Mar 19 2008
6.4. recap .. It’s the economy, Stupid!
The unrest in Tibet has the uncanny smell of 1989 in Tiananmen Square: all the western major media outlets report on the plight of the Tibetans but their violent protest. The burning of han Chinese stores showed Tibetans’ anger at being in the economic disadvantage, rather than human right as it being widely presumed. Same with June 4th, democracy was the least agenda on their minds when the students took to the street. An acquaintance who’s fm Beijing and was there during the Tiananmen Sq crackdown told me that protesters - thugs - turned very violent, they burned couple of soldiers alive. Those soldiers were all lowly educated boys from the countryside, happened to be there. Ever heard of them? I bet the answer is no.
It was a changing time in 1989 in China as it is in Tibet in 2008, the economic uncertainty. We knew there is Tibet, but we didn’t know or didn’t care to know anything about it. It’s not until Seth Faison’s South of the Clouds, did I grasp that the Tibetans actually hate us. Now Han Chinese are migrating there for business opportunity and are overwhelming the locals. It’s the economy, stupid! Of course there are plenty human right groups that fueling the Tibetans with the summer coming out party as prize. The stronger culture, as the G-7, has their idea as what human right is, what democracy should be, so there goes the one-sided media coverage. China is the dream target for the human groups, justify their existence and budget/donations. I can see Doctors Without Borders when they inject the vaccines and sew up parting lips. Will human right groups provide food/shelter/education after the protest? Same goes with women’s right for prositutes, if the groups don’t provide next bottle of water, food, shelter and education, whom do you think those girls will turn to the very next day? I understand the groups think their rehearls might put pressure on Beijing to improve, but I doubt much. A tiny bit maybe. Using Olympic as a tool is not going to work at all. Don’t forget England had child labor not too long ago. Middle class Chinese think the sweatshops are good thing that ever happened to the farmers.