I understand this may not be the right place to ask people to think critically about issues, but at least I wish people know what they're talking about, not what they think or imagine the issue is.
The following is the so-called "draft guideline" in Chinese, which was published to call for public comments:
The Chinese government is doing its job trying to regulate the treatment just days after the critical incidents and this is more formal policy draft. The title would be more appropriate to say: Chinese government propose to ban... What's so wrong about it?
I know for a fact thousands of American gay youth are still being checked into similar boot camps to rid of the gayness in them. When would the US Ministry of Health take a stand on the issue instead of hiding behind the religious freedom principle?
How many times do I have to say? It's the economy, stupid.
Since when the former slave traders become such kind-hearted patronages? When your country sits on the sidelines watching the Africans starved to death, or sets unacceptable political conditions for every cent's aid, China at least sends in investments and builds the factories and roads.
In the 1980s China first opened up its own country for the west to exploit. We didn't complain about the low pay. We tighten our belt and save every penny we can to build our country. The Africans can too, and China is giving them a chance.
If you're not doing anything better than this, please don't get in the way.
This Chinese government, strangely, seems to enjoy more support from its people than most "democratic" countries. The reasons are obvious to the Chinese, but not to the others who choose not to be interested.
From my point of view, this Chinese government is far more competent than the one in the US. I don't have to look at my 401K account to know that "greed, censorship, and political corruption" is far from a unique China thing.
Do you know when the massive earthquake strike, where were all those kid died? In SCHOOLS. Not in factories. That was in the most remote and backward counties in China, but all those kids died in SCHOOLS. A typical Chinese parent would sell blood to keep the kids in school. I doubt those US high school dropouts face the same pressure from the parents.
Yeah there still are child labors in China. So are in India, Mexico, and even in the US. But it's the economy, stupid. It's the extreme poverty that drives the kids to work. And you think you are so extremely helpful by laughing at them?
Yeah I get it. Chinese are all brainwashed neo-nazis. Try harder, you even may make them all believe the Jewish God as well as invading Iraq is a godsend gift to the Iraqis.
So you think your system is the best. Great, go ahead and continue believing so. But I do have a problem when you extrapolate your idealized system to something like "moral standard", "universal value", blah blah and try to force it into the reality, and not only to yourself but also to everyone else.
If you were born poor (which 90% of Chinese are), which country would you prefer to live, the totalitarian China or the democratic India?
Their answer is unanimously China. It comes at no surprise that the recent Pew survey showed a whooping 82% Chinese approve their government, the highest in the world. If the Chinese are happy, why all the fuss? Can't you just mind you own business?
Perhaps you mean good, and truly believe democracy will bring good to China. As a Chinese I thank you, but at the same time would like to remind you that it's up to Chinese to prioritize what they want and what to achieve, on their own terms. Demonizing their country or government is not going to achieve anything.
You may want to read how a former Tiananmen protester turned his back to the west, and how a Washington Post editor who lived a long time in China responded:
...gotten to know us and realizes that democracy indeed deserves two cheers, not three.
Get off my back, or what Alec called "collective ennui" toward Western "lecturing and chastising" about China. As the great Chinese blogger Hong Huang says: "I am tired of people treating me like I live in a concentration camp." This alienation has brought many Chinese in the elite to the conclusion that while their one-party system doesnâ(TM)t deserve three cheers, it could, like ours, deserve two. And it's convincing others - in Africa and the Middle East - as well.
Blocking the foreign reporters serves the purpose of calming things down. When foreign reporters are present, those monks grab the chance to stage the performance and add ammunitions to the unrest. When the foreign media are kicked out, they know there's no point doing that sort of thing any more. It's all familiar scripts. A Bulgaria friends told me how the media manipulated the Kosovo storyline. So what's the point to letting them in? They're not going to balance the report anyway.
Tibet wasn't blocked from the foreign media before the unrest, but did any of the foreign media interested in digging into the truth of the previous unrests? No. The media has no interest in truth whatsoever when it comes to Tibet. All they want are shocking news, army shooting monks, and when they're not getting it, they'll stage some.
