On the Train to Tibet

As part of our on-going series of reading recommendations and conversations about Tibet and Tibetan history, we are today featuring a short excerpt from occasional China Beat contributor Alex Pasternack about his recent ride on the new train to Tibet. Pasternack writes regularly for Treehugger, where this essay was published in its entirety.

China's – and the world's – reach to the highest plateau on earth grew in summer 2006 with the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (Qingzang Tielu 青藏铁路). An engineering marvel that China itself once ruled impossible, the $4.2 billion line traverses an region known for earthquakes, low temperatures and low atmospheric pressure.

Nearly 1,000 kilometers of rail runs at 4,000 meters or higher, and 550 km of track sits upon permafrost, a feat that required a system that keeps the ground frozen year-round to prevent the rails from sliding. Engineers also had to anticipate the long-term effects of global warming, which are melting Tibet's glaciers at an alarming rate. Former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji called the railway "an unprecedented project in the history of mankind," a typical unvarnished government boast that for once, wasn't hyperbole.

But no statistic can rival the humbling marvel of the scenery: the second half of the 47-hour journey is a panoramic moving postcard on two sides, looking like the world's longest high definition nature film. A throwback to the glorious days of train travel, the route crosses tundra lined by majestic peaks, fading grasslands where yak and rare antelope graze, mirror-like lakes reflecting an azure and white sky, and the homes of herders bejeweled in rainbows of dancing prayer flags...


Grazing the landscape

Protecting wildlife
At night, entertainment came by book (I tried to get a copy of The Snow Leopard, but Midnight's Children would do) and laptop (there's a standard Chinese outlet in each soft sleeper cabin and along the hallways of each car). One night we watched Kekexili, a hypnotic 2004 film by Lu Chuan that tells the true story of a ragtag militia that protected the endangered Tibetan antelope from vicious poachers.

Conservationists have warned that the train would pose an even greater threat to this and other treasured species. The film's title refers to the region in the historically Tibetan province of Qinghai where the antelope give birth—and where the railroad threatens to keep them from going.

But as voices in Chinese and English (but not Tibetan) frequently reassured us over the public address system, authorities have gone togreat lengths to mitigate the train's impact on the fragile environment, at a cost of around $192 million.

Wildlife researchers helped engineers install over 30 passageways that would allow the migrating antelope and other animals to pass beneath the train (see one on Google Earth). Despite an uneasy start and a scandal over a faked 2006 photograph (see below) that purports to show antelope and train in harmony, some Chinese researchers say that the animals have actually adapted to their new steel neighbor. In a letter to the journal Nature detailing their findings, the Beijing-based researchers with the government-sponsored Academy of Sciences say that 98% of the antelopes have managed to migrate in spite of the train.


Photoshop to the rescue

Other successful precautions include the introduction of dozens of man-made swamps to replace swampland and endemic plants destroyed by the train, and the storage of waste onboard until the train reaches collection points, rather than leaving waste on the tracks. A US Embassy report tells of workers halting work to accommodate migrating antelope.

But embassy officials recorded no instances of rolling up and preserving grass, as authorities promised. Meanwhile, nomads and herders who live near the tracks have complained that they received minimal compensation for their ruined farmland...

For more, including Pasternack's discussion of the effects of resource extraction and migration on the Tibetan people, see the full essay at Treehugger.

Photos by Alice Liu and Alex Pasternack. See also Erica Gies' excellent travelogue at Grist and Pankaj Mishra's account at The New Yorker

In Case You Missed It: Tibet Special, Part 3--Comments by Pico Iyer and Pankaj Mishra

Continuing our series seeking to draw attention to overlooked readings on Tibet, we are happy to be able to provide comments by two long-time friends of the blog, Pico Iyer and Pankaj Mishra, talented and versatile writers whose most recent books are The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond, respectively. It seemed particularly appropriate to ask Iyer and Mishra to suggest articles or books that they have found useful in thinking about Tibet but which might be under the radar of many of our readers. This is because six months ago, when we were covering the unrest in Tibet, we put up links to things that each of them had written for newspapers or magazines. We also pointed our readers to the latter's New Yorker review of the former's latest book.

Iyer: Read John Avedon's In Exile from the Land of Snows, already a quarter of a century old and, as a result, fresher, more full of wonder and outrage, with better access to the principal players than any subsequent book on Tibet and its recent history. Then, as a postscript, turn to The Story of Tibet, by Thomas Laird, from 2006, to see not just the larger frame into which Tibet's recent history has to be put, but, more important, the way in which the world's most celebrated living Tibetan would read that history, as parable, warning and instruction.

Tibet, more than anywhere, is enfolded in myths, Western projections and wishful fantasies. The only books to read on the subject are the ones that take you deeper and more rigorously into real life.

Mishra: Thanks to the wonderfully comprehensive China Beat site, I can't think of any undernoticed book or article on China and Tibet in recent months.

Torching the Relay

By Geremie R. Barmé

[The following remarks were written in response to a series of questions from writers at Woroni, the paper produced by students at The Australian National University. They were drafted on April 28 and revised on May 3, 2008. I would add that I was travelling in China during the Australian leg of the Olympic Torch Relay. My thanks to Tom Swann of Woroni for inviting me to respond to his questions, and to Jeffrey Wasserstrom for suggesting that China Beat post this material.—GRB]

Q: In general, the article will be asking: why was there such a powerful expression of Chinese nationalism in the Australian national capital, Canberra? We are guided by our personal observations that much of the protesting was overtly political and often antagonistic, which we think was not fully brought out in the media coverage.

