The first of what I fear will be many articles posted here on the China-Tibet issue.A longish spiel on the erosion of Tibetan culture. Things like school being taught in Chinese. But then again before the Chinese came flooding in most Tibetans never learned to read and write in the first place. Is it tradition versus progress? Tradition versus progress and state-controlled media :P Anyway, was surprised to learn that the Dalai Lama does not desire a boycott of the Beijing Olympics despite the rising death toll and (accusations of) cultural genocide.
2 comments:
But then again before the Chinese came flooding in most Tibetans never learned to read and write in the first place. Is it tradition versus progress?
Interesting line of thought. Have you tried it out with other situations:
"But then again, before Europeans came flooding in, most Native Americans (Australian Aborigines, Subsaharan Africans, etc.) never learned to read and write in the first place. Is it tradition versus progress?"
I don't know. Primitivity has its champions, certainly. It is almost a religion, in fact. Back to raw nature and all that. Erase the blot of technological man from the face of the earth etc etc.
To understand why so many westerners have soft spots in their hearts for Tibet, you'd almost need to understand the waves of enthusiasm for Eastern Religion that have swept over the western world periodically over the past century or two.
China's CCP, for all its corruption, pollution, and political oppression, has never garnered that level of nostalgia, somehow.
The Native American argument makes a lot of sense to me I'm sorry to say. It was unthinkably horrible the way it happened, but at the end of the day, if the Americas hadn't been colonized we'd still be in the 19th century, and I like my dentists well equipped.
Something similar seems to be happening in Tibet. And in China. The fact that Wikipedia is completely blocked in China, and search engines heavily cencured, is shit. As is anti-Tibetan policy and behavior by the Chinese in Tibet. But it seems pretty inevitable that the Chinese are the ones who will be building skyskrapers and power plants in the region, they have the largest population on earth. Like the Dalai Lama said: the Chinese have to learn how to be good hosts.
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