Australia to China: Let’s Be “Real” Friends

From John Pomfret of the Washington Post, an interesting take on a new type of “engagement” — Kevin Rudd’s approach to telling China the truth, rather than appeasing the delicate feelings of the Communist Party:

Does the West have a new secret weapon in dealing with China in the person of Kevin Rudd, the new prime minister of Australia?

Rudd is the only Western leader who speaks Chinese, and his Chinese is pretty good at that. But deeper still is Rudd’s understanding of China.

Australian China scholar Geremie Barme unpacks Rudd’s marvelous speech, given at Beijing University last week, in which he bluntly called on China to recognize its human rights problems in Tibet.

Most Western leaders probably would have either punted or come on too strong. Rudd’s tone, however, was pitch perfect.

Rudd’s brilliance in the speech involves turning the Chinese term “friend” on its head. Friend (pengyou in Chinese) and frienship (youyi) are two of the most distorted concepts in modern China culture. In modern China, a friend is someone who will do you favors and who expects favors in return. A “foreign friend” is someone the Chinese party-state expects will carry water for them and NEVER criticize them.

Whenever a Chinese official called me “foreign friend” (waiguo pengyou), I knew some type of horrible deal would soon be asked or expected of me.

“To be a friend of China, the Chinese people, the party-state or, in the reform period, even a mainland business partner,” Barme writes, “the foreigner is often expected to stomach unpalatable situations, and keep silent in the face of egregious behaviour. A friend of China might enjoy the privilege of offering the occasional word of caution in private; in the public arena he or she is expected to have the good sense and courtesy to be ‘objective.’ that is to toe the line, whatever that happens to be. The concept of ‘friendship’ thus degenerates into little more than an effective tool for emotional blackmail and enforced complicity.”

So what did Rudd do? He went back — way back — into Chinese history, to the 7th century AD, and used another word for friendship (zhengyou).

“A true friend,” Rudd said, “is one who can be a zhengyou, that is a partner who sees beyond immediate benefit to the broader and firm basis for continuing, profound and sincere friendship.”

“Rudd’s tactic,” Barme wrote, “was to deftly sidestep the vice-like embrace of [the current] model of friendship by substituting another.

“A strong relationship, and a true friendship,” he told the students, “are built on the ability to engage in a direct, frank and ongoing dialogue about our fundamental interests and future vision.”

This type of engagement could be a model for how the West interacts with China. Enough with the back door, private stuff that Western powers have relied on to engage with China — private conversations that Chinese officials can then ignore. But at the same time, stop the screaming, with its hint of “Yellow Peril,” racism and fear. Rudd got it right. It remains to be seen whether others can follow his lead.

BREAKING NEWS: Tibetan monks disrupt another scripted media tour

. Breaking news: a group of Tibetan monks in Labrang Monastery bravely demonstrated during a tightly-scripted media tour conducted by the Chinese government. Like the monks of the Jokhang Cathedral last month in Lhasa, the Labrang monks took great personal risk to show the world that Tibetans are not happy under Chinese rule.

As the world’s eyes are on San Francisco today for the Olympic torch relay, we must remember that in Tibet, the Tibetan people continue to suffer under China’s brutal military occupation. Despite this, the spirit of the Tibetan people is unbroken, and Tibetans continue to speak out for freedom.

The brave Labrang monks, like the Jokhang monks, knew that they would likely be arrested and tortured. But their act of courage spoiled yet another effort by the Chinese government to pretend that all is well in Tibet. We should all be urging our governments to demand that these monks not be punished, and demand full media access across Tibet; no more of these sham media tours conducted by Chinese officials.

ABC news has amazing video (click here), where the monks can be heard shouting (in Tibetan) that they want human rights and the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Here is a report from the New York Times:

Buddhist monks interrupted a government-managed media tour in western China on Wednesday, waving a Tibetan flag and protesting that the authorities were depriving them of their human rights.

The disruption, in the city of Xiahe in Gansu Province, was another unexpected public relations setback for China, and marked the second time that monks have upstaged government efforts to control foreign media tours of Tibetan areas.

Last month, several monks in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, risked official punishment when they made an emotional appeal to foreign journalists inside the Jokhang Monastery, one of the city’s holiest shrines.

The outburst on Wednesday came as authorities guided reporters through the Labrang Monastery. The tour marked the first officially approved visit to Xiahe by foreign reporters since monks and other Tibetans in the city clashed with police last month. During the tour, about 15 monks rushed out, waving a Tibetan flag, and approached a group of about 20 Chinese and foreign reporters.

Tibet remains under lockdown

Even as we watch the Olympic torch relay blow up in the Chinese government’s face, our thoughts should remain with the Tibetans inside of Tibet, who are suffering under a crackdown away from the world’s eyes. In just one example, the AP reports:

Police manning a checkpoint on Thursday stopped reporters trying to enter Aba prefecture, a primarily Tibetan area in Sichuan province, and escorted them back to the provincial capital, Chengdu.