I'd appreciate very mcuh if you could just spend a few minutes read through the following PBS post by M.A.Jones. I couldn't have done a better job summarizing all these:
http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?t=68073
1. The monks were arrested not because of their religion but because of their involvements in the Tibetan independent movements, which is illegal in China. Almost all previous unrests had their roots deeply inside these Gelug monasteries.
2. You can't blame the political interference in the religion if the religion also interfere in the politics. The current Tibetan Buddhism has no such thing as the separation of the religion and the state. With the exception of Tibetan Buddhism, Roman Catholics, and Falun Gong, all of which involve them in the politics, other religious events are mostly tolerated in China.
3. Even though the human rights condition in Tibet is not up to your standard, a normal Tibetan enjoys the same rights (or arguably more rights) than a Han Chinese. Also they enjoy much more rights than they used to under the Dalai Lama regime. What's the urgency to change that, and, look at what you're relying on for improving the human rights in Tibet? A non-elected God-King!
4. What's so difficult to accept the fact that all organized religions have their dark side, and Tibetan monastery system is no exception? Why the Pope got different treatments from the Dalai Lama? You do know sodomy is fairly acceptable in Tibetan Buddhism don't you?
So please, don't take your frustration out on the western media. They're the least of your problems. I wish I can be that optimistic. I very much am afraid this could be another consensus manufacturing process that in the end would cost us a fortune to recover, e.g., buy all your subprime loan?
Also a side note on how successful western democracy is compared to totalitarianism. I actually believed the propaganda and sent my niece to study in India. So far all I've got are complaints. Constant ethnic conflicts, strikes, chaos. Luckily India enjoys much friendliness from the west.
No, we Chinese are not trying to copy India. I believe most think tanks were and are looking at Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and even Japan, where totalitarianism were gradually transformed to democracy. I've said once and once again, bear with us, be patient. Let the nature run its course.
Thank you for writing back. I'd appreciate very much if you could spare a few minutes, forget the ideological differences, and read a small piece by Fareed Zakaria:
As one who protested in Beijing in 1989, I should have more to dislike CCP than you. Yet I don't. And it's not because I belonged to the well-off class. Most Chinese students came to the US not because we can afford the tuition, but because we tested high in GRE and can get scholarships and assistantships to cover the tuitions and fees. Most well-off Chinese kids nowadays go to the UK.
Then why, you may ask? Because after coming to the US, experienced three presidential elections and watched C-SPAN and local politics constantly, I realized it's painfully naive to assume that just because China is not democratic in the same way that you elect your president and congress, then CCP automatically reflects less Chinese population than your president and congress reflects the US population. Right on the contrary.
Deng, Jiang, and the current Hu-Wen have all enjoyed very high approval rate. My mother who retired 10 years ago from a teaching post and only earns a small pension approves them. My older brother who was laid off from a state-owned enterprise then found himself a contractor's job approves them. Our cousins in the countryside who don't farm the corps anymore but worked in the "sweatshops" had a lot to complain before, but also say they're much better off therefore thought the government is OK. And about Tiananmen, tell you the truth, it's much less about democracy than about inflation. Also it's interesting to note that empirically I feel the the current government enjoys the highest approval rate, and Deng's approval rate is lower.
So, please read Fareed Zakaria and admit you don't know much about China, and let us deal with our own problems. Also Chinese normally don't like finger-pointing unless it's our business, so if you want to complain the US wasn't treated fairly around the globe, please don't take it on us.
To be honest I see it only as a propaganda war between China and the west, no more, no less. China's point of view (not just the Chinese government's view or a nobody cared dissident's view, but an average Chinese view) is intentionally suppressed in the west and there's no such thing as fairness and balanced report. To fight this propaganda war, controlling the media is the necessary sin. If it's now being done too harshly and awkwardly, China's skill of manipulating the media needs to be improved. But not until China's media can penetrate your people as deeply as yours penetrates ours, you don't get the free ride.
Also I don't buy those free speech lectures. Time and time again it's been proved hypocritical and even ill-intentioned, or useless to say the least.
I'm one of those students who protested in China in Spring 1989. We broadcast the programs of the "Voice of America" and BBC throughout the campus, cheering on all kinds of rumors, e.g., widow of the former Premier Chou En-lai supported students, a certain army company rebelled, blah blah. Those days are long gone and I regretted my naivety the same as Patrick French retrospected his Free Tibet days (check his book Tibet, Tibet.)
