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Tibet in eyes of foreign journalists
Note: Great changes have taken place in Tibet since the Reforming and Opening-up policy was adopted in China in 1978. Marvelous Tibet is attracting more and more visitors and journalists, from home and abroad, particularly after the completion of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. Here are some of the stories by foreign journalists who have just been to Tibet in which they have showed the image of Tibet. In "Tibet in Eyes of Foreign Journalists," Chinaview.cn will continue to print more stories by foreign journalists so as to help viewers to have a better picture of Tibet and the life of the Tibetans.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-08/03/content_4914949.htm
"Tibet-The truth" was presented by the foreign journalist and creator of Mysterious China Series, which is a collection of award-winning featuring documentaries which showcase the epic cultural heritage of China. Given the recent events, he believes it's important to clarify the political history of Tibet.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/6407033.html
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Video: Tibet: The truth by foreign Monarex
Abolishing Tibetan feudal serfdom equates to ending slavery in U.S.
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Tibet University and Preservation of Tibetan culture
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MacBain: Western leaders "must know more" about Tibet, Dalai Lama
09:54, June 22, 2008
Some Western leaders should learn more about Tibet and the Dalai Lama so as to get a better understanding of the Chinese region, world-renowned publisher Louise T. Blouin MacBain said.
"Some heads of state even don't know that there were serfs in the 1950s in Tibet, and they don't have a clear picture of today's Tibet as well," MacBain told Xinhua in a recent exclusive interview.
"That's why they sometimes make mistakes in Tibet-related issues," added MacBain, the first foreign visitor to Lhasa since the March 14 riot. "Therefore, heads of state must know more facts on Tibet and the Dalai Lama."
MacBain, chairwoman of the Louise T. Blouin Foundation, said the lack of knowledge about Tibet and the Dalai Lama by some heads of state "bothers" her. "So I send them whatever I know to help them have a better understanding of the Tibet issue," she said.
The Dalai Lama "told Reuters on April 10 that Tibetans should also be in control of their own defense and foreign policy," MacBain said, adding that she was "very confused" with his positions. "What does he want all these for?" she asked.
MacBain said since the March 14 riots, she has actively appealed to heads of state and Western media to learn the facts about the demands of the Dalai Lama as part of the 'Middle Way' approach."
The Dalai Lama "is seeking political control of over 25 percent of China, extending Tibet beyond the borders of the Tibet Autonomous Region," she said, noting that it is not "reasonable" and even the head of state in a Western country would refuse such a demand if he were to handle such issues.
MacBain is also the founder of the New Globalization Platform, part of the Global Creative Leadership Initiative that has gained an increasing influence. She has been working to promote exchanges between different cultures.
She also criticized the Dalai Lama for criticizing China while traveling around the world.
"I don't think it's healthy for him to go around the world and criticize China," she said, calling "it's not constructive."
Speaking of what she saw when she was in Lhasa after the riots, she said: "I was impressed by what I have seen in Tibet."
Nobody is starving; all children can go to school; the literacy rate has jumped from 5 percent in the 1950s to 95 percent; and the economic growth is as high as 14 percent, she said.
"They (China) are going to be investing 70 million U.S. dollars in cultural protection," she said.
"Leaders of some nations don't know what is going on in China, their knowledge of Tibet is mostly based on Western media reports, and they even echo the Dalai Lama's claim that there is 'cultural genocide' in Tibet."
"It is difficult to appreciate the present-day Tibetan Autonomous Region without physically traveling to Lhasa in order to see both the ancient and sacred sites situated on the High-Plateau, but also to witness the amount of development that has occurred since 1950," she read from what she has written.
When the Dalai Lama uses the phrase "cultural genocide," it begs question, she said.
MacBain said she was amazed at what has happened in China in the last 20 years, noting that there are "many museums like here in New York, artists are emerging from all of the places, the universities are being built, the cities are going up like mushrooms."
"There is a growing effort and awareness to preserve, enhance and promote Tibetan culture rather than cultural genocide," she noted.
When the Dalai Lama said there is cultural genocide in Tibet, "I don't know which Tibet is he actually describing?" she asked. "As for me, it's not the one that I have seen with my own eyes."
"What I have seen is positive and I am especially thankful to the great efforts made by China over the years in preserving Tibetan cultural independence and its monasteries," she said.
MacBain spoke highly of the efforts made by the Chinese government, saying that it will help solve the argument that there is so-called "culture genocide" in Tibet.
"I will inform heads of state of more facts on Tibet, as I think some of them do lack the knowledge of Tibet and China as well," she said, noting that if they are well informed, they will be able to make the right decisions and separate the true from the wrong.
Source:Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/6434539.html
Spanish Tibetologist: "What I see and hear in Tibet differs from Dalai Lama's propaganda"
10:42, March 08, 2009
"What I have seen and heard in Tibet completely differed from the distorted propaganda by the Dalai Lama," a renowned Spanish Tibetologist has said.
The March 14 riot in Lhasa in 2008, involving violent crimes against people and property, was premeditated and masterminded by followers of the Dalai Lama, Inaki Preciado Idoeta told Xinhua in a recent interview.
"But the Dalai Lama neither made an apology for the riot nor condemned those who perpetrated the violence," said Precidao Idoeta, one of the first Spanish diplomats to China and also a famous sinologist in Spain.
He has visited Tibet several times since the 1990s and also temporarily lived there for his research.
"I can speak Chinese and the Tibetan language and communicate well with the local people, so I can get first-hand materials about the region," he said.
Commenting on Dalai Lama's accusation that the Chinese government has destroyed the Tibetan culture and language and the Tibetan people have no freedom of religion, he said that was an excuse used by the Dalai Lama to split the country.
"Under the current education system in the autonomous region, all the Tibetan students are required to learn the Tibetan language during the nine-year period of compulsory education," he said.
File photo shows Inaki Precidao Idoeta, one of the first Spanish diplomats to China and a famous Sinologist and Tibetologist in Spain, posing with lamas at the Waqiu Temple in Xinlong County of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province, June 16, 2005. What he has seen and heard in areas where people of China's Tibetan ethnic group are living "completely differed from the distorted propaganda by the Dalai Lama," Inaki Precidao Idoeta said in a recent interview with Xinhua. (Xinhua Photo)
"Many books and magazines in Tibet are also compiled in the Tibetan language. All these show that the Tibetan culture has been well protected and inherited," the scholar said.
Talking about the plan of the so called "Tibet government-in-exile" to hold "a series of commemorative events" from this March to the next, Preciado Idoeta said the Dalai clique needed to do something after receiving large amounts of money from western anti-China forces.
They will not stop making trouble because the clique has an entire network of international anti-China forces and the support from some western media, he added.
Some western media have been playing a shameful role in the past years by distorting truth on Tibet, deceiving readers and spreading those malicious rumors last year, the Spanish expert said.
An article will be published without hesitation if it criticizes the Chinese government and supports the Dalai Lama, however, the objective reports written by people who know the truth about Tibet are hard to appear in those media, he said.
File photo shows Inaki Precidao Idoeta, one of the first Spanish diplomats to China and a famous Sinologist and Tibetologist in Spain, posing with lamas at the Waqiu Temple in Xinlong County of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province, June 16, 2005. (Xinhua Photo)
The western people are blindfolded owing to those biased reports and China should try to get them shake off those wrong ideas. China should take measures to boost its overseas reports and introductions on Tibet, as to make people know the current situation in Tibet in a better and comprehensive way, Preciado Idoeta said.
Source:Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6608883.html
Tibet remains stable despite repeated secessionist attempts
13:06, March 08, 2009
A senior Tibetan official said in Beijing Sunday that the Tibet Autonomous Region remains stable and some foreign media's reports about increasing tension in Tibet are not true.
Legqog, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Tibetan Autonomous Regional People's Congress, confirmed that armed police have enhanced their service in some parts of Tibet but stressed that they are temporary security measures.
"They are defensive against possible disturbance from the Dalai Lama's group and some Western groups of 'Tibet independence'," said Legqog, who is in Beijing attending the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC).
"Most parts of Tibet are stable. People live a life as normal as usual. Religious activities, including major rituals, are also going on as usual," he said.
But, the Dalai Lama's group has never stopped promoting "Tibet independence", masterminding and creating chaos in Tibet since the March 14 violence last year, he said.
"They are not willing to see the stability and development in Tibet," he said. "This year they have intensified their secessionist activities."
They tried to collude with their agents in Tibet and even sent people into the region, Legqog said. "Through creating incidents that harm the region's stability, they want to internationalize the so-called 'Tibet issue'."
"We can not rule out that the Dalai Lama's group will continue their secessionist activities but their attempts will not succeed," Legqog said.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the region's Democratic Reform. In 1959, Tibetan serfs and slaves, who accounted for more than 90 percent of the region's population, were freed after the central government foiled an armed rebellion staged by the Dalai Lama and his supporters.
On March 2, the State Council Information Office published a white paper on the situation in Tibet before and since 1959. An exhibition on the same topic is held in Beijing.
"They (the white paper and exhibition) show the historic changes that have happened since the Democratic Reform, displayed the true new Tibet and told what we really think," Legqog said.
Source:Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90785/6609023.html
Tibet official: March Lhasa riots won't repeat
09:53, March 07, 2009
A senior Tibet official said here Friday that the violent riots, which resulted in the death of at least 18 civilians in Lhasa last March, won't repeat.
Although the riots have caused tremendous damage to the social and economic development and people's life in Tibet, it did not change the fundamentals of the steady development in Tibet," Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region government, said.
"The overall situation Tibet is stable," he said on the sidelines of the ongoing parliament session.
Qiangba Puncog said he cannot rule out possibilities that some individuals might make reckless moves next week, but he believed that "riots like those in last March won't happen again."
His view was echoed by Chubakang Tubdain Kaizhub, a living Buddha and chairman of the Tibet Branch of the Buddhist Association of China.
There will be "no problems" of stability in Tibet this year, as" a small group of secessionists who attempt to make troubles have lost social support," said Chubakang Tubdain Kaizhub, a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, the country's top political advisory body.
"A handful of separatists can by no means win the people's heart, and their disturbance would only result in the collapse of the social foundation for their existence," said he.
MARCH 28 CELEBRATIONS
In response to questions on securities measures on March 28, Qiangba Puncog said necessary measures will be taken in Lhasa on day, when celebrations will be held to mark the democratic reform that emancipated millions of serfs and slaves 50 years ago.
But no extraordinary measures like martial law will be enforced, said Qiangba Puncog at a panel discussion open to media.
The regional legislature in January endorsed a bill to set March 28 as Serfs Emancipation Day for annual observation in the region. Celebrations will be held in Lhasa and Beijing to mark the occasion this month.
Legqog, director of the Standing Committee of the Tibetan Autonomous Regional People's Congress, said the approval of Serfs Emancipation Day is an important move to wage a "tit-for-tat struggle" against the Dalai Lama group.
"We'll, for a long period of time, face austere test in maintaining unification of the motherland, fighting ethnic splittism, and maintaining social stability," said Legqog.
"Since the Dalai Lama and his supporters failed in an armed rebellion and fled abroad 50 years ago, they have been dreaming of restoring the reactionary, dark, barbarian and backward feudal serfdom in Tibet, and they have never stopped activities to split the motherland and undermine ethnic unity," he said.
In 1959, the central government foiled an armed rebellion staged by the Dalai Lama and his supporters.
"The younger generation in Tibet may know little about this history," Legqog said, adding the Serfs Emancipation Day would help "remind the younger generation of the bitter past so that they would cherish today's development, changes and new life."
CHALLENGE REMAINS
Despite efforts to maintain stability in Tibet, officials said disturbance and sabotage from the Dalai Lama group still remains and hinders Tibet's development.
Citing tourism as an example, Lhasa Mayor Doje Cezhug said Tibet economy enjoyed a fast growth in 2007 and early 2008. But the violent riots on March 14 last year denied the autonomous region a good chance of development.
Local economy, mainly driven by tourism, was "severely hurt" by the March riots last year, said Doje Cezhug.
Lhasa received 1.35 million tourists in 2008, down half from the previous year, and the tourism income dropped by 58.66 percent to 1.17 billion yuan (about 172 million U.S. dollars).
"We were also faced with other difficulties such as halt of factory production and investment outflow and shrink because of investors' panic after the riots," said the mayor.
He noted that the city has taken a series of measures to restore normal economical and social order, including reinforcing social public security and promoting tourism by tax cut and tax exemption policies.
"We will strive to ensure economic growth, people's well-being and social stability this year," said the mayor.
Source:Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90785/6608382.html
"Nonviolence" in the mouth of "Dalai Lama"
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Australian MP calls for balanced press on Tibet
2008-11-10 09:11:00
Reports from the West tend to focus on the problems of the autonomous region, Michael Johnson, representative for the Federal seat of Ryan and Federal Whip in the Australian Opposition party, told China Daily in an interview last Thursday.
"While reporting the challenges the region faces, they should also talk about the economic development. They should be balanced," Johnson said.
Leading a delegation of four people, including two Australian reporters, Johnson spent four days last week in Tibet meeting Tibetans and speaking with local officials. He is said to be one of the first Western politicians to lead a delegation to Tibet after the March 14 riots that brought heavy economic loss and casualties to Lhasa, Tibet's capital.
There is much of Tibet that has not been well covered in the press to the outside world, Johnson said.
"I am very surprised by the mature economic environment there, very sophisticated economic structure and mature modern economic infrastructure. It's the benefit of China's 30 years of growth and the growth of Tibet," Johnson said.
"That has not been communicated to the international community as it should have been," he said.
It is a real challenge for China to find a way to have the media talk in a balanced way over Tibet, Johnson said.
To achieve that goal, he said China should allow and encourage more Western politicians to visit Tibet.
"The feeling (of the tour) is great. It is actually a milestone in China's communications over the Tibet issue," Johnson said.
Talks with important government officials including a vice-chairman of Tibet's regional government and ordinary residents were very fruitful and enlightening, he said.
He plans to write comments in newspapers and give a speech in Parliament when he is back in Australia.
Similarly, he said the two journalists in his delegation would run important stories. "Also, I would encourage any member of Parliament to take the opportunity to come. I would advise them to come with an open mind and open eyes, to see the progress and development, side by side," Johnson said.
http://eng.tibet.cn/index/news/200811/t20081110_437419.htm
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Wall Street Journal : USA confession of
CIA Campaign Against China 50 Years Ago
Revolt of the Monks ---
How a Secret CIA Campaign Against China 50 Years Ago Continues to Fester;
A Role for Dalai Lama's Brother
By Peter Wonacott
2376 words
30 August 2008
The Wall Street Journal
DARJEELING, India -- Chodak, an 83-year-old former monk, fled Tibet in the wake of a bloody Chinese invasion more than 50 years ago. Today, he spends his days trimming wool carpets at a refugee center perched above the tranquil tea plantations of this Indian hill town. The plight of Tibetan exiles like Chodak, and their Buddhist message of nonviolence, has drawn world-wide sympathy to their cause.
But Chodak's story has a twist. He's one of the last surviving guerrilla fighters who took up arms against the Chinese during a little-known chapter in Tibet's history. His life has been one of war, not peace.
Starting in the late 1950s, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency trained scores of Tibetans, many of them monks, and then air dropped them back to their country with weapons and wireless radios. The linchpin of the operation was an older brother of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of 2.7 million Tibetans and today a Nobel Prize-winning symbol of peaceful resistance.
"We were fighting to protect Buddhism from those who wanted to harm it," said Chodak in an interview, his eyes now clouded with cataracts.
These days, armed with little more than his message of peace and the occasional chortle at Beijing's expense, the 73-year-old Dalai Lama enjoys the upper hand in a international public-relations war. He inspires protests that embarrass the Chinese government around the world, including during the recently concluded Beijing Olympics. He also provokes over-the-top denunciations from Chinese officials. During the unrest in March, Tibet's Communist Party Secretary, Zhang Qingli, accused the Dalai Lama of sabotaging the region's stability and described the Buddhist leader as a "a wolf in monk's clothes, a devil with a human face."
The Dalai Lama deflects such accusations with dry humor, saying repeatedly that if Tibet's freedom movement ever became violent, he'd step away from politics. "Please investigate," he said of the charges that he inflamed Tibetan protests in March. "If we are really the instigator, we are awaiting punishment."
He has said that he wasn't aware of the 1950s-era armed resistance in the beginning, and that upon learning about it, he didn't encourage Tibetans to join it. He also disavows any plan to see Tibet become independent, pressing merely for China to allow Tibetans more local autonomy to preserve their customs and language.
But the history of the resistance movement -- and the Dalai Lama's close family connection to it -- remains very much a part of the ongoing tensions with China. It helps explain why even rudimentary reconciliation talks -- the next round is expected in October -- have gone nowhere.
---
John Kenneth Knaus, a retired CIA officer who led a covert Tibet command center from New Delhi in the 1960s, remembers the Dalai Lama as torn -- personally sympathetic to his brave compatriots but unwilling publicly to support a bloody rebellion that ran counter to his Buddhist belief in protecting life.
"The Dalai Lama knew everything that was going on, but he couldn't give his blessing," says Mr. Knaus, author of the 1999 book "Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival."
