Fact vs. Myth

Fact vs. Myth

China’s favourite propaganda about Tibet and how to counter it

PHOTO: View of he Potala Palace, Lhasa

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SFT info

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MISSION: Students for a Free Tibet UK (SFT UK) works in solidarity with the Tibetan people in their struggle for freedom and independence. The SFT UK network is part of the international SFT movement of young people and activists around the world. Through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent direct action, we campaign for Tibetans’ fundamental right to political freedom. Our role is to empower and train youth as leaders in the worldwide movement for social justice.

VISION: SFT UK’s vision is of an independent Tibet, as part of a just and equitable world, free of oppression, in which there is respect for the earth and all living things. We see a world where young people realise that they can and must take responsibility to change our world for the better, and are equipped with the skills and knowledge to do so effectively and non-violently.

VALUES: We believe every individual has the right to be free. Those who enjoy freedom have the power and also the responsibility to make positive change in the world. We seek to create opportunities to inspire, enable and motivate all people to see that change is possible. We value creativity in every pursuit and we believe it is essential to have fun while working towards our vision of a just and equitable world.

This guide contains information from SFT HQ publication ‘Fact vs Myth’, ‘China’s Favorite Propaganda on Tibet…and Why It’s Wrong’ by Lhadon Tethong with additional notes 2

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Introduction

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Students for a Free Tibet knows that there are two sides to every story. Nonetheless, Tibetans and their supporters often face an uphill battle against the Chinese government and others, in trying to expose the truth about Tibet. In an attempt to help you understand some of the arguments on both sides, we have compiled this section on "Fact vs. Myth."

People often ask us for advice on how to respond to China’s misinformation campaign on Tibet. More and more often these days, this type of propaganda is being forwarded not just by the Chinese leadership and well-known China apologists (like Tom Grunfeld and Mel Goldstein) but by a host of scholars, writers and other characters in the west.

While it is frustrating and upsetting to have to listen to this from Chinese sources, I’m sure many would agree (especially Tibetans) that it is absolutely maddening to have to hear it from western students, academics and writers, given that they have had the privilege of a quality education and free speech, as well as free access to information.

There is a document that can help illuminate where some of this wrong information may be coming from.

On June 12, 2000 the Chinese government convened a meeting on “Tibet-related external propaganda and Tibetology work in the new era.” A leaked document from this meeting shows just how much China feels threatened by increasing support for Tibet in the world and how seriously they take our actions. In fact, the Chinese leadership has plotted a course of action, which includes using western intellectuals to “promote our views in western society.”

Overall, this is good news for Tibet. It is good news for the thousands of people around the world who have worked to bring the Tibetan struggle to the world stage. It shows that we are being successful, that China is sensitive to criticism and they are regrouping in order to fight us.

Remember the quote from Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to keep up the good fight.

-Lhadon Tethong, Director, Tibet Action Institute

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China’s favourite propaganda

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It's no secret that the Chinese government sees propaganda as a key weapon in its efforts to battle the movement for Tibetan rights and independence. Luckily for Tibetans, Beijing's Orwellian rants - for example labeling the Dalai Lama a "serpent" and a "wolf in monk's robes" - have bordered on the hilarious. That is, until recently. Beijing's propaganda strategy is shifting to a greater utilization of Chinese and Western scholars and hand-picked Tibetan spokespeople. A leaked document from the Chinese Communist Party's Ninth Meeting on Tibet-Related External Propaganda in 2001 stated, "Effective use of Tibetologists and specialists is the core of our external propaganda struggle for public opinion on Tibet." Beijing is also starting to send out propaganda tours of carefully selected groups of its Tibetan officials - always with a Chinese escort. In order to address these recent moves, Students for a Free Tibet has deconstructed Beijing's favorite propaganda points justifying China's invasion and continuing occupation of Tibet.

