Tibetans Are Not These Victims
by Grain

The Tibetan exiles have tried to draw parallels of themselves with famous victims in order to be politically correct. Native Americans, Jews, even "Chinese" a la the Chinese victims during the Japanese invasion of China. All of these analogies are incorrect.

Here is an excerpt from "Tibetan Chinese Are Not American Indians", by Bevin Chu, Chinese- American columnist for http://thechinadesk.blogspot.com.

"One especially disturbing aspect of the Tibet crusade in America is that Hollywood, academia, New Agers and the Washington establishment have drawn patently misleading parallels with American history. These comparisons of European immigrants to Han Chinese, and American Indians to Tibetan Chinese, have led to a grotesque collective misunderstanding.

This dangerously egocentric, even narcissistic way of experiencing the world may get America into deep foreign policy hot water. In fact, it has. When such historically irrelevant parallels are drawn what non-Chinese get is worse than ignorance. What non-Chinese get is the illusion of understanding.

Unfortunately most of what is readily available in English on the web regarding contemporary Tibet is predictable PC orthodoxy. The few rebuttals which are available in English are summarily dismissed by the intellectual orthodoxy as not credible simply because they are posted by Chinese or ethnic Chinese sources and do not support the "correct" conclusions.

Tibet is a region of China. It has been since the 13th century. Obviously one needs to refer to Chinese history and Chinese historians to learn about it. Most of that data is obviously going to be in Chinese. Yet it is only virulently anti-China Tibetan secessionist propaganda written in English which is automatically accorded the status of unassailable truth. The China bashers' attitude reeks of colonialist arrogance.

Far better to not know anything, and retain the humility that accompanies such ignorance, than to imagine that one knows all one needs to know to pass moral judgment and demand military intervention. As the old saw goes, "the problem isn't what people don't know, it's what they know that just ain't so.

"Tibetan Chinese are not American Indians.
For example, projection of "collective guilt" over the mistreatment of American Indians is with little doubt the psychological root of most pro-Dalai activism. Unfortunately the pro-Dalai faction has confused its own internal psychology with a foreign nation's history. Just because they feel "liberal guilt" about America's Indian minority does not mean that China's history actually conforms to their internal guilt and historical misunderstanding.

This is why so many western sympathizers of Tibetan independence are taken aback, stunned even, when they discover that most Tienanmen pro-democracy leaders do NOT support, and in fact vehemently oppose Tibetan and Taiwan independence. The sympathizers' projection has been so extensive that they are trapped in a "virtual reality" of their own making.

[Note by Grain: One of the most famous Tienanmen student leader was Wu-Er Kai Xi, a minority Chinese, like millions of other minorities in central China.]

The relationship between majority Han-Chinese and minority Tibetan-Chinese does NOT historically parallel that of European-Americans and Native Americans. The territory of modern China includes Tibet not because "the Han-Chinese conquered Tibetan-Chinese" the way European-Americans conquered American Indians and Hawaiians. (e.g., "Dances with Wolves").

Instead both Tibetans and Hans were conquered by the Mongols under the leadership of Genghis Khan and grandson Kublai Khan in the 13th century. When the Mongol or Yuan Dynasty collapsed a century later, it was supplanted by a Han-Chinese dominated Ming Dynasty, which inherited jurisdiction over the Mongol empire, including the Tibetan region. This is how Tibet, and of course Mongolia, became part of China.

Those who insist on "victim-victimizer" dichotomies might be tempted on leap to yet another equally simplistic conclusion, that "both Tibetans and Hans were victims of Mongol aggression." This ignores the fact that both "victims" and "victimizers" subsequently intermarried extensively, not under uress, but of their own volition, rendering the issue of victimization moot and irrelevant.

The bottom line is that Tibet was not "invaded" or "annexed" by China in 1959. Because by then the Tibetan region had been part of China for seven centuries, five centuries longer than these United States of America have even been in existence. One does not "invade" or "annex" what is already one's own territory. Beijing dispatched troops to prevent secession by the serf-owing elite which objected to the abolition of slavery, not to implement annexation. Hardly the same thing.

