Protests in Tibet

rand0M aXiS

You are correct, it is from last year.

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Sama

China Offers to Meet with Dalai Lama Envoys

"BEIJING — China appeared to bend to international pressure on Friday as the government announced it would meet with envoys of the Dalai Lama, an unexpected shift that comes as Tibetan unrest in western China has threatened to cast a pall over the Beijing Olympics in August...."

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vistet

""The policy of the central government toward the Dalai has been consistent and the door of dialogue has remained open," he said.

"It is hoped that through contact and consultation, the Dalai side will take credible moves to stop activities aimed at splitting China, stop plotting and inciting violence and stop disrupting and sabotaging the Beijing Olympic Games so as to create conditions for talks," the official added. "

(from Xinhua today)

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Munivar

There is a saying "When in a hole, the first thing you do is STOP DIGGING".

China is unaware of this, it seems.

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machadinha

One of our national papers pointed on to this recent article by Robert Kagan, The End of the End of History ("Why the twenty-first century will look like the nineteenth").

I was unaware of the author (or the paper for that matter); he's apparently a Republican co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and foreign policy advisor to John McCain, I suppose he'll be well-known to our US members. Not exactly my kind of guy in other words, and the comments to his article with The New Republic also feature some heated debates to that effect.

Be that as it may, it offers an interesting look at current global relationships and the position of Russia and China (as well as that of "the West") in particular I thought, although to me the end and conclusions are far less pointed than his initial argument, and his final inclusion of the issue of Islamism comes as something of a weird sidestep to his central point (but far less so considering his backgrounds I guess).

Anyway and as always: See what you make of it. I didn't find my time wasted reading it.

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kullukid

There is another saying, by chairman mao, goes something like.

"A lie told a hundred times becomes the truth" KK

Munivar

Aha...but we all know that Satyameva Jayate.

vistet

I found this piece from The Paper Republic interesting , on the psychology of Chinese net-chauvinism , from the viewpoint of a translator .

The Swedish Nobel foundation has belatedly found out that the Chinese television censored the inaugural speech at Nobel awards , which mentioned human rights abuse in China , and hold one of Swedens largest media firm responsible for making it possible , and cuts their contract.

IVAN

Interesting article machadinha.

I wrote a somewhat similar article on a Croatian web site, some time ago, named: "Is National Socialism the Future of Humanity", in which I argue how a basically "national socialist" system, like the one in China, based on a developing systemic/cybernetic core model (rather than an ideologic one) could very well beat Western democracies, particularly in the context where the individual(ism)-oriented societies of the West lack systemic resources to adress certain challenges that are slowly eroding the very biological base of these societies (they could simply die out of demographic failure, and be replaced by populations with quite different core civilisational values).

But this is too broad a subject for this topic.


What clearly comes out from this pro-Tibet protest situation we are witnessing, is that the "Chinese issue" is no more restricted to just an autocratic government one, but also involves the Chinese (Han) population, which clearly displays strong signs of nationalism and nationalistic pride, and seems quite happy with the "autocratic government" it has.
The hope that development in China will lead to democracy or even to the will of the broader Chinese population for democracy and "freedom" might well be an illusion.

And frankly, could they be blamed, since, from a Chinese perspective, the West may well look like a very shortsighted society directed towards eventual failure because of core structural contradictions.

I even wonder/worry if this situation could not represent a subtle "threshold" for the Chinese population (which could maybe have gone either way), but could now more firmly opt for a direction that is not the "integration with the world" psychological paradigm anymore.

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IVAN

Then again, what is the "World" from that psychological perspective?

Maybe just an illusion that will eventually disappear...

rajiveanand

Axl Rose has been working on an album by the same name for, like, the last ten years... It's doubtful whether his project or the real thing will ever come to fruition!

On a related note, 'Free Tibet' flags made in China

R.

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ind_pal

History has shown that people remain nationalistic whatever the flavour of the rulers at the time may be. They would rather have different 'government' if that was possible.

It is also possible to fool most of the people most of the time. Majority of the Chinese people would not be able to comprehend what it is like to live in a free country. This is probably the most dangerous aspect of the current situation and is what is keeping the current rulers in power.

Even abroad it is difficult to discuss anything seriously with any Chinese people because they are afraid.

Democracy is not perfect but at least the people have some say about what direction they broadly wish their country to go.

machadinha

Yes, thanks for your thoughts Ivan. Just briefly for now,

*cough* You'll realize national socialism is a rather tainted term to use right? I can see what you're getting at I think (if I agree is another thing, probably not), but I wonder if the term is in place here; or if it can be used today to any useful effect, other than what it has come to mean.

ps

I'm not at all convinced of this; it could be argued that history shows that people can be made to adhere to whatever identity happens to be force-fed them. Nationality in particular is not a given but a human construct of course, and has historically always been precisely shifting.

IVAN

So, what did you assume about my post, that you shouldn't have assumed if you read it with strict logic exclusively?

capt_mahajan

This conversation just got too esoteric for me