Regarding all your propaganda about how horribly Chinese are oppressing the Tibetan people: this man says it much better and much eloquently than somebody so obviously biased toward China.
"It's better now than it was in the 1950's" is not a defense. And that's not the only post in the thread; there are some perfectly good responses taking the opposing viewpoint.
I think the point was that it is better now than it would have been had there not been Chinese modernization. Granted there are plenty bad elements to it, but the scientific literature seems to obliterate the argument that the Han Chinese are systematically destroying Tibetan culture through population replacement, enforced non-education, etc that Tibetan exiles like to claim.
Regarding SCD's point on China's influences in Darfur. China's primary interests are her own, not everybody else's, to contrast US foreign policy.
Wow, you just shifted from "it's okay for China to illegally occupy other nations" to "China can't afford to be concerned with the rest of the world" so fast I got whiplash.
At what point did I say it's okay for China to illegally occupy other nations? Tibet as viewed by UN is not a nation. Neither is Taiwan. The history is that Tibet was an area under direct rule by Qing Dynasty China and after the Western "interventions" which demolished Dynastic rule in China, was free from Chinese influence for half a century until Mao claimed it again. Please also note the intention of Chiang Kai-shek was also to reclaim Tibet as a part of Nationalist China after the revolutionary war, so it's not only a Communist thing. If you really want to push this argument, then I say that Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land.
Also, it's not that China cannot afford to be concerned with the rest of the world. Rather, it's that China cannot afford to be concerned for the rest of the world. It is not my position that China should maintain this stance as it tries to become a global power. China should make every effort to aid the Darfur situation, I'm just pointing out why it's not.
And please don't respond with "neither does the US". Of course the US doesn't. You don't see ME cheerleading about how it's not my government's fault and there's just no other option.
Hey, ideally, I wouldn't have this situation either. There's no easy solution here. But I do think that this kind of rhetoric doesn't help the situation even more with the Chinese government than the US government. The Chinese one has a habit of crushing whoever cries the loudest, and I put people's lives above an ideal. (What was the saying, rather a slave and alive than free and dead?)
The Chinese government's as reluctant to accept such basic Enlightenment ideals as freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly as it is to give up land. It's trying to reap the technological advances of the twenty-first century without catching up to the political advances of the eighteenth. I realize that these are not changes that will occur overnight and must be chipped away at, but our government seems to be showing very little interest in even modest progress. (That could be because Bush's economic strategy consists of "owe a bunch of money to China so that the richest 1% of America doesn't have to pay taxes".) China needs to be challenged. More pressure needs to be brought to bear.
Agreed that more nations need to put diplomatic pressure on China to change, but America, who is in the best position to do this, is too busy screwing itself over to really effect this kind of change. Also, waaay too enamored with cheap Chinese goods. (This is problematic when we go home to visit, what can we bring back as gifts that's Made in US anymore?)
China has, at least on paper, the basic freedoms. However, China also has experience of cults assembling and overthrowing the government (See: Yellow Turban rebellion, Tai-Ping rebellion, Boxer rebellion, the millions of small rebellions during the Song Dynasty, the ENTIRETY of the Ming Dynasty, etc). So in order to keep stability, China takes a rather heavy handed approach in enforcing these things. Think of it as learning her personal lessons before learning European Enlightenment values.
I'm not even sure who you're referring to. China isn't a major issue in any race I know of this year, except as part of the larger issue of the economy.
I was speaking more of your state representatives and senators there. But I realize most those votes are along party lines. Yay for democracy.
I think what history has shown is that the best way for something to just sort itself out over time is when it becomes clear that it's economically disastrous (communism, looking in your direction here). That's not going to happen if THERE ARE NO NEGATIVE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES.
I was thinking more like, these Old Generation people have to retire first because they have the most clout and are the hardest lined AGAINST deviation from Maoist ideals (every citizen a Soldier-Farmer-Scholar, self-sufficient agrarian economy, fuck the westerners and japanese). Until then, it's damn near impossible for the party to change.
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