Fact vs. Myth

PHOTO: View of he Potala Palace, Lhasa

Fact vs. MythChina’s favourite propaganda about Tibet and how to counter it

SFT info

MISSION:Students for a Free Tibet UK (SFT UK) works in solidarity with the Tibetan people in their struggle for free-dom and independence. The SFT UK network is part of the international SFT movement of young peopleand activists around the world. Through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent direct action, wecampaign for Tibetans’ fundamental right to political freedom. Our role is to empower and train youth asleaders in the worldwide movement for social justice.

VISION:SFT UK’s vision is of an independent Tibet, as part of a just and equitable world, free of oppression, inwhich there is respect for the earth and all living things. We see a world where young people realise thatthey can and must take responsibility to change our world for the better, and are equipped with the skillsand knowledge to do so effectively and non-violently.

VALUES:We believe every individual has the right to be free. Those who enjoy freedom have the power and also theresponsibility to make positive change in the world. We seek to create opportunities to inspire, enable andmotivate all people to see that change is possible. We value creativity in every pursuit and we believe it isessential to have fun while working towards our vision of a just and equitable world.

This guide contains information from SFT HQ publication ‘Fact vs Myth’, ‘China’s Favorite Propaganda onTibet…and Why It’s Wrong’ by Lhadon Tethong with additional notes

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For more info, contact us at:sftuk.org

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Introduction

Students for a Free Tibet knows that there are two sides to every story. Nonetheless, Tibetans and theirsupporters often face an uphill battle against the Chinese government and others, in trying to expose thetruth about Tibet. In an attempt to help you understand some of the arguments on both sides, we havecompiled this section on "Fact vs. Myth."

People often ask us for advice on how to respond to China’s misinformation campaign on Tibet. More andmore often these days, this type of propaganda is being forwarded not just by the Chinese leadership andwell-known China apologists (like Tom Grunfeld and Mel Goldstein) but by a host of scholars, writers andother characters in the west.

While it is frustrating and upsetting to have to listen to this from Chinese sources, I’m sure many wouldagree (especially Tibetans) that it is absolutely maddening to have to hear it from western students,academics and writers, given that they have had the privilege of a quality education and free speech, aswell as free access to information.

There is a document that can help illuminate where some of this wrong information may be coming from.On June 12, 2000 the Chinese government convened a meeting on “Tibet-related external propaganda andTibetology work in the new era.” A leaked document from this meeting shows just how much China feelsthreatened by increasing support for Tibet in the world and how seriously they take our actions. In fact, theChinese leadership has plotted a course of action, which includes using western intellectuals to “promoteour views in western society.”

Overall, this is good news for Tibet. It is good news for the thousands of people around the world who haveworked to bring the Tibetan struggle to the world stage. It shows that we are being successful, that China issensitive to criticism and they are regrouping in order to fight us.

Remember the quote from Gandhi:“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to keep up the good fight.

-Lhadon Tethong, Director, Tibet Action Institute

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China’s favourite propaganda

It's no secret that the Chinese government sees propaganda as a key weapon in its efforts to battle themovement for Tibetan rights and independence. Luckily for Tibetans, Beijing's Orwellian rants - for examplelabeling the Dalai Lama a "serpent" and a "wolf in monk's robes" - have bordered on the hilarious. That is,until recently. Beijing's propaganda strategy is shifting to a greater utilization of Chinese and Westernscholars and hand-picked Tibetan spokespeople. A leaked document from the Chinese Communist Party'sNinth Meeting on Tibet-Related External Propaganda in 2001 stated, "Effective use of Tibetologists andspecialists is the core of our external propaganda struggle for public opinion on Tibet." Beijing is alsostarting to send out propaganda tours of carefully selected groups of its Tibetan officials - always with aChinese escort. In order to address these recent moves, Students for a Free Tibet has deconstructedBeijing's favorite propaganda points justifying China's invasion and continuing occupation of Tibet.

