Nationalism at core of China's angry reaction to Tibetan protests
BEIJING: Like so many Chinese, Meng Huizhong was horrified by the violent Tibetan protests in Lhasa. She cringed at videos of Tibetan rioters attacking a Chinese motorcyclist. Her anger deepened as Tibet dominated her online conversation groups, until it settled on what might seem like an unlikely target: the Communist Party.
"We couldn't believe our government was being so weak and cowardly," said Meng, 52, a mother and office worker, who was appalled that the authorities failed to initially douse the violence. "The Dalai Lama is trying to separate China, and it is not acceptable at all. We must crack down on the rioters."
For two weeks, as Chinese security forces have tried to extinguish ongoing Tibetan protests, Chinese officials have tried to demonstrate the party's resolve to people like Meng. They have blasted the foreign media as biased against China, castigated the Dalai Lama as a terrorist "jackal" and called for a "People's War" to fight separatism in Tibet.
If the tough tactics have startled the outside world, the Communist Party for now seems more concerned with rallying domestic opinion by using and responding to the deep strains of nationalism in Chinese society. Playing to national pride, and national insecurities, the party has used censorship and propaganda to position itself as defender of the motherland - and block any examination of Tibetan grievances or its own performance in the crisis.
But the heavy emphasis on nationalism is not without risks. With less than five months before the opening of the Beijing Olympics, China's sharp criticism of the foreign media comes precisely when it wants to present a welcoming impression to the outside world. Instead, Chinese citizens, including many overseas, are posting thousands of angry messages on Web sites and making crank calls to some foreign media offices in Beijing.
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Chinese state media have also inundated the public with so many reports from Lhasa about the suffering of Han Chinese merchants and the brutal deaths of Chinese victims - but with no coverage of Tibetan grievances - that critics have accused the government of "fanning racial hatred." In the recent past, nationalist upsurges have focused on outsiders, especially the Japanese, but Tibet is part of China, so the effect is to sharpen domestic ethnic tensions.
"When a big crisis happens here, they show their true nature," said Liu Xiaobo, a liberal dissident and government critic. "I am really shocked by the language they used concerning the Dalai Lama. They are talking about a 'People's War.' That is a phrase from the Cultural Revolution."
Analysts have long debated how often the Communist Party steers and inflames nationalism versus how often nationalist public attitudes are beyond the party's control. In the run-up to the Summer Games, the steady attacks against China on issues like Darfur, global warming, air pollution and human rights abuses have increasingly been interpreted by many Chinese, including those overseas, as an unfair attempt to undermine China's Olympic moment.
But the Tibet crisis has touched directly on the raw nerve of separatism at the core of Chinese nationalism. Tibet is usually a low-profile issue within China, especially compared with Taiwan. But most Chinese, influenced by the government, are interpreting the Tibetan crisis as an attempt to split China.
On Sunday, Xinhua, the official news agency, released an article titled "Dalai Clique's Masterminding of Lhasa Violence Exposed." It cited an "unnamed suspect" who confessed that the "Dalai clique" had organized and incited the protests to force China to allow the Dalai Lama to return and achieve more autonomy for "Greater Tibet."
The statement came on the same day that activists disrupted the ceremony in Athens in which Greek officials handed over the Olympic flame to organizers of the Games.
Evading massive security to unfurl protest banners, the demonstrators shouted "Free Tibet!" and charged into a police cordon, trying to block the flame from making its final 100-meter, or 330-foot, run into Panathinaiko Stadium.
Backed by riot squads, scores of police officers detained 10 of an estimated 15 demonstrators, whisking them off to Greece's national police headquarters minutes after the ceremony kicked off.
The torch is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Monday before taking off on the longest, most ambitious round-the-world relay in Olympic history: a 137,000-kilometer, or 85,100-mile, 130-day route that will cross five continents and climb to the summit of Mount Everest before finally arriving at the National Stadium in Beijing for the Aug. 8 opening ceremony.
