No Shangri-La

Slavoj Žižek
Letter, London Review of Books
Vol. 30 No. 8 · Cover date: 24 April 2008

The media imposes certain stories on us, and the one about Tibet goes like this. The People's Republic of China, which, back in 1949, illegally occupied Tibet, has for decades engaged in the rutal and systematic destruction not only of the Tibetan religion, but of the Tibetans hemselves. Recently, the Tibetans' protests against Chinese occupation were again crushed by military force. Since China is hosting the 2008 Olympics, it is the duty of all of us who love democracy and freedom to put pressure on China to give back to the Tibetans what it stole from them. A country with such a dismal human rights record cannot be allowed to use the noble Olympic spectacle to whitewash its image. What will our governments do? Will they, as usual, cede to economic pragmatism, or will they summon the strength to put ethical and political values above short-term economic interests?

There are complications in this story of 'good guys versus bad guys'. It is not the case that Tibet was an independent country until 1949, when it was suddenly occupied by China. The history of relations between Tibet and China is a long and complex one, in which China has often played the role of a protective overlord: the anti-Communist Kuomintang also insisted on Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Before 1949, Tibet was no Shangri-la, but an extremely harsh feudal society, poor (life expectancy was barely over 30), corrupt and fractured by civil wars (the most recent one, between two monastic factions, took place in 1948, when the Red Army was already knocking at the door). Fearing social unrest and disintegration, the ruling elite prohibited industrial development, so that metal, for example, had to be imported from India.

Since the early 1950s, there has been a history of CIA involvement in stirring up anti-Chinese troubles in Tibet, so Chinese fears of external attempts to destabilise Tibet are not irrational. Nor was the Cultural Revolution, which ravaged Tibetan monasteries in the 1960s, simply imported by the Chinese: fewer than a hundred Red Guards came to Tibet. The youth mobs that burned the monasteries were almost exclusively Tibetan. As the TV images demonstrate, what is going on now in Tibet is no longer a peaceful 'spiritual' protest by monks (like the one in Burma last year), but involves the killing of innocent Chinese immigrants and the burning of their stores.

It is a fact that China has made large investments in Tibet's economic development, as well as its infrastructure, education and health services. To put it bluntly: in spite of China's undeniable oppression of the country, the average Tibetan has never had such a high standard of living. There is worse poverty in China's western rural provinces: child slave labour in brick factories, abominable conditions in prisons, and so on.

In recent years, China has changed its strategy in Tibet: depoliticised religion is now tolerated, often even supported. China now relies more on ethnic and economic colonisation than on military coercion, and is transforming Lhasa into a Chinese version of the Wild West, in which karaoke bars alternate with Buddhist theme parks for Western tourists. In short, what the images of Chinese soldiers and policemen terrorising Buddhist monks conceal is a much more effective American-style socio-economic transformation: in a decade or two, Tibetans will be reduced to the status of Native Americans in the US. It seems that the Chinese Communists have finally got it: what are secret police, internment camps and the destruction of ancient monuments, compared with the power of unbridled capitalism?

One of the main reasons so many people in the West participate in the protests against China is ideological: Tibetan Buddhism, deftly propagated by the Dalai Lama, is one of the chief points of reference for the hedonist New Age spirituality that has become so popular in recent times. Tibet has become a mythic entity onto which we project our dreams. When people mourn the loss of an authentic Tibetan way of life, it isn't because they care about real Tibetans: what they want from Tibetans is that they be authentically spiritual for us, so that we can continue playing our crazy consumerist game. 'Si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l'autre,' Gilles Deleuze wrote, 'vous êtes foutu.' The protesters against China are right to counter the Beijing Olympic motto – 'One World, One Dream' – with 'One World, Many Dreams'. But they should be aware that they are imprisoning Tibetans in their own dream.