Geremie R. Barmé: Chinese demonstrators in Canberra would claim that they were giving voice to righteous patriotic (rather than the more negative “nationalistic”) sentiment in the face of deliberate distortions of the real situation in Tibetan China resulting from the “Western media” demonization of the People’s Republic of China, and the way the media had handled the March disturbances in Lhasa and elsewhere in what, for want of a better expression, I would call Tibetan China (that is the areas including the TAR, Qinghai, parts of Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan with large ethnic Tibetan populations). In the days leading up to the Canberra leg of the Olympic torch relay, Chinese organizers (both official and non-official) made the case to their fellows that Canberra is a city with a small population and that if patriotic Chinese did not turn up in numbers then protesters—“Tibet splittists” (to use the Chinese jargon), adherents of Falun Gong and a rag-bag of “anti-Chinese elements”—would make a big showing of “anti-Chinese” fervor in front of the national and international media. Only a large vocally patriotic Chinese presence could counter this.

Furthermore, the demonstrators who made themselves so noisily felt and heard in Canberra had been inflamed by the disruptions of the relay in London, Paris, and San Francisco. They were also outraged by talk of a boycott of the Beijing Olympics opening on August 8 this year. These boisterous—and also very physical demonstrations—had been reported in the Chinese media and blogosphere with a level of emotional intensity bordering on the hysterical. Accounts in the official Chinese media were also highly colorful and employed the histrionic style of high-Maoist China (that is, the liberal use of morally laden terms of vituperation and condemnation—something I have written about in the chapter “Totalitarian Nostalgia” in my book In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture, Columbia University Press, 1999). During this process, the Olympic torch, something that should by all rights be regarded as a global symbol that belongs to the world community, increasingly became in the minds of many people a symbol of China and China alone. Indeed, the torch, or “sacred flame” (shenghuo) as it is referred to in Chinese (and for that matter Japanese, in which it is called seika), became a quasi-sacerdotal symbol of super-national Chinese identity. (I would refer readers to the recent biting comments made during a recent visit to Australia by the Beijing-based artist Ai Weiwei’s on what I would call the “hijacking of the sacred” by Beijing propagandists and those in their thrall. See his comments as quoted in The Australian on April 30, 2008.)

As we have witnessed in recent weeks, the issue of the Olympic Torch Relay has now become one of Chinese global pride, integrity, and national unity. The official Chinese media has also encouraged a kind of by-proxy witch-hunt to determine which among the foreign countries of “the West” (an ill-defined category to say the least), their media, politicians, and public figures are, to use expressions first coined in the US media in 2005, “Panda huggers” (xiongmao pai, pro-China), “dragon slayers” (tulong pai, anti-China) or “Panda hedgers” (xiongmao qiqiang pai, undecided). Such terminology militates against subtlety of argument, nuance, shades of difference, or complexity on “both sides.” I would also note that the “unified caliber” (tongyi koujing) of Beijing-authored attacks on the “Western media” constitute a deliberate decision by the highest power in the land to use this opportunity to mount an all-out offensive on reporting on China by the independent media worldwide. I would speculate that this is a strategic decision made with the short-term tactical aim of neutralizing international media reports on China before and during the Olympic period—a time during which China has undertaken to allow unprecedented access of the international media to the country. The long-term ramifications of this decision will be profound.

Q: Are you able to provide any information about how it was reported, and viewed, in China? More generally, how is the torch relay being reported?

GB: Over all, the relay in Canberra was reported as being a celebration of China and a resounding success. Large crowds waving flags of the People’s Republic of China and toting various slogans were shown on TV news. Naturally, within Australia there were many proud participants—and I think of Gill Hicks (who walks on prosthetic legs after having lost hers in the July 7 London bombings) and Ian Thorpe. However, as I remarked above, it is noteworthy that the torch relay has now been constructed as more a reflection of China’s global presence than merely being an activity supported by, and crucially involving, the international community.

Chinese commentators have also noted that since the “Western” (Euramerican and Australian) media is basically run by prurient sensationalism and commercial concerns, it is hardly surprising that the story of protests surrounding the Olympic relay has concentrated on shrill protests and the activities of what are invariably referred to as a “small handful” of “Tibetan splittists” and other “anti-Chinese elements.” More broadly, the Chinese state and semi-independent media have spoken darkly of the existence of an “international conspiracy” against China, one that covertly reflects irrational fears of China’s rise as an economic and political superpower. According to this logic, the contretemps surrounding the Beijing Olympics is merely the latest platform for the conspirators. Many Chinese writing on the net, or who I have encountered since March (I was in Beijing during the original Lhasa disturbances, and have travelled to a number of cities in China since then on a second trip—for reasons unrelated to these issues) also point out that they feel that China is not given due credit for the extraordinary changes that have swept the nation in recent decades that have seen the mass alleviation of poverty and the rapid modernization of the largest nation on earth. However, while conspiracy theories make for good copy, they don’t help us understand the situation, or the long-term causes of the present rhetorical extremes both in China and elsewhere. Indeed, I would hasten to point out that media paranoia and hysteria is hardly something limited to China, and it would appear that many commentators and opinion-makers internationally have joined in the fray with enthusiasm.

The early reports of the London and Paris melees in the Chinese media moved from avoiding mention of the disruptions to propagating the righteous outrage of the international Chinese community (much of which consists of mainland Chinese students living and studying overseas), and the heroic spirit of martyrdom evinced by Jin Jing, the handicapped torch-bearer who was lunged at during the Paris relay (she quickly fell from grace when she had the temerity to oppose a mainland Chinese boycott of the French-owned Carrefour chain—critics widely attacked her: “not only doesn’t she have a leg, she doesn’t even have a brain!” has been a commonly heard tagline). The Chinese media treated these early protests as the disruptive activities of “a small minority” (yi xiaocuo) worthy of nothing more than contempt. It should be noted that after the spontaneous protests in China itself against Carrefour in mid April, the authorities began to calm things down by calling on people to engage in “rational patriotism” that did not impinge on the economic weal of the nation. This is a common tactic that we have seen deployed any number of times (see, for example, my 2005 article “Mirrors of History,” reposted on May 2 by danwei.org). For their part, the owners of Carrefour were quick to claim their pro-China, pro-Olympics stance and express outrage and disgust at the events in Paris.

Q: What does the Olympics mean to the Chinese people? (Many of the protesters, and people in the media, talked in terms of one-world spirit and so on).