In Beijing on Sunday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao reiterated China's position that it was open to talks with the Dalai Lama if he gave up his desire for independence and acknowledged that Tibet and Taiwan were inseparable from China, The Associated Press reported.
For now, Chinese public anger about the Tibetan protests is mostly confined to the Internet, but the enormous domestic media attention on Tibet has also focused the public on how the issue is being treated abroad.
"If Bush meets the Dalai Lama right now, or if the Congress does anything, the Chinese people might do something," said Tong Zeng, who helped organize anti-Japanese protests in the last major nationalism campaign in 2005. Tong said the Internet was filled with angry comments about the recent meeting between the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and the Dalai Lama.
"My thinking is that if there is anything passed in the House, the Chinese people will take to the streets," he predicted.
Communist Party leaders have hoped the Olympics would showcase China as a modern, confident and nonthreatening emerging world power, while also validating the party's hold on power. President Hu Jintao has advocated a "harmonious society" to signal a new government effort at addressing inequality in society. At the same time, China's soft power abroad is rising with its bulging foreign-exchange reserves and its increasingly active diplomatic role on issues like the North Korea nuclear problem.
But the Tibet crisis has shown a leadership that has seemingly stepped back into the party's harsher past. Buddhist monks in Tibet are now being subjected to punitive "patriotic education" campaigns. Paramilitary police officers and soldiers have swept across huge areas of western China as part of a broad crackdown. Party leaders, including the prime minister, have vilified the Dalai Lama and blamed the "Dalai clique" for trying to sabotage China's Olympic moment.
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"The language they are using about everything has been Cultural Revolution hyperbole," said Susan Shirk, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs and the author of "China: Fragile Superpower." "This does not look like the reaction of a strong, confident leadership."
Last week, a group of prominent Chinese intellectuals offered a rare contrary voice by issuing a petition that called on the government to allow Tibetans to express their grievances and to respect freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
Liu, the government critic, who helped draft the petition, said the government's attacks on the Dalai Lama and its censorship of state media coverage was the same strategy it used during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations when it jailed pro-democracy leaders as "black hands" and did not televise footage of soldiers firing on students.
"You can see the propaganda machine operating in full gear," Liu said. "That shows the true nature of the government. It hasn't changed at all."
Scholars often describe nationalism as China's state religion now that the Communist Party has shrugged off socialist ideology and made economic development the country's priority. Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet specialist, said modern Chinese nationalism could be traced to Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary who described the country's main ethnic groups - the Han, Manchu, Hui, Mongolian and Tibetan peoples - as the "five fingers" of China.
Today, Han Chinese constitute more than 92 percent of the population, but without one of those five fingers, China's leaders do not consider the country whole.
"The Communist Party has used nationalism as an ideology to keep China together," said Anand, a reader in international relations at Westminster University in London. He said many Chinese regard the Tibetan protests "as an attack on their core identity."
"It's not only an attack on the state," he said, "but an attack on what it means to be Chinese. Even if minorities don't feel like part of China, they are part of China's nationality."
This logic helps explain why Chinese nationalist sentiment has been inflamed by perceived Western sympathy for the Tibetan protests - an anger that has mostly focused on the foreign media.
Chinese media commentators have accused foreign news coverage of being more sympathetic to Tibetans in Lhasa than to Chinese who lost their lives and property in the riots. Meanwhile, Chinese from around the world were infuriated when several Western news organizations mislabeled photographs of the police beating pro-Tibet protesters in Nepal as being from China.
Last week, Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, described the foreign coverage of Tibet as a "textbook of bad examples" - even as the government refused to allow journalists free access to Tibet or other restive regions in western China to investigate the crackdown
Party leaders know the volatility of nationalism from 2005. The government tried to control - some would say manipulate - the anti-Japanese protests that escalated during a tense diplomatic tussle between China against Japan. But the protests became violent and grew so rapidly that the government finally forced them to end.