"Tibet has always 'belonged' to China"

This is Beijing's favorite argument, though the exact moment when Tibet supposedly became "part" ofChina keeps changing; it's variously said to have happened in the seventh century, the 13th century, theQing Dynasty, or simply "always." It's hard to do justice to two thousand years of Tibetan history in a fewparagraphs, and the suggested resources at the end of this document give much more detail than we canput here:

· The seventh century: Beijing used to claim that the marriage of Tibet's King Srongtsen Gampo to ChineseTang Dynasty Princess Wencheng in 641 A.D. marked the "union of the Tibetan and Han Chinesenationalities." It stopped claiming this when it was repeatedly pointed out that Wencheng was junior toSrongtsen Gampo's Nepali wife, Princess Brikuti, and that the Tang emperor was forced to give hisdaughter because of the strength of the Tibetan empire. In fact, the Tibetan army sacked and brieflyoccupied the Tang capital in 765 A.D., and the 822 A.D. peace treaty forced the Chinese to treat the"barbarian" Tibetans as equals.

· The 13th century: Beijing claims that Tibet became part of China during the Yuan Dynasty in the mid-13thcentury. The Yuan was actually a Mongol empire, with Chinggis Khan and his descendents conqueringChina and nations from Korea to Eastern Europe. For China to claim Tibet based on this would be like Indiaclaiming Burma since both were part of the British Empire. The Mongols never ruled Tibet as anadministrative region of China, and Tibet was given special treatment because Tibet's Sakya lamas werethe religious teachers of the Mongol emperors. By the fall of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, Tibet had againbecome in charge of its own affairs.

· The Qing Dynasty (1644-1911): Beijing is opposed to past Western and Japanese imperialism, but seesnothing wrong in claiming Tibet based on the Manchu Qing Empire. This claim doesn't stand up either. TheManchu rulers of China were Buddhists, and Tibet's Dalai Lamas and the Manchu emperors had a specialpriest-patron relationship called Cho-Yon whereby China committed to providing protection to the largelydemilitarized Tibetan state. Chinese nationalists may see this as sovereignty, but it wasn't. As therelationship became strained, China at various times exercised influence and sent armies into Tibet - butso did Nepal during this time. China expanded its influence in Tibet after 1720, as a powerful countrydealing with a weaker neighbor. It later tried to occupy Tibet by force, violating the Cho-Yon relationship, butwith the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Tibetans expelled the Chinese and the 13th Dalai Lamaproclaimed Tibet's complete independence.

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Until the Chinese invasion of 1950-51, Tibet enjoyed full sovereignty as defined under international law: ithad a territory, a population, a government exercising effective control, and the ability to enter intointernational relations (such as the 1914 Simla Convention with Britain, trade delegations to the West, andneutrality in World War II).

· 1951: China claims sovereignty over Tibet from before 1951, but this is an important date. This is whenafter defeating Tibet's small army, China imposed the Seventeen Point Agreement on the Tibetangovernment, demanding that Tibet "return" to Chinese sovereignty (raising the uncomfortable question ofwhy such a surrender treaty was needed unless Tibet was a country independent of China in the firstplace). This Agreement was legally invalid because of duress, but the Tibetan government had little choicebut to try to coexist with China under its provisions. It became clear that Beijing had no intention to live upto its promises, and the Tibetan government fully repudiated the document during China's brutalsuppression of the 1959 Tibetan uprising.

· "Always": Do we even need to respond to this? Irish Ambassador to the U.N. Frank Aiken said it best inthe U.N.'s debate on Tibet in 1959: "Looking around this assembly, … I think how many benches would beempty in this hall if it had always been agreed that when a small nation or a small people fall in the grip of amajor power no one could ever raise their voice here; that once there was a subject nation, then mustalways remain a subject nation. Tibet has fallen into the hands of the Chinese People's Republic for thelast few years. For thousands of years, … it was as free and as fully in control of its own affairs as anynation in this Assembly, and a thousand times more free to look after its own affairs than many of thenations here."