Gyalo Thondup, one of the Dalai Lama's brothers and the former resistance leader, declined to be interviewed for this story. "It's a very sensitive and inopportune time to talk, from the points of view of many different parties," said one of his sons, Tempa Thondup, in a message conveyed from the elder Mr. Thondup. People who answered the door at Gyalo Thondup's residences in New Delhi and Kalimpong, India, said the 80-year-old wasn't at home.
Stories recounted by Tibetan resistance fighters, including six surviving guerrillas, demonstrate the deep involvement of Mr. Thondup in the CIA-backed operation.
Mr. Thondup came to the resistance movement with rare qualities for Tibetans of his generation -- a fluency in Mandarin and an understanding of China's history. In 1949, he was studying in the wartime capital of Nanjing when the People's Liberation Army vanquished the Nationalist forces. Mr. Thondup and his Chinese wife, the daughter of a Nationalist general, eventually settled in Darjeeling, near the Indian border with Nepal.
When the CIA made contact with him in the early 1950s, Mr. Thondup had been organizing escape routes for Tibetans fleeing Chinese rule. His wife, Nancy Chu, helped establish the center where refugees learned handicrafts so they could make a living on Indian soil.
A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment on the Tibetan operation.
The refugees arrived with tales of misery and horror. Tsering Dakpa, a Tibetan farmer, says in 1954 he watched Chinese soldiers drag suspected rebels outside a village and force them to dig a trench filled with freezing water. The men were stripped, thrown into the trench and -- when they didn't answer questions satisfactorily -- shot, according to Mr. Dakpa.
"My heart stopped," the 77-year-old says of the execution. "I decided then I'd join the resistance."
That same year, the Dalai Lama had gone to Beijing to meet with China's leaders, including Mao Zedong, in hopes of securing more religious and political autonomy for Tibet. But back home, in the Tibetan region of Kham, an anti-China resistance had already taken root.
It was in Kham, in 1956, that one of the most violent clashes occurred, a days-long battle at the Litang Monastery. One of the Litang monks was Chodak, who now works at the refugee center in Darjeeling. He recalls a meeting in which a Chinese general urged them to abandon their weapons. The monks carried weapons to defend themselves from bandits. Chodak says the general threatened to burn down the monastery if they didn't comply.
"The Chinese said they were protecting us, and that there was no need to carry weapons," says Nawang Datha, another monk. "We refused."
Instead, the Litang monks sneaked up at night and attacked a nearby Chinese camp, according to Mr. Datha and Chodak.
The Chinese army responded by charging the monastery in a pre-dawn raid. The Tibetans fought back with homemade pistols, antique rifles, axes and knives.
"Everybody was rushing here and there," says Chodak. "We didn't know who we were killing."
Mr. Datha's younger brother, Tenlay Tenzing, managed to flee the monastery earlier on the family's black horse. Chinese troops shot the horse, but the monk kept running. Coming upon the horse carcass later, Mr. Datha feared his younger brother had been killed -- only to be reunited later at their parents' home. When bombs from Chinese airplanes were dropped on the monastery, Chodak fled to Tibet's capital, Lhasa, a weeks-long walk, but far from the fighting in Kham.
China's official history of the fighting at Litang says the monks reacted violently to Chinese efforts to abolish a "feudal serf system" and "slavery," according to the Web site of the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture People's Government, a part of Sichuan province that includes Litang. The government accused Tibetan rebels in the area of attacking military and government officials, damaging roads and bridges as well as raping, looting and killing. As a result, the Communist Party of China extended "important orders for the suppression of unrest," the Web site says, calling it a "war of liberation."
The events at Litang inflamed passions across Tibet and helped fuel the resistance movement. Many monks, left without a monastery, shed their robes to fight the Chinese. Warring Tibetan clans set aside grievances to unite in battle. The CIA later would gain several recruits from Litang, who wanted to match China's soldiers with modern firepower and military training of their own.
One of the Litang monks, who went by the name Lhotse and was the older brother of Messrs. Datha and Tenzing, fled to Darjeeling, posing as a trader. When he arrived, he knocked on the door of Mr. Thondup.
The brother of the 14th Dalai Lama, Mr. Thondup was already a prominent figure among Tibetans and his political sympathies were well known. After listening to Lhotse recount the failed uprising, Mr. Thondup responded with a proposition.
"If you want to go for training," he said, "I may have a place to send you."
The monk agreed to the secret mission, according to interviews with his two surviving brothers, whom he later told about the conversation.
In addition to Lhotse, Mr. Thondup recruited five Tibetan fighters and sent them in early 1957 for training with CIA instructors on the Pacific island of Saipan. The Tibetans learned how to operate a radio transmitter, fire modern weapons and set up ambushes.
The Dalai Lama's oldest brother, Thubten Jigme Norbu, served as a translator on Saipan. Mr. Norbu, a retired professor of Tibetan studies at Indiana University, is now in poor health and unable to respond to comment, according to his youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal.
After six months in Saipan, Lhotse and a monk named Athar parachuted back into Tibet. Traveling with other rebels, the pair relayed radio requests for weapons and supplies and kept the CIA apprised of the resistance inside Tibet.
Mr. Knaus, the former CIA officer, testified in writing to the U.S. Congress in 1999 that the CIA made two arms drops into Tibet in July 1958 and Feb. 1959. These included 403 Lee Enfield rifles, 60 hand grenades, 20 machine guns and 26,000 rounds of ammunition. By the late 1960s, Mr. Knaus estimates, the CIA had dropped 700,000 pounds of supplies to the rebels.
China's attempts to quell unrest around Lhasa worsened tensions. In March 1959, the Dalai Lama sneaked out of the city's Potala Palace and headed for India on horseback. The CIA-trained rebels hooked up with the Dalai Lama, sending radio updates on his whereabouts to Washington.
As Tibet's spiritual leader was about to cross safely into India, the rebels cheered and waved. The Dalai Lama waved back.
Chodak interpreted the wave as "a long-distance blessing," he says. "Then we went back to fighting."
The Dalai Lama's aides say that at the time the Tibetan leader didn't have a good grasp of the resistance, or of how the CIA was involved. "His brother really kept him in the dark -- for his own sake," says Tempa Tsering, the Dalai Lama's representative in New Delhi.
As Mr. Thondup filled out the ranks of the CIA-backed resistance, Mr. Datha and his brother Mr. Tenzing also enlisted. Mr. Tenzing recalls arriving in 1959 at a secluded training base in the Colorado Rockies called Camp Hale. He gazed at the pine forests and snow-covered peaks. "I felt I was back in Tibet," he says. Tibetans would train secretly in Colorado until 1964, according to Mr. Knaus's written testimony to Congress.
Mr. Thondup traveled extensively to publicize Tibet's plight, recruit fighters and forge links with foreign intelligence agencies, according to another of his sons, Khedroob Thondup, who acted as his private secretary.
During Mr. Thondup's rare breaks at home, the family went on picnics in the misty hills of Darjeeling. The children practiced shooting Mr. Thondup's old Winchester rifle. He also taught them how to prune his prize roses.
But inside Tibet, the resistance was wilting. China's superior radio communications allowed it to outmaneuver fighters. Its air power crushed Tibetan fighters. Most of the agents the CIA sent into Tibet were captured or killed.
In disarray, the rebels retreated to a mountainous base known as Mustang just beyond southern Tibet inside Nepal. Fighters at Mustang say Mr. Thondup showed up periodically to rally spirits. "You don't have to worry about food and supplies. We have sponsors that will take care of that," Mr. Thondup said, according to Nyima Namgyal, one of the rebels who heard the Dalai Lama's brother speak at Mustang.
"We had an idea it was America," added Mr. Namgyal, now 65 years old and living in a retirement home in Dharmsala.
So many arrived at Mustang that supplies were stretched thin. Chodak says he sold his sword and charm box -- an amulet he wore around his neck -- to buy provisions. The rebels raided farms inside Tibet for sheep that would provide food and wool to fend off the cold.
Infighting posed as grave a threat to the Mustang operation as the Chinese army. Several of the Tibetan fighters complained that the commander was pocketing funds, according to Mr. Tenzing. In 1968, disgusted with what had become of the resistance, Mr. Tenzing returned to Darjeeling and opened a dumpling restaurant.
For the Americans in the late 1960s, the operation was reaching the end of its usefulness. The CIA had closed training camps years earlier and was winding down supply runs. Mired in Vietnam, the U.S. government worried about getting drawn deeper into another Asian conflict. In 1972, President Nixon met with Chinese leader Mao Zedong, ushering in a new era of the U.S. and China relationship.
For the Dalai Lama, a new stance toward China would take shape, too. In the early 1970s, he sought to disband the rebels and end the bloodshed. Chodak says he concluded his war with the Chinese after a tearful 1972 meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala.
Not everyone agreed to leave Mustang. Some fighters shot themselves or slit their own throats rather than disobey the Dalai Lama's orders, according to his spokesman Tenzin Taklha.
By then, the fighting with China was essentially over. In 1974, the Dalai Lama huddled with aides in a sunlit meeting room at his residence. "We made up our minds that, sooner or later, we would have to talk with the Chinese government," he said in a recent interview. "Independence was no longer relevant."
The man who would serve as the go-between with the Chinese government was someone both sides knew well. He was the Dalai Lama's older brother, Gyalo Thondup.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122005956740185361.html
Tibet Fought Against Foreign Invasion
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Video: Documentary: The Dalai Lama .
Guardian: Down with the Dalai Lama
www.chinaview.cn 2008-06-19 15:53:12
BEIJING, June 19 (Xinhuanet) -- The Guardian newspaper published an article on Wednesday entitled "Down with the Dalai Lama."
The article, signed by Brendan O'Neill, editor of spiked, the online magazine, reads in part as the following.
Why do western commentators idolise a celebrity monk who hangs out with Sharon Stone and once guest-edited French Vogue?
Has there ever been a political figure more ridiculous than the Dalai Lama? This is the "humble monk" who forswears worldly goods in favour of living a simple life dressed in maroon robes. Yet in 1992 he guest-edited French Vogue, the bible of the decadent high-fashion classes, which is packed with pictures of the half-starved daughters of the aristocracy modelling skirts and shirts that most of us could never afford.
He claims to be the current incarnation of the Tulkus line of Buddhist masters, who are "exempt from the wheel of death and rebirth." Yet he's best known for hanging out with clueless western celebs like Richard Gere and Sharon Stone (who is still most famous for showing her vagina on the big screen). Stone once introduced the Dalai Lama at a glittering fundraising ball.
The Dalai Lama allows himself to be used as a tool by western powers keen to humiliate China. Between the late 1950s and 1974, he is alleged to have received around 15,000 dollars a month, or 180,000 a year, from the CIA.
He has also been remarkably nepotistic, promoting his brothers and their wives to positions of extraordinary power in "his fiefdom-in-exile in Dharamsala, northern India."
He poses as the quirky, giggly, modern monk who once auctioned his Land Rover on eBay for 80,000 dollars and has even done an advert for Apple.
Yet in truth he is a product of the crushing feudalism of archaic, pre-modern Tibet, where an elite of Buddhist monks treated the masses as serfs and ruthlessly punished them if they stepped out of line.
The Dalai Lama demands religious freedom, yet he persecutes. Those who defied his writ were thrown out of their jobs, mocked in the streets and even had their homes smashed up.
When worshippers complained about their treatment, they were told by representatives of the Dalai Lama that "concepts like democracy and freedom of religion are empty when it comes to the wellbeing of the Dalai Lama."
The Dalai Lama has effectively been turned into a cartoon good guy. In America and western Europe, the Dalai Lama has been embraced as a living, breathing representative of unsullied goodness.
Just as earlier generations of disillusioned aristocrats fell in love with a fictional version of Tibet (Shangri-La), so contemporary un-progressives idolise a fictional image of the Dalai Lama.
Most strikingly, the Dalai Lama is used as a battering ram by western governments in their culture war with China. The reason he is flattered by world leaders and bankrolled by the CIA is not because these institutions care very much for liberty in Tibet, but rather because they want to ratchet up international pressure on their new competitors in world politics: the Chinese.
At least one reason why the Dalai Lama can pose as "the ultimate spiritual authority" and all-round supreme leader of Tibetans and their future is because influential elements in the west have empowered him to play that role. In doing so, they have been complicit in the infantilisation of the Tibetan people.
(Agencies)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/19/content_8401169.htm
The changed and unchanged 'Shangri-La'
2008-12-02 10:54:00
Quite a lot of people care about China's "Tibet issues", there is always a "Shangri-La" with oriental mystery, shadowiness and idealism flashing in their minds.
Tibet indeed has such mystery: spectacular scene of snow land plateau, unique language culture, long aged Tibetan Buddhism¡&endash;however, sometimes it's easy to ignore a basic fact if let the imagination spread freely beyond the practice, that is, the story of "Shangri-La" still took place in the earth, and it happens following basic axiom.
A Canadian historian A. Tom Grunfeld wrote in his book "The making of modern Tibet" that Tibet is "a land so wrapped in obscurity that almost any fantastic tales about it, or allegedly from it, are received with awe and believed, unquestioningly, by countless individuals the world over. A land whose society and history have been so romantically homogenized that many call themselves "experts" after reading a mere handful of texts, assuming that the uniformity of these accounts indicates their accuracy".
However, history records the old Tibet with irrefutable facts that it was not the "Shangri-La" as people imagined. There were one million people living in Lhasa in 1950s, 900,000 of whom were homeless. There were only 20,000 people living in urban areas in Lhasa. More than 1,000 needy people and baggers were seen on streets. An elder Tibetan told "At that time, there were many people fighting with dogs for food on streets in Lugu in the southwest of Jokhang Temple". Nowadays, Tibetan people have much longer life expectancy with current 67 years old from 35.5 years old in the old Tibet. The economy keeps fast development for the past 7 years with double digits increase rate above 12%.
Compared the old Tibet with the one after peaceful liberation, which is the truly "Shangri-La", it is not so hard to make the conclusion.
Protecting the unique culture of "Shangri-La" never means to protect wildness and backwardness. The culture protection in Tibet must adapt to the development, progress, union and happiness of the whole Tibetan people. Only the Tibetan culture can be better protected at the same time of economic development and life improvement, not going back to the darkness of caesaropapism and feudal serfdom system.
As a matter of fact, to better protect Tibetan culture, Chinese central government has put significant fund on the maintenance of the Potala Palace, Norbu Lingka and Sagya Monastery. A more than ever maintenance project for 22 monasteries and ancient culture constructions will be implemented from this year. China also sets up department specifically for correction and publication of different versions of Tibetan Tripitaka... For protecting the blue sky and clean water in Tibet, Chinese government will allocate 22 billion yuan from now to build more than 160 ecological environmental protection project.
Today's Tibet takes much care on its invaluable culture features, which is the unchanged "Shangri-La". Today's Tibet also puts great efforts on moving forward and getting rid of backwards and unwisdom, which is the changed "Shangri-La".
"Change" is a well sounded slogan in today's world, no matter in America or in Europe, people often hear the words: We need change. For Tibet, "Shangri-La" is inheriting the traditions in the unchanged, embracing the future in the change.
*Based on article written by Ye Xiaowen, director of State Administration for Religious Affairs of China.
http://eng.tibet.cn/news/today/200812/t20081202_440976.htm
The Dalai Lama, killer of Tibetans' dream of Shangri-La
2008-12-09 09:26:00
A glimpse into the Dalai Lama's final years in Tibet, before his fleeing China in 1959, will allow people to form a clear mind picture of what Tibet was like under the rein of "His Holiness"- In 1956, the Dalai Lama, with the pretext that the central government "would soon move on Lhasa," issued an appeal for gold and jewels to construct another throne for himself. This, he argued, would help rid Tibet of "bad omens." One hundred and twenty tons were collected. When the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959, he was preceded by more than 60 tons of treasure.
Till 1959, Tibet's Buddhist monastic nobility represented by the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan elites had long controlled all land in the Himalaya region on behalf of the "gods." In a then society of feudal serfdom and slavery, much the way as the medieval Catholic Church exploited peasants in feudal Europe, they monopolized Tibet's wealth by exacting tribute and labor services from serfs and herders. Tibetan serfs and herders had little personal freedom. Without the permission of the priests, or lamas, they could not do anything, and were considered appendages to the monastery.
The Dalai Lama was the most supreme and powerful serf owner, and any subordinate acting against the supreme was considered rebel and could be brutally mutilated or killed immediately. Shrouded in the darkness of theocracy, old Tibet was backward in both economy and culture, and the Tibetan people lived in dire poverty while enormous wealth accumulated in the monasteries and in the Dalai Lama's palace in Lhasa.
Shangri-La, "the paradise on the earth," as a fanciful land to many and an eternal myth which can always conjure up people's imagination about all beauty and serenity, was in those days literally a "lost paradise" to ordinary Tibetans, where they were deprived of even the basic living conditions. The Dalai Lama, however, did nothing for the general good of the Tibetan society, instead, he and the leading few tried desperately to solidify the exploitative system in the name of defending Tibetan culture and religion. Once they felt their privileges threatened, they would forgo the disguise of deity and even turn to violence.
