<- Click to filter by commenter
| 7 |
Why I Didn't Cover About Tibet "The current French President himself works the media like never before, having close friends who own most of the major media. Tibet is soup of the day, perfect for stirring controversy and increasing readership." France should be careful what it wishes for. Paris seems to have a massive, bloody riot at least twice a year, and it seems rather hypocritical for Sarkozy or any other French official to criticize China for quelling riots, when French gendarme police are cracking skulls of young Muslim boys in the Paris suburbs every few months. Did the French show restraint in quelling their own riots? No, apparently not. In fact, an old friend of mine in Paris thinks that another French riot may be about to arise-- the young Muslim and African youths are again growing very furious about conditions in the poor French suburbs, and there's been a lot of racism in France recently. In fact, about 200 Muslim graves, of French Muslim World War I veterans, were recently desecrated! And the French have the nerve to criticize China? Especially with this recent grave desecration incident, there's about to be another big riot in France. Let's see how Sarkozy and the other French officials respond to it-- will they use "restraint"? Will be interesting to see. If anything, Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany is even worse. While the German people tend to be more fair-minded about China, Merkel herself tries to claim moral superiority. Yet German troops have been implicated in a number of atrocities against the Afghan people in Afghanistan, while Merkel's German troops continue to brutalize both Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. When faced with criticism over these incidents, Merkel dismisses the critics as "uninformed." Merkel, like Sarkozy, is a hypocrite, since she herself is quite uninformed about the Chinese whom she so freely criticizes. She deserves our contempt, and it will be wonderful when both leaders are forced out of power in the humiliation that they abundantly deserve. |
| 6 |
Why I Didn't Cover About Tibet Stephen, FYI there is a *very strong* Hawaiian independence movement in the USA. It's one of our strongest secession movements, right alongside some native American secession drives and the aim of a Latino state in the Southwest. One of their Websites: http://www.hawaiiankingdom.info/ another one: http://www.hawaii-nation.org/ The native Hawaiians have never, ever accepted US annexation and rule. The USA militarily occupied Hawaii in the 1870's, and the Hawaiians were deprived of independence. They fought very hard to stay independent, as did the Filipinos. What happened in Hawaii, once again, is simple demographics-- the Hawaiians became outnumbered by non-Hawaiians in the islands by early in the 20th century. Hawaiians were forbidden the right to do business or educate themselves in the Hawaiian language, and even where this right wasn't expressly forbidden, English became "the only route to economic survival" in Hawaii, so native Hawaiians just stopped passing on the Hawaiian language to their kids. The result of this was simple-- with the Hawaiian independence movement weakened due to demographics and cultural changes, native Hawaiians increasingly came to identify more as "Americans" and less as "Hawaiians." That's why you see this effect in Hawaii. Now, of course, the situation is changing again. The Anglo birth rate has plummeted in Hawaii, and many of the islands (especially outside of Oahu) are starting to get a Hawaiian/Samoan majority again. So the Hawaiian independence movement has been revived. It's demographics, simple as that. |
| 5 |
Why I Didn't Cover About Tibet One other thing to clarify-- When I was emphasizing that China should diversify its foreign language education (to provide a more equal emphasis on German, English, Spanish, Japanese, Hindi, Korean and so forth, rather than having mandatory English), the main reason for this is seeking *balance of power* in the West. Obviously, there are other reasons-- such as Germany's economic strength and high-tech talent in the EU, Japanese and Korean technical prowess, Hindi's cultural cachet and the widespread use of Spanish and Portuguese. Ensuring that Chinese students have expertise in a broader variety of languages, and not just English, increases your ability to defend China directly in the media of these nations, while also increasing your ability to do business and innovate technologically with these nations, especially upon mastering other big scientific languages like German and Japanese. But the other reason: The neocons' anti-Chinese power base is in English-speaking countries such as the UK, Canada, the USA and Australia, and so long as there is an "English-language consensus" (i.e., "English as the international language of the West"), then the neocon-dominated, anti-Chinese media will continue to be the chief information source throughout Western countries. The English language news is translated into e.g. French, German, Spanish