"Old Tibet was a backwards, feudal society and the Dalai Lama was an evil slaveholder"

Beijing (as well as sympathetic Western scholars such as Michael Parenti, Tom Grunfeld and Anna LouiseStrong) asserts that "pre-liberation" Tibet was a medieval, oppressive society consisting of "landowners,serfs and slaves." Tashi Rabgay, a Tibetan scholar at Harvard, points out that these three alleged socialclasses are arbitrary and revisionist classifications that have no basis in reality. There were indeedindentured farmers in old Tibet. There were also merchants, nomads, traders, non-indentured farmers,hunters, bandits, monks, nuns, musicians, aristocrats and artists. Tibetan society was a vast, multifacetedaffair, as real societies tend to be. To try to reduce it to three base experiences (and non-representativeexperiences at that) is to engage in the worst kind of revisionism.

No country is perfect and many Tibetans (including the Dalai Lama) admit that old Tibet had its flaws andinequities (setting aside whether things are better under Chinese occupation). But taking every real orimagined shortcoming that happened in a country over a 600-year period and labeling it the "way it was" ishardly legitimate history. Any society seen through this blurry lens would come up short. And in many ways,such as the elimination of the death penalty, Tibet was perhaps ahead of its time. The young 14th DalaiLama had begun to promote land reform laws and other improvements, but China's take-over halted theseadvances. It is instructive to note that today the Tibetan government-in-exile is a democracy while Chinaand Tibet are under communist dictatorship.

The crucial subtext of Beijing's condemnation of Tibet's "feudal" past is a classic colonialist argument thatthe target's alleged backwardness serves as a justification for invasion and occupation. These are thepolitics of the colonist, in which the "native" is dehumanized, robbed of agency, and debased in order tomake occupation more palatable or even necessary and "civilizing." China has no more right to occupy a"backward" Tibet than Britain had to carry the "white man's burden" in India or Hong Kong.


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"China 'peacefully liberated' Tibet, and Tibetans today are happy under Chinese rule"

Beijing's line is that the Tibetan people, and particularly the peasantry, welcomed the "peaceful liberation" ofTibet and that it was they themselves who "overthrew the landlords." In fact, China's People's LiberationArmy decimated the 5,000-strong Tibetan army in October 1950 at Chamdo, eastern Tibet. There's noquestion that some Tibetans initially greeted the Chinese (the communists claimed they were only there to"help develop" Tibet); that such welcomes were in the vast minority is equally clear. Tibetan histories ofTibet, such as Tsering Shakya's Dragon in the Land of Snows and W.D. Shakabpa's Tibet: A PoliticalHistory, corroborate this. The late Panchen Lama's courageous 70,000-character secret petition toChairman Mao summarizes how the "liberation" negatively affected Tibetans of all walks of life.

Indeed it was the Tibetan peasantry, the very group the Chinese "liberation" was said to have helped, whoformed the core of the popular resistance to the Chinese occupation. By 1959, a guerilla resistancemovement called Chushi Gangdruk ("Four Rivers, Six Ranges") that started in eastern Tibet had spreadnation-wide. The resistance reached a symbolic culmination on March 10, 1959, when thousands ofTibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama's Norbulinka Palace to act as human shields to protect him from arumored Chinese kidnapping plot (hardly the acts of a people longing to be rid of an oppressive Tibetanregime).

The armed resistance ended in the 1970s, at the urging of the Dalai Lama, but substantial popularresistance remains. This resistance has taken many forms over the years: pro-independencedemonstrations, postering, mass non-cooperation, economic boycott, and risking the perilous Himalayancrossing to live as refugees self-exiled from their own homeland. Ronald Schwartz has written a book,Circle of Protest, analyzing ways in which Tibetans have used religion to express covert political messages.Chinese writer Wang Lixiong provides another analysis in an article entitled Tibet: The People's Republic ofChina's 21st Century Underbelly. Wang opposes Tibetan independence, but believes there is a risk ofBeijing succumbing to its own propaganda. He recognizes the strength of Tibetan nationalism andpro-independence sentiment, and writes, "the military['s] role in sovereignty is only like a rope, which can tieTibet to China, but cannot keep our bloodlines together over the long term."

