Democracy in Exile – Yea, Right!

October 21, 2010

I read a misleading post at Global Voices that was titled China and Tibet: Democracy in Exile. My first thought was, “When was Tibet ever a Democracy?”

I also thought about double standards and hypocrisy, which I’ll get to later.

Here’s what the author said in the first sentence at Global Voices, “Being a Tibetan in exile is a loss that manifests in many forms: the loss of homeland and natural rights fall within that.”

What were those natural rights that were lost?

Most Tibetans in exile gave up land and millions of serfs who were treated no better than slaves. What was lost were positions of power and wealth.

Before 1950, when Mao’s Red army occupied Tibet, there had been no democracy or republic in Tibet – ever.

The next quote shows Tibet before 1950.

“Lamaism is the state religion of Tibet and its power in the Hermit Country is tremendous. Religion dominated every phase of life.… For instance, in a family of four sons, at least two, generally three, of them must be Lamas. Property and family prestige also naturally go with the Lamas to the monastery in which they are inmates.

“Keeping the common people or laymen, in ignorance is another means of maintaining the power of the Lamas. Nearly all of the laymen (serfs) are illiterate. Lamas are the only people who are taught to read and write.”  Source: October 1912 National Geographic Magazine, page 979.

Between 1912—when those words appeared in National Geographic—and 1950, Tibet did not change.

What we have in Global Voices is clever manipulation to elicit support for the Tibetan separatist movement.

In fact, Tibetans have the same chance to be free from China as Hawaiians have of being free of the United States. There is a separatist movement in Hawaii and the circumstances of Hawaii and Tibet being occupied and ruled by nations that are more powerful is similar.

The only difference is that a reluctant Tibet was ruled over by the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties from 1277 to 1913 when Great Britain convinced Tibet to break from China at the same time the Qing Dynasty was collapsing.

See Why Tibet?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

4 Comments | Buddhism, Buddhist, China, Chinese history, history, media, politics, Tibet | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Influenced by the Mandate of Heaven

October 13, 2010

Although I wrote on the Mandate of Heaven in April, I didn’t see how deeply that belief was influencing China’s Communist Party.

The epiphany took place soon after reading page 235 in Living With Evolution.

At the same time, I realized that America’s judgment of China’s Communist Party was in part due to half a century of entitlement programs for minorities and the disadvantaged in the U.S. — often rewarding those who were less qualified and punishing those who were successful through merit by holding him or her back.

However, in China after Mao was gone and Deng Xiaoping opened the country to world trade, meritocracy was back with a vengeance.

Meritocracy is a system in which the talented succeed and move ahead based on his or her achievement.

The Chinese for almost four thousand years believed that humans were responsible for how events unfolded on earth with human actions subject to the approval or disapproval of heaven.

Successful actions were held to be those that heaven approved of and unsuccessful actions were held to be those heaven did not approve of.

What this means is that anyone, regardless of his or her social status could challenge the elite and rise to the top on the claim that it was legitimate according to the Mandate of Heaven — a concept that was also quintessentially meritocratic.

This explains why China’s central government treats political and/or religious activists, who challenge the status quo, so harshly. 

If the Communist Party allows the Falun Gong, Tibetan and Islamic separatists or Western style human rights activists to have the kind of freedom of expression that is allowed in the West, most Chinese, including the Communist Party, may see this as a sign of weakness.

In fact, the Dalai Lama’s popularity in the West is seen as a challenge to the Party’s mandate to rule. The same could be said about the rival government in Taiwan.

To have a better understanding of what this mean, you may want to start reading the Living With Evolution Blog

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Misconceptions of China – The Chinese Government

August 20, 2010

This three-part series comes from a young Chinese man speaking on YouTube about Western misconceptions of China.

Larry says that one of the greatest misconceptions about China’s government is that people outside China believe it is completely Communist—a machine that gets rid of what it doesn’t like.  Even Larry’s Chinese-American friends feel this way.  That opinion is wrong.

Larry says that China does censor a few things like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The reason for that are because of Falun Gong, and Tibetan or Muslim (in Xingjian province) separatists.

Source: ShiWoLarry

Larry says many Westerners believe if you say bad things about the Chinese government, you will be arrested. The only instance where that might be true is if you used a loud speaker in the center of Tiananmen Square.  