Also check today's news on the Olympic torch relay in London. We Chinese people in London reported overwhelmingly supports from the Chinese community. A friend on the Trafalgar Square said he's never seen that many five-star red flags outside China, yet thousands of pro-China demonstrators barely get any mentioning in the news. The same happened for the pro-China demonstration held earlier in Toronto, Vancouver, and Frankfurt. 2 weeks ago an application of a pro-China demonstration in London at the Westminster police was outrightly denied citing the lack of police forces, yet the pro-Tibetan protesters were allowed every day in front of the China Embassy London. The Toronto demonstration only got approved as a pro-China concert (otherwise an up to 4 weeks' delay), on a private land, where no political slogans and speeches were allowed. At the same time a pro-Tibetan activist managed to break into the Chinese consulate in the open daylight, drag down the national flag from the consulate property (by law it's on China territory). Anyway, for those of you living in the bay area, check out the torch relay by yourself on April 9th starting from 8AM and see if overseas Chinese are all brain-washed.
For those of you that are genuinely concerned about the progress and human rights in China and Tibet, maybe start by reading the book "Tibet, Tibet" by Patrick French, a former Free Tibet activist. Then, bear with us. We're moving along, though not as fast as you had expected, but we'll be there eventually. In the end it's our country not yours, right? Environmentalists, isn't it familiar to you that intervening the natural course seldom bring in any good result?
For those of yours who just want to do good and the right thing, check the Media Monitors Network article "Not you! You!!!"http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/50965, then please put more (or at least the same amount of) energy to the places where your government do not have strategic interests, and to places your kind of doing good is not controversial and actually wanted. Thank you.
Rumor says it that the US does not trust Taiwan. The nuke may end up in the communist's hand.
Seriously, I doubt Taiwan even wants it to begin with. In the 2004 election, Taiwan failed to pass the missile referendum worded as following:
"The People of Taiwan demand that the Taiwan Strait issue be resolved through peaceful means. Should Communist China refuse to withdraw the missiles it has targeted at Taiwan and to openly renounce the use of force against us, would you agree that the Government should acquire more advanced anti-missile weapons to strengthen Taiwan's self-defense capabilities?"
About 55% of the voters refused to cast the vote on this question, which effectively invalidated the referendum. Similar things happened again in 2008.
Why the surprise? Check wikipedia. 98% of the Taiwan's population is of Han Chinese ethnicity. It's just a matter of when they migrated to Taiwan, in 50 years, 100 years, or 200 years or more.
Also, "A survey in November 2006... showed that more than 60% of Taiwan's population consider themselves Taiwanese, compared to only 18% in 1992." So you see how quick people change their minds. But then hundreds of thousands of people from Taiwan now migrate back to the mainland for work. So the tides may change again.
Letting Dalai Lama back to Tibet is just like giving the mid-Italy back to Vatican, if not more ridiculous. Where is the separation of the church and the state while Dalai himself is believed to be the god-king? And you want to preserve this as the Tibet culture? When did you pay your tithe?
From the religious point of view, Dalai's sect of monks and believers are convinced that Dalai controlled the path to the next life, so they'll do whatever it takes to get there in this life. You honestly think the monks would use violence if they truly believe that's against Dalai's teaching? Right on the contrary, violence has always been in the blood of the Tibetan Buddhism, and that's the very reason why the 5th Dalai Lama reached the religious supremacy, which passed on to this Dalai.
You've heard this Dalai's the pacifists rhetorics, even his threat to quit as the head of the state, but he never used his religious supremacy to punish the violence against Chinese, e.g., excommunicate. On the contrary, in his own words: "The wrathful goddesses and the enraged gods are there, in order to demonstrate that one can grasp the use of violence as a method; it is an effective instrument, but it can never ever be a purpose."
No, I'm referring to BUSH! He has used nationalist rhetoric time and again to manipulate public opinion, and control through division and fear.
Then the difference is even more significant.
1. Strategically China cannot lose Tibet, so the current communist government is just defending the national interest, which supposedly is the responsibility of any good government. The overwhelming Chinese consensus on Tibet simply cannot be compared with that in the US on Iraq. It's not the government pushing the nationalism but the other way around, it's the nationalism that pushes the government.
