QUOTE (Glue @ Mar 27 2008, 04:46 AM)
So you're suggesting the US -- where the government has restrictions on its ability to censor free speech -- is more singly biased than the news from China -- where we wouldn't hear anything negative towards the government ever coming out? Note, I'm not saying I believe the Tibetans necessarily represent the reality of the situation accurately. But I'd rather hear multiple biased views than just the government's.
Sure, it's your own choice. I can do nothing about whether or not you're going to believe whichever news that you've heard.
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And I understand why China does it and believes they're right. I just find that entire philosophy -- that you or your government somehow knows what's in the best interests of another people than they do -- highly amusing. Out here, we actually value the freedom to screw up our own lives and to the point where we have sacrificed more comfortable lives to have that ability (or at least we once did). That may sound like a foreign concept to you but it's actually worked out quite well in the long-term, I think.
I'd said it once, but I'll say it once again. I understand the philosophy of Democracy, but Democracy is something that's still can't fit into China's system for now. And not for the near future. BUT.... We're working on it for the good of future generations to come, which also includes the Tibetans, Xinjiang muslims, Mongols, and even Taiwan, if they wanna reconcile and reunite with Mainland. You see, it's hard for our government to combat the illiteracies and spend millions each year to build new free schools for rural children. China is not Taiwan nor Singapore. Those two might worked well with Democracy because of their small amount of population, but China is a totally different story. With billions of lives here, you can't risk let 'em all loose and doing irresponsible things under the cloak of democracy.
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All this is moot though. The Dalai Lama himself has stated that Tibet is best off staying with China. So evidently the problem lies somewhere else.
From a guy who already took significant amount of cash annually from CIA to keep the insurgency growing, I'm totally disappointed with that corrupted Buddhist spiritual leader. These modern days, whether Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, whatsoever, as long as they're fanatics, they're all the same.
QUOTE (sertile @ Mar 27 2008, 10:16 PM)
Caine, you make an interesting point by implying that China knows what's best for the Tibetans (better than the Tibetans themselves, apparently), and the occupation is for their own good. That Tibet needs China to civilize and modernize its people, and that without the Chinese they would spend all their time praying and begging for food. Does that properly encapsulate your argument?
Yes.
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I understand where you're coming from, but it's interesting to note that this is more or less the same colonial mindset that led Western nations to "civilize" indigenous peoples in North America, Africa, and Australia. The idea is that one's culture is superior to anothers, and that by educating/converting the ignorant savages you're actually doing them a favor.
It should be noted that this seldom if ever works, however, and tends to produce quasi-civilized third world living conditions rather than the desired result.
First of all, I don't care if it's gonna be sound like History lesson, but here we go. The problem about indigent of Tibet is that, for even millenniums, since the dawn of Han Dynasty, Tibetans were descendants from Chinese, and then centuries later, also, since the reign of Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty, the Mongol Emperor tried to re-integrate Tibet/Xizang back into one single unity of Imperial Yuan Dynasty, and it'd be that way for centuries to come, even until the Manchuria era / Man Cheng.
Then, during the weakened state of Manchu imperium, Tibet were handed off by the corrupt emperor to the British, and what did they get? Colonized and enslaved. And during the time of Nationalists vs Communists Civil War, both factions kind of forgot the official stance of Tibet as part of united China's integrity, that brought results as the Tibetan lords and lamas starting to so-called
re-establish their rule over the Tibetans under living hell of serfdoms, in which they treated their own people like animals, chop limbs off, impalement, eyeballs removed, etc due to small mistakes.
After Mao Zedong and Communist Party won the Civil War, due to vast support of Chinese people whom get tired of inconsistent Nationalists, few years after successful show of force by General Peng De Huai at Korean Peninsula against UN forces, People's Liberation Army marched west to liberate Tibetans people from the insane feudalistic serfdoms. And few times, those expelled Tibetan landlords and lamas tried to raise insurgency among Tibetan people, but failed, because people there already grew tired of being treated like animals by their own spiritual leaders, and it lasts that way until now. Their youths no longer get limbs chopped off because didn't want to spend life on monastery, but they got their own free will. And it's no wonder that Tibetans also take significant amount of Politburo member seats on Beijing.
Feel free to visit Lhasa, see how their education and health care system, also economical activities had improved way much more without having to abolish their own religious lifestyle, and then compare to what Richard Gere always used to talk about on TV shows about how our governments treated Tibetans unfairly and inhumanely.
So, point been made here: What's so indigenous about them if they'd already been the unbreakable part of China for millenniums.
to the idea that democracy can't work in China because there are too many people