and other languages, and since the original source of this news so frequently has an anti-Chinese bias, this same bias is passed onto other languages, and an "anti-Chinese bloc" thereby arises and solidifies in the West. Obviously English should still be **one of the important languages** that Chinese students study-- I'm just advising that you diversify to other big languages like Spanish, Japanese, German, Russian, French and Arabic. Try to publish your scientific and technical papers increasingly in Chinese of course (with pinyin transliteration as needed) and encourage Mandarin as an international language throughout the world. But when it comes to communications to the outside world, diversify the languages that you choose. English should be "nothing special", just one of many Western languages used for communication. I've noticed that India for example, and Arab countries, are already doing this-- diversifying the languages of communication that they use. Many dispatches are of course in English, but increasingly, technical papers and sophisticated publications are produced in languages such as German, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi and Arabic. As I'll explain below, if anything it's increasingly looking like Portuguese (and Spanish to a degree) might offer a lot of advantages as a "big Western language" as opposed to English or even German, and not just because of the strength of Brazil, where Portuguese is the main language: It really seems that Brazilians and Portuguese-speakers lately have been the fairest-minded toward China in the midst of this Olympics mess. If China does this as well, then English loses the "information privilege" that allows the neocon-dominated English-language media to dominate Western thought. In fact, because Chinese is so widely spoken, this will also help to accelerate the day when Mandarin becomes the global language. It's the old idea of achieving victory, by throwing your opponents off balance and keeping their eyes on each other, rather than unifying against you. Rather than giving English the extraordinary privilege of being "the Western language," just make it one of many which you use to communicate with the West. (Portuguese-- with Brazil's rise-- Spanish and German especially are overtaking it already in many spheres as "the big Western language.") As I said, the views in many of these countries also tend to be more fair-minded toward China: I'll correct my statement earlier and say that Brazilians and Portuguese-speakers in general, in my experience, tend to be the most pro-Chinese in the Western world. German-speakers and Spanish-speakers too, although based on overall reactions to this torch mess, both based on polls and anecdotal observations (I can speak Spanish and Portuguese), it seems that the Brazilians and Latin Americans (Portuguese-speakers especially, and Spanish-speakers as well) have been the ones to most staunchly defend China against the propaganda. Obviously, the sooner that Mandarin Chinese becomes the main global language, the better for you, since you can more easily defend your side of the story. Trust me, this is already happening-- schools in South America, Germany and Eastern Europe in particular are increasingly emphasizing Chinese, as are Australian and even USA schools-- and people all around me want to learn Chinese. As a suggestion, you might accelerate the process of Mandarin Chinese "going global," by facilitating software and other tools to publish in Chinese, using both the Romanized pinyin and the Chinese characters. I've found among a large number of my friends, that they more rapidly embrace Chinese and try to learn the language, when they can start learning grammar and vocabulary in pinyin. Even more so if they can convert Chinese characters in documents to pinyin-- if anything, pinyin Chinese documents represent one of the easiest languages in the world to learn (due to easy grammar and vocabulary), and I already know of some engineers and scientists in Europe and the USA who want to publish high-level scientific papers in Chinese. Many want to start with pinyin if possible while learning the language. Obviously, everyone here does intend to eventually become fully proficient in the Chinese characters as well, it's just that pinyin can help as a "bridge" for Chinese as an international language by making the introduction a little less intimidating for people not used to the characters. Once people are able to communicate in the pinyin well, then they feel more comfortable gradually mastering the Chinese characters as well. It's a practical matter, that's all. |
| 4 |