2. China has always been oppressive in western countries terms, even more so before the communists took over than now, so there's no parallel in using nationalist rhetoric to deprive personal rights. Come on, my parents were in high school in 1949, and no communist propaganda is required to know that as a fact. We don't have those rights in the first place, and although it's nice to have more, most Chinese just can't be bothered to fight for them as long as the living standard is improving.
3. A side note on "division and fear", did you actually notice that the CCTV propaganda program portrayed a number of ethnic Tibetans as victims and heroes? The weeping girl telling the story on how the other 5 co-workers (including an ethnic Tibetan) were burnt to death is herself an ethnic Tibetan from Shigatze. The ER doctor who risked his life to save a Han Chinese boy and was severely beaten up is also an ethnic Tibetan, and you see on the TV how grateful the Han boy's father was to the Tibetan doctor. This can hardly be branded as division and fear, can it?
4. In the end, the Chinese government see the Tibetan problem as an internal issue. They know pretty well if they push things too hard it will backfire and cause longer term problems. It's the Chinese government that has a vested interest to see the area stabilize and prosper, not those western countries and Dalai Lama.
Of course they certainly wouldn't be the only country doing this, it's a long standing tradition for any unpopular regime. If you can draw this line between you and another group, and get your people to rally around you on some point, you can easily manipulate and pacify a population.
If you're referring to Nancy Pelosi, remember a key difference here is that although the Chinese government needs the popular vote, it also tries hard to be responsible and wants to keep a good relation with the west, while all Pelosi cares about is her popularity.
Many people here wrongly assume that a communist government does not need the popular support. Not so. It needs it even more than your government, because when it fails, there's no one else to blame. And on sovereignty issues, any legitimate Chinese government, be it communist or democratic, is absolutely subject to the nationalism.
Remember, China actually wants to be a responsible stakeholder. Now your media is calling for the devil, even comparing this Olympic Games to the 1936 one. You know what, it's so easy to throw names, but the backlashes could also hurt you.
Slashdot Mirror
The following is the so-called "draft guideline" in Chinese, which was published to call for public comments:
http://www.gov.cn/gzdt/2009-11/05/content_1456838.htm
The Chinese government is doing its job trying to regulate the treatment just days after the critical incidents and this is more formal policy draft. The title would be more appropriate to say: Chinese government propose to ban... What's so wrong about it?
I know for a fact thousands of American gay youth are still being checked into similar boot camps to rid of the gayness in them. When would the US Ministry of Health take a stand on the issue instead of hiding behind the religious freedom principle?
How many times do I have to say? It's the economy, stupid.
Since when the former slave traders become such kind-hearted patronages? When your country sits on the sidelines watching the Africans starved to death, or sets unacceptable political conditions for every cent's aid, China at least sends in investments and builds the factories and roads.
In the 1980s China first opened up its own country for the west to exploit. We didn't complain about the low pay. We tighten our belt and save every penny we can to build our country. The Africans can too, and China is giving them a chance.
If you're not doing anything better than this, please don't get in the way.
This Chinese government, strangely, seems to enjoy more support from its people than most "democratic" countries. The reasons are obvious to the Chinese, but not to the others who choose not to be interested.
From my point of view, this Chinese government is far more competent than the one in the US. I don't have to look at my 401K account to know that "greed, censorship, and political corruption" is far from a unique China thing.
Oh that's so funny hahaha...
Do you know when the massive earthquake strike, where were all those kid died? In SCHOOLS. Not in factories. That was in the most remote and backward counties in China, but all those kids died in SCHOOLS. A typical Chinese parent would sell blood to keep the kids in school. I doubt those US high school dropouts face the same pressure from the parents.
Yeah there still are child labors in China. So are in India, Mexico, and even in the US. But it's the economy, stupid. It's the extreme poverty that drives the kids to work. And you think you are so extremely helpful by laughing at them?
OK my memory tricks me. 86% Chinese are satisfied with where their country is heading, that's the data I want to cite.
Yeah I get it. Chinese are all brainwashed neo-nazis. Try harder, you even may make them all believe the Jewish God as well as invading Iraq is a godsend gift to the Iraqis.
So you think your system is the best. Great, go ahead and continue believing so. But I do have a problem when you extrapolate your idealized system to something like "moral standard", "universal value", blah blah and try to force it into the reality, and not only to yourself but also to everyone else.
