Wednesday 9 April 2008

Tibet, the Death of Ideology and the Spectre of Nationalism

The violence in Tibet and the neighbouring provinces appears to have largely come to a halt. Its repercussions are not likely to be great for the outside world. There will be scuffles over the Olympic torch as it makes its way around the world and a succession of political leaders will hint that they might avoid the opening ceremony, although most will later decide to turn up and those who do not will strenuously deny that it has anything to do with China's human rights record.

Meanwhile, dissidents are no doubt being rounded up and imprisoned, joining the untold thousands (the Home Office records over a million sentenced prisoners, but there are many more who've never seen a trial and never will.) Movement of reporters will continue to be restricted, news which reflects negatively on the government will be suppressed, reporters who cross the line will find themselves incarcerated and international companies will continue to show contempt for the concept of freedom of the press.

It's fair to say that the Chinese government is a shit-stain upon the metaphorical sheets of the world's pretence to give a damn about justice. It's not a very pleasant image, nor a particularly informative one, but one can only really be either disgusted by their policies or apolitical to the point of immorality.

In the past forty years China has transformed itself from a Communist dictatorship which had degenerated into insanity in the Cultural Revolution into an economic juggernaut. It's economy is still fragile and it faces new challenges to do with a rapidly urbanising society and the influx of new technology, but at heart it still remains as a state capitalist behemoth, a demonstration that Bukharinism ia no more morally laudable than Stalinism, merely more economically realistic. [Yes, I will accept that there's no clear ideological link between Deng Xiaoping and the Right Opposition, but there are similarities and I'd like to pretend my A-level in History was slightly useful. Indulge me.]

Divorced from any ideological connection and committed only to remaining in power, China has become a force in the Third World. Whereas Western nations have to at least pretend to feel guilty when they deal with appalling despots before continuing their deals and shutting down bribery investigations the Chinese simply don't give a fuck whether or not you chuck water over your political prisoners before you attach electrodes to their genitals. Their foreign policy is realist, in that if you're willing to pay they'd overlook you skull-fucking a baby to death.

So yeah, I have to say that China's probably the nation to whose government I am most totally opposed. They're powerful, aggressively immoral and perhaps most worryingly, they appear to be relatively competent. North Korea, though run by a devastatingly unpleasant and bat-fuck insane clique, is at least run by a bat-fuck insane clique. It isn't comforting that they have nukes, but at least there's the chance that when they get drunk and try to use them they'll just immolate themselves rather than their neighbours. China, on the other hand, appears to work. It understands how the modern world works. It doesn't have to shut out companies like Yahoo! and Google. It just makes sure that they help the state security apparatus to suppress unpleasant and unChinese notions like democracy.

I hope I've managed to express how pleased I would be if the entire National Leadership of the PRC were consumed by Cthulhu. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to discuss my concerns about the actions of the rioters in what Wikipedia is calling, in its wonderfully vague and weaselly manner, the 2008 Tibetan unrest.

It'd be nice if this was a simple black and white situation, with clearly defined good guys and bad guys. Then again, it'd be nice if I regularly updated this blog, or if it was regularly read by people who aren't my friends or family. None of these propositions are in the slightest bit feasible.

You see, I'm not squeamish about resistance movements or rebel groups. Driving out an occupying force, or even bringing it to the negotiating table, is not easy and it's never going to happen without blood being spilt. In fact, it generally takes a lot of blood and unfortunately as the quantity of blood rises, the likelihood that some of it belongs to individuals who are, for want of a better word, innocent rapidly approaches 100%. Unless one wishes to condemn absolutely every uprising ever, one has to be sanguine about the deaths of members of occupying forces or their collaborators.

It's not hard to view the PLA as a foreign occupying force. Chinese sovereignty over Tibetan areas was established by military force and it's a fair guess (although obviously an impossible proof) that most of the population in these areas do not wish to be part of the PRC.

My problem is that it's hard for me to see the rioters as a resistance movement per se. Violence broke out because of the dispersal of a peaceful protest by the police. But the ensuing chaos soon lost connection to that event. It degenerated into an orgy of looting. That wouldn't be a particular problem, except for the reasoning behind the violence - Tibetan-owned businesses were spared, whilst those owned by Han Chinese were ruthlessly looted, Han and Hui Chinese were brutally attacked and the rioting culminated in an attempt to burn down a mosque.

To put this in context, recent years have seen an influx of middle-class Han Chinese to the province and they know own numerous small businesses in the area. One can certainly understand the resentment of Tibetans in economically marginal positions, but it seems clear to me that this has to be seen as an outpouring of misdirected rage.

It's not an organised attack on an occupying force. It's not an attack on the entity that holds them in an economically marginal position - the Chinese economic system and the government that oversees them. It is, and I hope you will forgive me for the charged nature of the term I am about to use, but it seems to fit the circumstances particularly well, a pogrom.

In principle, I have no objection to the idea of an independent Tibetan state (although I don't expect one to appear within my lifetime.) But I do have an objection to a Tibetan state in which only ethnic Tibetans are considered to be full citizens. That kind of nationalism is something I'd hoped we had left behind in the twentieth century.

Particularly since this isn't one province of China. Tibetan autonomous administrative divisions cover most of the province of Qinghai as well as western Sichuan and northern Yunnan and Tibetan enclaves can be found in plenty of other provinces. If the Chinese Communist Party loses power, I will be dancing in the street along with everybody else, but I don't want to see a successor state that represents the values of the rioters in Lhasa and elsewhere.

A Tibetan resistance group with a commitment to ethnic and religious tolerance (and a rejection of the theocracy which the Dalai Lama somewhat sheepishly represents) is something I can get behind without any qualms. But a putative state that believes in Tibet for the Tibetans gives me the shivers. It's very nearly as bad an idea as the People's Republic of China, which believes in staying in power whatever happens.