Throughout these years, the words "democracy" and "human rights" have found their way in the vocabulary of the "government-in-exile," operating out of Dharamsala in India. But the Dalai Lama's commitment to democracy seems brittle, as he has yet to recognize the separation of church and state as a "modern democratic principle". Even worse, as a political figure clad in saffron, the Dalai Lama has for years ceaselessly lobbied around to rally the international support for his so-called 'Greater Tibet autonomy,' but in actually, "Tibetan independence" in a disguised form. The hypocritical nature of the Dalai Lama and the "government-in-exile" was further exposed by its relationship with the U.S CIA, and its wicked plots within the Chinese territory to seed and incite the ethnic feud among the Tibetans, which is doomed to a failure, as more and more Tibetan people begin to realize only through stability and common prosperity, can a real Shangri-La descend upon the snow-capped plateau.
In recent days, the poor shows staged by the "government-in-exile" and its affiliate "Tibetan Youth Congress" have gone far beyond redemption, and their secessionist nature is discerning to anyone with the rational thinking, Tibetan people inclusive. In the ordinary Tibetans' mind, the dreamy land, Shangri-La, means a common blessing shared by all, not a sort of paradise accommodating merely the happy few. But a place of common happiness in Tibetans' dream is by no means the thing that the Dalai Lama would and could bring to them.
http://eng.tibet.cn/index/news/200812/t20081209_442002.htm
No one knows about Tibet better than the people from India
<<The Hindu>> Journalist first-hand Tibet visit experience:
Social well-being a striking aspect of life in modern Tibet
| by: Parvathi Menon | From: The Hindu
2008-08-28 14:16:00
Life has changed beyond recognition since 1959, when the system of monastic feudalism presided over by the Dalai Lama was overthrown and over a million serfs were set free.
In what used to be the dungeons of the Potala Palace, once the winter palace of the Dalai Lamas in Lhasa and now a religious and tourist site, is an unusual museum. The Zhol jail, a place where disobedient or rebellious serfs and labourers were subject to horrific forms of torture, was once located here. Today, photographs, paintings, models, and sound effects are used to recreate the brutality of the ancien regime against those classes whose labour created and sustained the splendid monument that soars above.
The squalor, poverty and social hierarchies of Lhasa, captured vividly in black and white photographs of the 1940s and 1950s, belong to a historical phase now squarely in the past.
Today the Potala Palace overlooks a city of modern infrastructure and conveniences. It has attractive tree-lined avenues, a busy business district, hotels, cultural centres and open spaces like the 12.2 square km Lhalu wetlands, a protected marsh that acts as what our hosts refer to as the kidneys of the Lhasa urban area. The modernity of the capital bears the impress of a strong Tibetan stamp in architecture, dress, and cultural practice.
Apart from warm clothes and altitude sickness pills, a foreign visitor to Tibet usually carries baggage of another kind. This is a belief that the 'real' Tibet lies hidden somewhere beneath what the eye sees and the mind registers; that the well being and modernisation evident in contemporary Tibetan society is a sort of maya. This perspective has been shaped by a vast literature and propaganda offensive that has emanated over the years from within the support base of the 14th Dalai Lama. It comes in large part from people who have not set foot in Tibet, and has, unfortunately, many well-meaning adherents.
A report published this year by the Dalai Lama's Dharamsala-based Government-in-Exile and titled Environment and Development in Tibet: A Crucial Issue has this to say: China claims that Tibet is experiencing growth and prosperity, but the reality is that, under Chinese rule, Tibetans are impoverished, marginalised and excluded; the sensitive and globally important ecology of Tibet is deteriorating; and many plant and animal species face extinction.
In fact, the fatal flaw of the report is that it has been written by people who have not visited their research area, for it is evident to any visitor's eye that the allegations of the impoverishment, marginalisation, and exclusion of Tibetans are unsubstantiated.
I was part of a journalists' delegation invited by the Chinese government to Tibet in July this year. To a visitor, the relatively high levels of living standards of people in the Tibet Autonomous Regions (TAR) are a striking feature of observable social life. In Lhasa, small towns and the villages of Tibet, there are no crowds of people ill, destitute, and unemployed - on the contrary, the overwhelming visual impression is of a population healthy and gainfully employed. Schools and universities hum with activity, and cultural assets like museums and ancient monasteries are treasured - these are but some marks of a society that is on the move.
Older Tibetans emphasise that life has changed beyond recognition since 1959, when the system of monastic feudalism presided over by the Dalai Lama was overthrown and over a million serfs were set free.
I consider myself middling-prosperous, says Zhuoga, the head of an eight-member farming family in Gapa, a village of 60 households, 10 km from Lhasa. She and her family members offer fruit, biscuits and Tibetan tea to her visitors in her warm and colourful sitting room decorated with Tibetan thangkas (religious scroll paintings) and carpets.
The Zhuoga household's annual income of 20,000 yuan (roughly Rs. 140,000) comes from her oilseed and corn harvest, from the rent paid by vegetable farmers for land they lease from her, from a 500 yuan annual subsidy given by the Government, and from collective work she and the family put in on village projects. School education and health care are free. Although a Buddhist, she thinks the Dalai Lama is not a good man as he masterminded the disturbances of March 14th 2008. We could not go to the city for work, she said. I was angry and scared.
Life now is like this, says Pingtso Tashi giving a thumbs-up sign. And before 1959 it was like this. He holds up his little finger. This 58-year old dam inspector and farmer is the son of former serfs. Today, hard work pays, he said. Every village family owns land and the average individual land holding of the village is 3.8 mu (15 mu = 1 hectare)
A range of special preferential policies and measures for social and economic development apply to Tibet. There is a preferential taxation policy by which income tax in Tibet is three percentage points lower than elsewhere, and farmers and herdsmen are completely exempt from taxes and administrative charges. There is a preferential interest rate on bank loans, the rate being two percentage points lower in the TAR than in the rest of China.
Yang Chen and Deji, microbiologists working for a bio-pharmaceutical company in Lhasa, and their office colleagues, are part of a cheerful and spirited group of women dressed in formal western office wear who have come to see a photographic exhibition on Tibetan women at the Tibet museum in Lhasa. Asked about the exhibition and whether it reflects the progress of women in Tibet, Yang Chen says, Yes it does. Today we are equal to men in every way. She and Ms Deji have two daughters each, and hope that the girls will one day become doctors. The one-child norm does not apply to Tibetans and other ethnic minorities as it does to Han Chinese.
http://eng.tibet.cn/index/news/200808/t20080828_422961.htm
Modern education a key to Tibet's social and economic progress
2008-09-04 10:01:00
| by: Parvathi Menon | From: The Hindu
Before 1951, 92 per cent of the population of Tibet was illiterate. That proportion is now 44 per cent.
A report published this year by the Dalai Lama's Dharamsala-based "Government-in-Exile" and titled Environment and Development in Tibet: A Crucial Issue (available on their website) seeks to perpetuate the myth that Tibetans are fast becoming a minority in their homeland as a result of a state-sponsored policy of Han settlement in Tibet. In fact, of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) population of 2.8 million, Tibetans account for 92 per cent, other ethnic minorities for around 2 per cent, and Han Chinese a little under 6 per cent.
Government officials in Tibet emphasise that the accusation that Han Chinese control the administration of Tibet is wrong. Tibetans constitute a majority of the cadre within government and the Communist Party. According to Duo Ji Ciren, Vice-Commissioner of the Administrative office of Nyingchi prefecture, 70 per cent of civil servants in Nyingchi prefecture are either Tibetans or from other ethnic minorities, and key prefectural posts are held by Tibetans.
Education has been key to social and economic progress in Tibet. Modern education only began after 1951. In 2007, enrolment in primary schools reached 98.2 per cent, in middle schools 90.97 per cent, in high school 42.96 per cent, and in colleges 17.4 per cent. Before 1951, 92 per cent of the population of Tibet was illiterate. That proportion is now 44 per cent, although the illiterate are now concentrated in the older age groups.
"You had to be a monk if you wanted education in the old society," said Dr. Losang Yundeng, 51, Director of the 210-bed County Peoples Hospital in Nyingchi. An ethnic Tibetan from a poor family of labourers in a remote village in Nyingchi prefecture, he was sent to one of the first schools to be opened in his village. When a medical team visited the village in 1972, the 15-year-old boy was chosen by his village to train as a barefoot doctor. After the Cultural Revolution, Dr. Yundeng trained at the Nanjing Medical College and later at the famous Norman Bethune Medical Academy to become a doctor.
Dr. Wangmo, 44, a brilliant Tibetan plant pathologist and professor in the Department of Plant Technology at the Tibetan Agriculture and Animal Husbandry College, Nyingchi, speaks of how education transformed life in her village. "I studied in a village which you could only get to by horse," she said. "But education gave us ability and confidence. In my school, 80 per cent of the children were Tibetan and our Tibetan education was very good." In the college where she teaches, half of the 3,000 students are girls and 80 per cent of all students are Tibetan.
Dr. Wangmo's current research is on understanding the structure of a fungus called Cordyceps Sinensis, which grows wild in certain high-altitude counties. Called "yatsagompo" in Tibetan, the fungus, which looks like an innocuous dry twig, has been the reason for a sudden increase in incomes among certain communities living in these regions. Used in traditional medicine and valued for its healing properties, the fungus is highly priced. "I have seen people earn 80,000 yuan a year from this," Dr. Wangmo explained. Her research team is also working on how to undertake the sustainable cultivation of this precious resource.
Indeed, the issue of ecological sustainability and protection of the natural habitat is one over which demonstrable measures have been taken. The Tibetan plateau is a cradle of the planet's natural wealth. It has the world's highest peaks and lakes, gives birth to Asia¡¡¥s mighty rivers, and has vast deposits of mineral and forest wealth.
The 10-hour drive from Lhasa to the Nyingchi prefecture, one of TAR's ecological treasure houses, is as remarkable for its stunning landscapes as it is for the absence of heavy motor traffic, roadside hoardings, the defacement of rock surfaces with advertisements or writing, and litter. The Nyingchi Prefecture has a forest cover of 46 per cent, the largest virgin forest in China. The preservation of the ecology is central to government policy here. "Our slogan is 'Build Nyingchi as the largest district in western Tibet with the best preserved ecology,'" said Mr. Ciren, its administrative head. The beautiful Environmental Museum in Nyingchi offers a stunning display of its plant and animal wealth.
China's Tibet policy was defined to us by Dong Yunhu, Director General of the State Council Information Office, as "the continuous improvement in the living standards of Tibetans," By this criterion, the implementation of China's Tibet policy is marked by measurable and visible success.
http://eng.tibet.cn/index/news/200809/t20080904_424239.htm
China issues white paper, refutes charge of "cultural genocide" in Tibet
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Religious autocracy under the cover of democracy
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Compulsory and Free-of-Charge Education
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Video: Improving standards in Tibet .
What's the matter with Tibet?
2008-04-25 08:18:00
Canadian writer Lisa Carducci wrote an article entitled "What's the matter with Tibet?" for China Daily, a Beijing-based English newspaper, explaining why people outside China usually have a prejudice against Tibet. Here is the full text of the article, which was published on April 22:
Lisa Carducci with her "Tibetan daughter" Gemar Yumco, Genuine Tibetan
It is one thing to be interested in Tibet, as most of my acquaintances are. It is another to have totally prejudiced views, which unfortunately is the case with most of them.
Only a handful are honest enough to hold their opinions until they visit Tibet and see things with their own eyes. Some others hear only what they want to hear and what doesn't disturb their "Tibetan imagination".
Here is an example. A Canadian friend of mine, a university professor, went to Tibet in May 1997. He later told me that his group had been sent away from a Tibetan restaurant by the police and directed to a Han establishment.
The reason, according to him, was racism, an attempt to "break" the "Tibetan nation". His immediate analysis - before he understood a word of what was going on - was obviously based on prejudice.
I was not there and didn't see what happened. But after discussing the fact with Han and Tibetan people who knew better, we all concluded that the real cause might have been one or more of the following: the owner of the Tibetan restaurant had no permit; he had not paid his taxes; the place was not hygienic enough for foreigners; the owner and the policeman had a personal dispute; or the owner was trafficking ancient tangka, a kind of Tibetan painting.
We also tend to assume that all Tibetans are the same and feel and act the same way. Far from it. Those I met in Tibet or in Xiahe county of Gansu province seem not interested in politics. They live happily and quietly, and have no complaints about the central government as long as their lives continue to prosper year after year.
At the village of Tashiling in Nepal, instead, the Tibetan women I chatted with for two hours at the market had different stories to tell.
The major difference between them and the Tibetans living in China is that the Tibetans in Nepal think that "the Hans invaded Tibet and forced them to flee the country".
The woman who spoke better Chinese and served as an interpreter for the group said: "When our country is free, we'll go back immediately and get good jobs! Do you think this is a life, what we do here? Commerce!"
I took pity on her because she seemed to have been completely swayed by anti-China propaganda. I told her that all the Tibetans I had met earlier knew very well what the central government of China had done for them and appreciated it.
"I'm sorry to tell you," I said, "that you fool yourself if you think that your Tibetan fellows inside the country think the same way you do and support your efforts for independence."
She stared at me, her eyes wide open. "Have you ever been to Tibet?"
"Of course! If not, how could I speak like this?" She remained silent a moment, then said: "Every year on March 10, the Tibetans of the world march for independence. If you go to Tibet on that day, you'll see the Chinese army killing so many people in the streets."
If there was any truth in her words, I thought, I must have been transported to another planet.
"We have seen photos, and videos," she continued. "Every year we see them."
"Who took these photos?"
"Foreigners. From other places."
I calmed down, before asking: "Are you sure these photos and films were taken recently? They may be from the 'cultural revolution' period when Tibetans just as other Chinese suffered and were treated badly. Or during the civil rebellion in 1959? Might you not have been deceived? Maybe they show you the same pictures year after year? Maybe the photos were altered?"
As a spokesperson of her group, she turned around, and said: "It's possible, but we have no means of checking."
"Might these activist friends of the Dalai Lama," I continued, "be the authors of the photocopied letters on the board at the village entrance, issued by 'His Holiness Dalai Lama's office'? And the inscription 'Chinese, leave', who do you think wrote it?"
I explained to them all the changes that had happened in Tibet and talked about all the money invested by the central government into reconstruction and development, the progress in education, the religious freedom, the improvement of health, society, life, and they were astonished. Apparently, no one had ever spoken to them like this.
"Do you believe me?" I asked.
"I believe you because you are a foreigner," said the woman, "not a member of the communist party. Are you?"
"You can trust me. I tell you only what I have seen. Tibet is a beautiful and peaceful place where people sing while they work, where people smile and enjoy life."
The younger ones among them were born in Nepal; others had fled Tibet to go to Nepal in the 1950s and never returned to Tibet. They have no passports; of course they cannot enter China.
I then visited a temple where a young 17-year-old monk said that his greatest aspiration was to see Tibet. He thought monks were arrested, jailed or even killed in China, his thought based on the fact that his friend went there and never returned.
"I'll tell you something, young man. Your friend may have been arrested because he entered a country illegally. But if you never heard from him after that, don't you think he might have accomplished his great desire: to see Tibet. He may be living in a monastery there!"
He bowed his head and said, "I wish I had such a chance!"
Finally, I realized that the Tibetans outside Tibet are the victims not only of ignorance but of a well-organized campaign of misinformation. And it struck me that it may be the same for the Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama, who left the country when he was still very young and under the influence of a group, and never saw Tibet with his own eyes later in life to be able to judge things for himself, is also a poor victim - much like the woman at the village market.
http://eng.tibet.cn/index/news/200804/t20080425_377356.htm
Young Foreign Tibetans stop being used by USA
You deserve high standard free-of-charge Education
Say NO! to Dalai Lama and Tibetan Youth Congress
<<The Wall Street Journal>> NOVEMBER 1, 2008
U.K. Policy recognizes Tibet,China sovereignty
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U.K. Policy Angers Tibet Ahead of Beijing Talks
By SHAI OSTER
NOVEMBER 1, 2008
Wall Street Journal
BEIJING -- The Tibetan government-in-exile criticized Britain's move to more explicitly recognize China's sovereignty over Tibet, a dispute that could complicate talks between Beijing and representatives of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
The U.K. has long acknowledged Chinese control over Tibet, but its policy for nearly a century has stopped short of formally recognizing Tibet as part of Chinese territory -- a stance that bothers China's government. In a statement on Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called that past British policy an "anachronism" and effectively abandoned it, saying that the U.K. does recognize Tibet as "part of the People's Republic of China."
The shift is largely symbolic, but some analysts say it could further weaken the position of the Tibetan exiles in ongoing talks with China. Britain's stance was unusual among foreign governments, and its rejection of that position could undercut Tibet's argument that it wasn't seen as part of China before Chinese troops occupied the territory in 1951.
A British official at the foreign office in London said on Friday that Mr. Miliband's statement represented only a clarification, and that the U.K.'s actual position hasn't changed. On Friday, Thubten Samphel, spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharmsala, India, said: "Before 1950, we had many treaties with British India government in which Britain recognized Tibet as an independent country." For the U.K. to say now that it always saw Tibet as a part of China is "testifying to [a] falsehood," he said.