There's a question that has been raised by a number of learned people already (the most recent one here: http://thechinabeat.blogspot.com/2008/07/smoke-and-mirrors-china-and-india.html):
If you were born poor (which 90% of Chinese are), which country would you prefer to live, the totalitarian China or the democratic India?
Their answer is unanimously China. It comes at no surprise that the recent Pew survey showed a whooping 82% Chinese approve their government, the highest in the world. If the Chinese are happy, why all the fuss? Can't you just mind you own business?
Perhaps you mean good, and truly believe democracy will bring good to China. As a Chinese I thank you, but at the same time would like to remind you that it's up to Chinese to prioritize what they want and what to achieve, on their own terms. Demonizing their country or government is not going to achieve anything.
Forgot the link: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/pomfretschina/2008/04/is_china_working.html
...gotten to know us and realizes that democracy indeed deserves two cheers, not three. Get off my back, or what Alec called "collective ennui" toward Western "lecturing and chastising" about China. As the great Chinese blogger Hong Huang says: "I am tired of people treating me like I live in a concentration camp." This alienation has brought many Chinese in the elite to the conclusion that while their one-party system doesnâ(TM)t deserve three cheers, it could, like ours, deserve two. And it's convincing others - in Africa and the Middle East - as well.I don't think it's that simple.
Blocking the foreign reporters serves the purpose of calming things down. When foreign reporters are present, those monks grab the chance to stage the performance and add ammunitions to the unrest. When the foreign media are kicked out, they know there's no point doing that sort of thing any more. It's all familiar scripts. A Bulgaria friends told me how the media manipulated the Kosovo storyline. So what's the point to letting them in? They're not going to balance the report anyway.
Tibet wasn't blocked from the foreign media before the unrest, but did any of the foreign media interested in digging into the truth of the previous unrests? No. The media has no interest in truth whatsoever when it comes to Tibet. All they want are shocking news, army shooting monks, and when they're not getting it, they'll stage some.
I'd appreciate very mcuh if you could just spend a few minutes read through the following PBS post by M.A.Jones. I couldn't have done a better job summarizing all these: http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?t=68073
Chinese can easily defend those cases by arguing:
1. The monks were arrested not because of their religion but because of their involvements in the Tibetan independent movements, which is illegal in China. Almost all previous unrests had their roots deeply inside these Gelug monasteries.
2. You can't blame the political interference in the religion if the religion also interfere in the politics. The current Tibetan Buddhism has no such thing as the separation of the religion and the state. With the exception of Tibetan Buddhism, Roman Catholics, and Falun Gong, all of which involve them in the politics, other religious events are mostly tolerated in China.
3. Even though the human rights condition in Tibet is not up to your standard, a normal Tibetan enjoys the same rights (or arguably more rights) than a Han Chinese. Also they enjoy much more rights than they used to under the Dalai Lama regime. What's the urgency to change that, and, look at what you're relying on for improving the human rights in Tibet? A non-elected God-King!
4. What's so difficult to accept the fact that all organized religions have their dark side, and Tibetan monastery system is no exception? Why the Pope got different treatments from the Dalai Lama? You do know sodomy is fairly acceptable in Tibetan Buddhism don't you?
Also a side note on how successful western democracy is compared to totalitarianism. I actually believed the propaganda and sent my niece to study in India. So far all I've got are complaints. Constant ethnic conflicts, strikes, chaos. Luckily India enjoys much friendliness from the west.
No, we Chinese are not trying to copy India. I believe most think tanks were and are looking at Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and even Japan, where totalitarianism were gradually transformed to democracy. I've said once and once again, bear with us, be patient. Let the nature run its course.
Thank you for writing back. I'd appreciate very much if you could spare a few minutes, forget the ideological differences, and read a small piece by Fareed Zakaria:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/36493
As one who protested in Beijing in 1989, I should have more to dislike CCP than you. Yet I don't. And it's not because I belonged to the well-off class. Most Chinese students came to the US not because we can afford the tuition, but because we tested high in GRE and can get scholarships and assistantships to cover the tuitions and fees. Most well-off Chinese kids nowadays go to the UK.