"Tibet has always 'belonged' to China"

This is Beijing's favorite argument, though the exact moment when Tibet supposedly became "part" of China keeps changing; it's variously said to have happened in the seventh century, the 13th century, the Qing Dynasty, or simply "always." It's hard to do justice to two thousand years of Tibetan history in a few paragraphs, and the suggested resources at the end of this document give much more detail than we can put here:

· The seventh century: Beijing used to claim that the marriage of Tibet's King Srongtsen Gampo to Chinese Tang Dynasty Princess Wencheng in 641 A.D. marked the "union of the Tibetan and Han Chinese nationalities." It stopped claiming this when it was repeatedly pointed out that Wencheng was junior to Srongtsen Gampo's Nepali wife, Princess Brikuti, and that the Tang emperor was forced to give his daughter because of the strength of the Tibetan empire. In fact, the Tibetan army sacked and briefly occupied the Tang capital in 765 A.D., and the 822 A.D. peace treaty forced the Chinese to treat the "barbarian" Tibetans as equals.

· The 13th century: Beijing claims that Tibet became part of China during the Yuan Dynasty in the mid-13th century. The Yuan was actually a Mongol empire, with Chinggis Khan and his descendents conquering China and nations from Korea to Eastern Europe. For China to claim Tibet based on this would be like India claiming Burma since both were part of the British Empire. The Mongols never ruled Tibet as an administrative region of China, and Tibet was given special treatment because Tibet's Sakya lamas were the religious teachers of the Mongol emperors. By the fall of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, Tibet had again become in charge of its own affairs.

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· The Qing Dynasty (1644-1911): Beijing is opposed to past Western and Japanese imperialism, but sees nothing wrong in claiming Tibet based on the Manchu Qing Empire. This claim doesn't stand up either. The Manchu rulers of China were Buddhists, and Tibet's Dalai Lamas and the Manchu emperors had a special priest-patron relationship called Cho-Yon whereby China committed to providing protection to the largely demilitarized Tibetan state. Chinese nationalists may see this as sovereignty, but it wasn't. As the relationship became strained, China at various times exercised influence and sent armies into Tibet - but so did Nepal during this time. China expanded its influence in Tibet after 1720, as a powerful country dealing with a weaker neighbor. It later tried to occupy Tibet by force, violating the Cho-Yon relationship, but with the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Tibetans expelled the Chinese and the 13th Dalai Lama proclaimed Tibet's complete independence.

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Until the Chinese invasion of 1950-51, Tibet enjoyed full sovereignty as defined under international law: it had a territory, a population, a government exercising effective control, and the ability to enter into international relations (such as the 1914 Simla Convention with Britain, trade delegations to the West, and neutrality in World War II).

· 1951: China claims sovereignty over Tibet from before 1951, but this is an important date. This is when after defeating Tibet's small army, China imposed the Seventeen Point Agreement on the Tibetan government, demanding that Tibet "return" to Chinese sovereignty (raising the uncomfortable question of why such a surrender treaty was needed unless Tibet was a country independent of China in the first place). This Agreement was legally invalid because of duress, but the Tibetan government had little choice but to try to coexist with China under its provisions. It became clear that Beijing had no intention to live up to its promises, and the Tibetan government fully repudiated the document during China's brutal suppression of the 1959 Tibetan uprising.

· "Always": Do we even need to respond to this? Irish Ambassador to the U.N. Frank Aiken said it best in the U.N.'s debate on Tibet in 1959: "Looking around this assembly, … I think how many benches would be empty in this hall if it had always been agreed that when a small nation or a small people fall in the grip of a major power no one could ever raise their voice here; that once there was a subject nation, then must always remain a subject nation. Tibet has fallen into the hands of the Chinese People's Republic for the last few years. For thousands of years, … it was as free and as fully in control of its own affairs as any nation in this Assembly, and a thousand times more free to look after its own affairs than many of the nations here."