The Tibetan statement came as two high-level Tibetan emissaries arrived in China for five days of talks, starting the eighth round of negotiations since 2002 over the future of Tibet. The last round ended with an impasse in July, during heightened international pressure on China before the Beijing Olympics in August.
British officials said Mr. Miliband's statement was aimed at helping the negotiations.
The Dalai Lama has said repeatedly that he seeks not independence, but autonomy and the ability for Tibetans to worship freely and maintain their culture. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on the British statement.
-Krishna Pokharel in New Delhi and Alistair MacDonald in London contributed to this article.
Write to Shai Oster at shai.oster@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122549900302589905.html
Destiny of Dalai Lama in desperation and hopelessness
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There are two types of Tibetans, Genuine and Foreign Tibetans.
Genuine Tibetans (most as a serf) remained in Tibet after 1959
and Genuine Tibetans (i.e. Raidi, a serf) live in Tibet forever.
Raidi is Vice chairman, Standing Committee, National People's Congress
Genuine Tibetans are those who have built modern Tibet
and should be the only people who make decisions for Tibet
and for the future of Tibetan generations.
They appreciate large sum of money invested by Central Government
into reconstruction and development, progress in education,
the religious freedom, the improvement of health, society, life.
There are 2.8 million Genuine Tibetans living in Tibet and
Genuine Tibetans are against Dalai Lama's return.
For more information about Genuine Tibetans:
Tibet After 1951 Peaceful Liberation
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Compulsory and Free-of-Charge Education
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Foreign Tibetans are those who left Tibet with Dalai Lama in 1959,
and are victims not only of ignorance
but of a well-organized campaign of misinformation.
Most of Foreign Tibetans were born and raised in India or Nepal,
never see Tibet with their own eyes in life
to be able to judge things for themselves.
Worldwide only 100,000 Foreign Tibetans,compared to 2.8 millions
2.8 millions Genuine Tibetans against Dalai Lama's return.
Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) within Foreign Tibetans
resolves from violence to terrorism
to achieve their goal of "Tibetan independence".
On March 14, 2008 Dalai clique masterminded Lhasa violence.
For more information about Foreign Tibetans:
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Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
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With the arrival of the day with revengeful human bombs
as clamored by Tsewang Rigzin(president of TYC),
people really do not know whether some Western media
will still think that they are "protesting peacefully"
and where will the so-called "moral height" of
US Speaker Ms. Nancy Pelosi be located?
U.K. <<Guardian>>: Down with the Dalai Lama
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Interview: "China's policy in Tibet very successful"
www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-06 19:11:43
NEW DELHI, May 6 (Xinhua) -- "I have seen an economically-developed Tibet and the Tibetans are living and working in peace and contentment. China's policy in Tibet is very successful," said Seema Mustafa, a renowned Indian political commentator.
The opinion and reporting in some western media is grossly unfair to China on the Tibet issue, Mustafa, the former political editor and New Delhi Bureau Chief of The Asian Age newspaper published in India, told Xinhua in a recent exclusive interview.
Mustafa, who visited Tibet late last year, said she could not sense any alleged restrictions on the Tibetans' religious freedom as the monasteries she visited were full of religious Tibetans who were devoutly doing Buddhist services.
Now editor of the newly-launched Indian magazine Covert, Mustafa voiced concerns over the gravely distorted coverage of the riots in Tibet in March by some Western media outlets, including CNN.
"Western media's reports on the Tibet issue are filled with bias or prejudices," she said.
Some Western reporters have never been to Tibet, but they often write stories to attack China's policy in Tibet, she noted.
"It is ridiculous. They have never been there and how did they know the reality there. They are short of basic professional ethics," she said.
Mustafa also recalled that an Indian-born Tibetan she met last year in Lhasa decided to stay in the capital city of Tibet and not to return to India, convinced that she could lead a better life there.
The Tibetan girl, who spoke very fluent Hindi, made her decision after spending about six months in Tibet. She was born and brought up in India after her parents fled Tibet.
Meanwhile, Mustafa listed a number of reasons as to why some Western reporters have followed a harmful trend of reporting the unrest in Tibet, among them the deeply-rooted racism in the hearts of some Western media and the fact that some Western leaders and media are jealous and scared of China's rapid development.
"They are scared of the challenges triggered by China's development to their supremacy around the globe... They inclined to cook up or fabricate stories and sensations in the international community once there is a sign of disturbance or trouble," said Mustafa, who got her master degree in political science at Lucknow University in India in the early 1980s.
She also raised questions about the strong interest on the part of the United States in the Tibet issue.
"I have many question marks on why the White House has showed strong interest in those happenings in Tibet," she said.
The United States has done many inglorious deeds in Russia, the Baltic region and the Middle East, and the so-called democracy and human rights are just a cheap excuse to conceal its real intentions, she said.
"Some Americans really want to see an absolutely independent Tibet instead of autonomous one. They want to see a broken-up China," said the commentator.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/06/content_8116611.htm
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Video: 'The Past of Tibet' shows that old Tibet was not a Shangri-la .
For Freedom of Religion in Tibet
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The New Face of Tibet
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-03 16:07:14
by: Sunita Dwivedi,India
Tibet has undergone mind-boggling changes and her mesmerizing beauty defines the Roof of the World.
For centuries few people could lay eyes on the mysterious kingdom of Tibet, called the "land of the snow and the roof of the world". But with the Chinese policy of "opening up", this landlocked Autonomous Province of China is no longer the hidden kingdom that so charmed and mesmerized the early western travelers that they risked their lives to reach Lhasa and have a glimpse of the famous Potala.
India is naturally gifted with a long border with this enchanting "Shangri-la" -- the paradise on earth that even surpasses the beauty of Switzerland.
One of the most fascinating places to visit in Asia, Tibet offers fabulous monasteries with their beautiful wall paintings, stunning views of the high snow-clad mountains, gushing milky streams and the famous rivers and lakes of the world. But for nearly four decades this "Shangri-la" in the aftermath of the 1962 war and the border dispute that ravaged the 2000 year old friendship shared by China.
A testimony to the deep cultural integration between the two countries is the "Journey to the West", the travelogue of the famous Hieun Tsiang in the seventh century AD.
Focus on friendship
Notwithstanding the setback of the 1960s in the bilateral relations and the acrimony expressed by some Indian leaders, for example George Fernandez stating that China was our enemy number one, the recent open and frank exchanges on trade and border issues between the two countries and realization that both need each other is the biggest change in the five decades of Indo-China relations. There is more understanding now than ever.
The two countries have been able to put the past behind them and revive the deep ties they shared historically. After nearly five decades both India and China have expressed deep feelings for each other and the recognition of the need for mutual cooperation in building a conductive environment for growth and prosperity through the principles of peaceful co-existence.
Both agree that the border question has mutually acceptable solutions and that peace in the border area is the imperative for progress.
In this regard Wu Dawei, vice minister of China pointed out recently during a meeting with the Indian press delegation that the border between India and China must become an asset and not a stumbling block and must benefit the people of the two countries. With strong focus on friendship India can hope that in future, apart from trade Nathu la, more points could be opened along the Indo-China border for trade and tourism.
For example, India's border areas in Ladakh and in the North-East states could provide the shortest route for both trade and tourism in China. Taking a positive attitude on border trade between the two countries Wu Dawei said that the long border between India and China should be the lifeline not the death line for the people of the two countries.
Growth in economy
It is for every visitor to see that the Chinese economy has been growing rapidly in the past years.
The impact of this can be best observed in Tibet, which just a few decades ago was undeveloped and completely shut off from the world.
Now the Tibetans are shrugging off their past and redefining their world. They have worked hard to raise their GDP to ten percent. In recent times the province is changing faster than anyone can dream of.
One can now travel anywhere in Tibet through the wide network of national highways and provincial roads connecting every major town and almost every village, communicate using the internet from the remotest destination, and eat the best of meals even in small wayside restaurant.
It was a pleasant surprise to see land tractors being used for ploughing the fields instead of the traditional ploughs. Traveling on the Tibet-Sichuan highway 318 one can see power cables all along the mighty mountains. Not even for a second does the mobile phone service go off on the long high way that passes through some of the most difficult terrains of Tibet and Sichuan provinces.
Tibet has experienced a remarkable progress during the autonomy. Since Tibet was less developed economically and socially and was a minority region, China took steps for its development and allocated a huge budget for it. The constructions of railways, airways and road networks in Tibet are an exemplary task that China has accomplished.
Major progress has been made in agriculture and animal husbandry. There has been rapid headway in education. The people's living standards have improved. Key prestigious construction projects include comprehensive development of 65,700 square kilometers of the middle reaches of the "three rivers" -- Yarlung Zangbu and its tributaries --Lhasa River and Neyang Qu River. The Gonggar Airport at Lhasa and the Bamda Airport in Qamdo have been expanded --Nepal, Nagqu-Qamdo and Zetang-Gonggar Airport Highways have been built connecting all parts of Tibet with the neighboring provinces.
The most challenging and prestigious of the projects undertaken so far has been the Qinghai-Tibet railways extending 1,118 kilometers from Golmud in the east to Lhasa in the west having an elevation of 4,000 meters for 960 kilometers rail line.
The mobile telecom business has developed at a rapid pace. For the first time on the roof of the world optical fiber telecommunication cable has been installed from Lhasa to Xigaze, which extends for 340 kilometers through the mountain peaks through an elevation of 4,000 meters.
Modernity mixes with tradition
There is a heady mix of modernity and tradition. And the Jokhang monastery, in the main bazaar area, one can see every morning thousands of devotees prostrating before the Buddha and turning the huge prayer wheels for good fortune. Monks and nuns can be seen circumambulating. Ordinary men and women move around with the rotating prayer wheel in their hands.
At Barkhor Street, Tibetans play the traditional Tibetan music. Modern buildings still follow the basic structure of the traditional style. Cultural and historical monuments are being protected throughout Tibet and being opened to the public. Nearly all Tibetans follow Tibetan Buddhism with the expectation of a miniscule minority who follow Islam and Catholicism.
Respecting and protecting the religious belief is a basic policy of the Chinese government. The citizens have the right to believe or not to believe in any religion or to follow any sect within a religion. Normal religious activities can be seen anywhere in Tibet.
Religious institutions are being restored. At present there are about 1700 monasteries in Tibet. In this regard China has allocated more than 380 million yuan for the repair and restoration of monasteries including the Potala Palace, Jokhang, Samye, Sera, Tashilhunpo, Gandain monasteries, to name a few.
The government-funded Institute of Buddhism is the place where Living Buddhas and Buddhist scholars teach sutras and religious history. Major monasteries hold classes for studying sutras and arrange debates on Buddhist doctrines.
Tibetology
Tibetology has become a special area of study in China and there are more than 50 institutions specializing in Tibetology. The China National Centre for Tibetan Studies was set up in Beijing in 1986.
These institutions have undertaken many research projects on a wide variety of topics including regional economic and social development strategies, editing and studying and researching Sanskrit sutras written in pattra palm leaves and conducting research on Tantric Buddhism.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-08/03/content_4915058.htm
Please click here to view
Video: Tibet museum; History tells the truth .
Freedon of Religion in Tibet
From Words of Past Tibet-Tour Hikers
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Interview: Abolishing Tibetan feudal serfdom equates to ending slavery in U.S
2008-07-24 10:31:00
There is no difference between the abolishing of feudal serfdom in Tibet and the ending of slavery in the United States, a senior Chinese Tibetologist said Monday.
Many Americans understand neither the history and the current situation in Tibet, nor China's Tibet policies, which always lead to wrong judgment on Tibet-related issues, especially when they are influenced by "one-sided" information, Tobdrub Wangben, vice minister of China's State Commission for Ethnic Affairs, said in an interview with Xinhua before leaving the United States for Canada.
"When I told Larry Seabrook, current New York City councilman from District 12 in New York City, that the abolishing of the feudal serfdom in Tibet in the 1950s is the same as the ending of the slavery system in the United States, Seabrook understood quite well what I was driving at," he said.
After hearing a brief introduction about the situation in Tibet and the facts of the March 14 riots in Lhasa, Seabrook offered to help Americans improve their understanding of Tibet by arranging them to visit Tibet and form their own opinion.
"If we could tell Americans as much as possible about the truth on Tibet, many of them could change their stereotyped ideas about Tibet," said Tobdrub Wangben, head of a four-member Chinese Tibetologist delegation, which arrived in New York last Thursday to promote understanding on the Tibet issue.
Harboring the hope that the delegation could tell more truth on Tibet to the American public, Tobdrub Wangben said regular and frequent exchanges of ideas between the two peoples are fairly important.
The U.S. tour was quite fruitful as many U.S. officials and legislators said that what they heard about Tibet was different from what they had heard in the past, he added.
Therefore, Tobdrub Wangben said, they expressed hope that more delegations of this kind would come to the United States and exchange ideas with the American public on a regular basis.
"The American public has shown great interest in Tibet, and of course, we will come back and satisfy their demands," he said.
http://eng.tibet.cn/index/news/200807/t20080724_414624.htm
Indian editor: Improvement in Tibetan livelihood is progress in human rights
2008-04-23 09:26:00
Tibet's all-round development in the past years has raised local people's living standards, which was in itself a progress in human rights, an Indian editor said here Tuesday.
Welfare and quality of life are indices to measure human rights was welfare and life quality, Narasimhan Ram, editor-in-chief of The Hindu Newspaper Group, told the ongoing Beijing Forum on Human Rights.
Ram, who has twice visited Tibet in the past seven years, said the villages they visited gave vivid proof of the region's economic development.
He said the per capita net income of Tibetan people had maintained a double-digital growth in each of the past five years, and stood at 2,788 yuan (398 U.S. dollars) last year.
Ram said he was deeply impressed by the farmers who became rich through hard work, central government subsidies and new opportunities provided by the construction boom.
In addition, the central government's preferential policy has enabled some 14,000 Tibetan students to get better education in high schools and colleges throughout the country. Ram said that was also a good example for India to follow.
With the aid of the newly-opened Qinghai-Tibet railway, Tibet's foreign trade volume last year hit 393 million U.S. dollars, and revenues from tourism reached 4.8 billion yuan, he said.
The expert admitted the railway had a negative impact on the region's environment and wildlife, but believed it was exaggerated.
Besides, the Chinese central government was working for the region's environmental protection with an input of 1.5 billion yuan, he said. The money would be used in rubbish and sewage treatment and building 33 special passages for Tibetan antelopes and other wild animals, he said.
http://eng.tibet.cn/news/today/200804/t20080423_377078.htm
History of Tibetan Buddhism by USA Professor:
<<Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth>>
Video: Tibet Riot Documentrary .
Video: Foreigners witness riots in Lhasa .
Video: Foreign residents condemn riots .
Video: Overseas journalists start Lhasa tour .
Why some Western media wage 'asymmetric warfare' on China
+ - 17:42, April 16, 2008
People's Daily Online Wednesday released an interview between Song Luzheng (hereinafter will be Song) and his French boss Bastien, trying to figure out why some Western media entities have long-held a biased, even hostile attitude towards China; and why a few of them showed blatant discrimination towards China and went out of their way to slander China, as seen and heard following the Lhasa Riot and on the global tour of the Beijing Olympic torch relay.
Song: What remains confusing to us Chinese, including the overseas Chinese, is why the French government, as well as the people, are so actively -overzealously - and desperately involved in attacks and clampdowns on China. Some French media carried articles and editorials with evident anti-China sentiment which can be detected by just glancing at the titles: "Olympic flame suffered a disastrous defeat in Paris," and "A slap to China." To my knowledge, the Chinese-French relationship remains sound and without any substantial conflict or confrontation. China has never done anything to offend French interests; and in particular, the two sides recently concluded a deal with a bulky order worth over 20 billion euros. Why would France opt to risk losing such a big and promising market like China?
Bastien: (pondering for a while) For human rights.
Song: Human rights? But why has the French government continuously offered aid and even sent protective troops to those African countries whose human rights records are even worse?
Bastien: You are quite right, but ...
Song: Let's get down to Tibet. As a part of China's territory, Tibet takes the lead in the country for tax exemptions; and is also exempt from family planning restrictions. The per capita GDP in Tibet exceeds 10,000 yuan. Compared with parts of China's mainland, Tibet enjoys the most preferential treatment as far as human rights are concerned. Why won't the French authorities shift their attention to other matters equally as important as human rights; and why do they, instead, always pin their focus on Tibet?
Bastien: It is still different because of the Dalai Lama.
Song: When you mention the Dalai Lama, I wonder how much you know about Tibet.
Bastien: I don't know very much about it.
Song: Then how much knowledge do you have about the Lama Buddhism?
Bastien: I'm sorry, I don't know very much about it.
Song: It is unbelievable that your government can easily pick a side to join that is opposed to China, when it remains ignorant of the Dalai Lama and Tibet. The Dalai clique is a bloc mixing religion and politics. Mixing religion with politics is forbidden in Western Europe, including France; and it is considered illegal.
Bastien: I'm not quite sure about this, as nobody has told me about this.
Song : But the Dalai Lama has kept very close ties with the Aum Shinrikyo ( Supreme Truth) cult.
Bastien: That's impossible.