Why I Didn't Cover About Tibet Just to clarify things here, I want to repeat my main point, since I admittedly buried it above: China must stay strong on the Tibet and Xinjiang issues and must absolutely ensure their economic, demographic, cultural and educational integration with the rest of China, because *it does not matter how just or fair you actually are in Tibet, the neocon propagandists in the West will attack you in Western media anyway and make China look bad*. Again, my chief objective in contributing to this forum is to give you, in China, the reality about the inside of the Free Tibet movement as someone who saw that ugly reality. (The same goes for the Free Xinjiang movement-- obviously, we collaborated a lot.) There were some of us who were sincere about human rights for all Chinese-- Tibetan, Uighur and Han alike-- but the Tibet movement has been increasingly taken over by neocon neo-imperialists who hate China far more than they want to help Tibet. These neocons' one and only aim is to provoke a massive civil war and the breaking-off of Tibet and Xinjiang from China, with hundreds of millions of deaths, a weak China and a consequent US-European occupation, with access to all of China's resources, even worse than the Opium Wars. It's about power and Western imperialism, not human rights. When I emphasized the need for a vast Han majority (90+%) in Tibet and Xinjiang, and intensive efforts to promote Mandarin-language education, intermarriage, assimilation and harmony among the groups, again I want to emphasize, my reasons are based on the practical realities of what I've seen in the Free Tibet movement: Until both Tibet and Xinjiang are fully secure and integrated within China, without riots and without a restless ethnic minority (predominant in the region) even considering secession, there will *never, ever* be peace in China, and China will continue to suffer from the worldwide propaganda aimed against it. I learned myself once, years ago when I ultimately left the Free Tibet movement, that the accusations of the neocons in charge of the movement were false. I learned that China has indeed been making efforts to accommodate the Tibetans, giving them an exception on the One Child Policy, encouraging Tibetan cultural celebrations and so forth. I am not at all trying to discourage fair policy to Tibet, obviously in the interests of human rights, I am glad to see the Tibetans overall treated quite well, and I hope it continues. I am just telling you the reality of the neocons' plans against you-- all your good efforts and fairness toward the Tibetans will do you little good among the Western public, because the neocons control the media here in the USA, Britain and much of Europe, and they will continue to launch anti-Chinese propaganda against you, portray you as oppressors, no matter how much good you do for the Tibetan people. The American, British, Australian and European publics have a short attention span-- they won't know of your fair policies in Tibet, they will know only the anti-Chinese propaganda. Obviously, you **should** work hard to defend your Tibet record (and discuss your efforts to treat the Tibetans well) to national leaders such as Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Donald Tusk in Europe, and use this as a way to defend yourselves and encourage them to show for the Olympics. But the reality is that in the West, ***appearances and perceptions in the media often count far more than realities*** among the general public. And no matter what level of good you do in Tibet, the neocon propagandists will always attack you with the "evil China" theme in the media. And as long as ***the geographical regions of Tibet and Xinjiang*** have a majority (or even a large minority) of Tibetans and Uighurs, the neocons in the USA, Britain, Australia and Europe will continue to foment riots and civil unrest, since this subsequently gives them the opportunity to humiliate China further with their propaganda, and encourage secession movements. To give you an analogy-- the entire US Southwest, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, was once a part of Mexico, until the USA invaded Mexico in 1846 and violently seized the region. In the decades after the war, there was much civil unrest, guerrilla fighting and attempts to resist US annexation, and either return to some kind of Mexican rule or be independent. This changed ***only with demographics*** when "Anglos" became the majority instead of Latinos-- Spanish was banned as a public language, all education and business was in English, and finally the civil unrest subsided and the region became secure. Even the Latinos who stayed, were forbidden from using Spanish-- they were forced to use English in schools, and thus as adults, they became "Americans" rather than "Chicanos." I'm not saying I'm happy about this-- I have many Latino friends, and I admire the Spanish language and Latino culture-- I'm just saying, it was only the demographic shift that secured California and the rest of the Southwest within the USA. Now, of course, demographics are changing again, and Latinos (and native Americans) are once again becoming the majority in Southwestern states. So now, Latino culture is again dominating the region, and predictably, there's ethnic tension. I personally don't mind, since I'm furious at so much Western hypocrisy and glad to see the Latinos flourish as a people again. All I'm saying is-- demographics and economic integration, above