"Old Tibet was a backwards, feudal society and the Dalai Lama was an evil slaveholder"

Beijing (as well as sympathetic Western scholars such as Michael Parenti, Tom Grunfeld and Anna Louise Strong) asserts that "pre-liberation" Tibet was a medieval, oppressive society consisting of "landowners, serfs and slaves." Tashi Rabgay, a Tibetan scholar at Harvard, points out that these three alleged social classes are arbitrary and revisionist classifications that have no basis in reality. There were indeed indentured farmers in old Tibet. There were also merchants, nomads, traders, non-indentured farmers, hunters, bandits, monks, nuns, musicians, aristocrats and artists. Tibetan society was a vast, multifaceted affair, as real societies tend to be. To try to reduce it to three base experiences (and non-representative experiences at that) is to engage in the worst kind of revisionism.

No country is perfect and many Tibetans (including the Dalai Lama) admit that old Tibet had its flaws and inequities (setting aside whether things are better under Chinese occupation). But taking every real or imagined shortcoming that happened in a country over a 600-year period and labeling it the "way it was" is hardly legitimate history. Any society seen through this blurry lens would come up short. And in many ways, such as the elimination of the death penalty, Tibet was perhaps ahead of its time. The young 14th Dalai Lama had begun to promote land reform laws and other improvements, but China's take-over halted these advances. It is instructive to note that today the Tibetan government-in-exile is a democracy while China and Tibet are under communist dictatorship.

The crucial subtext of Beijing's condemnation of Tibet's "feudal" past is a classic colonialist argument that the target's alleged backwardness serves as a justification for invasion and occupation. These are the politics of the colonist, in which the "native" is dehumanized, robbed of agency, and debased in order to make occupation more palatable or even necessary and "civilizing." China has no more right to occupy a "backward" Tibet than Britain had to carry the "white man's burden" in India or Hong Kong.

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"China 'peacefully liberated' Tibet, and Tibetans today are happy under Chinese rule"

Beijing's line is that the Tibetan people, and particularly the peasantry, welcomed the "peaceful liberation" of Tibet and that it was they themselves who "overthrew the landlords." In fact, China's People's Liberation Army decimated the 5,000-strong Tibetan army in October 1950 at Chamdo, eastern Tibet. There's no question that some Tibetans initially greeted the Chinese (the communists claimed they were only there to "help develop" Tibet); that such welcomes were in the vast minority is equally clear. Tibetan histories of Tibet, such as Tsering Shakya's Dragon in the Land of Snows and W.D. Shakabpa's Tibet: A Political History, corroborate this. The late Panchen Lama's courageous 70,000-character secret petition to Chairman Mao summarizes how the "liberation" negatively affected Tibetans of all walks of life.

Indeed it was the Tibetan peasantry, the very group the Chinese "liberation" was said to have helped, who formed the core of the popular resistance to the Chinese occupation. By 1959, a guerilla resistance movement called Chushi Gangdruk ("Four Rivers, Six Ranges") that started in eastern Tibet had spread nation-wide. The resistance reached a symbolic culmination on March 10, 1959, when thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama's Norbulinka Palace to act as human shields to protect him from a rumored Chinese kidnapping plot (hardly the acts of a people longing to be rid of an oppressive Tibetan regime).

The armed resistance ended in the 1970s, at the urging of the Dalai Lama, but substantial popular resistance remains. This resistance has taken many forms over the years: pro-independence demonstrations, postering, mass non-cooperation, economic boycott, and risking the perilous Himalayan crossing to live as refugees self-exiled from their own homeland. Ronald Schwartz has written a book, Circle of Protest, analyzing ways in which Tibetans have used religion to express covert political messages.

Chinese writer Wang Lixiong provides another analysis in an article entitled Tibet: The People's Republic of China's 21st Century Underbelly. Wang opposes Tibetan independence, but believes there is a risk of Beijing succumbing to its own propaganda. He recognizes the strength of Tibetan nationalism and pro-independence sentiment, and writes, "the military['s] role in sovereignty is only like a rope, which can tie Tibet to China, but cannot keep our bloodlines together over the long term."

