What does a free Tibet mean?

Let There be Understanding

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By Lloyd Lofthouse

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

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Many in the West do not know the China I know. I am married to Anchee Min, noted author of Red Azalea; Becoming Madam Mao; Empress Orchid, and The Last Empress. Anchee was born in Shanghai and suffered through Mao%u2019s Cultural Revolution along with everyone else in China including Tibet. In fact, Red Azalea (a New York Times Notable Book that also won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award) is Anchee%u2019s memoir and deals with the years she spent in the labor camps where she injured her back.

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Today, Anchee is an American citizen and she loves this country. The United States gave her a chance to live when she would have died. On the other hand, for the last decade, I have been immersed in Chinese culture and history.

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My education about China started in 1966 when I fought in Vietnam as a field radio operator in the United States Marine Corps against the spread of Communism. Until I met Anchee and started to learn about the real China, my opinion matched the image of Mao%u2019s Red Army joining the Korean conflict in the 1950s. Communists were evil. They were bogeymen, someone to fear and want to destroy. It is easy to distrust them, even today.

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My wife says that the people of China were lied to by Mao. They were told that most Americans were starving and were the slaves of capitalists. After arriving in the United States, Anchee learned differently.

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The China of Mao is not the China of today. Mao ruled like a modern emperor for twenty-seven years. After he died, China changed for the better. Deng Xiaoping opened the doors to capitalism. China%u2019s leaders did not want a repeat of the Cultural Revolution. They implemented term limits%u2014 two five years terms. An elected official can not serve after turning sixty-seven. He must step down. This means that by 2012, the new leaders of China will all have been educated in the West like Deng Xiaoping was.

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Today%u2019s China allows limited freedoms in autonomous regions like Tibet and the provinces of Xingjian and Mongolia where thirty million Islamists live. In Tibet, Buddhist monks worship from the monasteries that were destroyed by Mao%u2019s army and rebuilt after he died. Prior to the current outbreak of violence in Tibet, China had a hands off policy regarding the monasteries.

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Most of the support for the Tibet freedom movement stems from the fact that the Dalai Lama is a charismatic and noted public speaker. He has traveled the world for decades and won the hearts and minds of people like Richard Gere and Nancy Pelosi. What is there not to love? After all, the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Dalai Lama%u2019s prime-minister has said that China never ruled over Tibet prior to 1951. The Dalai Lama has stated that cultural genocide is taking place in Tibet, but he offers no explanation for what that means. Genocide is a powerful word and used in this context, it is misleading.

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What the Dalai Lama isn%u2019t saying is that prior to Mao%u2019s brutal reoccupation of Tibet during the Cultural Revolution, Tibet was a feudal society supported by serfs and slaves. It was mandatory for families with two or more sons to send one or more to a monastery to become lamas. The rest of Tibet was controlled by a handful of powerful landlords with serfs and slaves working for them on huge estates. Children did not go to school. Only the lamas learned to read. Everyone else in Tibet was illiterate and superstitious. This is the Tibet that Mao invaded.

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The Chinese government claims that China ruled over Tibet for hundreds of years, and that China has a right to be in Tibet. Hardly anyone in the West believes these claims. How can China compete with a charismatic individual like the Dalai Lama that goes on television and says, leave my peaceful people alone? When there is a choice between who to believe, the Dalai Lama or the Communists, who would you believe? If I hadn%u2019t married Anchee and started learning about the real China, I would believe him too.

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What I%u2019m saying in this essay is backed by respectable sources. One comes from Robert Hart%u2019s letters written in the 19th century and published by the Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press. Robert Hart was a major historical character in China during much of the 19th century. He is considered the %u2018godfather of China%u2019s modernism%u2019. The other source comes from a piece written by a doctor in the October 1912 issue of National Geographic Magazine. Both support China%u2019s claims. China clearly ruled over Tibet prior to Mao%u2019s reoccupation in 1951. As a matter of fact, China ruled over Tibet for almost a thousand years.

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The Dalai Lama%u2019s supporters in the West have romantic misconceptions that life was ideal in Tibet prior to 1951. Reality is different. Life was short and brutal in a land that looks like Shangri-La but isn%u2019t. China has built a public school system at great expense, so Tibetan children can learn to read and become educated for the first time in history. Buddhism has not died in China so why should it vanish from Tibet? There are still Buddhist monasteries in China and Tibet. I%u2019ve been to one south of Shanghai. I%u2019ve seen the monks. I%u2019ve seen people lighting incense and offering prayers. Does that sound like there is no religion in China?

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There are four separatist movement in Tibet supported by people like Richard Gere and Nancy Pelosi because of the Dalai Lama. Many Tibetans are not peace loving like the Dalai Lama. During China%u2019s long history in Tibet, there have been numerous rebellions%u2014 all brutally extinguished by Imperial Chinese generals.

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There is something dangerous happening here. More than a billion Chinese around the world know the truth, including most of the 3.6 million Chinese Americans. They are angry. They are pressuring China%u2019s government to crack down in Tibet and ignore the misplaced ire of those in the West. If many in the West continue to show support for the Dalai Lama%u2019s so called freedom movement, will the price be worth it?

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The economic backlash could be cataclysmic. China current government is being treated by many in the West like a guilty child caught with his hand in the cookie jar when he is really innocent. Do not forget that China holds more than 1.4 trillion of America%u2019s debt and does almost 400 billion in annual trade (imports and exports) with America. Imagine what would happen if China called for repayment of that debt and closed all trade to the West due to perceived insults on their dignity?

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If Tibet becomes free from China and returns to its feudal state, there is another danger lurking in the shadows. There are four Islamic separatist movements in Xingjian province in the north west of China. Thirty million Muslims want to be free and create an Islamic state. If pressure from the West eventually creates a free and feudal Tibet, Islamic fundamentalists will want the same thing%u2014 the result could be another Taliban controlled state in the northwest of China like the one we are still fighting to keep free in Afghanistan.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of My Splendid Concubine, the story of Robert Hart%u2019s early years in China. Lloyd has been heard on hundreds of radio stations across North America talking about China.