GB: Put simply, one could argue that the 2008 Beijing Olympics have been turned into a celebration of the People’s Republic of China’s emergence as a major global force. Years of propaganda, educational hype, and commercial spruiking by the Chinese party-state, the commercial media and international corporations who want to make a buck (or two, or millions) have added to the crescendo of hope, pride and national hubris bound up in a heady embrace during this the Olympic year [ed. note: “spruik” is of Australian origin and means to promote in public]. Extraordinary investment has gone into the physical sites of the games as well as into the redevelopment (and further despoliation) of Beijing. Voices of discord, disagreement, or doubt have never enjoyed any airtime. Those deprived of their homes or livelihoods as a result of the grand plan for the Olympics are generally mute, and “Olympic doubters” are in a minority. Those who might have concerns have no way of knowing how widely held their disquiet may be. China is not a pluralistic society, its media is guided, and its public opinion manufactured (again, this is a topic about which I have written at length elsewhere). So-called “public sentiment” (gongzhong yulun) is, I would argue, the result of long years of careful engineering. What is particularly unsettling for the uninformed observer is that those who mouth with unanimity views supported by the party-state are relatively complicit in their unreflective cooptation. I observed in my 1999 book In the Red mentioned earlier:

"As the children of the Cultural Revolution and the Reform era come into power and money they are finding a new sense of self-importance and worth. They are resentful of the real and imagined slights that they and their nation have suffered in the past, and their desire for strength and revenge is increasingly reflected in contemporary Chinese culture. Unofficial culture has reached or is reaching an uncomfortable accommodation with the economic if not always the political realities of contemporary China. As its practitioners negotiate a relationship with both the state in all of its complex manifestations and capital (often, but not always, the same thing) national pride and achievement act as a glue that further seals the pact. The patriotic consensus, aptly manipulated by diverse Party organs, acts as a crucial element in the coherence of the otherwise increasingly fragmented Chinese world." [From the chapter “To Screw Foreigners is Patriotic” which, when first published as an article in July 1995, bore the subtitle “China’s Avant-garde Nationalists.” See also the same book for the appendix entitled “Screw You, Too.”]

Q: How is the issue of Tibet viewed within China? Or other geo-political issues with which China is involved? By Chinese outside of China? Many have said that they think that the Western media is deliberately manipulating coverage of how China proceeds in its political issues.

GB: The issues of Tibet, or more generally of “Tibetan China” (that is the territories in China with large ethnically Tibetan populations in Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan), are extremely complex. While the Chinese official story fixates on the bloodshed of March 14 and the activities of agitators for Tibetan independence, it judiciously avoids discussion of the protests in the other dozens of towns and cities with large Tibetan populations, or the state violence and extrajudicial punishments meted out in the process. Nor is any real attempt made to help the public understand how or why such widespread and, in the main, peaceful protests could have taken place apart from ascribing them to the “premeditated plots” of the “Dalai clique.” In the Chinese media there is now a propaganda push to extol tirelessly China’s constant contributions to the Tibetans and their material prosperity; there is scant evidence of there being any willingness to concede that there could be any reason whatsoever for anyone to protest about anything. No one asks whether the aggressive modernization foisted on the Tibetans (and enjoyed by many, but concomitantly a process that has created numerous iniquities and problems) should be questioned. With that as the rhetorical backdrop to all reporting in China then protest, even if peaceful and moderate, must invariably be depicted as the result of the callous manipulations of the dreaded “Dalai clique” and their shameful desire to see China rent apart, or for a restoration of the old lama-dominated theocracy of pre-1950s Tibet. For an excellent article on the rhetorical (and policy) dead-end that results from this kind of argumentation, see Isabel Hilton’s April 12, 2008 article “Ditch the Tatty Flag of Nationalism.”

Most people know nothing more of the Tibetan realm than a few songs and dances, a few famous spots and glib ideas about Tibetan Buddhism. They certainly know little about the economic displacement that seems to be a major issue for some protesters, or of the effects of forced sedenterization of nomad communities, or the new Party control of the selection of reincarnated lamas, all issues of great importance for people in the Tibetan areas. Chinese comments I generally hear are of a kind that we in Australia are familiar with from the days of Pauline Hanson (a right-wing parliamentarian active from 1996 who helped during the long-years of the Howard Coalition government to shift public debate to the right): remember when Aborigines were derided for being bludgers on the social security system of “mainstream Australia”? Remember too that for all of the social and economic problems of Aboriginal communities, they were blamed for their own dire straits and attacked for “having it so good” while “average Australians” were “doing it hard on strugglestreet”? Similarly, I have often heard people say in recent weeks that the Tibetans have it so good and are freer than mainstream Han Chinese; they should be grateful for all the largesse they enjoy. Issues of socio-economic importance or questions of legitimate cultural and religious concerns seem to be virtually ignored in the mainstream Chinese media, nor are the actual on-the-ground policies debated in the public realm (they are daresay the subject of far more considered discussion behind closed doors). That the public is deprived of informed information and open discussion is an inevitable reality in a constrained media environment.

On this same anecdotal level, I have encountered common expressions of contempt for Tibetans as an ethnic group (that is, that they are “backward,” with “low IQs,” are “dirty” and “resistant to modernity”) since I was first a student in China in the mid 1970s. But I would also note that, Tibet-fascination—for its culture, landscape, religion and social relations—has also been a common feature of Han culture (alternative and mainstream) since the mid 1980s (see, for example, the material that John Minford and I included in the 1988 second edition of our Seeds of Fire, Chinese Voices of Conscience). It is also said that there are numerous Han converts to Tibetan Buddhism, people who are among the many who are searching for some greater human meaning beyond the arid landscape of material acquisition that is the predominant feature of mainstream consumerism.