all else, determine if a region is peaceful, or if it is full of tension. China will not survive as a unified nation, if the demographics of Tibet and Xinjiang are such that they remain Han minority. Because as I said, you can continue to pursue fair and just policies in Tibet and Xinjiang for the Tibetan and Uighur peoples, and it won't matter-- the neocons will still launch massive anti-Chinese propaganda against you as "oppressors" in Tibet and Xinjiang, and will continue to incite riots and civil unrest by the Tibetan and Uighur peoples. And if the Tibetans are not assimilated within China, if they don't "consider themselves Chinese" but instead a separate people, and above all-- if they are *a demographic majority* in *the geographic regions* of Tibet and Xinjiang, then the neocons will take advantage of this and continue to foment riots and violence in Tibet and Xinjiang against you, and continue to give China a negative image in the West. And as soon as China experiences a moment of weakness-- such as an economic recession, or food shortages of things like rice-- then the neocons will push for an all-out rebellion in Tibet and Xinjiang and cause great damage to you. Make no mistake, the neocons hate you almost to a racist degree, and will stop at nothing to hurt China. |
| 3 |
Why I Didn't Cover About Tibet One more thing to mention here, and this is very important, so please keep it in mind: For a large number (perhaps the majority) of the people in the "Free Tibet" movement, their pro-Tibetan stance has nothing to do with human rights, but instead has everything to do with Great Power Geopolitics and Realpolitik-- where the aim is to weaken and ultimately break up China, so that China cannot be a strong power. I encountered this attitude in many of the pro-Tibet meetings I attended, and it made me so angry that it became one of the factors pushing me to leave the movement myself. Again: A major motivator for the pro-Tibet movement now is not "human rights," but instead is a desire by many Americans, Canadians, Britons and Australians to break up China into a weak power by pushing Tibet and Xinjiang to leave, leading to a state of civil war, so that China can then be invaded and occupied by US, Canadian and British troops and (as a result) US multinational companies. They want to turn you into Iraq. The reality is, there are many powerful people in the USA, Canada and Britain especially, who intensely hate China and want to make you into a weak country. These people are the so-called "neoconservatives" or "neocons" as they're called for short. They are essentially Anglo-American imperialists, just like the British and French in the 19th century who fought the Opium Wars against China, and burned down the Chinese Imperial Gardens in 1860. The neocons remain bitter about the fact that China defeated the British and Americans in 1950 at the Yalu River, with the Anglo-American powers never being able to avenge that loss, and so the neocons continue to hate China as a result. The neocons are major leaders in the "Free Tibet" movement, an example being Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post: www.slate.com/id/2186753/ Her views have nothing to do with helping Tibetans, and everything to do with hurting China. It is the neocons who are responsible for the American-British-Australian disaster of the Iraq War, and I and most other Americans hate the neoconservatives because of it. As you can see from Anne Applebaum's article above, the neocons support secession of Tibet and Xinjiang because they see it as a way to weaken China, and thus turn China into a defenseless nation that can be invaded and occupied by the USA and US allies. That's what so much of this pro-Tibet propaganda in the US, Canada and Britain is about-- not helping Tibetans, but weakening China instead. The neocons don't care about human rights at all-- after all, they supported the bloody invasions and occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan, that have killed millions of people. Rather, the neocons care about power for the USA, Canada and Britain, and since they see China as a potential rival, they want to attack you because of it. My advice to you in China to fight against the neocons who hate you and want to weaken you: 1. You must, ***absolutely must*** ensure a long-term, large and stable Han majority in Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as the rest of China. Inner Mongolia now has about 80% or so Han population, which has stopped unrest there. The same must be true for Tibet and Xinjiang. So long as these geographical regions are associated with a majority of one ethnic group (Tibetans, or Uighurs in Xinjiang), they will always be a security threat for your country. That's because the neocons in the USA, will constantly instigate "freedom movements" for Tibet and Xinjiang like this, encourage protests and riots in those provinces, and write propaganda articles in the US, British and Canadian press, claiming "atrocities" by the Chinese and encouraging these regions' secession. The