content to settle in the poorer regions of conquered Tibet – indeed examples abound where Tibetans have been cheated out of their real estate, houses, cheptel and small businesses, very often with government and police approval. And the „steamroller of modernity“ that China imposes completely ignores the wishes/needs/culture of the Tibetan population which is economically, legally and socially marginalized so that in the long run such a severely disadvantaged conquered population can only decline – genetically (because their strongest people are killed) as well as in numbers (because they have fewer and fewer opportunities in their own land).
I also happen to know that China sends massive numbers of Han settlers to Xinjiang where the local people have become a minority too so I would guess that the situation is very similar there.
And as you ask „why don’t they leave?“ I will again answer with the Tibet situation: because the Chinese military shoot at all the fugitives that they detect in the Himalayas. And the by now small number who make it to Nepal are often forcibly returned by the Nepalese authorities because of Chinese pressure. What about other minorities? I suspect that a major obstacle to their leaving is the language barrier – if you have been cowed and diminished for many generations and you speak no foreign language where can you/will you go? And how would the Chinese authorities react to those who wanted to leave? Wouldn’t that be a loss of face for China?
Btw I remember a very interesting minority report (at least 20-30 pages) in the National Geographic some 30 years ago which had been established by the Chinese government around that time. It listed over 400 minorities a large number of which were close to complete disappearance. And I believe it also contained discussions about a new minority report which would reorganize the list of minorities by aggregating different groups even if they did not share the same language. Does this ring a bell with anybody?
Re: Buddhism.
As I’ve stated before I’m not a religious man. Generally speaking I have never found a deity that I could relate to but I’m very interested in religions because of the power that they have over cultures (sometimes good, sometimes bad) and because of the values that they stand for.
As to Buddhism I view it in my personal (i.e. entirely practical) light: the original teachings (as far as I know) do not mention any god(s) but they are a series of recommendations to improve one’s understanding of oneself by meditation+lifestyle changes – and the subsequent additions (Theravada, Mahayana etc) mostly detract IMO from the simplicity of the original message.
Yes, Buddhism as well as all the other religions have the problem of the (sometimes egregious) abuses of their religious hierarchies. But I feel that this is related to the same power-craze that drives the ambitions of empires (yes) – in other words human inner balance is extremely vulnerable to power – in other words again religions also have the problem of the 99% versus the 1%. And these abuses do not reflect errors in the religion itself (f. ex. Buddhism itself does not condone these abuses), they just reflect a basic human weakness which has become very dangerous today. And a religion that addresses the problem of understanding oneself should IMO be supported – and I find it a loss that China is destroying the only culture that (in modern times) has shown the initiative to make this search their priority.
Thank you, Song, for your comments. I have been to China several times, and the Tibet, with my husband (we both teach urban planning and have been invited by Chinese colleagues) and I totally agree with you.
The Tibet reminds me a lot of the Andean areas of Bolivia, Peru, Chile… where the mountains are the dominating attribute, people’s facial features and skins reveal the hardship of the weather, clothes are very colorful… I would say that the Tibet is a beautiful paradise in the Himalayas with a population who somehow submitted to religion as if there was nothing else to do – actually, in the past, most of the revenues of the Tibet were spent on the upkeep of the monasteries and the nobility.
Today, as an economic alternative to the region, the Chinese government is developing tourism to create jobs and improve people’s living conditions – there has been already significant investment in tourism infrastructure. Tourism would mostly be domestic, as they recognize that the region is very remote for most international tourists. The attractions are the temples (which they respect and preserve) and the natural beauties (mountains and mountain streams).
The idea that the Tibetans are being swamped by Han Chinese is a myth. There is a large Han population in larger cities but much of that population is seasonal and does not stay permanently. That is largely a question of biology and altitude.
The non-Tibetans only outnumber the Tibetans (and not by a large margin) when you include Kham and Amdo which were not historically part of the Dalai Lama’s domain.
If China wanted to wipe out the Tibetan culture, the easiest thing to do would be to encourage the Tibetans to emigrate.
As for Xinjiang, that region has been multiethnic since the beginning of recorded history which should not be surprising given how it is flat land that connects into the Eurasian steppe and the North China plain. In recent history, the Han Chinese presence was only erased as a result of Islamic rebellions in the 19th century. As of today, Han Chinese predominate in northern Xinjiang but southern Xinjiang is still largely Uighur.
Notsofast, you seem to stating that you find the weakened China of the 19th century that was unable to assert much of anything to be the most appealing since you find the truncated Russia that exists today to be appealing. Yet few Russians today consider the loss of territory that came with the dissolution of the USSR to have been positive. China has no moral obligation to accept what was lost during its century of humiliation. For reasons of good sense and strategic interest it may be necessary to compromise certain claims here and there (as in the Russo-Chinese border) but such compromises are not a moral imperative.