One of the crucially complicating factors related to events since the initial demonstrations in Lhasa on March 10 (these were peaceful protests that preceded the mob violence of March 14 and the widespread unrest and crackdown ever since) was that the Chinese authorities enforced a blackout that kept the Western media out of Lhasa and then restricted access to virtually most of Tibetan China. A lack of media freedom, and sensationalism, as well as state guided propaganda and emotionalism have added to the escalation of rhetorical violence and blind prejudice all around. For many Western media outlets, the media blackout and sensational circumstances of the torch relay have fed the frenzy. A cogent and measured reflection on the official responses to March 14 is the 12-point petition issued on March 22 by leading Chinese intellectuals and public figures. It remains essential reading.

Q: Some protesters were angry that white/non-Chinese Australians were protesting in the name of Tibet. Can you shed light on this?

GB: This is an added unpleasantness to an already unpalatable situation. Regardless of where one stands on issues related to the Tibetan question, freedom of speech, peaceful protest, and demonstration are guaranteed under Australian law. It is unfortunate in the extreme that in my home city of Canberra Chinese protesters—the majority of whom it would seem are not Australian citizens, although they naturally enjoy basic rights guaranteed under Australian law—have attempted to curtail or deny others the right to protest peacefully on non-Chinese sovereign soil. Sadly, perhaps even tragically given the scale of the perceptions now generated, many observers feel they have seen a sort of “export authoritarianism” masquerading as Chinese patriotism. A lot of work will have to be done to ameliorate this distasteful impression. It is noteworthy that some bloggers in China are also disgusted by the self-indulgent rhetorical hysteria of their (generally) middle-class countrymen and women overseas. They say that they’d like to see them go back to China and fight for political reform, media freedom, and human rights on home turf rather than making an hubristic spectacle of themselves internationally. Indeed, if China enjoyed true intellectual, media and political pluralism it would be possible to have a more rational and reasonable discussion of whether non-Chinese or non-Tibetan Australians have a right to express publicly their views on matters of international concern. Given the present state of affairs, this is simply not the case.

Q: Some have claimed that Tibet has long been part of China. Why? Or, would you say there is any academically recognized truth in this?

GB: The era of the nation state began for the territory of the Qing empire (the last Chinese dynasty, 1644-1911) in the mid nineteenth century. Like other modern countries “China” is a relatively recent construct as a modern nation-state. Prior to this time the sway of imperial rule, the relations between different imperial courts and bordering states or tributary states is what determined issues of territory. To project anachronistic views regarding the territory of the present People’s Republic of China into the distant past is a dubious undertaking at best. Similarly, to claim a unique independence for the territories of “Tibet” or “Greater Tibet” in the context of the imperial era is spurious. Although there were moves for an independent nation-state status for Tibet during the first half of the twentieth century (especially under the influence of the British imperium), such a status was not achieved in practical terms. For a study of the relations of the Tibetan areas of contemporary China to dynastic empires from the Mongol Yuan era (thirteenth century) to the high Qing (mid eighteenth century), I would refer your readers to the excellent work of the late historian F.W. Mote of Princeton University (see his Imperial China, 900-1800, Harvard University Press, 1999).

Furthermore, I would note that there is a dearth of independent scholarship on this subject of note in the People’s Republic as all historians and their research must conform to the official party-state line when dealing with issues of Chinese territorial integrity. This makes it particularly difficult for readers of Chinese alone to acquaint themselves with the rigorous, objective, and painstaking research that has been done on such issues by international scholars (not just English language scholarship), especially as the work of such scholars when produced in Chinese translation is usually censored or “cosmetically edited” when it touches on sensitive issues.

Q: Can you say anything about the concept of “motherland”?

GB: The “motherland” or in Chinese “zuguo,” which could also be translated as “fatherland,” a term with uncomfortable connotations in English, actually means “land of [one’s] ancestors.” It is a term and concept created in Japanese and Chinese during the era of Western imperial politics in the nineteenth century (see above). It has gained increased force in China over the past twenty years as the Chinese party-state (that is the nation which is run by a one-party system) has promoted patriotism as a positive unifying force, in particular through constant “patriotic education” (aiguo jiaoyu) classes from primary school onwards and popular movements that see party propaganda, patriotic sentiment and slick commercialism combined (see the chapter ‘CCPä & Adcult PRC’ in my In the Red).

Q: We find it ironic, and concerning, that many protesters were rejecting politicization but responding with further, at times quite explicit politicization; that they were responding to claims of violence on behalf of their government with antagonism and intimidation; that they were protesting for the cause of an autocratic government under the protection of a foreign democratic one. Do you think Chinese political culture is cognizant of such contradictions?

GB: One of the underlying elements of mob patriotism/nationalism in any highly charged environment is the lack of self-reflection. We see careful thought abandoned; there is an indulgence in emotionalism and the mindless drift towards extreme and simplistic responses to what are generally complex issues. The politics of the Games itself are fraught, and now more so than ever. The Chinese media in the PRC has never been clear about the various undertakings that were made to the international community to ameliorate the human rights situation in China prior to the 2008 Games, and so most people have no idea that the constant news of human rights abuses coming from China (the appalling Hu Jia case being only the most recently well-advertised case: see the enlightening article “Hu Jia in China's Legal Labyrinth” by Jerome A. Cohen and Eva Pils in the early May 2008 issue of Far Eastern Economic Review) have formed over some time a very negative backdrop to the recent Tibet issue.

It has been a great source of regret to many of us that the strident and vociferous activities of large mobs of Chinese “patriots” since London and Paris have so profoundly tarnished the image of China’s young people internationally. Furthermore, some have pointed out that the high-decibel denunciations of any who voice opinions not in keeping with what is dubbed “mainstream [Chinese] opinion” (zhuliu minyi) have created the impression that people in China and abroad are expected to support unquestioningly the People’s Republic of China, and all of its policies, regardless (for an approach that mitigates against such compliance, see the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s speech to the students of Peking University, April 9, 2008, and my April 12 analysis of it, “Rudd Rewrites the Rules of Engagement”). Doubts, questioning and informed discussion are, at present, not tolerated. Independent commentators in China have noted that while rabid patriotic Chinese demonstrators have enjoyed the right to protest internationally under the protection of the police of their resident countries, and with the full enjoyment of democratic freedoms that Western bourgeois democracies allow, in China they would enjoy no such freedoms.