"Tibetans are better off now than they were before the 'peaceful liberation'"

This incorrectly assumes three things: [1] that Tibetans are incapable of developing without Chineseintervention (a modern version of the "white man's burden"); [2] that Beijing's developmental priorities andideas of progress are what Tibetans want; and [3] that material development somehow excuses thecolonialist occupation of Tibet. Let's take these in order:

[1] To imply that Tibetans are incapable of developing their own country is insulting, condescending andchauvinistic. Nor is it proper to compare apples and oranges: Tibet five decades ago cannot be comparedwith today, since a free Tibet would not have existed in a vacuum in the intervening years. One only has tolook at the model success of the Tibetan refugee community to wonder how much better life in Tibet couldbe if Tibetans were actually in charge of their own country.

[2] Yes China has developed Tibet, but urban Tibetans only benefit marginally and rural Tibetans barelybenefit at all. Tibetans without Chinese language skills and connections are left to fend for themselves assecond-class citizens in their own country. China's own statistics show Tibet's per capita income falls belowthat of all Chinese provinces, and vast areas of rural Tibet lack basic healthcare and education. Beijing'soverarching priority is tying Tibet to China by moving in Chinese colonists to the urban areas and creating aTibetan economy dependent on resource-exploitation and state subsidies. It is spending huge amounts ofmoney on infrastructure to solidify its control, such as a railroad to Lhasa on which Beijing will spend morethan what it has put towards healthcare and education in the entire 50+ years it has occupied Tibet.


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Some scholars such as Hong Kong-based Barry Sautman argue that these policies are beneficial toTibetans and aren't colonialism because China isn't following the same demographic strategy as previouscolonial powers. Nevertheless, Tibet today is a vast resource-extraction colony and its urban areas arefilled with Chinese settlers. According to the UNDP in 2000, real GDP per capita in Tibet is $169, asopposed to $680 for China as a whole and $4,000 in Shanghai.

Adult Literacy is 38% as opposed to 81% in China. Maternal mortality is 50 per 10,000 as opposed to 9 per10,000 in China. All these show that China's much-vaunted "development" is skewed by political priorities(securing control, building infrastructure) and isn't benefiting Tibetans.

[3] Beijing would never argue that just because Hong Kong under British rule grew to become one of theworld's major economic centers and enjoyed one of the highest living standards in Asia, this somehowjustified British imperialism. It seems hypocritical for it to use exactly this line of reasoning for Tibet, whetherfactually valid or not.

"China has already granted Tibetans autonomy"

This argument is emerging as one of Beijing's new favorites, a way of combating the Dalai Lama'smoderate proposals for a compromise solution. In its latest White Paper, Regional Ethnic Autonomy inTibet, Beijing claims that it has given Tibetans substantial autonomy rights already and that this means the"Tibet question" is solved. The reality is that this alleged autonomy is crippled by severe limits and byBeijing's ultimate control. Autonomy in the so-called "Tibet Autonomous Region" is extremely limited, isgranted or retracted at Beijing's will, and is based on power-relationships rather than clearly defined rights.Most fundamentally, it's hard to speak of "autonomy" when the government is controlled by a non-democratic, communist party dictatorship that prohibits independent institutions or organizations. Beijing'soverriding concern in Tibet is "stability" (meaning fighting the independence movement) and all otherconcerns are subordinate. As a result, Beijing retains huge formal and informal ability to dictate policies in"hard" issue areas such as politics and law. There is a limited flexibility in "soft" issue areas such as cultureand economics, but even this is subject to Beijing's ultimate power as shown for example by the strictmonastery controls and incentives for Chinese settlers that Tibetans themselves would not willingly enact.

Tibet's lack of real autonomy is further underscored by looking at who the actual decision-makers are.Ultimate power lies in Beijing. Tibetans do occupy some figurehead positions such as governor of the "TibetAutonomous Region," but these officials are largely considered to be Beijing's puppets. Beijing doesn't trustthe Tibetan cadres at lower levels, and is constantly trying to root out their private religious devotion andloyalty to the Dalai Lama. As a result, real power is exercised by Chinese officials in Beijing and Tibet in-cluding Tibet's communist party chairman, who has never been a Tibetan. The importance of thecommunist party can't be over-emphasized, because ultimate power in China comes through this body.

