Chinese Blogs, Netizens React To the Tibet Issue

Bibek Paudel writes "Over the past few weeks Chinese bloggers and people on Internet forums have been reacting to events in Tibet and the protests disrupting the torch relay. The BBC and Global Voices have interesting insights on the recent happenings on the Net. A western commentator says, 'Lots of Chinese people now view the Western media, human rights groups, and Western leaders' criticisms of their country as part of the Racist Western Conspiracy to Stop China From Being Successful.' One of the most vocal appeals by the Chinese blogs, forums, and text-messages has been to boycott French goods in response to the protests that accompanied the torch relay in Paris. One response post reads, 'Who is abusing human rights? Who is bringing violence to this world?' There also are two versions of music video of the song Don't Be Too CNN, and its lyric has assumed the status of a cult catch-phrase. Sina.com has a popular page: 'Don't be too CNN, fire to the Western media.' Many analysts believe that the protests over Tibet have only served to strengthen Chinese nationalism rather than evoke sympathy for the Tibetan cause. Sina.com has a petition against the Western media which has reportedly accumulated millions of signatures. There is also Mutant Palm, a blog by an expatriate in China who has been watching and commenting on the fallout from Tibet and torch protests online."

Comments

Re:History

[Nursie]

Umm, please don't revise history this way.

You know full well it was precisely because the french were not only not going to commit forces to Iraq, but actively opposed it and rubbished the evidence. They turned out to be correct.

yes, they may have had dodgy financial involvements in the region, but it was the sheer gall to oppose the US in its supposed hour of need (bullcrap) that caused the backlash.

What the CCP isn't telling the Chinese population

[Anonymous Bullard]

It is very sad that some Han Chinese settlers were targeted by some angry and frustrated Tibetan youth against the wishes of the Tibetan exiled government. Just try to have a little understanding for the Tibetans who've lived under murderous and pervasive Chinese repression since the 1950s.

What would the Chinese people be doing today if they'd been under constant genocidal foreign rule for two or three generations, under daily humiliation, millenia of their invaluable cultural heritage destroyed, their own language, religion, identity and history all but banned and twisted to serve the occupiers, their homeland flooded with ever greater numbers of aliens who consider themselves culturally and racially superior...?

The Han Chinese hate even the partial and relatively brief Japanese invasion in the 1930s and the trade imperialism by the Western colonial powers as absolute evils so why can't they possibly understand why the totally non-Chinese people of Tibet are desperate for their own freedom from colonial brutality under China?

But importantly, what the CCP proparanda machine isn't telling to the Chinese people is that the riots in Lhasa on the 14th of March started only after several days of *peaceful* demonstrations (starting on March 10th, the day of Tibetan Uprising in 1959) during which the Chinese paramilitary (PAP) violently beat and imprisoned a number of Tibetan monks. Monks are revered in Tibet as if they were one's family members, which they often are!

Also, there has been dozens of large demonstrations (in chinese) all over Tibet (more than half of which was annexed into neighbouring Chinese provinces in the 1960s by the Chinese communists!) consisting of tens of thousands of Tibetans. All have been violently suppressed by the PAP, with hundreds of Tibetans dead (nearly 200 confirmed), hundreds more wounded or badly injured without medical care and several thousand Tibetans detained in the not-very-pleasant Chinese jails where abuse and torture in endemic, especially for the Tibetans.

These demonstration against Chinese misrule are still flaring up daily with the same results.

So yes, it is very sad that some young Tibetans' emotions boiled over and some Hans were attacked and some died while hiding inside the Chinese-owned buildings, but please, please try to also look at these issues from the Tibetans' perspective.

Yes, the western media also made some mistakes in labelling a few photos (though do realize that the Nepalese police were indeed beating and jailing Tibetans there at China's behest and for no other reason), but don't you think that the security cam footage from Lhasa, repeated ad nauseaum by the CCTV, was extremely selectively screened for propaganda purposes, and not just by mistake? The Chinese security apparatus has surveillance cameras at absolutely every part of Lhasa.

If the CCP has nothing to hide, why did they evict all foreigners and journalists from all Tibetan areas? Why are they promising massive 100,000 yuan (or well over $1000) reward for anyone who may have filmed the demonstrations and especially the bloody crackdowns that inevitably followed? Why is the CCP confiscating Tibetans' mobile phones, cameras and computers? Why does the CCP refuse even international (UN) observers and medical groups entry into Tibet?

"Free Tibet" is about Tibetans ruling themselves. Nothing more, nothing less.