Q: Questions of violence and intimidation aside, would you say that the show of support for China's Olympics, and the sense of national pride, and the sense of the need to protect it internationally, is shared by most Chinese?

GB: It is impossible to gauge what “most Chinese” think or feel, as there is no means of making such assessments. I would imagine that there is widespread pride in the Olympics and a fervent hope that the year passes without further incident. However, I would note that a people that has had a history of mass movements, agitations, rallies, and mob agitation for nigh on a century now, will not resile from further displays of collective anger and raucous protest. The Olympics will now be fraught and there will inevitably been extreme official paranoia generated by the fear that some athlete, or visitor, or even playful prankster, will unfurl a Tibetan flag or shout “Free Tibet” at some moment during the Olympics—be it in the main sports venues, or anywhere in Beijing. Everyone will have to pay the price for this in advance through over-zealous security measures and a virtual state of martial law. This will make for a baleful environment indeed. But elsewhere I have pointed out that “harmonious society” is a laden concept, one that consists of political tutelage, social quiescence and commercial frenzy, among other things.

I would further point out that many Chinese interlocutors are often more than happy to tell you what “We Chinese” feel or believe on any given topic. Given the lack of media freedom or true transparency in the Chinese public realm (added to by the shifting rhetorical ground of internet bloggers and commentators), claims that assert that individuals are able to represent anything but personal (even if it is “bestowed”) opinion are, needless to say, risible.

Geremie R. Barmé is a professor of Chinese history at The Australian National University, Canberra. He is the editor of China Heritage Quarterly, and his latest book, The Forbidden City, was just released in North America by Harvard University Press.

More Tibet Reading

It has been a few weeks since we last posted an installment of recommended reading on the situation in Tibet and neighboring provinces. Here are a few of the interesting or informative things we've run across in that time:

1. Historian James Millward's piece at openDemocracy on how China could right its worldwide public image is insightful--we urge you to read it.

2. A recent (often heated) discussion on the Asian history listserv, H-asia, centered around China's historical role in Tibet--reflecting questions that have been important in the popular discussions of Tibet as well. For example, Tibet specialist Elliott Sperling wrote another recent piece on this topic.

3. Dissent editor Michael Walzer, in a commentary that uses Palestine as a backdrop for the Tibetan situation, argues against boycotts but urges continued discussion and criticism.

4. A Chinese student at Duke University has sparked controversy (and personal threats) for mediating between pro-Tibet and pro-China demonstrators on campus. Read more at the New York Times.

5. And, finally, in the "maybe this explains something, but we're not sure what" category, head over to The Huffington Post to see video of National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley repeatedly referring to Tibet as "Nepal" in an interview with George Stephanopoulos.

Tibet, 228, and Ta-pa-ni: Some lessons for us all

(Please note: The following is based on my recent book about the Ta-pa-ni Incident (a colonial era uprising that changed the course of modern Taiwanese history), primary and secondary sources about the 228 Incident of 1947 (see also my recent blogpost), and current reporting + web/blogosphere debates about the tragic events in Tibet)

As we struggle to make sense of the maelstrom of violent resistance and its suppression, not to mention cope with our own feelings as concerned observers, it might be useful to consider the following:

*Such outbreaks are invariably sparked by a complex combination of socioeconomic, ethnic, and religious factors.

*The violence is never a case of black and white; it is simply red, with aggressors and their victims far outnumbering any heroes. When tensions boil over, the initial targets tend to be symbols of authority (policemen, officials), but can also include men and women who are stigmatized and persecuted as scapegoats. However, when the empire strikes back, it uses violence on a much larger and more systematic scale, with those who end up being punished including not only the original aggressors but many innocent victims as well.

*Casualty figures vary wildly, and are rarely subject to critical analysis. In the case of the Ta-pa-ni Incident, estimates of the dead have ranged from a few hundred to tens of thousands, but my analysis of archival and demographic sources puts the total at slightly under two thousand. It is also essential to note that the dead included men who fell on the field of battle, men who were rounded up and systematically executed, men who died in prison, women, children, and the elderly who were indiscriminately massacred, and children who died of exposure and disease while hiding in the mountains. All were victims, but death came to them in many different forms.

*The process of mythologizing the history of violent resistance begins almost as soon as the brutality. In the past, the state did most of the myth-making, or at the very least made its voice heard above all others. This is not the case in today's world, where we are overwhelmed by a wealth of information provided by all sides of a conflict, much of which is not rigorously scrutinized before being further disseminated.

*Once mythologizing processes are underway, their greatest casualty is the truth about those who suffered. Complex causes are ignored in favor of simplistic explanations, while the identities of victims end up being subsumed by stereotypical images constructed by the myth-makers. Think about it: How much do we really know about victims and their loved ones, regardless of whose hands they perished at?

Our responsibility is to cut through the Gordian Knot of myth and stereotype in order to better understand the diverse experiences of all people caught up in acts of violent resistance (regardless of whether they are aggressors or victims), as well as contemplate what their tragic fates can tell us about our past and our future.

James Miles on Media Coverage of Tibet

James Miles of The Economist was in Tibet when the riots and protests started on March 14. China’s strict limitations on foreign journalists entering Tibet in the following days made Miles one of the few journalists who saw the riots firsthand. With all the attention being now paid to how the international media are covering the events in Tibet, we thought it would be interesting to find out how Miles felt about the questions he got upon returning from the field. Here's how he answered us via email.

China Beat: Is there any question that you've been asked a lot since returning to Beijing that you think is off the mark or plays into simplistic or misleading thinking about a complex issue?