Beijing's unconvincing claims of Tibetan autonomy can't paper over the Tibetan people's unrealized right toself-determination. Even the U.N. General Assembly explicitly recognized this right in its 1961 resolution onTibet (Res. 1723(XVI)). This right means Tibetans have the legal right freely to determine their own politicalstatus, and freely to pursue their economic, social and cultural development. Self-determination is acomplicated issue, but to put it briefly: Tibet's history as a sovereign country and China's continuing andwidespread violations of Tibetans' fundamental political, economic and other human rights give the Tibetanpeople the right to choose their own political destiny.

[An interesting note: Until very recently, Beijing referred to "national regional autonomy," for example in theSeventeen Point Agreement it forced on Tibet in 1951. In the past few years, Beijing has instead been talk-ing about "regional ethnic autonomy," even rewriting history by altering the Seventeen Point Agreement inits contemporary textual references and web sites.


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This shift appears to be a belated realization that recognizing Tibetans (and other so-called minority groupslike Uighurs) as a "nationality" gives support to their demands for self-determination. Oops! Some analystsalso believe that if autonomy is redefined as an "ethnic" privilege, it will become easier for Beijing to justifytaking away all pretense of autonomy as Chinese immigration shifts the ethnic balance.]

"Tibetans in exile, especially the Dalai Lama, are a bunch of aristocrats seeking to reestablish theold regime"

The notions that the Tibetan refugee community longs to reestablish an aristocracy has nothing to do withthe real aspirations of the Tibetan freedom movement. Currently there are over 150,000 Tibetans living inexile around the world; to characterize this group as "former aristocrats" is ludicrous when one considerstheir numbers and diverse backgrounds from Tibet.

Tibetans never saw their country as perfect and the Tibetan government-in-exile is not advocatingreestablishing the system that existed before 1959 (nor would it be possible). The Dalai Lama has declaredthat he won't hold a political position in a free Tibet - despite that the vast majority of Tibetans inside andoutside of Tibet would probably elect him in a heartbeat - and has laid out guidelines for a democraticfree Tibet (see http://www.tibet.com/future.html). The government-in-exile is a democracy run by a primeminister (currently Samdhong Rinpoche) and parliament elected by universal suffrage in the refugeecommunities. The movement for Tibetan independence permeates all segments of Tibetan refugee society,as anyone who has spent time in the Tibetan refugee settlements in India or attended a Tibetan gatheringin the West can attest.

"The Dalai Lama is a US government puppet out to 'split' China"

Beijing claims that the Dalai Lama's status as a "Western pawn" is proved by CIA funding to the Tibetanresistance fighters in the 1950s and '60s. Former CIA agents Kenneth Knaus and Tom Laird have bothwritten books on the CIA's involvement in the Tibetan guerilla resistance movement, which movement wasnever controlled by the pacifistic Dalai Lama. These books and other historical documents and testimonyshow that the Tibetan resistance was very much an indigenous reaction by Tibetans to China's invasion oftheir homeland. Tibetans were willing to take any help against so large an occupying force, and the CIA'sview of Tibet's utility in a global war against communism doesn't detract from the legitimacy of the Tibetancause. The elites of the US and other liberal democracies now prioritize trade with China, and much of theirpressure to act on Tibet comes from grassroots public sympathy.

"Human rights are China's internal affair"

Even if Tibet weren't an illegally occupied country and therefore a subject of legitimate internationalconcern, the world still has a legitimate interest in Beijing's human rights abuses in Tibet and China. Certainhuman rights issues, like the prohibitions on genocide and torture, are jus cogens (peremptory norms ofinternational law) that may never be violated. Other human rights issues are covered by the variousinternational conventions that China has signed and/or ratified. The increased global focus on fightingterrorism, moreover, makes injustice anywhere harder to ignore and gives the world even more of a stakein finding a lasting, peaceful solution to the problems in Tibet.