Song: But it's a fact. The Dalai formed a tutor-pupil relationship with the Aum cult guru, Shoko Asahara; and even worse, he accepted a 100,000-dollar offer from the Aum cult. In return, he granted the cult a certificate which gave the cult a religious status in Japan. It was because of the Dalai Lama who persistently supported and trumpeted Shoko Asahara that the Aum cult could acquire "tax exemption" privileges and accumulated funds to bankroll his cruel evil doing against the Japanese people.
Bastien: (suspiciously) Did it really happen that way?
Song: You can find it on the Internet, and you can also find a group of photos with the both of them.
Bastien (reticent) ...
Song: Then do you know what the Tibetan social structure was like before 1959, when the so-called "uprising" was foiled by the central government?
Bastien: Democratic society, of course.
Song: (astonished) What? Democratic society! Come on, that was serfdom! It is incredible how you French could call it democracy.
Bastien: What?
Song: Do you know why the Chinese were irate and outraged this time? It is simply because your media fabricated news and made slanted reporting.
Bastien: (excited) Certainly impossible.
Song: The Chinese people both at home and abroad are still protesting this. RTF even fabricated a story saying the Chinese Embassy apologized to the French media.
Bastien: But was that true?
Song: It was crafted news. China's Foreign Ministry has straightened it out at the weekly press conference, stating that no such apology ever happened.
Bastien: Oh! I didn't know that.
Song: When the armed rebellion erupted in Tibet in 1959, the two brothers of the Dalai Lama were both working for the US's CIA, as the U.S then tried to cultivate Tibetan rebellious groups and airdropped them into Tibet to launch and organize the riots.
Bastien: Are you sure about this?
Song: Yes, this is history.
Bastien: As far as I know, the Dalai Lama has all along been seeking greater autonomy, not independence.
Song: But I wonder if you really know about the true nature of this "autonomy." What is behind the "autonomy" he preaches are his unspoken political ambitions: first, he attempts to smash the existing social system in Tibet, and rebuild a Tibetan society by mixing religion and politics. Second, he attempts to force the central government to pull troops out of Tibet. And third, he attempts to establish the "greater Tibet" which covers Tibet Autonomous Region and neighboring provinces which have never belonged to Tibet; and making up a quarter of China's territory. He even attempts to carry out "ethnic cleansing" by driving the Han Chinese out of Tibet. Do you really believe Tibetans would enjoy more human rights under the leadership of such a political Lama?
Bastien: Why has the Chinese side never explained this to other people?
Song: We have. The Chinese government, embassy and the overseas scholars keep informing others of the truth. Unfortunately, you are selectively blind to the facts and turn a deaf ear to the calls for justice.
Song: There is still one thing I personally can't understand: why did the French government sent such a hostile message to China this time? You must have done this for a reason, right? For instance, France strongly opposed to the U.S invasion of Iraq because of oil. More than a decade ago, the French government finished a deal with Taiwan on arms sales, which aroused great indignation from the Chinese and poisoned relations between the two countries. But we all knew, even then, it was driven by profit. But this time, for what? Who will want to deal with such an unreliable and unpredictable friend in future?
Bastien: (silent) I really didn't know about this before.
As we continued talking, I suddenly realized that Bastien is a French person with limited information and knowledge about Tibet and the Dalai Lama and fed by the media's selective or even manipulative reports. I can not help but think of a military term - asymmetric warfare - which originally refers to war between two or more players or groups whose relative military power differs significantly. But today, "asymmetric warfare" can describe a conflict in which the resources of two opposing sides differ; and during the struggle, each side interacts and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Some biased foreign media is launching pseudo- asymmetric warfare on China.
By People's Daily Online
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/6393940.html
Video: Western media's distorted reports torn apart by truth .
click here
'I see different Tibet': French hotel tycoon tours region by bike
2008-04-20 09:36:00 |
An eight-month bicycle ride from France to Cambodia has given 74-year-old Paul Dubrule a chance to see a different Tibet from what he had learnt in France.
I spent three months riding through Tibet during that trip. This experience completely changed my perspective about the region, Dubrule, chairman and founder of the leading multinational hotel group Accor Group, told Xinhua here on Friday.
Compared with those talking about Tibet in the French media but never setting foot in the region, I think I have more things to tell, he said.
In 2002, Dubrule, then 68, made a 15,000-kilometer journey by bicycle from his home at Fontainebleau to Siem Reap, Cambodia, during which he rode from Ngari in west Tibet to Qamdo in its east.
Before arriving in Tibet, I thought local people were under repression of the central government as many other Westerners (thought), he said.
But, during the tour, he saw schools, hospitals, power plants, airports, and especially highways.
I saw many roads under construction, he said. Along my way, I met many local people. Their life was not as good as in France but I found they were benefiting from the economic development.
Dubrule had read books about Tibet since the 1990s and many of them portrayed the Dalai Lama as a saint and victim. But he later learnt in Tibet that under the Dalai Lama's rule there was no medical service in an area between Ngari and Lhasa. The former is about 1,000 km away from the latter.
In Tibet, I found that people would like to have the region modernized rather than maintaining old lifestyles simply for tourists, he said.
He did not agree with the Dalai Lama who said economic development in Tibet was causing a disappearance of traditional culture. If a culture can not move forwards with economic and social development, it will end up in the museum instead of blessing its people.
Should anyone refuse development, schools and hospitals in the name of protecting culture and religion
In his 50,000-word travel book, Le Test du Cocotier, he wrote about what he saw in Tibet and was criticized by some back home for his stance to support present policies in the autonomous region.
I am not surprised. Because many French had not been to Tibet, most of the information they got about the region was biased or confused. The real Tibetan history is unknown to many, he said. I believe that they will change once they have the access to more positive information and exchanges with Tibet.
His travel book was published in Chinese in 2005. On the book's cover, Dubrule, on his bike, passed several Tibetans worshipping local mountain spirits.
Although I have never met the Dalai Lama, I would like to tell him that a country should protect the religious belief of its people but religions should not be a tool for people to turn against their country, he said.
http://eng.tibet.cn/Features2008/314sj/today/200804/t20080421_376907.htm
Dalai Lama does not represent all Tibetan or Tibetan Buddhism and he has lots of enemies, even within Tibetan Buddhism. Enclosed photo showing a demonstration against Dalai Lama by Tibetan Buddhism Monks in Germany. In this photo many Germans(like many of us) were very much surprised.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2008-06/23/content_8424644.htm
German scholar refutes Dalai's claim of "cultural genocide" in Tibet
2008-04-25 08:12:00 |
A German sinologist and ethnologist on Wednesday refuted the Dalai Lama's claim that the Chinese government has conducted "cultural genocide" in Tibet and criticized some Western media for not letting the voices of ordinary Tibetans be heard.
CULTURAL GENOCIDE? COMPLETELY WRONG
"The concept of 'cultural genocide' is completely wrong," said Ingo Nentwig, who chairs the research department of the Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, in a written interview with Xinhua.
"The Tibetan culture flourishes and prospers in China," including "language, literature, study of oral literature, everyday life and traditional architecture," he said.
Nentwig said that China has published a vast collection of books, newspapers and magazines in Tibetan language, and "there are a lot of Tibetan publishing houses, not only in Tibet but also in the neighboring provinces and even in Beijing."
Tibetan authors write in the Tibetan language and Chinese, Tibetan translation of foreign books are also available in China, and "there is an academy for traditional Tibetan medicine in Lhasa," he cited the example to illustrate his point.
The scholar said that unlike "some representatives of the clerical elite demanding independence for Tibet or just wanting to exert political power" who describe the modernization of the Tibetan society as "cultural genocide," "most Tibetans recognize the opportunities in a modern Tibet, which is part of China and open to the modern world."
SYSTEMATIC ASSIMILATION? OUT OF THE QUESTION
Nentwig said a systematic immigration and assimilation of Tibet "through a Han-Chinese (China's majority ethnic group) settlement invasion is just out of the question."
"If you come to Lhasa, you actually have the impression that there are many Han-Chinese who account for more than 50 percent of the population in Lhasa for sure," he said, but noting the bulk of them, however, stay there only temporarily.
Soldiers, for example, are to leave after demobilization, many construction workers are just there for road or railway projects, some officials are assigned to work in Tibet on a rotation basis and then leave. While some business people operate stores or restaurants there, but they seldom intend for a long-term stay, he said.
"But once you leave Lhasa, you hardly meet any Han-Chinese," said Nentwig, who spent a month in Tibet for a field research on yak shepherds in the summer of 2002.
"I did my field research in a county where just 20 or 30 Han-Chinese live among 50,000 to 60,000 Tibetans," he said.
The scholar said the overall proportion of long-term Han residents in Tibet is about just 7 percent, while ethnic Tibetans account for over 90 percent.
Even taking the short-term residents into account, the Han people account for an estimated 20 to 25 percent of entire population in Tibet, while ethnic Tibetans are still the "overwhelming majority of about 75 to 80 percent," he said.
Areas inhabited by ethnic Tibetans in the neighboring provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan, however, are ethically and culturally more diversified, where Tibetans have coexisted peacefully with Han and other ethnic groups such as Hui, Mongolian, Qiang, Tu and Salar for many centuries, Nentwig said.
If exiled Tibetans, under the "anti-assimilation" or "anti-sinicization" slogans, want to fight for Tibetans' cultural or political dominance, this would go against the historical truth and would be unfair for all other residents there, he said.
OLD RULING CLASS' ACCUSATION? DIFFERENT STORY TO TELL
The scholar listed some historical and geographical reasons for Tibet's relatively slow development compared with other Chinese regions.
Tibet is "unsuitable for a comprehensive industrialization and its agriculture is also handicapped by natural conditions" as large grazing areas there have "such thin topsoil that virtually nothing can be cultivated," he said.
He also called attention to the fact that before 1950, there were no hospitals and no schools except the monastic education.
While acknowledging such huge gap "can not be narrowed overnight," Nentwig noted with delight that the average life expectancy in Tibet has raised from 35 years in the 1950s to the present 67 years.
He hailed the liberation of the vast majority of the Tibetan people from the bondage of serfdom as a "great progress," adding most Tibetans are in much better conditions now than 50 years ago.
He said the Chinese government's ethnic policy is "enormously generous" and there are many examples to illustrate that China's ethnic minorities are given preferential treatments.
"The Tibetans, for example, may basically have two children ... (and) Tibetans in the countryside may have three or even more children" while the one-child policy is applied to the Han.
"The latest census showed that in the past 20 to 30 years, the population growth rate of Tibetans was much higher than that of the Han," he said.
Nentwig criticized some Western media for only reporting the voices of the former ruling class, namely, representatives of the old theocracy, the clerical and feudal aristocrats, who lost their power and can "no longer exploit the people at will," while ignoring the voices of the ordinary Tibetan people who "have a totally different story to tell."
Admitting that China's approach to ethnic minorities still has much room for improvement, he said if anyone wants to criticize China, such criticism should be concrete, constructive and based on expertise.
"It helps nobody if unqualified nonsense is disseminated as many Western media unfortunately have done and are still doing," he said.
http://eng.tibet.cn/index/news/200804/t20080425_377394.htm
For Freedom of Religion in Tibet
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Belgian professor: Chinese gov't protects Tibetan culture
www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-09 18:50:29
BRUSSELS, May 8 (Xinhua) -- A renowned Belgian professor specialized in Oriental Studies said here Thursday that the Chinese government has done a great deal in the protection of the Tibetan culture.
"Without the support and help of the Chinese government in protection, the culture in Tibet could not be as good as it is now," Professor Charles Willemen, a member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua and China Central TV in a joint interview.
"The government has helped a lot, really," stressed Prof. Willemen, who has visited Tibet for three times.
He described the Dalai Lama's accusation which says that the Chinese government has carried out "culture genocide" policy in Tibet as "strange and unjustified."
Prof. Willemen made his first visit to Tibet in the 1980s and the third 10 years ago.
He visited China four times a year since he made his first trip 25 years ago.
"I witnessed great changes in Tibet," he said, noting that Lhasa, capital of China's Tibetan Autonomous Region, was as developed as other cities in China, but with its own characteristics.
"When I first visited there, there was only one hotel for foreigners," he said, "but later there are more hotels, new temples and institutes for people to worship and study Buddhism. Now there is a new airport in Lhasa."
With respect to the life of the Tibetan people, Prof. Willemen, who once visited homes of ordinary Tibetans, said: "They are very happy, and happier than the Belgians."
He said some people in the West do not like to see changes in Tibet, "but one should understand that any region in the world should witness development and progress. It is impossible to remain forever like the Medieval times."
Prof. Willemen is fluent in Chinese and Japanese, and can read Hindi.
He has also been working to promote cultural exchanges and friendly relations between China and Europe. He was once vice president of the Belgium-China Friendly Association.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/09/content_8137322.htm
Catholic Church with more than 140 years of history in Tibet
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Austrian parliament leader congratulates China Tibet Culture Festival
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-17 11:08:58
VIENNA, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Andreas Khol, President of the National Council of Austria, sent a congratulatory message on Monday, for the forthcoming China Tibet Culture Festival to be held in Austria.
Khol said in the message he was very glad that the festival, scheduled for Oct. 18-29, was being held in Austria on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the establishment of Austria-China diplomatic ties.
He hoped that, for Austrians, the festival would be a window into the fascinating culture of China's Tibet.
The festival will be the sixth large exhibition of Tibetan culture to be held abroad since 2001, and it will include an exhibition of more than 200 photos selected from 150,000 pictures taken by 100 photographers from 19 countries. They were invited to take photos in Tibet last year. Enditem
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/17/content_5213191.htm
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China Tibet Culture Festival to celebrate Austria-China ties
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-16 13:45:00
BEIJING, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- The China Tibet Culture Festival will open in Austria on Oct. 18 and run till Oct. 29, marking the 35th founding anniversary of China-Austria diplomatic ties and the ongoing "Year of China" initiated by the Austrian government.
The festival is the sixth large exhibition abroad of Tibetan culture since 2001, said a spokesman for the Chinese Association for Cultural Exchanges with Foreign Countries.
The festival will include an exhibition of more than 200 photos selected from 150,000 pictures by 100 photographers from 19 countries. They were invited to take photos in Tibet last year.
Helmut Strohmer, a well-known Austrian photographer, is also expected to display 50 works, showing impressions of modern life in Tibet.
Fifteen Tangkar -- traditional song and dance -- performances will illustrate the religion, medicine and history of Tibet, the spokesman said.
A song and dance ensemble will perform folk songs and dances. The organizers has invited four Tibetologists and living Buddhas to give lectures at universities and meet with Austrian Tibetologists. Enditem
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/16/content_5208712.htm
Prayers return to normal at riot-hit mosque in Lhasa
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Austria: Railway to help bring closer Tibet
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-22 12:38:30
VIENNA, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Vice-president of the Austrian State Council Anna Elisabeth Haselbach cherishes a yearning for a trip to China's Tibet.
Meeting a Chinese delegation attending the "China Tibet Culture Festival," Haselbach said she hopes the Qinghai-Tibet railway built on "the roof of the world" would help bring closer Tibet and the rest of the world.
The "China Tibet Culture Festival" being held in Austria on Oct. 18-29 is part of a series of activities marking the 35th anniversary of the establishment of China-Austria diplomatic ties. The Austrian government has designated 2006 as a "China Year."
Over the past 35 years, the friendly relations between Austria and China have always been good despite the changing international situation. Many Austrian people have a strong interest in Tibet, she said.
The train has been proved to be a environment-friendly transportation tool, but some European countries made excessive use of trains for development of tourism at the expense of the environment, said Haselbach.
Austria has valuable experiences in environmental protection and is willing to share expertise and cooperate with China in the Qinghai-Tibet railway project, she added.
Extending her warm welcome to the two living Buddhas with the delegation, Haselbach said many Austrians believe in Buddhism, as they believe that Buddhism represents peace, kindness and tolerance.
"Such a spirit is just what we need to solve the current international problems," she said, hoping that Austria and China could join hands to promote world peace and stability.
The head of the Chinese delegation, Li Guangwen, a deputy head of the standing committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region's People's Congress, said the Chinese government has invested heavily in building the Qinghai-Tibet railway.
Before the launch of the project, relevant departments organized experts to study the local eco-system, and borrow good experiences from developed countries.
Li said data showed the railway has so far had no negative impact on the local environment.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/22/content_5234343.htm
Lhasa -- The Heart and soul of Tibet
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-18 15:53:19
By Sunita Dwivedi
Being the capital of Tibet Autonomous region, Lhasa is the political, economic, cultural, communication and transportation center for the entire region. It has a recorded history of more than 1,300 years. Great changes have taken place in the city of Lhasa since the reforms and opening up policy of China since 1979. The area has seen the construction of many new buildings including government buildings, hotels, night clubs, educational institutes combining traditional and modern styles. There are more than 10,000 commercial stores in the city.
Lhasa's suburbs are developed in agriculture. A number of vegetables and meat production centers have been set up. As soon as you take the suburban road from the airport to the city you notice long stretches of green houses where vegetables like tomatoes, chillies, cabbage, cucumber and turnips are growing. These green houses covered with plastic sheets over bamboo structures are interspersed with orchards of apple, peach, pear and walnut. Heads of yak, sheep and goats can be seen grazing on the meadows by the side of the Lhasa river.