James Miles: No. The question I get asked most is what happened, and then why. What happened in Lhasa from midday on the 14th to late on the 15th did not fit the normal pattern of unrest in Tibet. It was not monk-led, it displayed little explicitly-stated political purpose, and it was violent. Reporters who interviewed me during the unrest and afterwards seemed to readily understand this. If I were a media studies specialist I'd have a very good look at this case. The foreign media were almost entirely absent from Lhasa (a couple may have sneaked in under cover after the riots broke out but would have had limited access). Yet I have seen some very good reporting on what happened, notwithstanding the Chinese media's nitpicking. Reporting in the official press, by contrast, while reasonably on the mark as far as the violence goes, has been highly misleading by failing to look at the bigger picture of unrest in Tibet and beyond, by not asking what might have caused this anger and by portraying this as the actions of a handful of people organised by the Dalai Lama's "clique." It wasn't a handful, and I saw no evidence to suggest anything other than spontaneity.

China Beat: Is there any question you wish you were asked? Maybe even are surprised you haven't been asked?

James Miles: Again no. I found those questioning me from foreign news organisations wanted me to explain the story as I saw it. Their questions were often open-ended, putting the onus on me to tell the story as fully as I could. Some of them devoted considerable airtime and print and web space to what I told them. Nobody has asked how I felt being on my own, journalistically, in the middle of this huge story. Journalists hunt in packs on big stories, competing with each other but also cooperating with one another. Bouncing ideas off one another helps to sharpen our thinking. Having others there means that some can break away from the main story and look at what is happening on the edges. It is exhilarating being on one's own, but this was not an exclusive of my own creation -- it was the product of an environment where newsgathering is restricted.

Tibet 5: In the Third Week

With the crisis in Tibet entering its third week, we continue to sweep the web in search of interesting and/or informative pieces to bring to the attention of our readers. This fifth installment in the series is heavily devoted to retrospective works, which go back in time, either to detail what took place in Tibet in the past or explore historical analogies useful for thinking through the contemporary situation. Still, since the story continues to unfold and take surprising turns, we also include links to pieces that track very recent developments, both on the ground and in the debate over issues of coverage:

1) The Far Eastern Economic Review does a great service by making available, free from its archives, the magazine's reports on the 1959 Tibetan insurgency.

2) Foreign Policy has posted a thoughtful interview with Robert Barnett, author of the recent Lhasa: Streets with Memories and a leading American Tibet specialist based at Columbia University.

3) Ian Buruma, in "The Last of the Tibetans," takes up the common theme of parallels between the treatment of Native Americans then and Chinese ethnic minorities now, but gives it some very interesting novel twists at.

4) The Economist, which continues to have the advantage over the other main Western media outlets of having had a reporter on the ground in Lhasa when the demonstrations and riots began, provides a valuable retrospective and update of things that just happened (like the disruption of a choreographed press conference by angry monks).

5) Richard Spencer, of the Daily Telegraph, offers an unusually wide-ranging and interesting discussion of the complexities to media "bias" concerning Tibet on his lively blog.

6) Parallels between recent events involving Tibet (and Iraq) and 1930s events involving Japan (and Manchuria) are explored by China's Beat's Jeff Wasserstrom, in a commentary that muses on what Hu Jintao and George W. Bush might have to say to one another in Beijing in August. Donald Lopez, one of the leading American specialists in Buddhism and author of Prisoners of Shangrila, also posted a recent piece called "How to Think about Tibet" at openDemocracy, asking us to ponder the historical analogy provided by Latvia.

The Taelspin on Tibet: The Chinese Response to foreign media coverage of the 3.14 unrest

Foreign media coverage of the demonstrations and riots in Lhasa, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Gansu two weeks ago has sparked a significant backlash here in China. State media continues to release increasingly shrill diatribes against Western media bias as Chinese netizens take to the internet with their own protests sparked by a general perception that coverage of the riots was purposely warped and skewed by anti-China forces in the West. (For a sampling in English, check out the back and forth on this forum hosted by that bastion of journalistic integrity and objectivity: The China Daily.) There’s a whole website devoted to attacking CNN, and in this age of user-generated online content, we see the battle spilling over onto (the recently blocked and unblocked) YouTube. Moreover, some of these videos and blog posts seem intended for a wider audience, not just for domestic consumption.

Over at the popular online forum Tianya, I stumbled across a thread in which a patriotic and enterprising youth has cut and pasted pages from a media directory, telling readers that the telephone is their greatest weapon and they should use it against the foreign news organizations:

If someone is there, inquire about their mother (ahem). If they don’t pick up, keep calling and when somebody answers, curse them out and then hang up—the idea is to jam the lines so the SOBs can’t use their telephones. [paraphrase]

Charming. I remember playing this game once. When I was 12.

On a more serious note, criticism of Chinese government actions and policies is once again perceived as being anti-China, but that said: those who claim that some foreign media organizations have reason to apologize might well be right.

In the hours and days following the event, there were several cases of words and especially images misrepresenting what was going on in Tibet. While I doubt this was due to a global anti-China conspiracy (a state-sponsored bogeyman if there ever was one) it certainly suggested sloppy journalism. As the first news of significant unrest emerged from Lhasa on May 14, it seemed like one of those stories that writes itself, which is a classic trap for any journalist: "Tibetan Monks! Chinese Troops! Film at 11!" Not that the Chinese coverage was any more nuanced (“Let’s blame it all on the Dalai Lama Clique!”), but at least CCTV and Xinhua wear their lack of objectivity on their sleeve.

For its part, Xinhua blamed the Western media bias on a “cognitive blackout,” and many foreign journalists in China do need a more sophisticated understanding of the issues in Tibet. Unfortunately, the government chose to respond to this cognitive blackout with a news blackout. In the absence of information, the mind races even as the fingers type, and western journalists are generally trained in such a way that when a government appears to be hiding something, it must be something worth hiding, and so they begin to suspect the worst. On the day the violence erupted, only The Christian Science Monitor and The Economist had people on the ground filing stories as Beijing Street in Lhasa burned. Everybody else was in Beijing (the city) desperately trying to get as close as they could to the action but to little avail: the government was not letting any more foreign journalists into Tibet. Facing the demands of a 24-hour news cycle, and working with rumors, recycled information, and a limited pool of images and footage from Lhasa, too many journalists relied on preconceived notions and faulty assumptions with predictable results.