At a news conference in Beijing, Aba’s deputy chief Xiao Youcai, said life was “completely normal” in the area, but insisted also that it remained “too dangerous” for foreign journalists.

This is a complete contradiction, showing how crazy the Chinese government’s claims about Tibet are. Is the situation “completely normal” or “too dangerous”? Pick one! What is the Chinese government hiding in Tibet?

From the information trickling out of Tibet, we hear of protesters massacred in the streets, and massive political indoctrination sessions (as if more propaganda will solve Tibetan demands for freedom and independence). From this information, we can piece together a grim picture of life in Tibet right now:

Xiao refused to confirm an earlier state media report that Aba police had shot and wounded four rioters in self-defense, conceding only that shots had been fired in self-defense. Tibetan groups said up to 20 people may have been killed.

Alongside the stepped-up security, the region’s top officials have ordered more stringent ideological education for young people _ an apparent acknowledgment that years of political indoctrination have failed to curb support for the Dalai Lama.

China and IOC in crisis talks

The Chinese government and the International Olympic Committee are reportedly in crisis talks, after they massively underestimated worldwide ourtage over Beijing’s repressive rule in Tibet.  This report is from the Financial Times:

Beijing officials are to hold urgent talks with senior members of the Olympic movement about the torch relay, as concern grows among International Olympic Committee members over the impact of pro-Tibet protests on the Games.[...]

IOC insiders discounted the prospect of routes being curtailed or cancelled, but one said that in light of recent events, discussions would take place with Beijing about “how the integrity of the torch can be maintained”. One said the backlash against China’s action in Tibet was in danger of casting a “stain on the Olympic movement”.

[...]

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, made his strongest comments yet on China’s handling of unrest in Tibet, saying in Beijing he was very concerned “with the international situation and what’s happened in Tibet”.

Although he added there was no momentum for a general boycott of the Games, IOC insiders said he and other senior IOC members were becoming increasingly worried about the Olympics movement becoming tainted by the international focus on China’s handling of Tibet.

Note to the Chinese government: Your big coming out party was a bit hasty.  As long as you continue to occupy Tibet, you will never really be accepted in the international community.  In case you didn’t get the memo, imperialism is so 19th century.  Free Tibet, and then you can get the respect you so desperately crave.

Note to the IOC: I hate to say “we told you so,” but what did you expect when you allowed the Chinese government to exploit the Olympics for its own political ends?  OK I can’t resist… we told you so.

Tibet and China’s imperialism

Canada’s Globe & Mail carried an interesting piece, looking at how China’s rule in Tibet is an anacronistic throwback to imperialism even as Beijing tries to present a more modern face to the world:

The struggle in Tibet is a reminder that China is not just a nation but an empire, and a communist empire at that. [...]  All of this tends to be overlooked in the glittering reflection of Shanghai’s skyscrapers. We have been so dazzled by China’s amazing rise as a modern economic power that we forget what a throwback it is. [...]

It has been clear for many years that China is pursuing what is essentially an imperial policy in Tibet, encouraging Han Chinese to colonize the region and dilute the native Tibetan majority, building railways, airports and other links to bind Tibet to the metropolitan power, using its secret police and other coercive powers to crush any dissent. All of these techniques were familiar to empires of the past, from the British to the Portuguese to the Russian. Empires always fear the untamed people on their distant edges, and Beijing’s attitude to the Tibetans and the Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang has been like Rome’s to the Gauls. [...]

Like other empires, the modern Chinese empire is held together through force.  Ultimately, however, China’s rule over Tibet is unstable because the Tibetan people, like other colonized peoples, will not accept foreign occupation.  The Chinese government is on the wrong side of history if it thinks it can hold on to Tibet forever:

All this was known before last month’s protests in Lhasa and beyond, but China’s reaction – defensive, paranoiac, often laughable in its Orwellian denial of the facts – brought home that, for all its modern airs, this is still at root an imperial, communist power.

Denouncing “the Dalai Lama clique” – opponents of communists seem always to gather in “cliques” – the Communist Party chief in Tibet, Zhang Qingli, called Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader “a wolf in monk’s robes, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast.” Last year, he said “the Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need. The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans.” Yes, and Stalin was the benevolent father of the Soviet minorities.

China hopes that, if it folds its minorities into the paternal embrace of the state, they will end their futile attempts at independence and come to see themselves as Chinese just like everyone else. History suggests this kind of consent can rarely be coerced. The fraternal brotherhood of the Soviet peoples dissolved the moment Soviet power did. Yugoslavia, too, flew apart after the demise of communism.