The villages are few and far between and resemble the villages in India especially in the Ladakh and the Spiti areas. The houses are built of stone and surrounded by fluttering prayer flags and small white-washed stupas. Huge heaps of cow dung cakes dot the green fields as the dung is an important fuel for the villagers. Here and there one can see women clad in pants or long gowns grazing their cattle or working in their fields.
The population is scarce and out of a total of four lakh people only about 1.5 lakh are living in the city. For this reason there is no crowding or traffic jams on the streets of Lhasa.
On the six lane roads separate provisions have been made for rickshaws and pedestrians which flow unhindered.
Apart from the Tibetan people who take up 87 percent of the population of Lhasa, Han, Hui, and some 30 nationalities also live here.
Lhasa has more than 200 cities known for their cultural relics and more than 20 of them have already been opened to tourists. Work is underway to open 3 more sites to the public. Main tourist destinations include the Potala palace, Jokhang monastery, Ramoche and the Sera monasteries, the Norbulingka. Cute little rickshaws will carry you to the Potala or the Jokhang.
Barkhor Area: The glittering Barkhor street is the place where religion and commerce meet. The huge area through which a broad street runs just in front of the Jokhang monastery is always buzzing with activity. The huge quadrangular space at the entrance of the monastery is the best place to be at all times of the day. Here one can observe the men and women offering oil lamps to Buddha and burning incense. Monks and nuns circambulate the monastery with prayer wheel in hand and chanting Buddhist mantras.
Devotees kiss the ground and prostrate themselves. Just outside the square in the lanes and bylanes of the Barkhor Street bejeweled Tibetan women sell antique jewelley, statues of Buddhist deities and also of Chairman Mao. CDs of India films are very popular with the Tibetans and almost everyone know Shahrukh Khan, Priety Zinta and Kajol. Dance numbers of Urmila Matondkar are also very popular and one can see the famous actress gyrating to loud music on the TV sets in the Barkhor Bazar. The best gift to buy are stone bead necklaces made by Tibetan women in their homes.
Lhasa River Front
The Lhasa river front can be compared to the famous Bundh in Shanghai on the river Huang Po. The backdrop is formed by the high mountains and snow clad peaks surrounding the city. The beautiful river front stretches for miles on the outskirts of the Lhasa city. In the glow of the evening sun young coupes stroll and hand in hand along the river. Some just sit by the side of the cobbled street enjoying a quiet sunrise over Lhasa. Far away bouts can be seen carrying sand from the river bank.
No Mini-Lhasa in Dharamsala:
Many Indians happily describe Leh [in Ladakh] and Dharamsala [in Himachal Pradesh] as the "mini-Lhasa" of India. Apart from the fact that Tibetans form a large part of the population in these towns there is little else by way of material development that can make these towns eligible as "mini-Lhasa". A visitor to Dharamsala will at once notice the deplorable conditions in which the Tibetans eke out a living in the filthy and narrow back lanes of the township. Amid heaps of garbage and bursting pipelines Tibetan women sell momos and other Tibetan delicacies. The resthouses for Tibetan refugees in the dirty bylanes are teeming with men, women and children. I happened to go inside a refugee shelter not far away from the Namgyal monastery. The bathrooms were stinking and the rest halls were crowded with charpoys.
Just outside the Main temple which was to be the venue of the meeting to be addressed by the Dalai Lama, a sewer line had burst in the monks quarters and sewage flowed on the rear pathway to the Temple office spreading a lot of stink. The Temple area is congested mainly due to crowding by too many big and small hotels around the monastery. Plastics are strewn all over the township and stray cattle can be found all over the place munching at the waste thrown outside the eateries. However this is the shameful story of most of the Indian towns.
Monasteries crumbling in Ladakh:
I also happened to be in Ladakh in May 2005 and had a taste of the poor condition of road. Even the westerly Leh-Kargil road on which I was traveling up to Lamayuru was not only narrow but also pot-holed and dusty. The only mobile phone service that worked in Leh town was Cell One, while the suburbs had no service.
Even the important monasteries like the Lamayuru, the Alchi, the Hemis and the Spituk on the Leh-Manali road showed little or no upkeep. Rare and beautiful paintings were being destroyed in the harsh climate of Ladakh and little was being done to preserve them. The reason clearly is that very little funds are available to the monasteries in India for their upkeep despite tall promises by the government to preserve them for tourism.
No Comparison with Lhasa:
At least for those who have visited Lhasa recently and have seen the pace of development here will not commit the folly of comparison. The capital city of Lhasa is clean, well spread out and has well swept six-lane roads. On either sides of the road stand beautiful and fancy lamp-posts that illuminate the streets with high powered bulbs. Even the suburbs are well connected through land and mobile phones. Not one but many mobile phone services are available throughout the long highways connecting the autonomous region with other provinces of China.
The Chinese government is also spending millions of yuan on the restoration of the monasteries and historical monuments. On the Potalta palace alone, the Chinese government has sent about 200 million yuan to strengthen the foundation. The Norbunlingka or the Summer Palace of the Dalai Lama is in for an intensive restoration work currently underway. Similarly, restoration work is also in progress at the Ramoche monastery which belongs to the seventh century A D.
In several monasteries that I visited, the Dalai Lama's throne occupies a prominent position. The throne lies vacant. In the bazaar area and in some monasteries, the Tibetans, on spotting an Indian, enquire about the present Dalai Lama XIV [now living in India] and whether or not he has seen him. Dharamsala and Ladakh are in no way qualified to be termed as Mini-Lhasa but for the fact that the Dalai Lama is ensconced at McLeodgang while the people miss him in Tibet.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-08/18/content_4978564.htm
Golden Roof Shining in the Sun
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-03 15:59:47
By: Soni Bhattathiripad£¬MALAYALA MANORAMA,India
Tibet. Land of mysteries. Unknown to the external world even in the early decades of the twentieth century. Great valleys crouching beneath snow laden mountains. Lakes mirroring blankets of snow. Majestic Buddhist edifices. Conspicuous to the world for political reasons, this dark land enclosed by huge mountains ranges was sparingly trodden till recently.
It was mid noon when we landed at Lhasa the Tibetan capital. It took two hours' drive into Lhasa city. First destination next day was Potala Palace which Tibetans proudly claim to be the prime miracle since the creation of this world.
Bitter cold permeated around. At Lhasa temperatures go as low as 5¡ãC. Nights have even wollen sweaters captivated by cold.
Potala Palace is visible from any distance, with the golden roof shinning in the sun. Its interiors house a thousand suns to astound the hapless visitor. The palace is as old as the city of Lhasa, which claims a heritage of 1,300 years.
Its construction began in the sixth century A.D. but completed only in 17th century during the days of the fifth Dalai Lama. From this red peak, the toil of millions who drained their life here, smile upon the world as the largest palace ever constructed by human hands.
Potala Palace was the abode of the Lamas. Their investiture, schooling, growing up-all happened here. 1,300 chambers spread across 130,000 sq. meters. Amidst renovation initiated by the Chinese government, men at work come across even chambers. In the last two years only China has spent as much as 2,000 millions dollars upon the palace.
Potala Palace stands as if it grew with the mountain peak. The grand interiors housed 13 stories bear almost anything. Buddhist sculptures, places for worship and meditation, antiques and curios heralding the rich and age-old heritage of Tibet.
The palace has quite fittingly found a place in UNESCO's world cultural heritages list and it boasts of a huge inflow of tourists. The palace is like two snakes coiled upon each other. One white palace, the other red. White palace was the political headquarters of the Lamas, the red was their spiritual headquarters.
A host of paintings welcome the guests even as they step in. Every Lama gas made his contribution to the palace. Approximately ten thousand pictures have taken their lives from the Buddhist concept that 'Not a Thing Shall be Spoilt'.
On leaving the paintings arcade, the accompanying Chinese diplomat showed us the room once occupied by Dalai Lamas. Forsaken corridors. Strange indeed are the predilections if history. Painting adorning the magnificent walls aches to say something. Silence pervades all.
While leaving the prayer hall with silent prayers for the Tibetans in India dreaming of their homeland, Sunita Dwivedi of our team whispered: "Back at Delhi I should tell my Tibetan friend that their palace is beautiful; that it is a golden feather upon the roof of the world. "
No artillery, no infantry, nor is there elephant or armory or trenches. Alike in the light sun and in darkness, the Palace of Serenity stands glistening.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-08/03/content_4914996.htm
Pilgrims to Holy Mountains to Get Better Facilities
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-03 16:10:48
Raghavendra, PTI, India
Pilgrims to holy Mt. Kailash and Mansarovar Lake can look forward to better amenities under a plan to be implemented by authorities in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China.
Acknowledging that the infrastructure at Kailash and Mansarovar was "backward", a senior official of the Tourism Bureau of the TAR said the authorities in Ngari prefecture in western Tibet plan to provide better facilities for pilgrims visiting the two holy places.
"Pilgrims have contributed a lot to the development of the prefecture. In the present situation, the infrastructure conditions are backward," Thondrup, Director of the Tourism Bureau of TAR, told a group of visiting Indian journalists. "The pilgrims from India visit the holy mountains and lake annually. Now, it is a question of development of these places."
Around 500 pilgrims visiting Lailash, located in the Purang County adjoining India and Nepal, and Manasarovar Lake. Kailash, the source of the Ganges, Indus and Yarlung Tsangbu rivers, is also visited by pilgrims from China and Nepal.
Thondrup said authorities were paying attention to improving the infrastructure in the Ngari prefecture to attract foreign tourists.
An airport was also planned to be built, he said, adding it would be done "quickly".
"Preparatory work" was being done and a survey carried out for better infrastructural facilities in the Ngari prefecture, he said.
Asked about opening the route from the Ladakh side to facilitate easy accesses to Lailash and Manasarovar, he said it was an issue which the Indian and Chinese sides had to decide at a higher level. Thoudrup said a delegation from Nepal would visit Lhasa next month to hold discussions for tourism cooperation.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-08/03/content_4915080.htm
Tibet makes the most of limited freedom
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-17 14:06:03
BY Ashis Chakrabarti
At 76, Luosang has seen it all! Tibet old and new. In fact, he hasn't just seen it; he has played his part in the dramatic makeover of the mystical land of romantic imagination.
He sits in a first-floor room of his traditional Tibetan style house in Lhasa, his back to a wall adorning several images of Buddha and Buddhist paintings.
In the street below there are endless streams of pilgrims making the rounds of Jokhang, the holiest of the Buddhist shrines in all of Tibet, whose origin dates back to the seventh century. Only a small distance away looms the massive structure of the Potala Palace rising to the top of a hill.
Luosang's story, like modern Tibet's, begins in 1959, when the 14th Dalai Lama left the Potala on his great escape to India, making Tibet an international cause.
Luosang began working for the Lhasa residents' committee in 1959 as a volunteer. It was a hard life maintaining a family of four children.
He is retired now and lives with the family of his youngest son, a carpenter by trade. His other son and two daughters live elsewhere. The eldest daughter has also retired from her government job, while the two other children - a son and a daughter - also have regular jobs.
Luosang is happy with the freedoms that Tibetans now enjoy, freedoms to choose their professions and live their own lives.
"It was hard to imagine such freedoms in the old days when most Tibetans lived as serfs and life was what the serf-owners, who were also the monastic leaders, made of it for the people," explained Luosang.
But what about religious and political freedoms? He does not talk of the post-1951 communist takeover of Tibet or the Cultural Revolution clampdown on religion.
"The government's policy gives the people the freedom to either believe or disbelieve in religion," he said.
A government official sitting next to Luosang adds: "The scene at the Jokhang says it all. Religious freedom is there for all to see."
Luosang would like the Dalai Lama to come back, but only as a religious leader.
"The government and the people will welcome him only if he gives up his separatist campaign," claimed Luosang.
As for political reform, "It's reflected in the people's freedom to elect or be elected as members of the People's Congress (the state and national level parliaments)."
Partyspeak, official propaganda, or a reality check on today's Tibet? The answer depends on what picture of Tibet one carries in one's mind. There is little doubt Luosang has been a communist party cadre. Obviously, he has had little sympathy for the Tibet campaigners who see the old world as a Shangri-La the Reds rose from hell to destroy.
No doubt Luosang's story skips some crucial facts, particularly the present-day restrictions. It says nothing of the communist party's and the government's control of religion through the so-called democratic management committees of the monasteries, the government's religious affairs bureau, the "political education campaigns" of the monks and sundry other ways.
But then such restrictions are not unique to Tibet. The official policy that acts tough on "anti-national" and "separatist" activity is as valid elsewhere in China.
What is undeniable, though, is the march of the development engine. It has now gained momentum since the government initiated the western development program in 2003 to accelerate the economic growth of backward areas like Tibet.
Even if one goes only by an overview of Lhasa's leap into modernity, with its wide roads, high-rise official and residential blocks and other facilities, there is no denying the common Tibetan now lives a better economic life.
To say the development projects benefit only the Chinese settlers in Tibet seems simply untrue. To say also the development is confined only to big towns of Tibet would also be untrue. The evidence lies in big highways and roads that cross high mountains and broad rivers that had remained un-crossed for centuries.
And, the development drive is all set to get a new impetus this September when Lhasa celebrates the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-08/17/content_4973283.htm
Tibet on Trade Track
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-03 16:07:54
Ashis Chakrabarti, The Telegraph, India
Tibet is keen to follow the rest of China in opening up to the world. That could mean a new turn in China's relations with India, since all of the 3,500-km border between the two countries runs along the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).
The vice chairman of TAR, Lhasong Gyaltsen, told a group of visiting Indian journalists that the government would like trade, tourism and other interactions with India and other South Asian countries to improve.
Of the South Asian countries, Tibet's largest border trade is with Nepal. TAR has 28 ports for border trade and most are on its border with Nepal.
Lhasong's remarks are significant in the backdrop of the arrangement between India and China to begin border trade across Nathu-la in Sikkim.
The TAR government's keenness to look up new areas for border trade could offer new opportunities for Ldakh.
Lhasong's statement comes within days of the Chinese vice-minister for foreign affairs, Wu Dawei, saying in Beijing that China could consider a opening up more border trade points with India if the latter agreed. He also indicated that the TAR government was interested in opening up western Tibet to tourism from India.
At present, only about 500 Indian tourists visit the pilgrimage route in the Kailash-Mansarovar area.
"I have to admit that the tourism infrastructure in those western regions is poor compared to that in Lhasa. We'll like to improve the infrastructure in those areas. We welcome Indian tourists in Tibet and would work to create facilities for them," he said.
Tibet's proposals to open up more to China's South Asian neighbors could be an extension of the massive efforts being taken in TAR to improve and expand its road and railway network.
The 1,100-km railway project connecting Lhasa to Qinghai, across high mountains and turbulent rivers, Lhasong said, would be completed in July 2006.
Work on four major highway projects will also be completed in the next two or three years, thereby expanding the road coverage in Tibet to 42,000 km in 33 counties.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-08/03/content_4915064.htm
Rails that Touch the Skies
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-03 16:03:55
By: Soni Bhattathiripad£¬MALAYALA MANORAMA£¬India
China, the land of the Great Wall, one of the great miracles of world, is all set to astonish the world with yet another miracle. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway line is to be realized in March 2006 as the tallest railway line in the world. And it would sure be a technological marvel.
Western media have described thus railway line as a venture, which is as Herculean as building the Great Wall. A railway line to the roof of the world was a dream cherished ever since the Chinese accession of Tibet. But for sundry the project remained unrealized till now.
The construction of Qinghai-Tibet railway began as early as 1962. It was the first reach from Golmod to Lhasa. The formidable part was yet to come.
From Golmod to Lhasa, soil as hard as steel, deliquescent blankets of snow, cold that chills even the soul were only a few of the deterrents. Many a time were studies conducted, every time the project was dropped. In June 2001, the Chinese government decided to tale upon this railway laying as a challenge and complete it as a prestigious project.
And it was a challenge by all means. Of the 1142 kilometers of rail from Golmod to Lhasa, 960 kilometers pass over huge mountain ranges as high as 5072 meters above sea level.
Ten million U.S. dollars were spent on study alone. The total project cost them a dear 3.2 billion U.S. dollars. Laying rails directly over the land is always under the threat of imminent landslips. Engineers have innovated to construct bridges first and lay rails above it.
Qinghai-Tibet rail has won also the credit of being the first environment friendly railway in the world. The government has set aside 8% of the total cost for conservation of environment.
Tibetan mountains and valleys are home to immense genetic diversity. Many rare species of plants and birds are housed here. Tibetan forests boast of a huge line of medicinal plants. The government set out to construct the railway line only after considering the recommendations made by the Academy of Environment Protection after years long study.
The railway line to be commissioned next year will conduct trial runs for one complete year. The government is all set to open for transport before Olympic games.
The railway line will no doubt take Tibetan tourism by leaps and bounds. Influx of tourists via road and air is already in a boom thanks to the government renovation of restrictions on visitors to Tibet.
The Chinese government believes that 90% of tourists will take on the railways once it is opened up. It would be an unforgettable expedition across full bosomed clear streams cascading down beautiful mountain ranges, sharing kisses with glistering dew drops, an amorous ride with nature. It would be the dream of any tourists from any land.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-08/03/content_4915032.htm
Interview: Senior Nepali journalist finds Tibet amazing
09:39, June 07, 2008
A senior Nepali journalist was still amazed by his trips to Tibet a couple of years ago.