Then why, you may ask? Because after coming to the US, experienced three presidential elections and watched C-SPAN and local politics constantly, I realized it's painfully naive to assume that just because China is not democratic in the same way that you elect your president and congress, then CCP automatically reflects less Chinese population than your president and congress reflects the US population. Right on the contrary.
Deng, Jiang, and the current Hu-Wen have all enjoyed very high approval rate. My mother who retired 10 years ago from a teaching post and only earns a small pension approves them. My older brother who was laid off from a state-owned enterprise then found himself a contractor's job approves them. Our cousins in the countryside who don't farm the corps anymore but worked in the "sweatshops" had a lot to complain before, but also say they're much better off therefore thought the government is OK. And about Tiananmen, tell you the truth, it's much less about democracy than about inflation. Also it's interesting to note that empirically I feel the the current government enjoys the highest approval rate, and Deng's approval rate is lower.
So, please read Fareed Zakaria and admit you don't know much about China, and let us deal with our own problems. Also Chinese normally don't like finger-pointing unless it's our business, so if you want to complain the US wasn't treated fairly around the globe, please don't take it on us.
You may not want to know it, but according to Pew Research, "Few in China Complain About Internet Controls":
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/776/china-internet
GO ahead and boycott them. But you seem to forget a large portion of those companies' advertisements are targeting the Chinese market.
I'm one of those guys.
To be honest I see it only as a propaganda war between China and the west, no more, no less. China's point of view (not just the Chinese government's view or a nobody cared dissident's view, but an average Chinese view) is intentionally suppressed in the west and there's no such thing as fairness and balanced report. To fight this propaganda war, controlling the media is the necessary sin. If it's now being done too harshly and awkwardly, China's skill of manipulating the media needs to be improved. But not until China's media can penetrate your people as deeply as yours penetrates ours, you don't get the free ride.
Also I don't buy those free speech lectures. Time and time again it's been proved hypocritical and even ill-intentioned, or useless to say the least.
I'm one of those students who protested in China in Spring 1989. We broadcast the programs of the "Voice of America" and BBC throughout the campus, cheering on all kinds of rumors, e.g., widow of the former Premier Chou En-lai supported students, a certain army company rebelled, blah blah. Those days are long gone and I regretted my naivety the same as Patrick French retrospected his Free Tibet days (check his book Tibet, Tibet.)
Also check today's news on the Olympic torch relay in London. We Chinese people in London reported overwhelmingly supports from the Chinese community. A friend on the Trafalgar Square said he's never seen that many five-star red flags outside China, yet thousands of pro-China demonstrators barely get any mentioning in the news. The same happened for the pro-China demonstration held earlier in Toronto, Vancouver, and Frankfurt. 2 weeks ago an application of a pro-China demonstration in London at the Westminster police was outrightly denied citing the lack of police forces, yet the pro-Tibetan protesters were allowed every day in front of the China Embassy London. The Toronto demonstration only got approved as a pro-China concert (otherwise an up to 4 weeks' delay), on a private land, where no political slogans and speeches were allowed. At the same time a pro-Tibetan activist managed to break into the Chinese consulate in the open daylight, drag down the national flag from the consulate property (by law it's on China territory). Anyway, for those of you living in the bay area, check out the torch relay by yourself on April 9th starting from 8AM and see if overseas Chinese are all brain-washed.
For those of you that are genuinely concerned about the progress and human rights in China and Tibet, maybe start by reading the book "Tibet, Tibet" by Patrick French, a former Free Tibet activist. Then, bear with us. We're moving along, though not as fast as you had expected, but we'll be there eventually. In the end it's our country not yours, right? Environmentalists, isn't it familiar to you that intervening the natural course seldom bring in any good result?
For those of yours who just want to do good and the right thing, check the Media Monitors Network article "Not you! You!!!"http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/50965, then please put more (or at least the same amount of) energy to the places where your government do not have strategic interests, and to places your kind of doing good is not controversial and actually wanted. Thank you.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12585
Why They Hate China
Well, you have to hate someone...
We are happy here, so thank you but no we don't need your human rights police please! Apply it somewhere else, perhaps directly to your head?
Rumor says it that the US does not trust Taiwan. The nuke may end up in the communist's hand.
