Why can’t Tibetan people enjoy modern civilization?
06 Sep 2007 19:10 EDT

So, why is is that Tibetans can’t enjoy modern civilization? Let’s see...

• Tibetan access to computers and the internet is extremely limited. Throughout Tibet, internet cafes are the predominant means of access to computers and the internet. Of all the cafes I visited, not a single one was properly equipped for the use of Tibetan language. The interface of the whole computer is Chinese, meaning that unless you understand Chinese — and not just spoken Chinese, which many Tibetans have a basic understanding of, but writen Chinese, which is a nightmare — it’s incredibly difficult to use. On top of that, even if you can deal with the Chinese interface, you cannot type in Tibetan to write email, compose your own websites, or chat. This is despite the fact that there has been software supporting Tibetan language for many years, despite the fact that Tibetan is included in the Unicode standard, despite the fact that it is relatively easy to retrofit old computers for Tibetan, and despite the fact that even the Chinese government supported much of the standardization work. At best, some Chinese-government-run sites displaying Tibetan text are readable, but these are all using font hacks and not correct Unicode, and thus unindexable, unsearchable, etc.
• Even Tibetans who can read and write Chinese are still very limited in their internet access by the “Great Firewall of China”. From my experience, China’s filtering system adds about a 15-second delay to loading most pages, making it really painful to browse, even with a multitude of browser windows open at once all waiting on different pages. This is despite the actual DSL and such used in the internet cafes being very fast; all the slowdown is at the filtering level. Moreover, many pages are blocked, even ones not related to Tibetan or Chinese politics, due to being hosted by the same provider, etc.
• A key component of modern civilization is legitimate, scientifically valid, reliable health care — something which Tibetans do not and will not have under China. In Lhasa, I saw a billboard about HIV awareness, which was written in Chinese language only — no Tibetan. The message is clear: China wants their own people to be safe from AIDS, while they don’t care if Tibetans die. This problem extends to medicines, in that all the labels with directions and safety information are all in Chinese. But even if they can read them, Tibetans would be better off not taking this medicine most of the time, since there is no enforcement of regulations separating legitimate medicine from snake oil.
• Tibetans have little access to modern products, only backwards Chinese junk. China has a really warped view of what is modern. To them, it means poorly manufactured goods on par with what the rest of the world had 50 years ago. As an example, whenever my friends in Tibet would show me their photo collections, they were always in small albums made from low-quality plastic that was falling apart and dropping out all the pictures. I later learned that the albums are already in this condition when you first buy them. On the other hand, you find individually-wrapped candies in super-thick, durable plastic. If that isn’t the definition of backwards, I don’t know what is — the products one needs to last are made to degrade before you even buy them, while the products that need to degrade quickly when disposed of won’t break down 100 years! To be fair, the one exception to China’s backwardness in manufactured goods is mobile phones. Many Tibetans have quite advanced phones holding their music collections, photos, and so forth, making up for the lack of computers.
• Tibetans do not have freedom of travel. Modern civilization is a globalized world in which one expects to be able to travel to study abroad, conduct business and open up trade, or just to see the world and come to better understand people from cultures different from one’s own. Tibetans, however, have a very difficult time even getting a passport to leave Chinese-controlled territory, and are subjected to intense monitoring if they do. Some Tibetan ‘traders’ manage to obtain permission to cross the Nepali border, but aside from this, international trade and business are basically closed-off to Tibetans, giving a monopoly to the Chinese.
• There is no rule of law in Tibet. In some rural places I visited, the local people were concerned for my safety, saying that there are many thieves and robbers and murderers around and that they’re in league with the Chinese police. This was purely word of mouth, but it’s surely what the people believed, making it difficult to have any sort of viable criminal justice there. All over, bribes seem to be the norm. And of course there are big public cases where the complete absence of rule of law shows clearly, such as the trials of Truklu Tenzin Delek which repeatedly violated Chinese constitutional law. Having a legitimate system of justice and rule of law is crucial to modern civilization.
• And perhaps most importantly, at present, the only way to modern civilization in Tibet is on Chinese terms. Thus, Tibetans are given the choice of remaining true to their identity, their hopes, their families — or becoming part of the Chinese nation. Naturally things are not quite so simple and Tibetans are not stupid; thus I’ve seen a good many cases here and there of Tibetans playing China’s game but staying true to themselves in secret. But even then it’s a dangerous game and many of the outcomes are sad: children growing up unable to socialize with their Tibetan peers and not even able to speak their language. Simply put, the opportunity to modernize Tibet on Tibetan terms is simply not there.

With the answer to Deng Xiaogang’s question out of the way, let’s look at his argument:

Some people enjoy the modern civilization including a higher living standard and various technological progresses themselves, but hope other people always live in closed and primitive status. They themselves sit in comfortable cars while hoping others still to ride donkeys; they live in modern houses but hope others to live in caves. This kind of psychology is not normal, nor healthy.

Indeed it is not healthy; whether it is normal is a question for the psychologists to study I suppose. What Deng Xiaogang has done here is set up a frame in which Westerners (and exile Tibetans) campaigning against China’s actions in Tibet (particularly the railway) are the lazy and spoiled ones demanding that Tibetans maintain a difficult, traditional, untechnological, and as he puts it, “uncivilized” lifestyle. While some irresponsible Tibet-‘supporters’ do behave in such ways, upon further analysis, Deng’s statements are actually evidence that China’s chauvinist and racist view of Tibetans has not changed over the past 50 years. They still think of Tibetans’ traditional lifestyle as uncivilized and barbaric, and yet they’re unwilling to unfasten the yokes of control which prevent Tibetans from participating in the modern world on their own terms.

How does one combat this sort of sophisticated trojan message designed to snare progressive Western sympathizers away from the Tibetan cause? To me, some of the important ingredients seem to be:

• Drawing out the implications of China’s view of Tibet and backwards and what it says about their racist past and present.
• Reporting on how, given the choice between setting up a Chinese lifestyle in towns or staying on the farms and in the pastures, most Tibetans continue to live the latter even while using ‘modern’ Chinese products in their lives.
• Acknowledging, cheering on and supporting those Tibetans who do manage to make steps towards a more modern Tibet while still under Chinese rule, whether it be the ones building schools and clinics or the ones developing Tibetan computing and telecommunications.

One thing’s for sure: while China remains in its current shape, the propaganda is only going to get more and most sophisticated. Their work in the universities over the past decades has paid off, leaving them with an ample supply of Westerners who eat up their propaganda faster than American news media eats up the Bush administration’s spoon-fed “news” clips. Unlike the Chinese who make signs like “RACIST PARK”, these people are experienced in developing messages for a Western audience, and probably come from “leftist” backgrounds themselves. Thus, we have a formidable foe on the ground.

What China does not have on their side though, and what they will never have, is actually being right. And while our friend Tendor is certainly right about truth being high-maintainence, a lie takes even more work to maintain. In this critical time, then, I feel it’s more important than ever for us to be honest, grounded in reality, and speaking from the heart of the issue.

So, Mr. Deng... what’s it going to be? Why can’t Tibetan people enjoy modern civilization? If you’re so worried about that question, get your troops out and let’s see what happens.

I dare ya!