One can argue the merits or demerits of secession, but that is another issue entirely. Rather than debate the issue honestly however, the Dalai Lama and his Hollywood camp followers prefer to lie about history. They are counting on popular ignorance of the details about exotic and distant Cathay and Shangri-la, calculating that the general public will believe whatever is fed them if it is presented in a convenient and satisfying Manichean "good versus evil" framework.

The false equation of Tibetan-Chinese with American Indian has predictably led to the false attribution of racist motivations to Beijing's abolition of serfdom and crushing of Tibetan secession. Beijing's Tibet policies are being falsely equated with everything from Nazi genocide of Jews to Nato's allegations of Serbian "ethnic cleansing."

If one is determined to force the Chinese experience into an American mold, one could perhaps equate the militarily powerful Mongols with one of the aggressive, nomadic tribes such as the Comanche, and Tibetans and Hans with less aggressive, agrarian tribes such as the Hopi or Navahoe. The point is that all of China's major ethnic subcultures are native Chinese, including so-called Hans.

Now that communism is dead, sympathizers of the Dalai Lama, many of whom were sympathizers of Mao Zedong, seem to have forgotten what communism was all about. Communism was a political ideology obsessed with economic equality. Communism adjudged who was good and who was bad on the basis of its fatally flawed economic theory. To communist true believers the relevant question was to which economic class do you belong. Are you a capitalist victimizer or a proletarian victim? Ethnicity to communism was always irrelevant.

The Chinese Communists were no exception. They committed their atrocities because they were fanatical radical egalitarians, "coercive egalitarians." The Lamaist theocracy was targeted because it engaged in the economic exploitation of Tibet's serfs.

When Red Guards vandalized monasteries in Tibet they were doing precisely the same thing to Zen Buddhist monasteries, Taoist monasteries, Christian churches, Jewish synagogues all over the rest of China. They were not doing anything so narrowly parochial as singling out the Tibetan subculture for "cultural genocide." Rather they were motivated by disgust for what they perceived as vestiges of unjust economic systems throughout China.

The Dalai Lama's allegation that Chinese Communist violence against Tibet's serf-owning elite was racially motivated ethnic cleansing is a red herring. Chinese Communists were evil because they were coercive egalitarians. Chinese Communists were never racist."

Tibetans are not Indians.
As I pointed out to a Jewish human rights activist, China poured in billions of dollars to help Tibet.

Did the Nazis pour in billions of dollars to help the Jews? Look at the facts of Cultural Revolution. Many things that happened in Tibet happened in a worse way all over the rest of China.

Did the Nazis put other Nazis into concentration camps?

Tibetans are not "invaded" by the Chinese
One of the most ridiculous articles on www.tibet.com tried to draw an analogy between the "invasion" of Tibet with the "invasion" of China by the Japanese. This article totally disregards the centuries of integration in China. I was very disappointed to find that one of the very respected American journalists even bought this analogy.

The direction of minority migration within China had been inward, from outer regions into central China, for centuries. China was formed as an alliance of all bordering minorities and the Han in central regions. The Han left the bordering regions to autonomy. This is not at all like the situation with Japan and China, two separate countries.

I once even ran into an Irish American, who drew an analogy between what happened between the Han and the Tibetans with the English and the Irish. He told me that when he grew up in Britain, the English people were "snobs" that looked down on the Irish. I had to tell him, please do not project what he feels about the British to what happens in China. "If you want me to listen to what you have to say about the Irish situation, then listen to what I have to say about China. As a Mongolian Chinese, I have never encountered any bad attitude toward me by any Han. They treated me with awe and friendliness."

I hope in the future we will look at each case of alleged ethnic persecution in detail, based on the facts in that country, and not all jump on the "holocaust" wagon. The Jews were real victims that were sent to the concentration camps.

The rest have not been so.In the case of China, you are actually punishing the real minorities by supporting the "Tibetan exiles". They have grossly misrepresented China to the point that we the real minorities are "non-existent". Please understand this, and help the real minorities in China to keep our identity.

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