The question is often asked: given the explosion of capitalism in China, when will democracy assert itself there, as capital's 'natural' political form of organisation? The question is often put another way: how much faster would China's development have been if it had been combined with political democracy? But can the assumption be made so easily? In a TV interview a couple of years ago, Ralf Dahrendorf linked the increasing distrust of democracy in post-Communist Eastern Europe to the fact that, after every revolutionary change, the road to new prosperity leads through a 'vale of tears'. After socialism breaks down the limited, but real, systems of socialist welfare and security have to be dismantled, and these first steps are necessarily painful. The same goes for Western Europe, where the passage from the welfare state model to the new global economy involves painful renunciations, less security, less guaranteed social care. Dahrendorf notes that this transition lasts longer than the average period between elections, so that there is a great temptation to postpone these changes for short-term electoral gain. Fareed Zakaria has pointed out that democracy can only 'catch on' in economically developed countries: if developing countries are 'prematurely democratised', the result is a populism that ends in economic catastrophe and political despotism. No wonder that today's economically most successful Third World countries (Taiwan, South Korea, Chile) embraced full democracy only after a period of authoritarian rule.

Following this path, the Chinese used unencumbered authoritarian state power to control the social costs of the transition to capitalism. The weird combination of capitalism and Communist rule proved not to be a ridiculous paradox, but a blessing. China has developed so fast not in spite of authoritarian Communist rule, but because of it.

There is a further paradox at work here. What if the promised second stage, the democracy that follows the authoritarian vale of tears, never arrives? This, perhaps, is what is so unsettling about China today: the suspicion that its authoritarian capitalism is not merely a reminder of our past – of the process of capitalist accumulation which, in Europe, took place from the 16th to the 18th century – but a sign of our future? What if the combination of the Asian knout and the European stock market proves economically more efficient than liberal capitalism? What if democracy, as we understand it, is no longer the condition and motor of economic development, but an obstacle to it?

Slavoj Žižek
Birkbeck College, London WC1

CCTV: Protest West Media Distortion in Ottawa, Canada

China protesters outnumbered

Chinese students quickly organize a counterprotest, call activists uninformed
Peggy Lim
Staff Writer, News & Observer
peggy.lim@newsobserver.com


DURHAM - While protesters were heckling the Olympic torch out of San Francisco, Duke University junior Adam Weiss was having a hard time bringing sympathy for Tibet's cause to the campus.

Hundreds of counterprotesters, far outnumbering members of Weiss' Duke Human Rights Coalition, showed up Wednesday night to his mock version of the torch relay for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which Weiss calls the "Genocide Olympics."

Chinese students at Duke, N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill caught wind that Weiss was preparing to jog through campus carrying the Tibetan flag to protest China's rule in Tibet. The word rapidly spread online.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Chinese students piled into cars and headed to Duke. They held posters that read, "Do not mix politics with the Olympic Games."

Weiss, 21, a political science and Spanish major at Duke, disagrees.

"This is the best time, when the spotlight's on, to show what the Chinese government is about," he said.

"Some of my best friends are Chinese," he added. "It's just this one issue we disagree on. ... You can love Chinese culture, but you don't have to like the Chinese government's policy on Tibet."

The counterprotesters Wednesday waved red flags -- some brought from China, others purchased in bulk the day of from Grand Asia, a Chinese grocery store in Cary.

When a shirtless Weiss approached the Duke Chapel after a trek from Duke's East campus, Chinese students, who had just finished singing the Chinese national anthem, swarmed him.

Weiss and about 15 other students then took up a perch on the steps of the chapel, where they yelled, "Freedom and justice, here and abroad."

The Chinese students responded with their own chants, including, "Liar! Liar! Liar!"

"This is probably one of the most exciting demonstrations since I've been here," said onlooker Rebecca Wu, 19, a Duke sophomore. "For other events, attendance is really low."

The face-off was heavily policed and did not devolve into violence.