Larry then talks about the few human rights violations Westerners hear so much about. The central government reacts the way it does toward the Falun Gong, Tibetan Separatists and the Muslims in Xingjian province because the Communists came to power through rebellion and want to avoid the same thing happening to them.  

After the Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911, China went through chaos and anarchy for decades—millions suffered and died.  Any rebellion would mean a return to those horrible times and regardless of any negativity one hears or reads about China, there is a lot of good things going on that we don’t hear about in the West.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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1 Comment | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Communism, cults, cultural differences, Islam, media, politics, Tibet | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
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China Rejects Western Pressure on Human Rights

August 13, 2010

One place to read anything positive about China is in the “China Daily” or a few Blogs written by people like me, who have been to China and do their homework to know what’s really going on.

In China rejects Western standards on human rights, Xinhua (7-3-2010), Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying says that the “West” ignores China’s political progress.

In fact, there has been much political progress since Mao died in 1976. See China’s Capitalist Revolution to learn more.

I’d like to rewrite Minister Fu Ying’s statement to say that most of the “Western media” and conservative and liberal political action groups in the US ignore China’s progress for a reason. These groups have a political agenda against anything that has the word “Communist” in front of it. To them, China is still a Maoist country that they fear, and they do not want to hear the truth.

Minister Fu Ying is correct when she says that the Western point-of-view on human rights in China is spread by “political extremists”.

The Tibetan separatists represent about one percent of the Tibetan population, and the Muslim separatists from China’s northwest are the same as the Islamic fundamentalists the West is fighting on the other side of the border in Afghanistan.

The other loud voice is the Falun Gong, a cult with enough money to support a traveling international musical troop, a TV station and a newspaper. That has to cost a small fortune, so where does that money come from?

Well, we know from Congressional hearings that the CIA supports the Tibetan separatists, so it isn’t a stretch to figure out who supports the Falun Gong and the Muslims.

I suggest you watch the three videos and tell me who isn’t guilty of human rights violations.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Invisible White Elephants

May 18, 2010

In the debate about China with Timothy V, one of his quotes stuck in my mind. Timothy V wrote, “Concerning the Chinese students, I’ve met students from all over China. From Fujian to Beijing. From the rural areas to the big cities. I have one close friend who was born in northeast China and grew up in Beijing. None of them have very much good to say about their home country. One common thread that they have is that they say they have more freedom to move around here in the U.S. than in China…”

I find it interesting that so many Chinese students and one close friend would all bad mouth China to a foreigner like Timothy V. The hundreds of Chinese I’ve met would never talk about their country like that to a foreigner even if that was how they felt. In a collective society like China, it isn’t proper to talk about the “White Elephant” in the room.

That is, unless those students were Tibetan separatists, Islamic Uyghurs or one of the dissidents who fled China after the Tiananmen Square incident and was bitterly stranded in the United States. In China, the police and state security closely watch any person considered a subversive, which would explain the fear and distrust these students have for the police in China.

Even in the US, the FBI, CIA and Secret Service watch suspected terrorists closely. If they didn’t, there would have been another 9/11 by now or worse.

Chinese supporting China in front of a Sears

Consider that during the 2008 Beijing Olympic protests, Chinese nationalism, even from Chinese Americans, was at an all time high. The Chinese government had never seen so much support from Chinese all over the world.

In an April 2010 post on the “FrumForum” about Chinese Nationalism, it said, “If they ever did have a free election here, the Chinese Communist Party would win 70% of the vote.” and “…young nationalists hesitate to criticize their own government because (1) they share the widespread feeling that on balance, their government has done a good job improving their lives (China is on track to 12% growth in 2010!) – and (2) over-emphatic criticism would cost them their audience by pushing them far out of the mainstream of Chinese opinion.”

David Frum even shared a meal in China with a highly educated woman in the arts. American-educated, English-speaking, progressive-minded. Frum said they talked about the burden of censorship in the arts – and she bristled. ‘If you offend the authorities, you are just stupid. Everybody knows where the lines are, why cross them? Our idea of freedom is different from yours, why can’t you accept that?”

Could it be that Timothy V casts doubt on what I write about China because of whom he knows and that limits his perspective leading to flawed opinions?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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