rxmd
May contain traces of nut
Hi Roger,
Under some past dynasties China did have irredentist policies, but some of these were in fact non-Chinese themselves (you mention the Mongols and the Manchus) and others are so long ago that it makes really very little sense to use them as a politicl reference. In fact the notion of irredentism makes little sense when you speak about feudal sovereignty relations. This is really on a similar scale as seeing a continuity between French territorial policy and the Roman Empire, it's sketchy and misleading, at best.
I also guess Chinese policies towards Tibet in the 1950s were certainly influenced by the notion that Tibet had been under Chinese suzerainty since the early 18th century up to 1912. In fact, this notion is also not limited to Communist China, incidentally; Taiwan, as the political successor of the pre-Communist Chinese government, hasn't renounced territorial claims to Tibet either, or to Mongolia, parts of Russia and Tajikistan for that matter (see map).
When you speak about political irredentism, it certainly doesn't. I have relatives who were imprisoned by Germans some 2000 miles outside any historical political or mental land area of Germany. It takes a train eight hours to cross Germany, but forty-eight to go from Berlin to where the German imperial experiment ended. You'd be hard pressed to find similar megalomaniac expansionism in Chinese politics, even towards Tibet. Also you can say a lot of bad things about Chinese cultural policy towards Tibetans, and most of them will probably be pretty close to the truth, but they do not propagate a policy of systematically murdering all Tibetans by industrial means. Comparisons in death counts between empires are fine (and you are forgetting Belgium, with 10 million Congolese killed, etc.pp.), but they also don't tend to lend objectivity to a discussion.
The Chinese government does a lot that people can criticise and/or condemn it for, but we shouldn't stop differentiating. I agree with your basic argument and your moral justification for it, but there's two sides to most stories and an excessive comparison makes it difficult to see more than one of them. In the long run this won't help. I hope the Dalai Lama would agree.
Philipp
To be honest I'm not so sure if that can be said in all this simplicity. In fact for the past 300 years or so the "mental map" of what constitutes China has been more or less stable; China is now more or less in the borders of what the (Manchu) Qing dynasty had control over (with the exception of Mongolia), and there has been little political irredentism beyond that or an idea of expanding the borders of China, on a large scale anyway. Certainly not if you compare it to other nations who have a recent history of large-scale invasions vis-a-vis their neighbours. You can say a lot of bad things about the Chinese government but irredentism is not really at the top of the list.
Under some past dynasties China did have irredentist policies, but some of these were in fact non-Chinese themselves (you mention the Mongols and the Manchus) and others are so long ago that it makes really very little sense to use them as a politicl reference. In fact the notion of irredentism makes little sense when you speak about feudal sovereignty relations. This is really on a similar scale as seeing a continuity between French territorial policy and the Roman Empire, it's sketchy and misleading, at best.
I also guess Chinese policies towards Tibet in the 1950s were certainly influenced by the notion that Tibet had been under Chinese suzerainty since the early 18th century up to 1912. In fact, this notion is also not limited to Communist China, incidentally; Taiwan, as the political successor of the pre-Communist Chinese government, hasn't renounced territorial claims to Tibet either, or to Mongolia, parts of Russia and Tajikistan for that matter (see map).
I'm not sure whether the comparison to Nazi Germany is doing your argument a favour.
When you speak about political irredentism, it certainly doesn't. I have relatives who were imprisoned by Germans some 2000 miles outside any historical political or mental land area of Germany. It takes a train eight hours to cross Germany, but forty-eight to go from Berlin to where the German imperial experiment ended. You'd be hard pressed to find similar megalomaniac expansionism in Chinese politics, even towards Tibet. Also you can say a lot of bad things about Chinese cultural policy towards Tibetans, and most of them will probably be pretty close to the truth, but they do not propagate a policy of systematically murdering all Tibetans by industrial means. Comparisons in death counts between empires are fine (and you are forgetting Belgium, with 10 million Congolese killed, etc.pp.), but they also don't tend to lend objectivity to a discussion.
The Chinese government does a lot that people can criticise and/or condemn it for, but we shouldn't stop differentiating. I agree with your basic argument and your moral justification for it, but there's two sides to most stories and an excessive comparison makes it difficult to see more than one of them. In the long run this won't help. I hope the Dalai Lama would agree.
Philipp
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Dear Philipp,
Certainly true -- and the fact that most of Tibet was independent from 1912 to 1950 (coinage, postage stamps, etc.) makes current Chinese claims over Tibet about as sustainable as a British claim to rule Eire might be.