But the hundreds of Chinese students who showed up for the confrontation reflect the frustration many have felt about how their country has been criticized or portrayed in the media. In the past two months, Chinese students from Germany to Canada to North Carolina have inundated Internet bulletin board services, shared YouTube videos or contributed to Web sites such as anti-cnn.com, a collection of errors Western media outlets have made in coverage of Tibet.

The students say that human rights protesters have ignored that Tibetan mobs turned violent, looting stores, burning buildings and killing civilians in the riots that roiled Tibet's capital, Lhasa, on March 14.

Hainian Zeng, 25, a botany doctoral student at N.C. State University, said that's why he feels he must speak up.

" 'Free Tibet' -- to them it's just a slogan," Zeng said. "They have no idea about the past and current situation in Tibet."

Zeng was in one of about 45 students who caravaned to Duke from NCSU on Wednesday. He was also one of a handful of NCSU students who recently compiled fliers and distributed 200 copies across NCSU's campus. The fliers include excerpts from "Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth," a piece written by Michael Parenti, an American political scientist, historian and media critic. In coming days, Zeng hopes to distribute 500 more copies along with a CD he has created, called "Truth in Tibet."

Zeng, who came to Raleigh from Shanghai two years ago, said he doesn't want to escalate conflict between any ethnic groups. But he can't sit back and do nothing.

"We just want to try to give people a different point of view," he said.

peggy.lim@newsobserver.com or (919) 836-5799

Olympic Torch Relay Counter-Protest in London

Taimur Rahman

On Sunday the 6th of April the Olympic Torch was being carried through the streets of London. For some time now the procession of this Torch had become a focal point for demonstrations. On the one hand were those who, egged on by the imperialist media wanted to see a boycott of the Olympics. On the the other hand were those that supported the first Olympics to be held in a formerly colonial country.


CMKP comrades in UK who have been writing on the subject for the past few weeks, decided to join the protests on April 6th. We joined these protests against the so-called Free Tibet Movement and against imperialism' s efforts to undermine the national sovereignty of China.


When we arrived at Trafalgar Square, we were delighted to see thousands of Chinese students gathered. They were waving red flags and banners. Trafalgar square fills out with about 20,000 people. It seemed to be at least half full. My estimate is that there may have been about 10,000 people present. There were also pro-Tibet protesters within the crowd as there were people who had just come to see the torch. However, the vast majority of young people had come out to defend China.


As soon as we got there, we unfurled our flags and banners and began to raise slogans. At this point we were standing, unintentionally, in the middle of Free Tibet protesters. Hence there were only a few of us shouting slogans. We also had a short heated argument with some British people who were protesting in favour of Tibet (99% of Free Tibet protesters were British, we saw only one or two Tibetans). However, the police came and broke us up. We decided to move to another spot.


We went in the middle of Chinese students and began to raise slogans. The response was unbelievable. From then on there was no stopping us. Chinese students formed a ring around our slogans, sang songs, raised their voices, beat their gongs and drums, and jumped up and down with the slogans. It was absolutely amazing and with incredibly high energy. Shahram was in the middle of the ring shouting slogans and waving the CMKP flag with one hand when he got an idea. He grabbed the Chinese flag from me and holding it in his other hand, started spinning around to the cheers of the crowd with the flags held high. It looked beautiful and the Chinese went nuts!


We then walked down towards Downing Street. The march was a sea of red flags. I think there may have been five thousand Chinese students. On the opposite side of the road were mostly British people supporting the Dalai Lama. But they were completely outnumbered nearly 10 to 1. At one point a small group of pro-Tibet protesters tried to provoke the Chinese students by marching into their side of the demonstration with their placards etc. If this had been Pakistan I can assure you that it would haveresulted in a scuffle. But to my surprise, the Chinese students did not touch them. They raised slogans and voiced their discontent but they did not even lay a finger on them. Chinese students repeatedly sang their national anthem and shouted "Tibet China, Is One", "Long Live China" and "Dalai Lama, CIA". We then marched down past the PM's office to the parliament, went along the river and came back up to Trafalgar square. The march lasted at least about 3 hours during which time students were almost constantly raising slogans. CMKP comrades also made an impassioned speech standing on the street corner, explaining to the Chinese students that we were present out of a sense of internationalism. That we the people of the Third World must stand with each other against imperialism. There was rapturous and sustained applause.


