Lhasa's having a Han Chinese majority makes me sick...

Lhasa is the RIGHTFUL CAPITAL OF TIBET!

Hearing about Lhasa makes me sick. All Han Chinese who would not be loyal to an independent Tibet state should be expelled from Tibet, with relocation expenses paid entirely by the Chinese "Communist" Party (who forced them to settle there to begin with), with exemptions granted to Hans that were already in Tibet prior to the Chinese Civil War, of course. The democratic socialist National Democratic Party of the Tibetan Government in Exile shall become the governing party of Tibet and serve as a caretaker government backed by the international community as Tibet transitions from a dictatorship of the Chinese elite to a democracy of the Tibetan people.

(One of my girlfriend's cousins is one of them.) And the Chinese government should respect human rights in Tibet much better than it has.

Having said that, Tibet has been a part of China for over 500 years. It's no more outrageous than California having a majority of Caucasians.

and it is outrageous.

but that is not necessarily connected with separatism.

The practice of moving in different ethnic groups to control a conquered area goes back at least to the Assyrians. It was done by Saddam moving Sunnis into Kirkuk and is being done now by Moroccans moving Arabs into Western Sahara. The British moved Scots into Northern Ireland and Tamils into Sri Lanka, among other places. Not to mention every square mile of the Western Hemisphere that's not on an Indian reservation.

The Free Tibet movement is counterproductive -- China is no more going to allow Tibet independence than the US would allow Alaska and Hawaii to become separate countries. And there's no compelling reason for them to do so -- Tibet has been Chinese for centuries. It's rightly seen as an attempt to divide and conquer, and would only be considered under duress if China wrere as weak and vulnerable as they were a century ago.

China does need to improve their human rights record. That's where the concern should be focused.

The balance is swinging the other way here in the Southwest.

Some people consider that outrageous but I don't.

It's what humans do.

I remember hearing a report which included an interview with a Han Chinese guy living in Tibet, complaining about how lazy the Tibetan people are.

Sound familiar?

Ahh, the arrogance of empire.

Why would I want to fatten the pockets of Chinese businessmen?

I'll be here all week.

nt

:shrug:

They're doing the same thing in places like Sinkiang province.

The good news, in a sense, is that Han colonization of Tibet has no real permanence. It will always have to rely on Peking subsidizing the industries need to keep Han in Lhasa- it's ridiculous to run an industrial economy at the end of an 800 mile railroad from its supplies and its markets. The really bad news is what the Party is doing to the Tibetan people and culture, though- actively destroying the society piece by piece. Crudest, stupidest, imperialism out of Peking- destruction of a culturally unique people without the resource base for power that can remotely endanger China materially.

But it's the power of the anticentralization ideas and example represented by the mountain/desert culture of Tibet, and the Dalai Lama's way in power, sort of like the democratic Chinese society developing in Taiwan, that some petty and vile CP emperors-by-committee can't tolerate and is what really matters. In truth it's the things the Peking autocrats can't control in their own society, its particular miseries that frustrate them and the degradation of their own people that they are partially responsible for, that these other societies remind them of, and are the 'reason' for their vile and oppressive abuses of others, for the lashing out.

I wouldn't cry for China if Tibet was somehow liberated.

Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are not even Slavic countries, but they were part of the old Russian Empire. They were granted independence after World War I, but in 1944, the Red Army moved in, ostensibly to throw out the Germans. They indeed did that, but they stayed until the wave of popular uprisings forced them to withdraw in 1989.

Stalin created a legal fiction by holding plebiscites in which people cast ballots that said, in effect, "I want Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania to become a republic of the Soviet Union." There was no way to cast a no vote--you just received a ballot with that statement printed on it and put it in the box--and anyone who abstained was denied the right to receive food rations.

During the Soviet period, the authorities followed a concerted policy of moving Russians in and local people out to other regions of the Soviet Union. By 1989, Riga, the capital of Latv ia, had a Russian majority.

There was armed guerilla resistance into the 1950s, but by 1952, all the serious resistance fighters were either dead, in prison, or in exile.

(A grad school classmate of mine was from Moscow, and when he applied to go to a university, he was assigned to a university in Lithuania. As much as possible, students were required to go to school outside their home area, to avoid having concentrations of students with local friends and relatives.)

The Soviets made a show of encouraging Baltic folk culture, but only a censored version was allowed. All the residents of the Baltic States were required to learn Russian, but no Russian settler was required to learn the local language. Religions, both the local varieties of Christianity (Catholicism in Lithuania, Lutheranism in Estonia and Latvia) and Judaism, were suppressed, as was the rich assortment of surviving pagan folk culture. Anyone who suggested that it was especially ridiculous for modern, well-educated countries to be colonized by a neighbor was deemed guilty of "bourgeois nationalism" and subject to imprisonment.

So there are parallels with Tibet: the Baltic States were ethnically distinct from Russia, they were former parts of the Russian Empire, the local culture was suppressed, the conquerors sent in people of their own ethnic group to dilute the local population, and there were large exile communities in the West.

If the Chinese people who live in Lhasa wish to stay there, they should be allowed to stay.