Scouring the Internet about Tibet

I found a lot of good blogs and videos, and I even wrote something.

I am so-called "pro China," but I agree that the argument that Tibet always was a part of the Chinese empire is not a good argument. I think actually a lot of Chinese people know this, they have trouble articulating the exact issue. The issue is the level of British and American influence in Tibet and on Chinese politics for the greater part of the past two centuries. The British, in particular, but also the Germans, French, Italians, and Americans forced China, which was militarily weak, into many treaties allowing Western access to its ports, the sale of opium, and "renting" land. You may not know that at some point they even ransacked and destroyed the Old Summer Palace. During the 1911-1949, the country was in turmoil and fought WWII during a civil war. The United States supported the KMT, but they were not popular with the people. One of the main headquarters was in Chengdu, Sichuan, which is east of Tibet, so many KMT ran West to Tibet and India, which was still a British colony until 1950. There is not a good boundary between China and Tibet, and the CCP did not want to risk letting the KMT recuperate there and launch counterattacks. Also, as a result of Western involvement, the Chinese are sensitive to Western demands to "free Tibet" in the name of human rights, especially given that America just "freed Iraq". So that issue is about political power, which is about economics and military.

Political power plays mold public opinion on each side. Of course Chinese people are biased, but they found out what propaganda was during the Cultural Revolution, and the take-away lesson has been, don't trust any media and try to take into account biases. In contrast, Western media has enjoyed much praise in the past 50 years for being fair and unbiased, with Walter Cronkite and other revered newscasters. During the Tiananmen Square in 1989, many Chinese students viewed American democracy and American media as an ideal. Americans felt very proud about this and their free media, and so they never consider that it may be be biased. After the Western coverage of Tiananmen and now of the Tibet protests, and now that millions of Chinese people have access to Western media and internet, Chinese people's idealism of the West has been shattered. Most Chinese know most protesters and journalists themselves act in good faith, but we still get very frustrated, especially when people just accuse you of being "a CCP hack." I already talked about this in my angry post, but just to reiterate in a non-angry way, China has been a rival and even enemy of the US for a long time, and even though the Cold War is technically over, many people's sentiments are ingrained in their beliefs. When you are taught your whole life that someone morally base and not to trust them, and then suddenly they are not really your enemy anymore, it is rare for sentiments to catch on right away, especially when it sells news.

I do think there are lots of problems with China, but the Tibet issue is not so simple. This whole situation hasn't been all bad, though. I think little by little, Chinese people are speaking up and perhaps even being heard.