But China's 'territorial integrity' has always been highly disputable. As far as I recall, an independent Dali state existed for 15-20 years before being crushed in 1873, and there are other examples of 'minorities' rising against Chinese overlords throughout history. China has always been an unwilling empire with a big army as its main way to keep occupied territories down.
As for lebensraum, well, if that strikes you as too Nazified a word, substitute a more circuitous English phrase for it. The underlying logic is the same.
Cheers,
R.
infrequent
Well-known
@rxmd - well how do you explain china's territorial claims in kashmir and financial support for separatist movements in north-east india? i suppose they were part of the Qing dynasty too.
steamer
Well-known
The fact that there are 2 sides to any story doesn't make both sides right, The Japanese had "good" reasons for their "advance" into China, A US president made certain claims about weapons of mass destruction etc, how China stacks up against the Nazis or the anyone else is not the point here, nor are Beijing's dubious irredentist arguments. The Tibetan people do not welcome their self styled "liberators."
rxmd
May contain traces of nut
You don't have to prove that Tibet was independent, I'm not doubting it. Alas, a claim like the Chinese are making does not have to be politically sustainable for people to make it; all it has to be to have real-world consequences is legitimate in the eyes of who makes it. World history is full of the rejection of sustainable claims; having a legitimate claim is nice, but in itself it doesn't help a lot.
Well, this was a period where the Chinese central power was weak. When the central power somewhere is weak, the periphery tries to gain more autonomy; this happens everywhere and with varying success (Ireland 1798 when Britain was busy, Vendée 1790-1793 in the French Revolution, etc.). When the central power is strong, it reclaims those territories, usually by force, "crushing" the others. This happened everywhere and throughout the ages; by itself this mechanism does not lend legitimacy to either side IMHO, neither to those who break away for whatever reason nor to the central government.
Also note that even in the 19th century territorial integrity was far from a clear-cut concept in general. My own country had its borders drawn only in 1871. Unless you lived on an island, clear-cut borders were a by-product of the modern nation-state, which China certainly wasn't until the 20th century. Feudal statehood extends not by territorial delimination, but by power relations. Hence, talking about the territorial integrity of China in 1873 seems more than a bit problematic to justify the arguments of any side.
And my whole argument is that it isn't. After all it was you who chose to use Hitler's term (pretty consciously if you use the German loan in English), and its underlying logic is that of moving into a territory vastly outside your own and indiscriminately killing everybody who lives there to make room, because they don't deserve to live while your own people do. There is a lot to condemn the Chinese government for regarding Tibet, but this is not their policy, and all I'm saying is that we shouldn't stop differentiating between the two if we don't want to become detached from the real world with our arguments.
The moral claim the Tibetans have from the policy of nonviolence is much more valuable and supportable IMHO than the detraction of their Chinese opponents by comparisons designed for shock, Nazi or otherwise. It might be even more supportable than a political claim referring to a period of past independence. Tibetan radicals are in danger of losing much of what they stand for; if they reject nonviolence, they will be just another of the 1000 independence movements in the world which may succeed or fail but will lead to much more bloodshed either way.
Philipp
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rxmd
May contain traces of nut
Well in Kashmir they are a continuation of a 19th colonial border dispute between China and the British Empire. The reason why the Chinese invaded in 1962 was probably because they wanted to construct a road through this territory, so it was motivated by good old real-world politics rather than historical legitimacy. The 1962 war was certainly not what a good neighbour would do, but neither does it warrant the "lebensraum" comparison. (In fact that's why I wrote about the "large scale".)
Financial support for separatist movements is nothing out of the ordinary. Most powerful countries tend to support some political movements abroad, and sometimes those movements are rather questionable. I'd be more surprised if they didn't support anyone.
Look, guys, I am not a blind China supporter, all I'm saying is look a bit more closely and choose your comparisons carefully. If that already constitutes too much of a dissenting opinion we probably shouldn't be talking.
Philipp
Rayt
Nonplayer Character
What happened in Tibet last month was essentially a race riot. There were Western reporters there namely a correspondent from the Economist who reported it as such. The Chinese government obsession with censorship and media control make anything they say unbelievable. They are their own worse enemies. People don't riot for no reason and oppression do and/or did exist. In modern day Tibet much of the woes have been the economy where Tibetans lose out to the Han Chinese who had migrated to Tibet over the years and taking their jobs. The riots targeted Han Chinese randomly for stealing their livelihoods. So where is the balance? Evict all Han Chinese from Tibet so the region will remain ethnically pure? When I was in Tibet two years ago I was turned off by the influx of alien culture in Lhasa, sort of a feeling many tourists have when visiting SF or Toronto Chinatown.