"Tibetans are better off now than they were before the 'peaceful liberation'"

This incorrectly assumes three things: [1] that Tibetans are incapable of developing without Chinese intervention (a modern version of the "white man's burden"); [2] that Beijing's developmental priorities and ideas of progress are what Tibetans want; and [3] that material development somehow excuses the colonialist occupation of Tibet. Let's take these in order:

[1] To imply that Tibetans are incapable of developing their own country is insulting, condescending and chauvinistic. Nor is it proper to compare apples and oranges: Tibet five decades ago cannot be compared with today, since a free Tibet would not have existed in a vacuum in the intervening years. One only has to look at the model success of the Tibetan refugee community to wonder how much better life in Tibet could be if Tibetans were actually in charge of their own country.

[2] Yes China has developed Tibet, but urban Tibetans only benefit marginally and rural Tibetans barely benefit at all. Tibetans without Chinese language skills and connections are left to fend for themselves as second-class citizens in their own country. China's own statistics show Tibet's per capita income falls below that of all Chinese provinces, and vast areas of rural Tibet lack basic healthcare and education. Beijing's overarching priority is tying Tibet to China by moving in Chinese colonists to the urban areas and creating a Tibetan economy dependent on resource-exploitation and state subsidies. It is spending huge amounts of money on infrastructure to solidify its control, such as a railroad to Lhasa on which Beijing will spend more than what it has put towards healthcare and education in the entire 50+ years it has occupied Tibet.

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Some scholars such as Hong Kong-based Barry Sautman argue that these policies are beneficial to Tibetans and aren't colonialism because China isn't following the same demographic strategy as previous colonial powers. Nevertheless, Tibet today is a vast resource-extraction colony and its urban areas are filled with Chinese settlers. According to the UNDP in 2000, real GDP per capita in Tibet is $169, as opposed to $680 for China as a whole and $4,000 in Shanghai.

Adult Literacy is 38% as opposed to 81% in China. Maternal mortality is 50 per 10,000 as opposed to 9 per 10,000 in China. All these show that China's much-vaunted "development" is skewed by political priorities (securing control, building infrastructure) and isn't benefiting Tibetans.

[3] Beijing would never argue that just because Hong Kong under British rule grew to become one of the world's major economic centers and enjoyed one of the highest living standards in Asia, this somehow justified British imperialism. It seems hypocritical for it to use exactly this line of reasoning for Tibet, whether factually valid or not.

"China has already granted Tibetans autonomy"

This argument is emerging as one of Beijing's new favorites, a way of combating the Dalai Lama's moderate proposals for a compromise solution. In its latest White Paper, Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet, Beijing claims that it has given Tibetans substantial autonomy rights already and that this means the "Tibet question" is solved. The reality is that this alleged autonomy is crippled by severe limits and by Beijing's ultimate control. Autonomy in the so-called "Tibet Autonomous Region" is extremely limited, is granted or retracted at Beijing's will, and is based on power-relationships rather than clearly defined rights.

Most fundamentally, it's hard to speak of "autonomy" when the government is controlled by a nondemocratic, communist party dictatorship that prohibits independent institutions or organizations. Beijing's overriding concern in Tibet is "stability" (meaning fighting the independence movement) and all other concerns are subordinate. As a result, Beijing retains huge formal and informal ability to dictate policies in "hard" issue areas such as politics and law. There is a limited flexibility in "soft" issue areas such as culture and economics, but even this is subject to Beijing's ultimate power as shown for example by the strict monastery controls and incentives for Chinese settlers that Tibetans themselves would not willingly enact.

Tibet's lack of real autonomy is further underscored by looking at who the actual decision-makers are.

Ultimate power lies in Beijing. Tibetans do occupy some figurehead positions such as governor of the "Tibet Autonomous Region," but these officials are largely considered to be Beijing's puppets. Beijing doesn't trust the Tibetan cadres at lower levels, and is constantly trying to root out their private religious devotion and loyalty to the Dalai Lama. As a result, real power is exercised by Chinese officials in Beijing and Tibet including Tibet's communist party chairman, who has never been a Tibetan. The importance of the communist party can't be over-emphasized, because ultimate power in China comes through this body.

