Today, China’s Global Times ran this headline. Apparently in China today is the 60th anniversary of the Chinese liberation of Tibet. The goal has been eerily like America’s spreading Christianity across our west … bringing civilization to the natives.
Not sure how the Chinese editors picked the year 60. Under Mao, China invaded Tibet in 1950. Before then, Tibet had not only been independent, a large swath of what is now Szechuan was historically Tibet. Nonetheless, in the face of reality, in 1951, the Tibetans signed a seventeen-point agreement reaffirming China’s sovereignty over Tibet. Initially, like America’s Indian Territory .. today’s Oklahoma, by treaty Tibet remained led by Dalai Lama. In 1959, however, the Dalai Lama fled Tibet to northern India and the Tibet Autonomous Region within China was officially established in 1965. China took over the schools and religious sites. Now they wait for the Dali Lama to die when China will appoint his successor.
Reading the history of this atrocity is all too like reading Ulysses Grant. The US President, having freed the slaves, wanted to bring civilization to the Lahota, the Nazaho, the Crow, the Cheyenne, the peoples of the west. Grant’s armies, led by Sherman, made war and forced the barbarians onto reservations where Indian Agents dispensed blankets and canned food while the missionaries dispensed bibles and forced the children to attend schools honoring Jesus.
So the little red book replaced the scrolls of Dharma much as the Christian bible replaced the legends of the elders. My version of the headline is to your left.
The Tibet issue is important and serious. Unlike some of the other stuff on the Ave this is significant, even if being bent just a little bit. Tibet though underlies China’s Communist party goals and strategy’s. It is why China has territorial disputes with India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The silk road project is bolstered and dependent on the territorial claims of Tibet and is the ideological underpinning of the project The Chinese claims on Taiwan and the South China sea are dependent on the occupation of Tibet not being undermined. (Odd China can make a claim on this area and essentially make it part of China but Israel cannot do the same in the Golan Heights, and China will not support the Israeli claims on the Golan.) There are hundreds of Islands owned by Japan, Philippines, Taiwan, Australia that China says are just as Chinese as Tibet. And eventually China will bring civilization to the renegade Hermit Kingdom provinces.
Abd remember it’s the Progress of the People’s Communist Party of China that counts here. A rather more materialistic sort of progress compared to that ot the Dalai Lama. Hopefully there is still room for the snow leopards, and yaks.