When sympathy demonstrations and unrest broke out in ethnic Tibetan regions in Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai, foreign media representatives rushed to these (slightly) more accessible areas, resulting in a flood of "Dateline: Xiahe" stories even as the PSB, local cops, and the usual hired goon squads tried to keep the foreigners away from hot spots. One Beijing-based journalist out west last week retorted that if a meeting of The Foreign Correspondents Club of China had been called in the Lanzhou airport transit lounge, they might have had a quorum. (On a separate note, FCCC president Melinda Liu has been quite vocal in expressing her disappointment and displeasure at the government restrictions on journalists covering this story.) Just yesterday, the Chinese government finally agreed to allow a select pool of journalists to travel to Lhasa, a move that backfired almost immediately.

The whole mess has become a PR nightmare of Olympic proportions.

Unsurprisingly, media coverage of Tibet was a major topic when Danwei held its Second Plenary Session here in Beijing on Tuesday night. It was an excellent evening and kudos to Jeremy Goldkorn and the Danwei team for putting it together. Featured speakers included Steven Liu, Olympic News Editor at Sohu.com and part of the duo that produce Antiwave (反波) a series of podcasts focusing on foreign and Chinese media; journalist Raymond Zhou who has written for The China Daily among other publications; Lindsey Hilsum, international news editor for Britain’s Channel 4 News and whose reports can be seen Stateside on PBS's The News Hour with Jim Lehrer; and Jonathan Watts, East Asia correspondent for The Guardian and a last-minute replacement for CNN’s Jaime FlorCruz, who--it is safe to say--is not having the easiest week of his China career.

(On some level, you have to feel just a little bit for CNN: When Xinhua calls you out for lack of objectivity it’s a bit like Britney Spears suggesting that your life is out of control and you should think about getting some counseling, but I digress...)

Asked about claims of a western media bias regarding the Tibetan situation, Jonathan Watts called the events of March 14, “The most important story of my five years in China, and the most difficult to cover because we weren't allowed anywhere near the story.” He strongly criticized the government’s decision to prevent journalists from traveling to Lhasa, a sentiment echoed by Lindsey Hilsum.

Raymond Zhou took a different view, arguing that Western media coverage of China has in general been far too negative and ignores the positive aspects of China’s development. “A farmer in the (American) Midwest, reading only the western newspapers, would get the impression that China is a dreadful place,” he said, responding to a question I asked regarding the differing role of journalists in the PRC (cheerleader for the government) and in Europe and North America (watchdog media).

Mr. Zhou has a point, except that the negativity of the media in Europe and the United States isn’t just directed at the CCP. The Bush administration constantly laments the lack of ‘positive coverage’ for the Iraq War. The front pages of the New York Times, Le Figaro, and The Guardian are filled with stories that would seem quite ‘negative’ when compared with the front pages at my local newsstand in Beijing, and as a daily viewer of the morning and evening CCTV news, I’ve noticed that this compulsion to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative stops at the water’s edge: CCTV never hesitates to trumpet the latest murder statistics, school shooting, natural disaster, or political scandal from America, not to mention the Chinese state media's almost gleeful reportage on the ongoing US disaster in Iraq. (By way of recent example: A montage of Elliot Spitzer headlines, including those from the New York Post and New York Observer, occupied a prominent place in the morning newscast a couple of weeks back.)

I’m a historian by training, and as I’ve written elsewhere, history is a slippery ally in contemporary political disputes so I'm frustrated by the extent to which the historical record has been twisted and warped by both Chinese state media and the free Tibet crowd. But the truth is that history education in the PRC is highly politicized, and the state uses it to shape public opinion and to preserve the legitimacy of the government and the Party. The netizen response is a reflection of this, and this response has also received (at the very least) tacit official support from the traditional state media. I see a parallel here to the anti-Japanese internet fervor of a few years back, which was also given a pretty free rein and tacit official support until it threatened to hurt Sino-Japanese relations and the government stepped in and shut it down.

At the same time, while the Chinese-language online world is bursting with harsh condemnations of foreign media treachery, almost all opinions or ideas expressed in opposition to the official line are quickly blacked out, blocked, or deleted. There is little incentive for the government to allow open discussion of the Tibet question, and the curriculum of ‘patriotic education’ in the schools means that alternative perspectives on history or politics get short shrift.

The government line that China is becoming stronger and all this negative attention is mere jealousy also works on a basic level because it is a psychologically comforting response to a complex situation. Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “One of the best ways to enslave a people is to keep them from education. The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but also by controlling all the ways in which ideas are transmitted.” When you have young people who grow up in an environment with a single point of view that is both psychologically palatable and which ties self-esteem to national pride, it’s not surprising that you get the “fenqing (愤青) phenomenon,” angry young Chinese who make up the bulk of these online demonstrations against the foreign media.

At the Danwei session, Steven Lin, argued that the role of the online forums was as a psychological release valve for these angry young people (actually the metaphor was a little more scatological, but you get the point). Raymond Zhou concurred and said that 99% of what is posted on the BBSs is "garbage." That may be, and certainly the fenqing are more extreme than mainstream Chinese views on the subject, but not by much and their anger suggests that disruption of future events, not the least of which the Beijing Olympics, will be treated with the same indignant fury as the riots in Lhasa. These past few weeks, many young Chinese responded on BBSs with anger, natural enough given the brutality of some of the attacks on Han Chinese in Tibet, but it was anger tinged with real hatred. Sentiments such as "Forget the Olympics, ignore the Western critics," "restore order at all costs," "strike hard," and "smash the Tibetan ingrates" reverberated in cyberspace, as well as more moderate views that called for foreign news organizations to issue retractions and apologies. A fax sent to several news organizations this week had "Shameless CNN! Shameless America! One day we Chinese will be strong!" written in a scrawling hand.