"Fixed taxi fare, no matter from where to which place inside the Lhasa city, is interesting," Kishor Shrestha, chief editor of the Nepali weekly Jana Aastha, said in an interview with Xinhua Friday.
"The amazing thing I have found in Tibet is that there is not a single village without the access of transportation and electricity," said Shrestha, who travelled to Tibet in 1997 and 2002.
"Vegetables are produced even in the freezing month of December and fruits from all over the world are available for the local people, which still seems impossible in our similar areas like Manang and Mustang districts, some 200 km west of the Nepali capital Kathmandu," he said.
"The main reason behind this might be the Chinese leadership's commitment, determination and dedication towards the Tibetan people there," Shrestha added.
He said Nepal should learn from China's "system of supporting the backward areas by the developed areas."
"As far as I know, economically sound coastal provinces like Guangdong and Fujian have been assisting in the development race of Linzhi (Ningchi) of the Tibet Autonomous Region," Shrestha said.
As for the protection of the cultural heritage in Tibet, he said it was very difficult to maintain the heritage, especially in such a terrain.
"But renovating and keeping intact the 1700s monasteries, palaces and so on there is a miracle," he noted.
"The world could get more benefits from Tibet thanks to the historical documents well kept in Lhasa's Archeology Department. There are more than 3 million historical written materials," Shrestha said.
Source:Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/6426255.html
Nepali journalist: Lifestyle in Tibet changed, culture remains
18:06, May 07, 2008
People's lifestyle in Tibet has totally changed, but the local culture has remained unchanged, said a Nepali journalist who visited the Tibetan Plateau last year.
"When we can compare Tibet 50 years ago to the new Tibet, there is massive change. People's lifestyle has totally changed. But their culture is still as it was," Bhojraj Bhat, who works for the Nepal Weekly News Magazine, one of the best-selling journals in the country, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
"I can tell everyone, every forum, what I saw there, as you know fact is fact," said Bhat, who paid a half-month visit to China's Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai province last September.
"Almost all the people can be seen clutching mobile phones in their hands; and underground fiber optics have linked each house with landline telephones there," he once described Lhasa in his essay, "Changed Appearance," published in the Nepal Weekly News Magazine.
"In some places, a single road has been transformed into double flyovers. Let alone a piece of dirt at the market areas and roads, there isn't even a piece of paper or plastic on the ground. Even the transportation system is very systematic," Bhat wrote in the essay.
"In Qinghai province, I found quite new things. There are Muslim communities and also Buddhists but they have social harmony," he said.
"I visited some monasteries, and conducted some interviews with monks too. They were so happy with the government. They want to secure their future as citizens of a country in rapid development, as well as preserving their culture," Bhat added. "Somebody told me they want to back the Dalai Lama as a monk but not as a political leader."
"I was wondering about it when seeing some new activities in Tibet and Qinghai. Before I went to this Plateau area, I had made up my mind that 'most of the people are followers of the Dalai Lama, they used to pray in a traditional way, etc.' But when I went there, I found quite a different situation," he said. "Most of the Buddhists are changing. They are grasping technology. They use mobile phones, cars and hi-tech products."
In "Changed Appearance" published last November, Bhat described what he saw in Lhasa.
"However, the sights of Buddhist monks busy with their prayers at monasteries in Lhasa are also common till now. The effect of development and change can also be seen in the monasteries and the monks there," he wrote.
"One can easily see very modern LCD television sets inside the monasteries, with monks and nuns riding motorbikes in very well-ironed clothes and talking through state-of-the-art mobile phone sets," Bhat said in the essay.
He narrated with surprise, "Before, I watched some western films and there were some anti-China movement scenes, but I never saw any activities of anti-China perception there. People told me they wanted development, they needed basic infrastructure, and the government provided them."
"Some of the Indian newspapers also exaggerated the Dalai Lama's activities. I try to find facts to match that news, but I couldn't find anything. Then, I made up my mind these western and Indian media want to manipulate the reality," he said.
Development has occurred in the Tibetan Plateau, but culture is still there, Bhat noted.
"This is a new type of theory," he said. "We, the Nepali people, should learn from Tibet."
Source: Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6406160.html
Senior Nepali journalist: Fundamental human rights well protected in Tibet
18:27, May 07, 2008
There are many facets of human rights and those fundamental and basic ones are well protected in Tibet, a senior Nepali journalist who visited Tibet last year told Xinhua in a recent interview.
"If you want to know about my first impression, I was highly impressed with China's economic development. My visit to Lhasa was an eye opener of the fact that so much has been accomplished," said Ambar Mainali, Chief Reporter of The Rising Nepal.
The development, which is crucial to human rights, is well safeguarded in Tibet, he said.
Mainali paid a half-month visit to Tibet and the provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan in the western part of China last September, where he visited different cultural sites and "saw that many monasteries were being renovated."
"There cannot be absolutely good human rights situation anywhere in the world. As for basic and fundamental rights of free movement, doing business and having access to education, all of them seem to be well protected in Tibet," he said.
"I feel that one country has its own policies and one should stick to it while at the same time respect the international human rights treaties that they have signed," Mainali said, referring to the recent Lhasa riots.
"It is obvious that Nepal has been sticking to the one-China policy," he said.
Talking about the recent anti-China activities by some Tibetan separatists in Kathmandu, Mainali noted that the Nepali government will not ignore the activities, which they believe, are not intended for peaceful purposes.
Source: Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6406212.html
Click the following to view the White Papers on Tibet issues:
Tibet -- Its Ownership And Human Rights Situation
New Progress in Human Rights in the Tibet Autonomous Region
Tibet's March Toward Modernization
White Paper on Tibetan Culture
White Paper on Ecological Improvement and Environmental Protection in Tibet
Tibet's Compulsory and free-of-charge Education
White Paper: Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet
Genuine Tibetans Spoke Ottawa, Canada 2008-07-23
Interview: Tibetologists say Tibetan culture well preserved
2008-07-24 10:04:00
The Tibetan culture has been well preserved and developing, said a visiting senior Chinese Tibetologist on Wednesday in Canada.
Tobdrub Wangben, professor of the Chinese Central University for Nationalities, told Xinhua in an interview that the Dalai Lama's claim of the so-called "cultural genocide" in Tibet is totally groundless.
Wangben is heading a four-member Tibetologist delegation on a three- day visit to Canada to promote understanding on the Tibet issue. The delegation has met with scholars from the Canadian International Council, local media outlets, government officials and parliamentarian representatives.
The total population of Tibetan ethnic group in Tibet has increased from nearly 1 million before 1951 to 2.77 million last year, while the illiterate rate dropped significantly from 95 percent in 1951 to 28 percent last year, Wangben explained with figures to make it clear whether the culture in Tibet was being damaged or developed.
When asked about the restrictions that foreign media encountered in Tibet, Wang Pijun, a senior official with the China Association for International Cultural Exchange, said that the Chinese government attaches great importance to strengthening communications and understanding with the international community on the issue of Tibet, and has arranged several rounds of visits by foreign correspondents to Tibet.
The government has promised to arrange more such tours in the future, Wang added.
Talking about the Dalai Lama's claim of not seeking Tibet independence, Lian Xiangmin, Director of Science and Research Office at China Tibetology Research Center, said people should not only look at what he says but also at what he does.
"The Dalai Lama said he is not seeking Tibet independence while he is the leader of the illegal Tibet government in exile," said Lian.
And it is also stated in the charter of some organizations such as the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) which seeks Tibet independence that they will listen to what the Dalai Lama says, and the Dalai Lama said he support the TYC's cause, Lian added.
Luorong Zhandui, professor of the Social and Economic Research Institute under the China Tibetology Research Center and a Tibetan himself, noted that the economy of Tibet and living standards of people there have improved greatly during the past years. The Qingzang Railway has proved to boost the local tourism considerably, and this is of vital importance to the industrial development of Tibet and to the promotion of Tibetan culture, he said.
http://eng.tibet.cn/news/today/200807/t20080724_414411.htm
Genuine Tibetans Spoke Sydney, Australia 2008-07-24
Tibetologist: China will not change policies on Tibet
2008-07-25 09:48:00
A Tibetan professor said in Sydney on Thursday that the incident took place on March 14 would not result in a policy change towards Tibet from the Chinese government.
The Chinese government will continue its support to Tibet to keep the peace and stability in the autonomous region, said Professor Sherap Nyima, head of the Chinese Tibetan delegation nowon a visit in Australia.
"The Chinese government will provide 170 billion yuan to Tibet during the period of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010) to improve social life and infrastructure there," Nyima said at a Tibetology seminar in the New South Wales Parliament House.
The seminar was attended by NSW members of parliament, representatives from the Chinese community in Sydney and local media.
Tibet has undertaken great changes in the past few decades, said Nyima, who is the Vice-President of the Central University of Nationalities of China, adding that the average annual income of the Tibetans increased to around 10,000 yuan in 2007 from 241 yuanin 1965 and the average life expectancy almost doubled in the pastfive decades.
Professor Tseyang Changngo, a member of the delegation and Vice President of the Tibet University in Lhasa, also said the Chinese government has spent lots of money and exerted great efforts in cultural protection in the region.
"I teach Tibetan history and women and gender studies in Tibetan language at my university. Tibetan language is also taught in primary and middle schools in Tibet. We Tibetans can even have Microsoft office software in Tibetan language and can send mobile messages in Tibetan language," she said.
At the seminar, Nyima also refuted criticisms that the Chinese government tried to change the demographic composition of Tibet by sending a large number of Han Chinese into the region. The real situation is totally different, he said.
"There are 2.8 million people in Tibet, of which Han Chinese only account for five percent and the Tibetans 92 percent. Moreover, Tibet is part of China and why the Hans are not allowed to come and help Tibetans build a better Tibet?" the professor asked.
Nyima said many people outside China know little about Tibet because they have never visited the place and are misled by Dalai Lama and a few foreign media with ulterior motives.
"I come here hoping to communicate directly with you and tell you the real truth about Tibet. I hope more people will visit Tibet from Australia and more Tibetan scholars will come here to exchange ideas with you," he said.
The seminar was organized by the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China.
The Tibetan delegation arrived here on Wednesday and will visit Canberra and Melbourne before leaving for New Zealand.
http://eng.tibet.cn/index/news/200807/t20080725_414746.htm
Forum on development of China's Tibet opens in Vienna
by: 2007-11-30 09:58:39
Nyima Tsering, vice chairman of China's Tibet Autonomous Region, addresses the First Forum on the Development of Tibet, China, in Vienna, Nov. 29, 2007. (Xinhua/Liu Gang)
The First Forum on the Development of Tibet, China is held in Vienna, Nov. 29, 2007. (Xinhua/Liu Gang)
Qian Xiaoqian, deputy director of State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China is making a speech in the forum, Nov. 29, 2007.
Tibet will further open up to the outside world and attract more direct foreign investment while promoting ecological and environmental protection, Nyima Tsering, vice chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, said here Thursday.
"We shall participate in domestic and international economic cooperation and competition in more fields and on a higher level, and strengthen cross-regional economic and technological exchanges and cooperation," Tsering said at the opening of "the First Forum on the Development of Tibet, China" in Vienna.
He said Tibet would work hard to develop an open economy and promote regional economic and trade cooperation on different levels and by various means, especially with southern Asian countries, in the wake of the launch of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
In his speech, Nyima Tsering elaborated on the progress achieved by Tibet over the past four decades and the challenges facing Tibetans.
He said that to pursue sustainable and balanced development of the autonomous region, Tibet must continuously push forward the "frog-leap" mode in economic and social development, accelerate infrastructure construction and promote the construction of "a new countryside."
It is a priority of the Tibetan government to improve the working and living conditions of farmers and herdsmen and increase their incomes, he said.
Tibet will also deepen reform and innovate systems, he added.
"We shall follow the established path of market economy development, treat the market as a guiding force, and continue to actively reform the investment and financing mechanism so as to attract more investment," he said.
According to Nyima Tsering, since the establishment of the Tibetan autonomous region, Tibet has been in the best period of economic development with the fastest economic growth thanks to the strong support of the central government of China and unselfish assistance by other parts of the country.
Tibet has maintained an economic growth rate of over 12 percent for the past six consecutive years, and in 2006, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the region reached 29.1 billion yuan (about 3.93 billion U.S. dollars), 89 times that of 1965, he said.
Over the last four decades, Tibet has witnessed comprehensive progress in social construction, he said.
"A fairly complete modern educational and medical care system has been installed in Tibet," he added.
There are six universities, 118 high schools, seven intermediate vocational schools and 880 elementary schools in Tibet, with a total enrollment of 540,000 students and attendance of 96.5 percent of the school-age population, he elaborated.
The life of the Tibetan people has improved significantly over the past four decades, he said.
"Social stability is being continuously maintained and people are enjoying their life and work," he said.
In his words, Tibet is a region rich in local resources, such as abundant grasslands, mineral, water, forest, flora and fauna, and tourist resources, which have created great conditions for Tibet's development.
But to achieve further progress, Tibet faces much challenges, he pointed out, citing weak infrastructure basis, investment and vulnerable ecological environment among others.
"We deeply understand we must make a lore more effort in the long run, and will sincerely implement a human-oriented and scientific outlook for coordinated and sustainable development, and work hard to solve existing problems while adhering to a policy of reform and development," he added.
The senior Tibetan leader encouraged people around the world to visit Tibet more instead of listening to "untrue" and "unfriendly" reports about the region.
"Tibet is a place where people live happily and also a beautiful tourist resort," he said. "I believe a fast-growing and new Tibet will leave every visitor an unforgettable memory."
The two-day forum on Tibet is jointly sponsored by the State Council Information Office of China, the Chinese embassy in Austria, the permanent mission of China to the United Nations and other international organizations in Vienna and Austrian organizations including the Organization to Support the Austrian and Chinese Economic Cooperations.
http://en.tibet.cn/news/tin/t20071130_289252.htm
To clarify: Dalai Lama and his so called "Tibetan independence"
click here
Primary School on Roof-of-the-World
http://pic.people.com.cn/GB/31655/6543727.html
This unique Primary School is located on Roof-of-the-World, 5573 meters above sea-level.
The Government of China is committed to provide a free-of-charge and compulsory education for every Tibetan child.
The Central Government of China invested a huge sum of money to re-build this school from ruins in 1986, so that the children of the nomads can receive an education.
This school covers an area of 8400 square meters and the building provides a useful area of 1221 square meters. The children are too far away from their nomadic families and are all staying in this boarding school for the entire school term.
Every morning the whole school will be singing the China national anthem.
The windows of this school are installed with double layers(rarely seen in China) due to winter fourty below temperature.
This school uses the latest technology, i.e. teaching Fine Art with computerized CD equipment.
The six teachers in this school and some of their students.
There are 141 students and all stay in this boarding school. It is too far from their nomadic camps. Students will learn how to take care of their bedding.
The school principal (also a teacher) is teaching his student how to read/write Tibetan.
The school principal's wife decided to move to such high altitude location, just to help out cooking tasks at the school.
Teaching Biology and practice it with a micropscope.
Students using computer aided equipments and internet access receive long distance educational training.
The cracks on a young face of every student review the hardship of the sun at high-altitude and lack of oxygen. It takes a very dedicated teaching staff to remain working long term in this special school.
The students automatically line up for their meals during lunch hours. This is a very well organized school.
Older students are serving rice (the main dish) to the students.
A study of the food being served, it reviews that students receive a very well-balanced diet.
After lunch being served, students are having fun at the school play ground.
During the Dalai Lama era there was no school or university, a child had to join one of the Monasteries to receive an education and that was the reason why many Tibetan mothers were forced by their own clans to give up their love ones to the Monasteries. Today, no Tibetan mother has to make such a decision.
The truth is that during the Dalai Lama era most Tibetan women were second class citizens and very seldom had any chance of an education. Today, all Tibetan children, both boys and girls, have equal chances of a free-of-charge and compulsory education. Tibetan women today provide a major and essential workforce in the government of Tibet Autonomous Region.
Without Lhamo Toinzhub(14th Dalai Lama), Tibet is better off today!
In 1951 Lhamo Toinzhub signed widely known as 'the 17 Pacts'
to run Tibet for Chairman Mao until he sneaked out in 1959.
For almost 9 years Lhamo Toinzhub had worked for Chairman Mao.
Tibet Today still fighting her Biggest Enemy...
Click below:
Secret CIA Sponsorship of Tibetan Rebels against China Exposed---
How A Ground-breaking Book Unveiled History as It Was
http://www.china-hiking.com/tibet/invasion.htm
In 1959 conned by then Ambassador in India(Henderson) at his own free will,
Lhamo Toinzhub left Tibet and thus had given up his right to run Tibet.
As an early version of Iranian Czar or Filipino Marcos, he was tricked to leave Tibet.
Since 1959 for 49 years Tibet Autonomous Region has been run by capable
native Tibetans, most of whom were a SERF during Dalai Lama era.
These Tibetan leaders should be the only people who can make decisions
for the future of Tibet Autonomous Region, NOT Lhamo Toinzhub.
He has neither Tibetans' Trust nor experience to run Democratic and Modern Tibet.