Beijing's unconvincing claims of Tibetan autonomy can't paper over the Tibetan people's unrealized right to self-determination. Even the U.N. General Assembly explicitly recognized this right in its 1961 resolution on Tibet (Res. 1723(XVI)). This right means Tibetans have the legal right freely to determine their own political status, and freely to pursue their economic, social and cultural development. Self-determination is a complicated issue, but to put it briefly: Tibet's history as a sovereign country and China's continuing and widespread violations of Tibetans' fundamental political, economic and other human rights give the Tibetan people the right to choose their own political destiny.

[An interesting note: Until very recently, Beijing referred to "national regional autonomy," for example in the Seventeen Point Agreement it forced on Tibet in 1951. In the past few years, Beijing has instead been talking about "regional ethnic autonomy," even rewriting history by altering the Seventeen Point Agreement in its contemporary textual references and web sites.

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This shift appears to be a belated realization that recognizing Tibetans (and other so-called minority groups like Uighurs) as a "nationality" gives support to their demands for self-determination. Oops! Some analysts also believe that if autonomy is redefined as an "ethnic" privilege, it will become easier for Beijing to justify taking away all pretense of autonomy as Chinese immigration shifts the ethnic balance.]

"Tibetans in exile, especially the Dalai Lama, are a bunch of aristocrats seeking to reestablish the old regime"

The notions that the Tibetan refugee community longs to reestablish an aristocracy has nothing to do with the real aspirations of the Tibetan freedom movement. Currently there are over 150,000 Tibetans living in exile around the world; to characterize this group as "former aristocrats" is ludicrous when one considers their numbers and diverse backgrounds from Tibet.

Tibetans never saw their country as perfect and the Tibetan government-in-exile is not advocating reestablishing the system that existed before 1959 (nor would it be possible). The Dalai Lama has declared that he won't hold a political position in a free Tibet - despite that the vast majority of Tibetans inside and outside of Tibet would probably elect him in a heartbeat - and has laid out guidelines for a democratic free Tibet (see http://www.tibet.com/future.html). The government-in-exile is a democracy run by a prime minister (currently Samdhong Rinpoche) and parliament elected by universal suffrage in the refugee communities. The movement for Tibetan independence permeates all segments of Tibetan refugee society, as anyone who has spent time in the Tibetan refugee settlements in India or attended a Tibetan gathering in the West can attest.

"The Dalai Lama is a US government puppet out to 'split' China"

Beijing claims that the Dalai Lama's status as a "Western pawn" is proved by CIA funding to the Tibetan resistance fighters in the 1950s and '60s. Former CIA agents Kenneth Knaus and Tom Laird have both written books on the CIA's involvement in the Tibetan guerilla resistance movement, which movement was never controlled by the pacifistic Dalai Lama. These books and other historical documents and testimony show that the Tibetan resistance was very much an indigenous reaction by Tibetans to China's invasion of their homeland. Tibetans were willing to take any help against so large an occupying force, and the CIA's view of Tibet's utility in a global war against communism doesn't detract from the legitimacy of the Tibetan cause. The elites of the US and other liberal democracies now prioritize trade with China, and much of their pressure to act on Tibet comes from grassroots public sympathy.

"Human rights are China's internal affair"

Even if Tibet weren't an illegally occupied country and therefore a subject of legitimate international concern, the world still has a legitimate interest in Beijing's human rights abuses in Tibet and China. Certain human rights issues, like the prohibitions on genocide and torture, are jus cogens (peremptory norms of international law) that may never be violated. Other human rights issues are covered by the various international conventions that China has signed and/or ratified. The increased global focus on fighting terrorism, moreover, makes injustice anywhere harder to ignore and gives the world even more of a stake in finding a lasting, peaceful solution to the problems in Tibet.