neocons will constantly be encouraging trouble and unrest in these regions until there's a strong Han majority there, mingling and working together with the Uighurs and Tibetans, and with these regions economically benefiting along with the rest of China. The danger is that, if there were a Tibetan majority in Tibet and/or a Uighur majority in Xinjiang, then these regions ***would*** attempt to secede, whenever China had a period of temporary weakness or economic crisis-- such a recession, high inflation, poor harvests or anything else causing turmoil. This would lead to a civil war in China, because the neocons in the USA, Canada and the UK would be fomenting "revolution" in Tibet and Xinjiang, providing weapons, spreading propaganda and doing other things to push a civil war to weaken China. Make no mistake-- you have enemies in the USA, Canada and Britain especially, i.e. the neoconservatives, who would just love to see China violently break up in a civil war, ***even though this would be horrible for Tibetans and Uighurs*** as well as Han Chinese! Once again, the neocons don't care about human rights-- they care only about power, and weakening China. On the other hand, if there is a Han majority throughout China including in Tibet and Xinjiang, then these regions would be more stable and calm during any period of economic crisis, recession, or turmoil throughout China. There wouldn't be violence, and no danger of the neocons fomenting a civil war there. It's even better if the Han Chinese intermarry and mingle with the Tibetans and Uighurs, and especially if Tibet and Xinjiang are better integrated with the rest of China, sharing in the country's economic growth. 2. Thus, you should strongly encourage Han immigration into both Xinjiang and Tibet through those rail lines among other means, while also encouraging Tibetans and Uighurs to leave Xinjiang and Tibet and prosper throughout China, not just in Tibet and Xinjiang. Encourage intermarriage among the different groups and some degree of assimilation, spread education in the Mandarin Chinese language (which is essential for economic success anyway) while allowing for Tibetan and Uighur cultural celebrations throughout China, not just in Tibet and Xinjiang. Maybe make an exception to the One Child Policy for Han Chinese who move there-- thus, for Han in Tibet and Xinjiang, allow them to have their desired family size, since these regions need development anyway. Also, of course, encourage Han entrepreneurs to set up businesses and employ Tibetans and Uighurs in Tibet and Xinjiang. Simultaneously provide microcredit and loans to help Tibetans and Uighurs start their own businesses. The overall objective here, is to make Tibetans and Uighurs feel more like respected citizens of China, as more Chinese than Tibetan/Uighur (even as they maintain some degree of their prior cultural heritage), to provide them with educational and economic opportunities throughout China. In other words, the best way to address any tensions among the Tibetan and Uighur peoples is *absolutely not to encourage ethnic separateness*, but to instead encourage intermarriage and opportunities in education and business. This is why a country like Brazil, for example, is able to stay unified despite dozens of ethnic groups-- they intermarry, and people are focused on improving themselves in education and business, rather than ethnic grievances. As an added benefit, when Tibet and Xinjiang are secure, then China won't have to worry so much about meddling and hateful outsiders such as the neocons, stirring up trouble within China. You can therefore proceed more confidently toward various reforms-- such as better intellectual property protections, a freer press, more open intellectual discussions (in areas like the sciences, which will help to increase the number of Nobel Laureates among the Chinese and the quality of Chinese universities!). You'll then attract more business from the outside, while also attracting more intelligent people from other countries to work in China, especially if environmental reforms go with these other benefits. As for Tibetans and Uighurs, my sense is that once Tibet and Xinjiang are secure, then Uighur and Tibetan culture will actually flourish ***much better***, since there won't be any political/geographical threat to China's integrity, and cultural celebrations can happen throughout China. Plus, you won't have to worry about further unrest and bad press for China as a result! 