It's true that following the outbreak of unrest on March 14, many in the foreign media dropped the ball, in some cases due to lazy or mistaken reporting, in others as the result of preconceived notions of the situation and a misunderstanding of the complexities in the Sino-Tibetan relationship. Meanwhile, coverage in the Chinese state media was little better in its histrionic attempts to portray the Dalai Lama as a demonic mastermind bent on splitting China and “re-imposing a slave society” on Tibetans. Chinese netizen response was sparked by outrage at flawed reports and a perception of bias in foreign coverage of the event, but i was also the product of an environment where the Party line is the only possible interpretation of either historical or contemporary ‘reality.’ Unfortunately, I fear this is not the last time in this Olympic year that competing expectations and perceptions, by the Chinese state and public on one side and the foreign media on the other, will result in unpleasantness. Stay tuned.

Tibet Reading 4

The coverage and dialogue about the situation in Tibet has continued over the past days, evolving largely (in great part due to foreign media's lack of access to Tibet and neighboring provinces where unrest has occurred) into a discussion on China's media clampdown and the way the Tibet riots and subsequent protests are being read in China and abroad. Here are some of the apropos things we've been reading in recent days.

1. On Danwei.org, an intriguing short piece on YouTube videos, which asks if this might be "the world's first international user generated propaganda war?"

2. When the crisis began, we were eager to see what Pico Iyer and Pankaj Mishra, both elegant writers who have penned thoughtful commentaries on Tibet in the past, would have to say, and we linked to pieces by each of them in earlier posts in this series. Now, on the New Yorker's site, as free content, at least for the moment, is a fascinating lengthy review by Mishra of Iyer's new book on the Dalai Lama.

3. The Shanghaiist has a good short piece (with accompanying video) on the varied ways that the lighting of the Olympic torch in Olympia on March 24 (and the disruption of the ceremony by protesters) was covered inside and outside of the PRC.

4. China Digital Times effectively brings its readers to date on issues such as a petition by Chinese critical intellectuals calling for, among other things, an end to what they see as Cultural Revolution-type rhetoric in the government's statements about the situation in Tibet.

5. "Riots" vs. "protests"? Outbursts of social unrest are often accompanied by battles over terminology, and Chinese bloggers have been complaining that the Western media has been using more neutral terms, such as "marches" to describe what in fact have been "riots" in Tibet and nearby areas. This piece in the BBC highlights a dilemma that Western journalists face, lacking direct access to the regions in question, and having only Chinese official reports to go on, which cannot be cross-checked easily with other sources--yet it does use "Tibetan riots continue in China" as its headline.

6. Several articles have been reporting on and breaking down the anger at the foreign media’s “bias” that has grown in China over the past week (fanned in a part by the government and its media outlets, and in part by nationalistic netizens). Read about its affects on foreign media and the atmosphere inside China here, or here. (There is also a piece in the Wall Street Journal, which requires a subscription.)

Tibet: Background on Current Events and Their History

A third installment of readings on Tibet.

1) This insightful piece on the economic roots of discontent in Tibet by Pankaj Mishra, an Indian intellectual who wrote an illuminating essay in the New Yorker last year about the impact of the new railroad through the Himalayas and recently was in China.

2) A careful day-to-day reconstruction of events, which highlight violence done by both sides on dramatic individual days such as March 14.

3) A fascinating look at the life and thought of the Dalai Lama by Pico Iyer, who has just published a book based on many years of conversations with the Tibetan leader in exile.

4) This news wire report of Chinese dissidents and critical intellectuals calling on the Beijing leadership to "directly engage in dailogue with the Dalai Lama."

5) Also of interest is this piece by the official Xinhua news agency that, in an effort to counteract any sense that the international community tout court is critical of Beijing at this moment, lists the countries around the world (North Korea, Syria, Nepal, Fiji, etc.) that have "expressed support to the Chinese government in its efforts to ensure social stability and the rule of law in Tibet and to defend the fundamental interests of the Tibetan people."

Tibet: Further Reading

A few days ago, we published a handful of links to websites providing good or unique coverage of events or history related to the situation in Tibet. Here are six more.

1) A very timely joint review of two new books (one by noted travel writer Pico Iyer) that place Tibetan history and the Dalai Lama's life into perspective have just appeared on the Economist's website.

2) An interesting extended look at how the current unrest compares with and is linked to events of the 1950s and 1980s, written by an adviser to the Tibetan government in exile.

3) If you would like to read further on the complex implications of the Tibetan events for the Taiwan election (further, that is, than Yong Chen’s commentary below), they are introduced well in this piece by a Financial Times correspondent in Taipei.

4) A blog tied to Wired magazine has good updated coverage of the flow and blockage of information on the web.

5) The Nation's website has just published a take on recent events by China Beat's Jeff Wasserstrom.

6) Newsweek has an exclusive new interview with the Dalai Lama here.

Information on the Tibet Situation

Many of us here at China Beat have been following very closely the story on the recent uprisings in Tibet and neighboring provinces. These are the sources we’ve been reading; if you have other recommendations for solid reporting and commentary on this developing situation, please post them in the comments section.

1. James Miles (Beijing bureau chief for the Economist and the author of The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray, on China in the aftermath of 1989) is apparently the only Western journalist who is or was in Lhasa. He's published good reports like this one on the Economist's website and in the Times (London).

2. An NPR report in which they interview Miles and also Luisa Lim, NPR’s Shanghai correspondent.

3. Here's a good news round-up (to which China Beat’s Jeremiah Jenne has contributed).

4. For those curious about the cyberchatter the situation is generating, check out China Digital Times’ coverage. For translations into English of Chinese web chatter about Tibet, go to the Global Voices Online coverage here.

5. For those who would like to learn a little more about Tibet, here's a list of seven things Westerners often get wrong about Tibet by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., author of Prisoners of Shangrila.