Hundreds of Chinese students came up to us and asked us our names, where we were from, and thanked us again and again for charging up the crowd. They said "you are very professional. How did you learn all this". We smiled and said that a year of mass movements against dictatorship in Pakistan had taught us much about leading rallies and marches.


This was the first time that we also attended a mass demonstration that involved people from China. We were extremely touched by their warmth, openness and friendliness. Here we were, a small group of Pakistani communists, leading a giant march of Chinese students. And they all supported us, and followed us, and thanked us profusely. It reminded me of that famous saying by Karl Marx "workers have no nation, you cannot take from them what they have not got".


We came home to look at media reports. One would have thought that a march of some five Chinese students in central London would receive some coverage. Not a word. The imperialist media completely blacked out this news. Instead they only focused on the pro-Tibet protesters. Their selective coverage made it seem like all of London was out against China. There were some incidents where Pro-Tibet protesters (who were mostly all British people) tried to snatch the Torch or extinguish it. But they were puny in comparison to the pro-China protesters. Yet the entire media only focused on one side of the picture. Here are some Youtube clips that catch glimpses of this giant protest.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=-ehT6GslKJM)

Chinese Americans feel sting of Olympic protests

David Pierson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 11, 2008

As the Olympic torch made its way through the streets of Paris, London and San Francisco, tens of thousands protested China's treatment of Tibet and the Dalai Lama.

But inside some Chinese American communities, notably the San Gabriel Valley, the view of Tibet and its spiritual leader is far more complex.

On Cat Chao's Mandarin-language talk show "Rush Hour" on KAZN-AM (1300), most callers haven't been debating whose side to take but why the Western media has been so biased against China in its reporting of the riots that rocked Tibet earlier this month.

"They're pretty angry," Chao said. "People usually trust Western media because they think it's balanced. Not anymore."

Others complained that the torch protests have gone beyond criticizing the Chinese communist government and have a decidedly anti-Chinese feeling. In recent days, some prominent Chinese Americans who support greater ties with China have fought back.

"We're proud of the progress, but at the same time we're worried" about human rights, said S. Alice Mong, director of the Committee of 100, an organization of leading Chinese Americans.

Two of the committee's members, actress Joan Chen and author Helen Zia, recently wrote newspaper editorials warning that confrontation with China would stymie progress and that support of the Olympics would lead to more openness.

"The Chinese are a proud people. They want freedom and greater rights, but they know they must fight for them from within," Chen wrote in the Washington Post.

Of course, this backlash is far from universal. Some Chinese Americans had fled the repressive region and support the outcry over Chinese human rights issues. And the San Gabriel Valley's large Hong Kong and Taiwanese populations are naturally wary of Beijing, a feeling reinforced by events in Tibet.

Hurt feelings

But many Chinese Americans are struggling to balance their concerns about the Chinese government with the nationalism they feel as their homeland is the host of the Olympics for the first time.

"The Olympics were supposed to bring glory to the Chinese," said Daniel Deng, a leading Chinese American defense attorney based in Rosemead. "Now the focus is the Dalai Lama and Tibet. A lot of Chinese are offended."

Deng, a native of China, said a popular analogy being used among Chinese likened the protests to wearing funeral attire at a wedding. "That's how people feel," he said. "This was supposed to be a great thing to celebrate."

Chinese authorities have used deadly force to quell the riots and arrested 2,300 in Tibet and neighboring provinces, according to the exiled Tibetan government. Beijing said there have been 22 deaths, although the Tibetan government said the toll is 154.