Seriously, I doubt Taiwan even wants it to begin with. In the 2004 election, Taiwan failed to pass the missile referendum worded as following:
"The People of Taiwan demand that the Taiwan Strait issue be resolved through peaceful means. Should Communist China refuse to withdraw the missiles it has targeted at Taiwan and to openly renounce the use of force against us, would you agree that the Government should acquire more advanced anti-missile weapons to strengthen Taiwan's self-defense capabilities?"
About 55% of the voters refused to cast the vote on this question, which effectively invalidated the referendum. Similar things happened again in 2008.
Why the surprise? Check wikipedia. 98% of the Taiwan's population is of Han Chinese ethnicity. It's just a matter of when they migrated to Taiwan, in 50 years, 100 years, or 200 years or more.
... showed that more than 60% of Taiwan's population consider themselves Taiwanese, compared to only 18% in 1992." So you see how quick people change their minds. But then hundreds of thousands of people from Taiwan now migrate back to the mainland for work. So the tides may change again.
Also, "A survey in November 2006
Letting Dalai Lama back to Tibet is just like giving the mid-Italy back to Vatican, if not more ridiculous. Where is the separation of the church and the state while Dalai himself is believed to be the god-king? And you want to preserve this as the Tibet culture? When did you pay your tithe?
From the religious point of view, Dalai's sect of monks and believers are convinced that Dalai controlled the path to the next life, so they'll do whatever it takes to get there in this life. You honestly think the monks would use violence if they truly believe that's against Dalai's teaching? Right on the contrary, violence has always been in the blood of the Tibetan Buddhism, and that's the very reason why the 5th Dalai Lama reached the religious supremacy, which passed on to this Dalai.
You've heard this Dalai's the pacifists rhetorics, even his threat to quit as the head of the state, but he never used his religious supremacy to punish the violence against Chinese, e.g., excommunicate. On the contrary, in his own words: "The wrathful goddesses and the enraged gods are there, in order to demonstrate that one can grasp the use of violence as a method; it is an effective instrument, but it can never ever be a purpose."
http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Part-2-09.htm#politicalcalcul
Yeah he's just playing innocent when he said he has no control over the Tibet Youth Congress, and you guys turned a blind eye.
Then the difference is even more significant.
1. Strategically China cannot lose Tibet, so the current communist government is just defending the national interest, which supposedly is the responsibility of any good government. The overwhelming Chinese consensus on Tibet simply cannot be compared with that in the US on Iraq. It's not the government pushing the nationalism but the other way around, it's the nationalism that pushes the government.
2. China has always been oppressive in western countries terms, even more so before the communists took over than now, so there's no parallel in using nationalist rhetoric to deprive personal rights. Come on, my parents were in high school in 1949, and no communist propaganda is required to know that as a fact. We don't have those rights in the first place, and although it's nice to have more, most Chinese just can't be bothered to fight for them as long as the living standard is improving.
3. A side note on "division and fear", did you actually notice that the CCTV propaganda program portrayed a number of ethnic Tibetans as victims and heroes? The weeping girl telling the story on how the other 5 co-workers (including an ethnic Tibetan) were burnt to death is herself an ethnic Tibetan from Shigatze. The ER doctor who risked his life to save a Han Chinese boy and was severely beaten up is also an ethnic Tibetan, and you see on the TV how grateful the Han boy's father was to the Tibetan doctor. This can hardly be branded as division and fear, can it?
4. In the end, the Chinese government see the Tibetan problem as an internal issue. They know pretty well if they push things too hard it will backfire and cause longer term problems. It's the Chinese government that has a vested interest to see the area stabilize and prosper, not those western countries and Dalai Lama.
If you're referring to Nancy Pelosi, remember a key difference here is that although the Chinese government needs the popular vote, it also tries hard to be responsible and wants to keep a good relation with the west, while all Pelosi cares about is her popularity.
Many people here wrongly assume that a communist government does not need the popular support. Not so. It needs it even more than your government, because when it fails, there's no one else to blame. And on sovereignty issues, any legitimate Chinese government, be it communist or democratic, is absolutely subject to the nationalism.
Remember, China actually wants to be a responsible stakeholder. Now your media is calling for the devil, even comparing this Olympic Games to the 1936 one. You know what, it's so easy to throw names, but the backlashes could also hurt you.