Tong, the organizer, said the anti-Japanese movement was continuing today - if modestly, at a time when the government is trying to improve relations with Japan. But he said the nationalism that infused the anti-Japanese movement was deeply rooted and transcended divisions that can separate people in China.
"In our group, we have the right, we have the middle and we have the left," Tong said. "It is similar to the Tibet issue. For most Chinese people, the bottom line is you should never divide China."
Many Chinese people know little about Tibet's different interpretation of its history and regard Tibetans as having been granted special subsidies and benefits from the government because of their ethnic status. For many Chinese, the protests come across as ingratitude after years in which China has built roads, a high-altitude railroad and other infrastructure for Tibet.
"Our country is very tolerant to all kinds of religions," said Meng, the office worker. "And the Tibetans are taking advantage of this."
Meng said she got her information about Tibet from state media and various postings on the Internet. After the Lhasa riots, she was infuriated when she saw a photograph of policemen cowering behind riot shields without fighting back. But she said her attitude toward the government's response began to change when she saw Qin, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, take a tough line on Tibet and also accuse the foreign media of distorted coverage.
She said she was also pleased to see that President Hu Jintao had rejected a request from President George W. Bush to open a new dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Still, she said she wanted even tougher action.
"I want the killers to be executed," she said. "Well, I know it is just my wish, because the government will not go that far because of the ethnic issue."
Anthee Carassava contributed reporting from Athens. Zhang Jing contributed research from Beijing.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/30/asia/china.php
BEIJING: Like so many Chinese, Meng Huizhong was horrified by the violent Tibetan protests in Lhasa. She cringed at videos of Tibetan rioters attacking a Chinese motorcyclist. Her anger deepened as Tibet dominated her online conversation groups, until it settled on what might seem like an unlikely target: the Communist Party.
"We couldn't believe our government was being so weak and cowardly," said Meng, 52, a mother and office worker, who was appalled that the authorities failed to initially douse the violence. "The Dalai Lama is trying to separate China, and it is not acceptable at all. We must crack down on the rioters."
For two weeks, as Chinese security forces have tried to extinguish ongoing Tibetan protests, Chinese officials have tried to demonstrate the party's resolve to people like Meng. They have blasted the foreign media as biased against China, castigated the Dalai Lama as a terrorist "jackal" and called for a "People's War" to fight separatism in Tibet.
If the tough tactics have startled the outside world, the Communist Party for now seems more concerned with rallying domestic opinion by using and responding to the deep strains of nationalism in Chinese society. Playing to national pride, and national insecurities, the party has used censorship and propaganda to position itself as defender of the motherland - and block any examination of Tibetan grievances or its own performance in the crisis.
But the heavy emphasis on nationalism is not without risks. With less than five months before the opening of the Beijing Olympics, China's sharp criticism of the foreign media comes precisely when it wants to present a welcoming impression to the outside world. Instead, Chinese citizens, including many overseas, are posting thousands of angry messages on Web sites and making crank calls to some foreign media offices in Beijing.
Related Articles
Dalai Lama rejects talks, China says
The Olympic flame's journey to the opening ceremony
Tibetan protesters try to storm Chinese Embassy in Nepal
Chinese view of Dalai Lama bodes ill for its Tibet policy
Today in Asia - Pacific
A highway that binds China and its neighbors
Nationalism at core of China's reaction to Tibet unrest
Dith Pran, 'Killing Fields' photographer, dies at 65
Chinese state media have also inundated the public with so many reports from Lhasa about the suffering of Han Chinese merchants and the brutal deaths of Chinese victims - but with no coverage of Tibetan grievances - that critics have accused the government of "fanning racial hatred." In the recent past, nationalist upsurges have focused on outsiders, especially the Japanese, but Tibet is part of China, so the effect is to sharpen domestic ethnic tensions.