Often directed at Western Tibet supporters:"Anyone who hasn't been to Tibet has no legitimacy in talking about it"

This is often said by someone who them self may never have been to Tibet, or whose own motives andinterests are suspect. It is a line designed to perpetuate an unjust status quo by de-legitimizing a maximumnumber of people who could possibly challenge the injustice. Going to Tibet would undoubtedly beinformative, and all Tibet supporters who can go should; visitors are usually struck by Tibet's naturalbeauty, the warmth of its people, and a pervading sense of a land under military occupation.


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But you don't need to go to Paris to know the Eiffel Tower exists, and you don't need to be jailed in Tibet'sDrapchi Prison to know that political prisoners are tortured there.

“Tibetans are terrorists!”

This claim has become more popular post-9/11, as China attempts to place Tibetans in the same mould asviolent Jihadists, believing this will win them sympathy and legitimacy from other nations when crackingdown violently on Tibetan ‘seperatists’. But the claim is roundly ignored by non Chinese-state media and byforeign governments, and supporters of the Tibetan cause, we can counter that it is offensive not only toTibetans but to those who have died at the hands of terrorists worldwide for the Chinese state to make thiserroneous claim about Tibetans in order to paint themselves as victims when in fact it is the Chinese regimewho are undeniably proven to be the perpetrators of terror against Tibetans. The Chinese state chooses toplay up ‘ethnic violence’ and will seize on cases where civilians from one group have scuffled with thosefrom another; notably in East Turkestan, where the state reports in detail any incidents of Uyghurs injuringHan Chinese, but not of Chinese, civilians or more often military, abusing Uyghurs. The same was true ofthe 2008 Tibetan Upsiring, where the state concentrated on footage from a single incident where Tibetanshad overturned cars and set fire to shops, using the same footage over and over throughout the perioddespite almost all of over a hundred protests having been peaceful, while ignoring the dozens pf cases ofpolice brutality, torture and massacres carried out against peaceful protesters. There have been only acouple of incidents of bombings in Tibet, and it’s difficult to know whether these have been state-orchestrated. Certainly the bomb plot against Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche was a state-engineered case, andthere was also an explosion in 2008 and a bombing in Chamdo in 2011 which were blamed on Tibetans, yetnobody was killed and it is suspected reports have been falsified. In any case, it’s important toseparatedubious incidents like these from the vast majority of Tibetan protests, which are peaceful andresult in clearly evidenced violent responses from the Chinese regime, including arrests, torture, beatings,fatal shootings and massacres.

For over 60 years, the Tibetan cause has been peaceful. This is a huge testament to the Tibetan people’sresolve to stick to the principles of non-violence despite daily abuses being undertaken against them, andas we’ve seen from the Arab Spring, much shorter periods of oppression have led to armed resistancewhich has not been seen as terrorism by the vast majority of nations. It’s unlikely the Tibetan cause willbecome violent, but even if it did, there would be grounds to state that after such a long period of violenceagainst them, some might see a violent reaction as self-defense, so long as it was directed at the Chinesestate rather than the Chinese people. In the end, if foreign governments are serious about the ‘war onterror’ and ‘winning hearts and minds’, it would be a good move for their own security to back the Tibetanpeople’s peaceful cause; if such a well known non-violent movement was to be successful, it would showthose who may otherwise be tempted towards radicalisation in other countries to think that there are other,peaceful alternatives which can work.

Since 2011, the Chinese state has moved to paint self-immolation as a ‘terrorist’ act, and this is a difficulttopic for some Tibet supporters. The state claims that self-immolation is contrary to Buddhist teachings,which is not an accurate statement, and also that those who have self-immolated were ‘crimminals’ ormentally unstable. This claim has been disproven by the very rational notes and messages left by thosewho have self-immolated. But there is still unease about the topic, as most of us living in the free world areunable to fully understand the depth of suffering Tibetans in Tibet go through, making it hard to comprehendwhy somebody would self-immolate, especially people with families or their whole lives ahead of them. Weshould not pass judgement on this, nor should we entertain the Chinese state’s claim that self-immolation is‘violent’ (it does not harm others, which perhaps shows that even in the depth of crisis, Tibetans wouldrather hurt themselves than their oppressors) but we should instead focus on the circumstances which leadpeople to self-immolate and to demand that the Chinese state addresses the greivances put forward by theTibetan people.