Often directed at Western Tibet supporters: "Anyone who hasn't been to Tibet has no legitimacy in talking about it"

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This is often said by someone who them self may never have been to Tibet, or whose own motives and interests are suspect. It is a line designed to perpetuate an unjust status quo by de-legitimizing a maximum number of people who could possibly challenge the injustice. Going to Tibet would undoubtedly be informative, and all Tibet supporters who can go should; visitors are usually struck by Tibet's natural beauty, the warmth of its people, and a pervading sense of a land under military occupation.

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But you don't need to go to Paris to know the Eiffel Tower exists, and you don't need to be jailed in Tibet's Drapchi Prison to know that political prisoners are tortured there.

“Tibetans are terrorists!”

This claim has become more popular post-9/11, as China attempts to place Tibetans in the same mould as violent Jihadists, believing this will win them sympathy and legitimacy from other nations when cracking down violently on Tibetan ‘seperatists’. But the claim is roundly ignored by non Chinese-state media and by foreign governments, and supporters of the Tibetan cause, we can counter that it is offensive not only to Tibetans but to those who have died at the hands of terrorists worldwide for the Chinese state to make this erroneous claim about Tibetans in order to paint themselves as victims when in fact it is the Chinese regime who are undeniably proven to be the perpetrators of terror against Tibetans. The Chinese state chooses to play up ‘ethnic violence’ and will seize on cases where civilians from one group have scuffled with those from another; notably in East Turkestan, where the state reports in detail any incidents of Uyghurs injuring Han Chinese, but not of Chinese, civilians or more often military, abusing Uyghurs. The same was true of the 2008 Tibetan Upsiring, where the state concentrated on footage from a single incident where Tibetans had overturned cars and set fire to shops, using the same footage over and over throughout the period despite almost all of over a hundred protests having been peaceful, while ignoring the dozens pf cases of police brutality, torture and massacres carried out against peaceful protesters. There have been only a couple of incidents of bombings in Tibet, and it’s difficult to know whether these have been stateorchestrated. Certainly the bomb plot against Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche was a state-engineered case, and there was also an explosion in 2008 and a bombing in Chamdo in 2011 which were blamed on Tibetans, yet nobody was killed and it is suspected reports have been falsified. In any case, it’s important to separatedubious incidents like these from the vast majority of Tibetan protests, which are peaceful and result in clearly evidenced violent responses from the Chinese regime, including arrests, torture, beatings, fatal shootings and massacres.

For over 60 years, the Tibetan cause has been peaceful. This is a huge testament to the Tibetan people’s resolve to stick to the principles of non-violence despite daily abuses being undertaken against them, and as we’ve seen from the Arab Spring, much shorter periods of oppression have led to armed resistance which has not been seen as terrorism by the vast majority of nations. It’s unlikely the Tibetan cause will become violent, but even if it did, there would be grounds to state that after such a long period of violence against them, some might see a violent reaction as self-defense, so long as it was directed at the Chinese state rather than the Chinese people. In the end, if foreign governments are serious about the ‘war on terror’ and ‘winning hearts and minds’, it would be a good move for their own security to back the Tibetan people’s peaceful cause; if such a well known non-violent movement was to be successful, it would show those who may otherwise be tempted towards radicalisation in other countries to think that there are other, peaceful alternatives which can work.

Since 2011, the Chinese state has moved to paint self-immolation as a ‘terrorist’ act, and this is a difficult topic for some Tibet supporters. The state claims that self-immolation is contrary to Buddhist teachings, which is not an accurate statement, and also that those who have self-immolated were ‘crimminals’ or mentally unstable. This claim has been disproven by the very rational notes and messages left by those who have self-immolated. But there is still unease about the topic, as most of us living in the free world are unable to fully understand the depth of suffering Tibetans in Tibet go through, making it hard to comprehend why somebody would self-immolate, especially people with families or their whole lives ahead of them. We should not pass judgement on this, nor should we entertain the Chinese state’s claim that self-immolation is ‘violent’ (it does not harm others, which perhaps shows that even in the depth of crisis, Tibetans would rather hurt themselves than their oppressors) but we should instead focus on the circumstances which lead people to self-immolate and to demand that the Chinese state addresses the greivances put forward by the Tibetan people.