"When a big crisis happens here, they show their true nature," said Liu Xiaobo, a liberal dissident and government critic. "I am really shocked by the language they used concerning the Dalai Lama. They are talking about a 'People's War.' That is a phrase from the Cultural Revolution."
Analysts have long debated how often the Communist Party steers and inflames nationalism versus how often nationalist public attitudes are beyond the party's control. In the run-up to the Summer Games, the steady attacks against China on issues like Darfur, global warming, air pollution and human rights abuses have increasingly been interpreted by many Chinese, including those overseas, as an unfair attempt to undermine China's Olympic moment.
But the Tibet crisis has touched directly on the raw nerve of separatism at the core of Chinese nationalism. Tibet is usually a low-profile issue within China, especially compared with Taiwan. But most Chinese, influenced by the government, are interpreting the Tibetan crisis as an attempt to split China.
On Sunday, Xinhua, the official news agency, released an article titled "Dalai Clique's Masterminding of Lhasa Violence Exposed." It cited an "unnamed suspect" who confessed that the "Dalai clique" had organized and incited the protests to force China to allow the Dalai Lama to return and achieve more autonomy for "Greater Tibet."
The statement came on the same day that activists disrupted the ceremony in Athens in which Greek officials handed over the Olympic flame to organizers of the Games.
Evading massive security to unfurl protest banners, the demonstrators shouted "Free Tibet!" and charged into a police cordon, trying to block the flame from making its final 100-meter, or 330-foot, run into Panathinaiko Stadium.
Backed by riot squads, scores of police officers detained 10 of an estimated 15 demonstrators, whisking them off to Greece's national police headquarters minutes after the ceremony kicked off.
The torch is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Monday before taking off on the longest, most ambitious round-the-world relay in Olympic history: a 137,000-kilometer, or 85,100-mile, 130-day route that will cross five continents and climb to the summit of Mount Everest before finally arriving at the National Stadium in Beijing for the Aug. 8 opening ceremony.
In Beijing on Sunday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao reiterated China's position that it was open to talks with the Dalai Lama if he gave up his desire for independence and acknowledged that Tibet and Taiwan were inseparable from China, The Associated Press reported.
For now, Chinese public anger about the Tibetan protests is mostly confined to the Internet, but the enormous domestic media attention on Tibet has also focused the public on how the issue is being treated abroad.
"If Bush meets the Dalai Lama right now, or if the Congress does anything, the Chinese people might do something," said Tong Zeng, who helped organize anti-Japanese protests in the last major nationalism campaign in 2005. Tong said the Internet was filled with angry comments about the recent meeting between the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and the Dalai Lama.
"My thinking is that if there is anything passed in the House, the Chinese people will take to the streets," he predicted.
Communist Party leaders have hoped the Olympics would showcase China as a modern, confident and nonthreatening emerging world power, while also validating the party's hold on power. President Hu Jintao has advocated a "harmonious society" to signal a new government effort at addressing inequality in society. At the same time, China's soft power abroad is rising with its bulging foreign-exchange reserves and its increasingly active diplomatic role on issues like the North Korea nuclear problem.
But the Tibet crisis has shown a leadership that has seemingly stepped back into the party's harsher past. Buddhist monks in Tibet are now being subjected to punitive "patriotic education" campaigns. Paramilitary police officers and soldiers have swept across huge areas of western China as part of a broad crackdown. Party leaders, including the prime minister, have vilified the Dalai Lama and blamed the "Dalai clique" for trying to sabotage China's Olympic moment.
Related Articles
Dalai Lama rejects talks, China says
The Olympic flame's journey to the opening ceremony
Tibetan protesters try to storm Chinese Embassy in Nepal
Chinese view of Dalai Lama bodes ill for its Tibet policy
Today in Asia - Pacific
A highway that binds China and its neighbors
Nationalism at core of China's reaction to Tibet unrest
Dith Pran, 'Killing Fields' photographer, dies at 65
"The language they are using about everything has been Cultural Revolution hyperbole," said Susan Shirk, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs and the author of "China: Fragile Superpower." "This does not look like the reaction of a strong, confident leadership."