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“The Tibetan cause is just a celebrity fad”

Over the years, there have been numerous celebrities who have shown support for Tibet, and the DalaiLama himself has a somewhat celebrity status. This can lead to the criticism that the Tibetan cause is ‘run’by or favoured only by out-of-touch westerners with no real contact or connection with what is happening inTibet. But again this is a case of China (and often simply members of the public) attempting to downplaythe Tibetan cause and to sidetrack people from the point in hand; what is happening today to Tibetansinside Tibet. Some Tibet groups, like SFT, actively train and encourage Tibetans in exile to be the leaders ofthe movement, and gain information about what is really happening inside Tibet from brave Tibetancontacts inside who risk their lives and freedom to get evidence of China’s abuses through the state’s strictmedia and communications controls and into the foreign media. The role of celebrities is merely to reachlarger cross-sections of the world’s population using their media prominence. Some celebrities who havebeen long term supporters are also activists in their own right, and use that platform to push governmentsand international bodies to act for Tibet. This is a benefit, but it is by no means a prime focus of the cause.

“The Tibet movement is a Western plot”

Typical of an old fashioned Cold War state, the Chinese regime likes to play divide and rule, and attemptsto appeal to the Chinese people’s national pride by making any contentious issues (be that TiananmenSquare, state corruption, pollution or Tibet) an ‘us and them’ issue. But the Chinese regime is not trulyrepresentative of the Chinese nation; otherwise it would allow the Chinese nation to vote on who runs theChinese state. One thing that the regime does have some success in is mobilising Chinese people to getbehind the Chinese nation against other groups. The state often accuses ‘Western’ governments, especiallythe US, of working with Tibetan ‘separatists’ (most notably the Dalai Lama) and of controlling the foreignmedia to report negatively on the activities of the Chinese regime. It also accuses NGOs who work on theTibet issue of being run by Westerners who have alterior motives, or claim that they are backed bygovernments seeking to damage China’s wealth, power and reputation. Those these views are spuriousand typical of a paranoid state used to pnly having its own opinions heard, the amount of resources theChinese state spends on influening the world’s media (notably in its globalisation of state propagandaagencies Xinhua and CCTV) means some Chinese state views fall into the public conscioussness.

Increasingly, the younger generation of exiled Tibetans are becoming the leaders of the movement, and thisis a vital step for the development of the cause and for its success. It’s understanable that Tibetans whohave lived inside Tibet are afraid to take political action, or simply have never been taught about politics likethose growing up outside Tibet are. It’s also understanable that Tibetans whose parents grew up in Tibet orwho still have family in Tibet may be brought up to be careful of getting involved in politics. But that dynamicis changing, notably with the Tibetan Uprising of 2008 and the diversification of the movement inside Tibet.Now, Tibetans inside Tibet are leading the movement; as the Dalai Lama has said, they are ‘our boss’. Andin the exile community across the world. more Tibetans are leading. In the end, there will always be a placefor non-Tibetan supporters, and the Tibetan people will always benefit from foreign support, but anindependent Tibet will be led by Tibetans, so the Tibetan movement should be led by Tibetans too.

China has ‘developed’ Tibet

When Chinese leaders, Embassies and companies are criticised for the abuses in Tibet, one of the mostcommon responses is to ignore the criticism alltogether and to focus on the amount of money China isinvesting in ‘developing’ Tibet. Impressive statistics and pictures of advanced building projects in Tibet canpersuade some that China’s occupation is beneficial for Tibet, and when it comes to investment, thestatistics are largely true, but using them when criticisms of human rights abuses are made is a smoke-screen tactic. Though China is ‘developing’ Tibet, in is doing so for China’s gain, not Tibet’s. China buildshuge, advanced factories, municipal buildings and projects for migrants in order to strip Tibet of its naturalresources, which fuels China’s booming economy. Tibetans are paid less than Chinese for many jobs, don’tbenefit from ‘development’ and are left with resulting pollution and destruction of communities.


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Students for a Free Tibet UKA report by Students for a Free Tibet UK

Tibet will be free.

Fact vs. Myth

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