When I was in China in 2008 and teaching this class on American Newspapers and Magazines, I walked a fine line balancing between American concepts of free press and Chinese, uh, absence of these thoughts. I generally stuck to fluffy topics like sports and fashion and celebrity, but then in March there was a riot in Tibet. It was on the state sponsored Chinese news. It’s also the reason I didn’t get to visit Tibet that spring. However, in my naivete, I thought that anything on Chinese news was fair game and I brought it up in this newspaper class only to run straight into a giant red wall and my first hard lesson in government censorship.

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Mar 24, 2008 at 8:39pm

Tibet in the News

First of all, I’m fine, the whole thing is happening on the other side of the continent. I may not be able to travel there like I wanted, but I’m in no danger here.

DO NOT PUT YOUR OPINIONS ABOUT TIBET ON MY WEBSITE. (this is not for my sensibilities but because the internet police are a real thing here)

I thought it would be ok to discuss with my students, since I saw it on the Chinese news, but apparently not.

I am not able to go into the history of Tibet on this page, but I what want to share here is…

The Chinese Perspective

Tibet has ALWAYS been a part of China.

I asked my students to tell me when it had first been, and they could not give a date, even though we discussed China from the Qin dynasty forward.

In 1950, the Chinese army liberated the people of Tibet from an oppressive and cruel imperial regime under which they suffered greatly. The Tibetans welcomed their Chinese liberators and the REUNIFICATION of China.

The people who are rioting are:

1) under the orders of the Dali Lama

2) not really protesting over religion or independence, but only want to disrupt social order and make China look bad.

3) are using the Olympic timing to capture the attention of the world (they don’t say for what, but rather emphasize that they are trying to destroy the image of the Olympics with violent behavior, and distract the world from the Olympics)

4) possibly PAID to inflict violence as mercenaries in a political conspiracy.

These riots should be ignored. We should not let ourselves be distracted from the true spirit of the Olympics by their behavior.

The Chinese government has provided tremendous aid and relief to the people of Tibet, raising their standards of living, freeing them from oppression, etc. and the Tibetan people are surely grateful. These riots do not represent the will of the people.

And finally, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. Foreign travelers and reporters have been asked to leave the provinces of Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu and possibly others because its no one else’s concern, but an internal Chinese affair.

East vs West

If your brain is in knots, don’t worry, its hard to see things from the other side. But in trying to understand it, I reached a fundamental conclusion.

The Chinese say that there can be no freedom without peace, and the Americans say there can be no peace without freedom.

This may not seem like a big difference, but I assure you, it is HUGE.

One student told me that they will accept a lack of freedom because the most important thing is survival, and that only once economic prosperity was assured and the survival of the people was no longer at stake could they worry about thier freedoms.

I said that for Americans, survival without freedom isn’t worthwhile.

Another student told me that the Chinese were just waiting for the people of Tibet and Taiwan to accept the One China policy, because only when there is one unified China can there be peace. She referenced the ideology of Emperor Qin who fought like crazy to unite China (for the first time, 2200 years ago) because he believed that only if the warring states were united could there be peace, and he was willing to spend his own life fighting so that there would be peace in the future. (Check out the movie ‘Hero’ if you haven’t seen it).

This idea, that we must fight now for peace later is close to the American one, but the root of it is submission.

I believe both our cultures value peace, and both will fight to create and defend it, but what we are willing to sacrifice to get it, and what we believe makes life worth living are diametricly opposed.

“Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace– but there is no peace… Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?… I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” — Patrick Henry, 1775

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My brain had some hardcore cognitive dissonance reading this post today in 2018. On the one hand, I’ve certainly become less mono-focused on American cultural values (although I’m sure they will always be a part of me). On the other, I read the line about violent protesters being paid to incite riots and went… Fox News says what? 

I look at the current American sentiment and it seems like the assessment I wrote here has somehow been taken to the absolute extreme. While the Chinese are gradually becoming less willing to sacrifice the freedom of today for the security of tomorrow, the Americans seem to be willing to sacrifice everything at the altar of absolute freedom. And yet, despite this, we are burdened with a spin cycle that paints protesters who claim to be “against fascism” as paid inciters of violence rather than actually dissatisfied citizens just the way that Xinhua news did with the protesting Tibetans.

I saw then what it looks like when citizens believe the “alternative facts” presented by their government so fiercely they cannot see the holes in the story, and dismiss any contradictory evidence as fake propaganda. I saw it then, and now I realize why it looks so familiar.