Last week, a group of prominent Chinese intellectuals offered a rare contrary voice by issuing a petition that called on the government to allow Tibetans to express their grievances and to respect freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
Liu, the government critic, who helped draft the petition, said the government's attacks on the Dalai Lama and its censorship of state media coverage was the same strategy it used during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations when it jailed pro-democracy leaders as "black hands" and did not televise footage of soldiers firing on students.
"You can see the propaganda machine operating in full gear," Liu said. "That shows the true nature of the government. It hasn't changed at all."
Scholars often describe nationalism as China's state religion now that the Communist Party has shrugged off socialist ideology and made economic development the country's priority. Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet specialist, said modern Chinese nationalism could be traced to Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary who described the country's main ethnic groups - the Han, Manchu, Hui, Mongolian and Tibetan peoples - as the "five fingers" of China.
Today, Han Chinese constitute more than 92 percent of the population, but without one of those five fingers, China's leaders do not consider the country whole.
"The Communist Party has used nationalism as an ideology to keep China together," said Anand, a reader in international relations at Westminster University in London. He said many Chinese regard the Tibetan protests "as an attack on their core identity."
"It's not only an attack on the state," he said, "but an attack on what it means to be Chinese. Even if minorities don't feel like part of China, they are part of China's nationality."
This logic helps explain why Chinese nationalist sentiment has been inflamed by perceived Western sympathy for the Tibetan protests - an anger that has mostly focused on the foreign media.
Chinese media commentators have accused foreign news coverage of being more sympathetic to Tibetans in Lhasa than to Chinese who lost their lives and property in the riots. Meanwhile, Chinese from around the world were infuriated when several Western news organizations mislabeled photographs of the police beating pro-Tibet protesters in Nepal as being from China.
Last week, Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, described the foreign coverage of Tibet as a "textbook of bad examples" - even as the government refused to allow journalists free access to Tibet or other restive regions in western China to investigate the crackdown
Party leaders know the volatility of nationalism from 2005. The government tried to control - some would say manipulate - the anti-Japanese protests that escalated during a tense diplomatic tussle between China against Japan. But the protests became violent and grew so rapidly that the government finally forced them to end.
Tong, the organizer, said the anti-Japanese movement was continuing today - if modestly, at a time when the government is trying to improve relations with Japan. But he said the nationalism that infused the anti-Japanese movement was deeply rooted and transcended divisions that can separate people in China.
"In our group, we have the right, we have the middle and we have the left," Tong said. "It is similar to the Tibet issue. For most Chinese people, the bottom line is you should never divide China."
Many Chinese people know little about Tibet's different interpretation of its history and regard Tibetans as having been granted special subsidies and benefits from the government because of their ethnic status. For many Chinese, the protests come across as ingratitude after years in which China has built roads, a high-altitude railroad and other infrastructure for Tibet.
"Our country is very tolerant to all kinds of religions," said Meng, the office worker. "And the Tibetans are taking advantage of this."
Meng said she got her information about Tibet from state media and various postings on the Internet. After the Lhasa riots, she was infuriated when she saw a photograph of policemen cowering behind riot shields without fighting back. But she said her attitude toward the government's response began to change when she saw Qin, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, take a tough line on Tibet and also accuse the foreign media of distorted coverage.
She said she was also pleased to see that President Hu Jintao had rejected a request from President George W. Bush to open a new dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Still, she said she wanted even tougher action.
"I want the killers to be executed," she said. "Well, I know it is just my wish, because the government will not go that far because of the ethnic issue."
Anthee Carassava contributed reporting from Athens. Zhang Jing contributed research from Beijing.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/30/asia/china.php