3. In terms of China's "geostrategic orientation," I would encourage you to diversify, to be less US-centric in your education and business relations but to cultivate closer ties with other powers, such as Russia, India and especially the European Union. Just as one example, I would strongly encourage Chinese schools to promote mastery of a greater variety of foreign languages-- such as Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Japanese and ***especially German***-- rather than just English. I was talking to a Chinese colleague recently who told me that all Chinese students must take English courses, while other languages are optional. This makes no sense to me, even as an English-speaking American! It would be much better to diversify the languages that your students master, so that you can better do business with a broader section of the world-- not just English-speaking countries, but *especially* the German regions, Japanese, Russian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi. For those of us who work in engineering and the sciences, we essentially have to learn German anyway, since the Germans are the leaders of the European Union and still are pretty much the best scientists and technical people in the world, as has been the case for about two centuries now. So German is now a big scientific and business language again. As an added bonus, I have been in Germany on several occasions for work, and I can tell you that the Germans are probably the most pro-Chinese people in the Western World. The Germans, after all, were among the few Europeans who did not try to attack China during the Opium Wars period, or force an "Unequal Treaty" onto China, and so the Germans have long had more respect for China, India, Korea, Vietnam and Japan than the British, French and Americans, who either attacked these Asian countries or in some cases set up colonies there (as the British did in much of India). Thus, the Germans are much more comfortable with the 21st century as one led by countries such as China and India, than are the USA, Britain, Canada and Australia. Since Germany, again, leads the European Union-- a bigger economic bloc than the USA-- German is already becoming very important all throughout Europe and even North America and South America. So, I'd strongly suggest that Chinese schools and universities drop the mandatory English requirement, and instead encourage Chinese students to master a variety of languages. In fact, it might be beneficial to focus more on German in particular-- write some scientific papers and technical journals in German, give talks in German, do business in German, get professional training in the language and so forth. Obviously English will still be very important, but this way, your students will diversify and be strong in a broader array of languages. I'd also strongly suggest Arabic, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Japanese, Korean and Russian as "encouraged electives" for Chinese students to study. I want nothing more than to see China succeed-- and for Tibetans and Uighurs to succeed as China succeeds-- since this, once and for all, will shut down the dangerous neocon movement. I hope that these suggestions will help you to do that. |
| 2 |
Why I Didn't Cover About Tibet Dear Jian Shuo Wang, I'm an American who used to be one of the "Free Tibet" supporters, but I left the movement due to my anger about the hypocrisy among so many people in the pro-Tibetan movement. They criticize China for the situation in Tibet, while they ignore the far worse crimes of e.g. the British and Americans in North America-- where almost the entire indigenous native American population was wiped out by the British settlers, and where the US Southwestern states were stolen in a bloody war against Mexico in 1848 (and where Latinos are again becoming the majority), where places such as Hawaii and Puerto Rico were seized without the consent of the natives. Since California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and other neighboring states will soon have a Latino majority, and since the USA took them in the Mexican-American War, should we let them secede as a new country now as a result? Or the Hawaiians? Same with e.g. the British and Australians in Australia, where the indigenous aborigines were brutally slaughtered, or in New Zealand, which was taken from the indigenous Maoris. And yet, my pro-Tibetan friends hypocritically ignore this history in a bid to attack China. Don't yield an inch on the Tibet issue. Try to be nonviolent, and address issues in the region by for example, encouraging entrepreneurs from other places in China to move in and start businesses in Tibet, which will employ Tibetans and better integrate the Tibetan economy with the rest of China. Also, increase educational opportunities and provide Mandarin language instruction for Tibetans to better join the rest of the economy. Much of the unrest in Tibet has been fomented by troublemakers from outside of Tibet (including a Canadian-American group that is more anti-Chinese than pro-Tibetan), but to the extent that there is frustration there, best to solve it by better joining the Tibet economy with the rest of China to share in the prosperity. Same with Xinjiang-- integrate the Uighurs better into the overall Chinese economy to share in the prosperity, encourage Chinese from all over to go to Xinjiang, and provide more Mandarin-language instruction to increase job prospects there. |
| 1 |
Mandarin or Shanghaiese? The most important dialect to learn - after Mandarin - is Cantonese. You can get anywhere with Mandarin except one place : Hong Kong |