I am sorry but your knowledge of Chinese history is quite poor.
Nosofast,
Your argument against Chinese sovereignty is based on an untenable claim that Chinese rule is incompatible with Tibetan religious life. It is only incompatible insofar as the Dalai Lama leverages his religious rank to agitate against China. You are left then with a vague belief that the Chinese are inherently aggressive and expansionist, which is not only contrary to almost all Western, much less Chinese, scholarship on Chinese history but is supposedly based on your extrapolation from experiences with Chinese businessmen, as if they are inherently different from Russian and Indian businessmen.
It is also clear that you know little about the situation of Chinese ethnic minorities. The fact that the proportion of ethnic minorities vis-a-vis the Han Chinese population has increased since the implementation of the one-child policy (Han only) also seems to escape your attention. The plethora of affirmative action programs that allow minority candidates with lower test scores to enter Chinese universities also passes you by. You even seem to think that the Chinese Koreans are cowed by the CCP into not leaving for South Korea. There is a fair number of Chinese Koreans in South Korea but many more remain in China. What language problem would they possibly have? You also seem to be unaware that the ethnic Koreans have higher average economic standing than the Han Chinese. Extrapolating propaganda from an exile population in Dharmasala that believes themselves to be holy people sullied by dirty lowlanders is not analysis.
“If China wanted to wipe out the Tibetan culture, the easiest thing to do would be to encourage the Tibetans to emigrate.”
Why does China then shoot at the Tibetans that want to leave? And why are those who reach Nepal despite the military patrols forcibly returned?
“You are left then with a vague belief that the Chinese are inherently aggressive and expansionist, which is not only contrary to almost all Western, much less Chinese, scholarship on Chinese history but is supposedly based on your extrapolation from experiences with Chinese businessmen, as if they are inherently different from Russian and Indian businessmen.”
National characters can be extremely different from one nation to another – for example the national characters of the neighbouring countries of France and Germany are very different indeed (even for businessmen) and I’ve always been very interested in these matters. And so I know that my experience with Chinese immigrants has brought me into contact with a mindset and a tradition which is completely different from Western mindsets (and this goes far beyond business concerns only).
And as for the expanding empire idea I feel that the invasion of a country like Tibet which was not a threat to China and which had a completely different culture and a completely different population was simply an empire act of conquest/aggression which China justifies by prior partial control (by force) that did not hold. And since China also has an all-ready list of additional territory claims some of which are rather crass (the whole of the South China Sea f. ex.) I feel justified in wondering where all this will end.
I am sorry that this discussion has to end on a strong note of disagreement. The only sign of hope that I saw in this discussion was your mention of an “aching uncertainty” which I related to an underlying feeling of changing times that more people feel today and which I interpret as an awakening of planetary humanity. But planetary humanity and expanding empires do not go together IMO. Probably in a few years these “interesting times” will produce a better understanding one way or another.
These are the questions I make to myself when I consider the Tibet question:
Was the Tibet an indisputably independent country in 1950, with an egalitarian society where the most basic human rights were respected, including freedom of slavery and the right to a job paying enough money to live on and social security – housing, medicine, education, child care, etc.?
Or were the majority of the people religiously brainwashed peasants who, under the Dalai Lama’s feudal regime, lived on the estates of the aristocratic landowners to whom they belonged from birth and whose lands they worked?
“Was the Tibet an indisputably independent country in 1950, with an egalitarian society where the most basic human rights were respected, including freedom of slavery and the right to a job paying enough money to live on and social security – housing, medicine, education, child care, etc.?”
You are not asking me to believe that China invaded Tibet out of humanitarian care for its poor oppressed population are you? Humanitarian care for foreigners is not a feature of Chinese tradition and it is a simple fact that a very large majority of Tibetans is deeply unhappy with the Chinese colonization and clearly prefers their culture despite its so-much publicised warts. And they show it by carrying pictures of their ruler either in amulets or on their cellphones, by burning themselves to death or by fleeing Tibet despite the high risk of being killed on their flight.
As for the “independence” Tibet always was a different population, language and culture from China and certainly never wanted to be colonized. And the colonizer obviously searches for legalistic argumentation to justify his aggression.
At this time we appear to be rehearsing old arguments to no avail. Both Song and myself have made efforts at mutual understanding and for the moment we end up with the conclusion that we both see the invasion of Tibet in a completely different light. I am not a specialist in Chinese history – but on the other hand life has gifted me with unforgettable experience both of the Chinese tradition and of the Tibetan situation. I am also a strong believer in common sense: an important question for me is always “What do these people facing me really want?”. And I even believe that it is an attitude that I learned in part from the Chinese. And so in conclusion I feel that unless we can come up with some new angles of view we will simply tiring ourselves out with no results.