Tibetans do not want someone both a Political and Religious leader to head Tibet.
Why do nations want to have Tibet returned to a SERF system under Dalai Lama?
It is because they want to control Tibet with a puppet like Dalai Lama.
This will lead Tibet into neither Democratic nor 'Freedom of Choice'.
Our World is enough to have only one Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini !
USA Professor asked: Want Another Taliban?
Lhamo Toinzhub has to realize Tibet today is a well established society,
and stop allow himself being used as a puppy by nations against China.
It is sincerely hope before his approaching death Lhamo Toinzhub
(14th Dalai Lama) will give up his so called 'Tibet Independence'
and for once in entire life doing something good for people of Tibet.
The only way to avoid ending up in history like Iranian Czar or Filipino Marcos!
http://pic.people.com.cn/GB/31655/6543727.html
What to negotiate with Dalai Lama?
2008-07-01 16:41:00
To most people, no matter in the old Tibet or in Dharmsala today, where Tibetan government-in-exile locates, Dalai Lama is both a political and a religious figure. Although Dalai himself frequently refers to the "government-in-exile" as a "democratic government", he has never denied he is the political leader. But it does not make any sense at all to compare theocracy to a democratic system. If it did, people would assume he either lacks or ignore common sense.
Theocracy was abolished in Tibet. This is the reason why Dalai left Lhasa in 1959(click here), and it is also the result of his absence.
Tibet is an autonomous region, so the Tibetan autonomous government is the only legal government to represent Tibet, not that government-in-exile.
Therefore, to negotiate with China is actually to negotiate Dalai's future. Because he is not able to represent neither Tibet nor Tibetan on any legal grounds, and China will never consent to negotiate with him when he claims himself as the political figure of the "government-in-exile". I am not sure whether Dalai is clear about this or not.
http://eng.tibet.cn/news/today/200807/t20080701_410293.htm
What to talk with Dalai Lama?
2008-07-01 16:39:00
Seems a new round of talks between the Beijing central government and the Dalai Lama will start soon. Then, what are the topics on the table? Is it the current situation of Tibet, position of Tibet, future of Tibet, or the destiny of the Tibetan people, of course NOT.
The reason is simple. Dalai is a Buddhist lama, his past political status was based on the system of theocracy. The system, in which a society is ruled by a priest or monk who represent a god, has been abolished in Tibet long before. So if one is going to discuss with a monk the position and future of Tibet, and destiny of Tibetan people, doesn't that give an impression that China will allow theocracy to resume in Tibet?
Tibet is an autonomous region of China, and representing it is the government of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The 14th Dalai Lama has set up an "exile regime" in Dharmsala, India, and he claims to be the leader of the exile regime. The fact is that not a single state in the world today admits the legitimacy of Dalai Lama's exile government in Dharmsala. If the central government is going to discuss the position, future of Tibet, and destiny of Tibetan people, doesn't that give an impression that Dharmasala exile regime is legitimate?
Tibet has achieved a lot in the past 50-odd years, but Tibet's success and progress has nothing to do with the Dalai Lama(click here). He by no means can represent Tibet or the Tibetan people now. So, China's central government is not going to discuss with Dalai Lama the current situation of Tibet, position of Tibet, future of Tibet, or the destiny of the Tibetan people, but only the future and destiny of Dalai Lama himself.
http://eng.tibet.cn/news/today/200807/t20080701_410290.htm
Last opportunity for Dalai Lama
2008-07-01 16:41:00
The 14th Dalai Lama is running out of opportunities. And that's why he is using the Beijing Olympics as his last straw. But could he really make the best use of this opportunity? Some Westerners are providing Dalai Lama with badly-needed guidance and support, which shed light on why he frequented Western countries in a rush. However, there are vast differences in the interest of those Westerners' and Dalai's, which can be seen through the fact that Dalai has been given a cold shoulder by the West from time to time in the past decades.
Therefore Dalai should tell the difference in interests and stop binding himself to certain political forces, which will lead to his loss of opportunities. Judging from the current situation, Dalai Lama is losing his most important opportunities on mending ties with the Chinese central government.
Of course, it remained to be seen whether Dalai Lama still has any power and influence to muster, without the support of some political forces in the West.
http://eng.tibet.cn/news/today/200807/t20080701_410291.htm
Chinese central government officials meet with Dalai Lama's private representatives
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-03 15:37:37
BEIJING, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Du Qinglin, head of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, met with private representatives of the 14th Dalai Lama in Beijing recently, the department said on Thursday.
Du, also the vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), told the two representatives, Lodi Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, the central government's policy towards the Dalai Lama is consistent and explicit. The door for dialogue is always open.
The Dalai Lama should openly and explicitly promise and prove it in his actions not to support activities to disturb the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games, not to support plots to fan violent criminal activities, not to support and concretely curb the violent terrorist activities of the "Tibetan Youth Congress" and not to support any argument and activity to seek "Tibet independence" and split the region from the country, he said.
While the country is welcoming the 30th anniversary of its reform and opening up, Tibet, together with the rest of the country, has progressed to realize economic development and improve people's living standards while protecting the environment and effectively using resources, he said.
In Tibet, the adherence to the CPC leadership, the socialist system and the regional autonomy of ethnic minorities will not be altered, he said.
The central government will apply its policies in Tibet, support the region's economic and social development and work to improve living standards of people in Tibet as it did before.
Du also briefed them about the Wenchuan earthquake on May 12 and the relief work.
He said at time of difficulty, the Chinese nation has shown strong cohesiveness and profound love among its people. The relief work serves as vivid illustrations of China's protection of human rights.
The CPC implemented its principle of putting people first and ruling the country for the people, while the advantages of socialist system are also manifested in the quake relief, as indicated in the policy of saving lives first, nationwide mobilization for quake relief and timely and smooth flow of information, he said.
Zhu Weiqun and Sitar, two deputy heads of the department, also met with the Dalai Lama's representatives and exchanged ideas on detailed issues.
If the Dalai Lama makes positive moves, the next round of contact may be held before the end of this year, according to the officials of the department.
The Dalai Lama's representatives also expressed their ideas on several relevant issues and said they would report the results to the Dalai Lama.
During their stay in Beijing, the two toured the Olympic stadiums and talked with some Tibetologists.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/03/content_8483444.htm
Dalai Lama's 'new olive branch'
2008-08-22 09:51:00
A "new olive branch" from the Dalai Lama has staggered to the public by a western guy through a piece of western newspaper.
Nicholas D. Kristop has published an article on New York Times on August 7, the day before the opening of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and for the first time, the Dalai Lama is willing to state that he can accept the socialist system in Tibet under Communist Party rule while "the main thing is to preserve our culture, to preserve the character of Tibet, That is what is most important, not politics", according to that article.
What's the matter with Tibet and what crisis Tibetan characteristic is facing? What kind of problem makes the Dalai Lama sacrifice so much, even to compromise a lot to be willing to accept the socialist system to "preserve them"?
This topic is too gigantic and Tibet is also too far away. Let's just come to the details. A few days ago, I went to Dongdan and near the Xiehe Hospital I found a small shop with a lot of Tibetan Buddhism figures in its shop window and lots of Thangka and monks pictures on its wall. At that time, I really wanted to take some photos just for my western friends to tell them how the Tibetan culture is in today's Beijing. It's a pity that the shopkeeper refused me. So for as I know, there are many other kinds of such shops in Beijing run by Tibetans or local residents. Whether it can be run for long or not, it only depends on the business. Can this phenomenon reflect an aspect of current Tibetan culture?
Yesterday, I went to China Tibetology Research Center for some work. Two kilometers east away from the Bird's Nest where the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games opening ceremony was just held, the Tibetan-style building is next to some other Tibetan-style buildings, such as Tibet Mansion, Tibet Middle School, Tibetan Medicine Mansion and also the newly-finished Tibet Folk Custom Museum. Painted in deep purple, a kind of characteristic color for the top of Potala Palace and some Tibetan Buddhism monasteries as well as the color of Tibetan monks' robe, those Tibetan-style buildings gather together just like a Tibetan village in Beijing. In deed, the Tibetan culture has special characteristics and we can touch the characteristics only from the Tibetan buildings which we can easily find on street. We can definitely say that the Tibetan culture has never boomed in today's Beijing as there are so many Tibetan books and newspaper, literature and art, music and etc. What is the problem with protection and development of Tibetan culture? If there is, there is only one problem, that is after so many distort words from the Dalai Lama and some western media, how can the Chinese Government make more and more westerners believe that the Chinese Government has no genocidal policy for Tibetan culture.
As for the Tibetan characteristics, there are some Tibetan characteristics in the long history including elite and draff. There are some uncultured and outdated "characteristics", such as the feudal serf system under the combination institution of politics and religion and the feudal dictatorship of Tibetan Buddhism monasteries and large numbers of monks. Yes, all those dictatorship have disappeared and of course there is no measure to keep such "characteristics". Once there was such characteristic in the history of different ethnic groups and different countries, why should Tibet keep such "characteristics" while most of the westerners weren't keen on the medieval inquisition, the tithe and the indulgence.
The "olive branch" also mentions the disquieting future:" much of Tibet is likely to have been drowned in a sea of Chinese migration" and also delivers some "prescription":" to restrict migration into all Tibetan areas, inside and outside the "autonomous region," through China's existing system of residence permits. The Chinese authorities would stop issuing resident permits, known as hukou, to non-Tibetans for any Tibetan area..."
The fact is that the Chinese Government has no policy that the Dalai Lama said to encourage large numbers of immigration to Tibet, but with the economic development and social life progress of China, it is an indisputable fact that the population flow between western and eastern China is increasing. There is other ethnic people in Tibet while there is also some other ethnic people including Tibetan in eastern China. Many countries have experienced or are experiencing the nationalities flow. All the ethnic people are equal in China and if we don't allow other ethnic people to enter Tibet, will we allow Tibetans to go to the inland cities? If the restriction is only effective to some ethnic people, does it mean that there is one or some nationalities has or have special rights? And how about the others? While if we set some restriction to all the nationalities, will there be some so-called "Human Rights Issue"? In fact, we can find paper material recording that 1,300 years ago in the beginning of Tang Dynasty, there was Han-Tibetan intermarriage and intermarriage with other nationalities is an important characteristic of Tibetan culture. If there is some restriction for population flow, don't you be afraid of losing this "Tibetan characteristic"? Can all the different ethnic young people in Tibetan-populated areas fall in love according to their will? Or they can only enjoy their separation life? How about those "Tuanjie Zu", second generation or third generation with half, a quarter even eighth blood of Tibetan? In my opinion, there is no capable leader in China can solve such complicated problem and I'm afraid that we should hire some advisors from western countries.
There are some words confusing me in that article and I can't distinguish it is from the Dalai Lama or just from Nicholas. But it mentioned so-and-so institution won't take part in the talk with the representative of the Dalai Lama or such and such secretary in Tibet transfers to some other post, I believe he has put his foot in it.
Yes, the Dalai Lama expressed his will of returning home again, so please admit your fault and see clearly of the situation to drop your bargaining with the Central Government. In last half century, you have done too many things to distort the history of Tibet, spoil the image of our country, harm Chinese people's feeling and demolish the unification of our country and keep such situation is really not the best choice.
http://eng.tibet.cn/news/today/200808/t20080822_421710.htm
What kind of olive branch from the Dalai Lama?
2008-08-21 11:23:00
Just on the former day of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, "New York Times", an American newspaper, published an article titled "An Olive Branch from the Dalai Lama" by Nicholas D. Kristof, a journalist who once worked in China. The article introduces the Dalai Lama's new opinions about Tibet.
Before analyzing the Dalai Lama's new ideas, I would like to share two points which puzzle me most.
Firstly, the Chinese government always opens doors to the Dalai Lama for talks. As a matter of fact, from 2002 to the beginning of this year, the departments concerned have conducted six rounds of talk with the Dalai Lama. In addition, after the March 14 Riots the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Communist Party of China (CPC) had dialogues with the Dalai Lama twice although local people in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) were very angry with separatists due to great damages caused by riots. If the Dalai Lama has any new ideas indeed, he should communicate with the central government directly instead of conveying his comments by western media. The proposition from a western journalist not only makes people disbelieve its authenticity but also doubts the Dalai Lama's sincerity. Does he wish to solve the issue or just to strengthen public relations among the western world for another time?
Secondly, one point of the Dalai Lama's new allegation is that the object of the dialogue should be changed to the supreme leader from the United Front Work Department of CPC, which is out of all reason. That would do no good to the following dialogue. On the contrary, it will set new blocks to the progress. So I have to suspect the Dalai Lama's sincerity of resolving issues.
The first point of the Dalai Lama's new ideas is that "the Dalai Lama is willing to state that he can accept the socialist system in Tibet under Communist Party rule", which he regards as an important compromise. Actually, this is what the Dalai Lama should do according to the dialogue. It is really wise enough to interpret an inevitable thing as a big compromise, in terms of negotiation skills. It is a popular tactic in western public relations to put forward a fake topic and then gain virtual profit by making compromises. With the establishment of the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965 after the democratic reform in 1959, the socialist system has become the foundation of Tibet's society today. The result of changing the reality is unimaginable. On the foundation of current social system, TAR has made great progress on the way to modernization. Further promoting the autonomous region is millions of Tibetan people's requirement and rights. It is selfish that some few people hope to change the progress of the history, which is impossible as well.
The second point of view is about the Dalai Lama's so-called "greater Tibet". He can accept the current boundary between TAR and other provinces but calls for "greater Tibet" "to be placed under one administration" and demanded "to create a Regional Authority for Tibetan Affairs that would administer key aspects of life" in greater Tibet. That is to say, he would like to gain the practical domination over greater Tibet by superficially giving up greater Tibet. Here we can learn the negotiation tactics of "moving forward two steps by moving back one step". In history, there has never been "all Tibetan areas" with an effective and consolidate administration. In the rule of law, his claiming greater Tibet disregards other nationalities' rights completely. As for politics and real life, if the plan of greater Tibet takes effect, a race launder with unprecedented scale will happen. Thus the plan of greater Tibet itself is ridiculous and persisting this plan is one of the greatest barriers for the dialogue between the central government and the Tibet separatist group. The Dalai Lama changed the expression way of the issue of greater Tibet without giving up the preposition actually, which is the essence of the problem of the so-called new ideas.
After recommending the new policy of his highly-praised Dalai Lama, Kristof raised a series of detailed requests on behalf of the Dalai Lama, such as allowing the Dalai Lama to arrive in or depart from China according to his will; restricting other ethnic people's migration; stopping the patriotism education in monasteries; permitting pre-school age children to go to school; promoting the status of Tibetan language and boosting the occupancy of Tibetan cadres. In my opinion, it is the Dalai Lama's rights to raise requests, but all those requests should be based upon rationality and reality.
Let's have a simple discussion at some topics. Firstly, the so-called migration problem. In terms of the modern nomology, except the well-organized and large scale migration to some areas based upon governmental public power and resources, it is the basic rights under the guarantee of constitution for citizens to migrate according to one's own interest demand within the frontier. It is wrong to restrict individual free migration according to the nomology and according to the modern human rights view, it is also improper. Now the fact is that there is no issue for government to organize migration to Tibet or some other Tibetan-inhabited areas while the government should respect and protect the behavior of individual migration according to market economy demand.
Secondly, permitting pre-school age children to go to school. The key problem is the balance of rights claim. China respects citizens' religion freedom according to the law and in opposite, the citizen must respect the law to fulfill the legal obligation and this is a kind of balanced contract relationship. It is the rights for children to enjoy education and the duty of parents and the government to help children to finish compulsory education. The reasonable claim is to help those children finish education and allow them to choose their religion belief after they have ability to fulfill their rights to perform their rights according to the constitution.
Thirdly, about the Tibetan language. With the development of modernization, any nationality will meet the challenge of adjusting to the modernization and protecting the traditional culture. A clear fact is that since the Reform and Opening-up, the Chinese Government has done a lot to popularize Tibetan language, protect and develop the Tibetan culture and has also made a lot of progress. In stead of criticism without any fact basis, the Chinese Government deserves affirmation and encouragement for its efforts on Tibetan language and Tibetan culture.
In Kristof's quotation cited from the Dalai Lama, a marked paragraph shows that he pays much attention to those words: "The main thing is to preserve our culture, to preserve the character of Tibet, That is what is most important, not politics." It sounds really good, but if you read carefully, you will still feel that culture is just used as an excuse as what the Dalai Lama cares most is the politics.
http://eng.tibet.cn/news/today/200808/t20080821_421558.htm
Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
click here
Click the following to view the White Papers on Tibet issues:
Tibet -- Its Ownership And Human Rights Situation
New Progress in Human Rights in the Tibet Autonomous Region
Tibet's March Toward Modernization
White Paper on Tibetan Culture
White Paper on Ecological Improvement and Environmental Protection in Tibet
Tibet's Compulsory and Free-of-Charge Education
White Paper: Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet
Click the above for full text of White Papers on various Tibet Issues
Potala Palace is the symbol of Tibet, China
On July 1, 2006 Qinghai-Tibet Railway put into operation
which changed the History of Tibet forever !!
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Ride Qinghai-Tibet Railway with us to visit Potala Palace
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