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“The Tibetan cause is just a celebrity fad”

Over the years, there have been numerous celebrities who have shown support for Tibet, and the Dalai Lama himself has a somewhat celebrity status. This can lead to the criticism that the Tibetan cause is ‘run’ by or favoured only by out-of-touch westerners with no real contact or connection with what is happening in Tibet. But again this is a case of China (and often simply members of the public) attempting to downplay the Tibetan cause and to sidetrack people from the point in hand; what is happening today to Tibetans inside Tibet. Some Tibet groups, like SFT, actively train and encourage Tibetans in exile to be the leaders of the movement, and gain information about what is really happening inside Tibet from brave Tibetan contacts inside who risk their lives and freedom to get evidence of China’s abuses through the state’s strict media and communications controls and into the foreign media. The role of celebrities is merely to reach larger cross-sections of the world’s population using their media prominence. Some celebrities who have been long term supporters are also activists in their own right, and use that platform to push governments and international bodies to act for Tibet. This is a benefit, but it is by no means a prime focus of the cause.

“The Tibet movement is a Western plot”

Typical of an old fashioned Cold War state, the Chinese regime likes to play divide and rule, and attempts to appeal to the Chinese people’s national pride by making any contentious issues (be that Tiananmen Square, state corruption, pollution or Tibet) an ‘us and them’ issue. But the Chinese regime is not truly representative of the Chinese nation; otherwise it would allow the Chinese nation to vote on who runs the Chinese state. One thing that the regime does have some success in is mobilising Chinese people to get behind the Chinese nation against other groups. The state often accuses ‘Western’ governments, especially the US, of working with Tibetan ‘separatists’ (most notably the Dalai Lama) and of controlling the foreign media to report negatively on the activities of the Chinese regime. It also accuses NGOs who work on the Tibet issue of being run by Westerners who have alterior motives, or claim that they are backed by governments seeking to damage China’s wealth, power and reputation. Those these views are spurious and typical of a paranoid state used to pnly having its own opinions heard, the amount of resources the Chinese state spends on influening the world’s media (notably in its globalisation of state propaganda agencies Xinhua and CCTV) means some Chinese state views fall into the public conscioussness.

Increasingly, the younger generation of exiled Tibetans are becoming the leaders of the movement, and this is a vital step for the development of the cause and for its success. It’s understanable that Tibetans who have lived inside Tibet are afraid to take political action, or simply have never been taught about politics like those growing up outside Tibet are. It’s also understanable that Tibetans whose parents grew up in Tibet or who still have family in Tibet may be brought up to be careful of getting involved in politics. But that dynamic is changing, notably with the Tibetan Uprising of 2008 and the diversification of the movement inside Tibet.

Now, Tibetans inside Tibet are leading the movement; as the Dalai Lama has said, they are ‘our boss’. And in the exile community across the world. more Tibetans are leading. In the end, there will always be a place for non-Tibetan supporters, and the Tibetan people will always benefit from foreign support, but an independent Tibet will be led by Tibetans, so the Tibetan movement should be led by Tibetans too.

China has ‘developed’ Tibet

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When Chinese leaders, Embassies and companies are criticised for the abuses in Tibet, one of the most common responses is to ignore the criticism alltogether and to focus on the amount of money China is investing in ‘developing’ Tibet. Impressive statistics and pictures of advanced building projects in Tibet can persuade some that China’s occupation is beneficial for Tibet, and when it comes to investment, the statistics are largely true, but using them when criticisms of human rights abuses are made is a smokescreen tactic. Though China is ‘developing’ Tibet, in is doing so for China’s gain, not Tibet’s. China builds huge, advanced factories, municipal buildings and projects for migrants in order to strip Tibet of its natural resources, which fuels China’s booming economy. Tibetans are paid less than Chinese for many jobs, don’t benefit from ‘development’ and are left with resulting pollution and destruction of communities.

Tibet will be free.

Students for a Free Tibet UK A report by Students for a Free Tibet UK