As well as targeting Han Chinese, the rioters also completely trashed the Muslim quarter in Lhasa.
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steamer
Well-known
If you buy Parenti's party line you probably won't like this:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/a-lie-repeated-the-far-left’s-flawed-history-of-tibet/
To quote:
In his descriptions of old Tibet, Parenti predominantly draws on the work of four historians — Anna Louise Strong, A. Tom Grunfeld, and Roma and Stuart Gelder. The fact that all of these historians had a romantic predilection towards Maoism and drew mostly on Chinese government statistics should surely be cause for concern as far as their legitimacy as source material. One certainly wouldn’t trust the Indonesian government’s party line on Aceh or East Timor. Or, for that matter, the U.S. government’s continued assertion that the Iraqi people welcome the current American occupation. Such manipulations of public sentiment, in which an occupation is presented as ‘the will of the people,’ are — as a rule — only employed to further the agenda of the occupier.
You might want to have a look at this as well:
http://www.reversespins.com/acme.html
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/a-lie-repeated-the-far-left’s-flawed-history-of-tibet/
To quote:
In his descriptions of old Tibet, Parenti predominantly draws on the work of four historians — Anna Louise Strong, A. Tom Grunfeld, and Roma and Stuart Gelder. The fact that all of these historians had a romantic predilection towards Maoism and drew mostly on Chinese government statistics should surely be cause for concern as far as their legitimacy as source material. One certainly wouldn’t trust the Indonesian government’s party line on Aceh or East Timor. Or, for that matter, the U.S. government’s continued assertion that the Iraqi people welcome the current American occupation. Such manipulations of public sentiment, in which an occupation is presented as ‘the will of the people,’ are — as a rule — only employed to further the agenda of the occupier.
You might want to have a look at this as well:
http://www.reversespins.com/acme.html
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I didn't say it was my view. It's just another view.
Although I'm reading up on it, I don't yet know enough about the Tibet situation to feel fully informed. However, its pretty obvious the western media is just cheerleading the Tibetan side, and the Chinese media is just cheerleading their own side. How could it be otherwise?
Edited to add: P.S. I noticed you edited your reply. Thanks for the links you added. More information to digest!
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Nh3
Well-known
'The west' has its flaws but in the end people can vote for a different leader and the government cannot get away with everything.
China is the opposite and any sort of moral relativism between china and the west is absurd.
China is the opposite and any sort of moral relativism between china and the west is absurd.
Rayt
Nonplayer Character
The situation in Tibet will not improve short of full autonomy for the Tibetans people. China has been acting like the colonial master and the closest analogy I can think of would be how the White Australians handled the natives in their efforts to civilize them. Tibetans and Hans don't mix due to very different values. The Chinese just can't understand why people can spend hours, days, weeks and even months in worship. The Chinese interprets this level of devotion as laziness. The government should ban migration into the area, bulldoze existing Han structures and stop further cultural contamination. The last thing anyone needs is for Lhasa to turn into another generic Chinese city.
bmattock
Veteran
None of our business. China's problem to deal with.
bmattock
Veteran
Nh3
Well-known
China needs a more mature policy line than childish reiterations concerning Tibet.
bmattock
Veteran
Not Canada's or the USA's job to tell China what it needs regarding how it deals with internal affairs. Mature or immature, if we tell other countries how to administer their internal affairs, we open the door to them telling us the same thing.
The arrogance of the enlightened - let's tell China what they 'need'. I'm sure they'll be grateful, we're like an older, wiser, brother - and we have such an excellent history of granting independence to earlier cultures we subjugated and made part of our respective countries.
steamer
Well-known
Yes Tibet governed by Tibetans is preferable to a Tibet governed by a Chinese dictatorship of the proletariat.
Sadly for Tibetans, Tibet is a part of China and is likely to stay that way for a long time, but India was once part of the British Empire and Manchuria and Korea were once part of Japan so who knows? Like you say it's not your problem.
bmattock
Veteran
Not to the Chinese. And surprise - they're the ones in charge of China.
Northern Ireland still belongs to the UK. Shall we discuss what happened the last time Puerto Rico wanted independence?
I say that Northern Ireland is an issue for the British and the Irish to work out, Puerto Rico is an issue for the USA to work out, and surprise, Tibet is a problem for the Chinese to work out. Without our interference.
Besides, I love these Johnny-come-latelys. I didn't hear any of you lipping off ten years ago during the last crackdown on Tibetans. Oh, right - no Olympics then.
Fair-weather activists. Who needs 'em?