Burma, Tibet, China and the charade of 'promoting freedom and democracy'

Chinese military in Tibet (AFP)I wanted to write this at the time of the protests by Burmese civilians and the monks, and the brutal put-down by the Burmese military junta. As with so many things in life, good intentions alone are not enough. And, right now, there's so much happening in Tibet - and no one knows for sure what exactly, as all communication is highly restricted - in this day and age - that I feel so helpless that all I can do is to write a useless blog entry!

Anyway, here's a bit of a background - more in the form of questions that I have:
China obviously claims that Tibet has always been a part of China. Well, if that is so, why is that Tibetan people feel differently, whereas people in the rest of Mainland China seem to have no questions on their Chinese identity? Heck, even the people of HongKong, Taiwan, and the people of Chinese origin in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc., all call themselves Chinese (or some kind of hyphenated-Chinese), but no Tibetan person would even dream of calling himself/herself as Chinese - ever!

Chinese emperors in the past, and later the Communist Party have done a pretty good job at bulldozing through whatever regional identities that there might have been, and everything has been under a centralized system for a very long time. However, Tibet's case is different. You can get some basic historical information, including the dates for various events, from many sources such as Wikipedia. But any visitor to Tibet would tell you that Tibet's culture, language and its people are so distinct from the rest of China, that it's hard to imagine Tibet to be a part of China.

There are so many aspects of Tibetan life and culture that can be cited to show that China's claims over Tibet are nothing but a historical artefact. Take Tibetan language, for example, which is totally different from any other languages spoken in China, and their script - does not use Chinese characters. This is an important point to note - because Chinese characters were widely used in many parts of East and Southeast Asia until recently. They continue to be used in the Japanese writing system even today, along with Japanese phonetic alphabets. Chinese characters were used in Korea until about 500 years ago when the Korean alphabet was invented and introduced. Chinese characters were used in Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, before those languages adopted the romanized script for their writing. But not in Tibet - Tibet's writing system was originally derived from the Indic writing system.

Tibetan culture is predominantly Buddhist - and religion is an integral part of the Tibetan people. How can this culture coexist with the out and out materialistic culture of today's China? To think of China as a communist country is just plain wrong, and their Communist Party is a joke! There is so much more socialist principles in the form of governmental care and protection in western countries than in China. People there have to really struggle to save up enough money for their children's education, and healthcare costs are beyond the poor people's reach. There's hardly any protection or assistance for their farmers. And there is a new breed of entrepreneurs who want to capitalize on the current demand for cheap goods the world over, even if that means putting an entire generation to work in near-slavery conditions. So, really, I have no idea why the governing set up should even be called 'Communist' - because it's not anything like in the old Soviet system. The only thing in common with the Soviet system is perhaps the level of governmental control and censorhip of information.

Dalai LamaI have spoken to many people from China, who will repeat the official line, and some of them even take offence to an accidental mention of Tibet (or Taiwan) as a separate entity. I remember one incident when I mentioned that China may have different languages and dialects, but all of them share the same writing system, one person said, no, we have more than one system, and he mentioned that people in the Tibetan province use a different system. As far as he was concerned, there was no question that Tibet was a part of China. Many of these people also repeat the official position that the Chinese government has carried out so much development in Tibet, and that the one-child policy is relaxed for Tibetans, etc. But my question is this: why is that the people of Tibet feel that they would rather be free and less developed, or even poor, than be under a smothering system that wants to wipe away any separate identity and culture? Let's face it - Tibet has hardly any natural resources (which would also explain the West's hands-off approach), pretty much cut off from the rest of the world, and has little chance of reaching any sort of comparable levels of modernity or development on its own. You would think that a poor country and its people would somehow welcome the prospect of being integrated within another large, dynamic economy of an emerging superpower (like so many European countries are clamouring for inclusion in the EU, and even in NATO). But the Tibetan people want none of that! They just want to be left alone, so they can go about their life, with their prayers, chanting, meditations and what have you! Instead, what they see is a steady colonization by 'outsiders', a steady smothering and gradual obliteration of their culture and their way of life, and enormous pressure to 'integrate'.

Now, a little bit about the hyprocisy of the so-called champions of freedom and democracy:
Tibetans protestWell, about this, I think the less said, the better! Any thinking person cannot miss the irony of the situation. Here is a people crying out for freedom, wanting to be left alone - but living under the brutal glare of a regional bully, have already suffered enormously, lost countless monasteries and other aspects of their culture to marauding mobs during the ridiculously named 'cultural revolution', their spiritual leader has been living in exile, based in India, for almost 50 years, and yet, the entire western civilization is totally and utterly helpless in this situation. They cannot do s*$# in this situation to help the Tibetan people free themselves. Same with the case of Burma - these are two classic cases where two predominantly Buddhist countries, made of entirely peace-loving people, crying out for freedom from oppression, but no one can do a thing! Not a thing! But the leaders of western countries, especially in the US and Britain, never tire of talking about freedom and democracy! I would really like these idiots to shut up for a while, and not talk about liberating other people from tyranny anymore! Gordon Brown is somewhat better in this respect than his predecessor Tony Blair - he doesn't dish out that sanctimonious BS as much.

So, if the western governments cannot do anything, what about the regular folks? Well, I want to throw this suggestion - I'm sure many have talked about it before, and some may be actually putting it in practice:
How about boycotting Chinese-made goods for the next several months (or indefinitely), and completely tuning out of all the Olympics hype? Be sure that there will be a lot of hype generated by the TV companies - because their bottomline is at stake - but no one is forced to watch the Olympics, and really, it's not a big deal to skip one Olympics unless you or someone in your family is participating in it! Really, does it matter which country tops the medals list? Well, we know in advance that China and the US would be in the top 3 or 4 countries - so what's the big deal? This action of boycotting Chinese-made goods and the Beijing Olympics will take time to show its effects - because stores would have already stocked up on stuff, and they are not going to notice any change for months to come.

Any action in support of a peace-loving people such as in Tibet has to be peaceful, and what better way than to do that most effectively through a dual boycott of Chinese-made goods and the Olympics?

China knows its strengths - cheap labour, a controlled system, and it knows the West's weaknesses: greedy companies (and their partners in the governments), apathetic people for whom a bargain sale price is more important than local jobs, and the fear of any sudden currency collapse, especially in the US, where the financial and monetary systems are in an extremely precarious position. But they do need the Olympics to be successful - if for nothing else, to massively distract and keep their own people under control for a few more years. Already, the majority of the Chinese urban population seems to have bought into the nationalistic pride - so that part is taken care of. They just need to take care of the simmering feelings of neglect in their countryside. But it seems to be the Communist party's gamble that they can go about their development making use of the greed of the western companies, pacify their own population, all while arming themselves to the teeth - there is a massive modernization of their armed forces, in case you didn't know - knowing that there is very little that any country can do about any of this, other than making speeches.

China knows that any drastic action by such countries is unlikely. So any action has to come from individuals like you and me. Plan something else more productive during the Olympics and completely tune out. I know it's not easy to boycott made-in-China goods these days - but surely we can try? At least for the rest of this year?