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junjunshi asked me to repost her thoughts on the protests surrounding the Olympic torch relay protests over Tibet and other problems related to China.
Here is the link to her original post: http://junjunshi.livejournal.com/1223.htmlPersonally, I think it's interesting to get the perspective of someone from China. I am not really in a position to agree or ( Read more... )
Here is the link to her original post: http://junjunshi.livejournal.com/1223.htmlPersonally, I think it's interesting to get the perspective of someone from China. I am not really in a position to agree or ( Read more... )
I don't know what is this conclusion you drew here based on. Objective speaking, chinese government did trashed the society system of tibet since 1949. Before 1949, tibet was still a slave society. DaLi Lama has the superior rights to determined the fate of his slaves and followers. He was not as peaceful as the western media said. I can show you some pics here to represent what he had his formers did when they governed the Tibet. However. They could punish the slaves by digging out their eye balls or ripping off their skins at their will. Despite of these brutal behaviors, he was and is still the spirit leader of most tibetans. This is not hard to understand. Religions can change people's mind. Just like in middle ages, religions was a tool for the nobles to manipulate people.No matter how brutal was, most people at time took it for granted, just because they thought the governers represented the sign of religions. I think we should what are the tibetans saying, not only the tibetans exiled abroad , but also those still live in china. Fortunately i had some classmates in college who were from tibet. They told me that actually they are living in delimma. They like the economic development and benefits chinese government brought to them, but they are still struggling their spirit leader is a evil in chinese media. As i said before, i don't want to argue tibet belongs to china or not. China and tibet had a long history of treaty back in yuan dynasty, from thousands years ago. Since Qing dynasty, chinese government always had government officials resided in Tibet. Even the title "Da Li la ma" was xxx by the king of china who had the right to recall the old DaLiLaMa and entitled a new one according to his will. So Tibet actually has never been efficiently free. After the current Dalilama was exiled from 50s, china put lots of money building the city Lasa, rennovating temples. And the kids of tibets have the priority going to colleges which actually always make kids from 'Han" feel unfair, because the competition going to college is really really high in china.
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It's based on the 17 point agreement and the 5 principles of peaceful co-existence. Here's a basic timeline of events. As far as religion goes, the Cultural Revolution is where I drew that conclusion. Over 6,000 monasteries were destroyed.
The Chinese government likes to stress the time before their invasion under Mao. It wasn't a perfect society by any means, but it was far from the eyeball gashing, head ripping horrorfest that Chinese propaganda would suggest. There were serfs working for monasteries. While that's nothing to crow about either, I think the Chinese have exaggerated their claims. I wasn't there, so it's really a matter of who you choose to believe. Given the nature of Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, I find the Chinese claims to be a bunch of balogna.
Ultimately, the Tibetans would have preferred to handle their problems on their own, not by being taken over by the PRC. That's the main argument that seems to be the one trumping all of China's claims of the Dalai Lama being some sort of monster. That, and the idea of that is pretty absurd.
The Chinese opinion seems to be that the Tibetans should be grateful, that they were having a terrible time until the Chinese saved them with their modern stuff. They're also assuming that Tibet wanted modernization. Coming from the perspective of people who are working towards that, that want that, it seems logical. Did the Tibetans want to be modernized? I kind of doubt it.
The Han (ethnic Chinese) living in Tibet like the new way of doing things. Tibetans that were there before see the influx of Han as a threat to their culture. The classmates you had in college...I don't know if they were Han or Tibetan, but both younger generations have grown up hearing the Chinese version of things. I can't imagine how conflicted that would make a person. You're being asked to choose between your culture and your comfort (in the way of development), basically, or to at least find a way to balance the two.
I wasn't there and have never been there, so I don't claim to have all the right answers. This is just an opinion formed from going through various media, and studying Tibetan Buddhism. I could be wrong. I really just want to see peace in that area, but how that can be achieved I don't know. Like you, I don't want to debate who the area belongs to, because that region has fought over forever.
As far as Falun Gong goes, I met a woman named Zhang Cuiying who was doing a calligraphy demonstration in Miami when I went to school there. She told me about how she was imprisoned and tortured for speaking out about Falun Gong. I was pretty affected by it, and nothing I've read would lead me to believe this isn't still happening in China.
I don't mean to pick on just China, because lord knows our country has its own share of human rights violations. I just wish everyone would get along. :-(
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