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have condemned China's response, and some nations have discussed a boycott of the Games. Tibetan advocates have rallied across the globe, including in Los Angeles, where hundreds protested outside the federal building on Wilshire Boulevard.

In the United States, the Dalai Lama commands a loyal following, including celebrities such as Richard Gere. The exiled Tibetan leader is popularly viewed as a symbol of peace and spirituality.

Many new immigrants from China are more skeptical of him, coming from a country that has demonized the 72-year-old monk and accused him of engineering the recent unrest from behind the scenes.

Some recent immigrants say they had little idea there was so much opposition to Beijing in Tibet. It was not widely discussed in a country where media and public education stuck closely to the party line. As such, Michelle Qi never questioned China's claim to Tibet.

"It's an accepted fact," said Qi, a 35-year-old secretary at a Monterey Park travel agency who emigrated from northern China seven years ago. "The Chinese government has given Tibet a lot of financial support. But for Tibetans, the economy isn't the most important thing, it's religion. It's hard to tell who's right or wrong."

For pro-Tibetans, the answer is clear. They say the Chinese government is diluting their culture and stifling their religious freedom, apparent during the days when authorities quashed riots in China with force.

"Many Chinese don't support us," said Tenzin Sherap, a Tibetan monk at the Land of Compassion Buddha center in West Covina. "They're used to listening and believing what the government says. Maybe some Chinese have some concern inside, but they are afraid to join the protest."

Sherap said sympathy for Tibet has grown in recent weeks. He has some Chinese students, though most are from Taiwan. Non-Asians have been stopping by the center asking for red, blue and yellow "Free Tibet" bumper stickers and Tibetan flags, he said.

Patriotism surfaces

The local Chinese community's response to the opposition, in part, indicates the growing ranks of local mainland Chinese immigrants in the United States. But it also underscores a deepening sense of nationalism as China increasingly becomes a presence in their lives.

"It's an old brand of nationalism that has been revived now that China is a major player in the world," said Richard Baum, a professor of political science at the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. "Everyone loves a winner. There's a huge diaspora that had no reason to feel proud for the last 100 years. Most of them, I suspect, identify with Beijing's coming-out party."

Chinese immigrants worldwide have supported China despite the fact that many fled their homeland during its most repressive periods, from the Cultural Revolution to the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, to seek better lives. (There are about 400,000 people in Los Angeles County who are either Chinese or part Chinese, according to the U.S. Census).

A sense of pride

Clay Dube, associate director of the USC U.S.-China Institute, said memories of those dark days have fueled a sense of pride at seeing China's improvements. The physical distance only heightens the feeling.

"They say you're more Irish the farther you are from Ireland," Dube said.

Sylvia Tian, a reporter for the World Journal, one of the largest Chinese-language newspapers in the U.S., said many local Chinese have reconciled their personal grievances with China's past. They're more concerned now with not missing out on China's growing opportunities.

"A lot of people who participated in Tiananmen have already asked the government if they can come back," said Tian, a Beijing native who was a teenager during the crackdown. "Why? Because China is so different from before. The economy is better and there's also freedom to say and think things. The only thing you can't do is try to throw away the Communist Party. Other than that, people can do anything they want."

Even some Hong Kong Chinese, who only a decade ago were among Beijing's leading skeptics, reflect China's official message that Chinese investment in Tibet is improving a backward province.

"With so much economic growth, there's going to be some problems. But life is so much better for all. I don't see how Tibet can stand on its own," said Stephen Chan, a San Gabriel Valley broker and property manager who remembers watching with great anxiety when Britain signed an agreement in 1984 to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.

But now Chan and his circle of friends from the former British colony feel nothing but hope. They've been impressed by Hong Kong's soaring fortunes since the hand-over. Tibet has been the hot topic in recent days and there's been little disagreement that China is right, Chan said.

"I've done a complete 180," he said. "I'm a big fan of China now. Everything they do makes me proud to be Chinese."

david.pierson@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tibet11apr11,1,4624272.story