Apr 24 2008
What Said Would Say about Tibet?
Just re-read Edward Said’s Orientalism a couple of days ago. Wondered what would he say about what is going on in Tibet?
I am afraid his strong identification to the Palestinian cause would compell him to side with the Tibetans. But ironically, it is his argument in Orientalism that helps me to justify my identification with the Chinese cause.
Said’s work builds on Foucault’s discourse/power/knowledge concept, as Said himself acknowledges (I also flipped through some chapters in “The Archaeology of Knowledge” and “The Foucault Reader” and did see the connections). A discourse, according to Foucault, is a process of contention that solidifies a loosely developed narrative and transforms it into knowledge. Said applies this model in the Middle East study and claims that knowledge about the Orient (i.e. Orientalism) is the by-product of colonialism, as he illustrates through Belford’s speech in the Parliament. However, Said struggles to establish whether Orientalism is created out of subjective desire or objective necessity. In other words, he cannot just say Orientalism is NOT the result of a grand conspiracy of the colonialists.
This hermeneutical ambivalence makes me cringe. If anything, Foucault is very clear that the creation of prison (in Discipline and Punish), like the creation of morden military, is out of necessity rather than planning. It is precisely this author-less-ness of modern knowledge (particularly socio-political disciplines) that makes the knowledge so authoritative and so powerful. Social Darwinism was consider a true knowledge because it was NOT a creation out of the Colonial Office. Rather it was advanced by a hermit-like scholar (Hubert Spencer) who was known to be a nerdy and detached observer. Social Darwinism was de-scienced only after the collapse of the colonial system.
What really bothers me is not what actually happened in Tibet, but how it is interpreted by the West and the Chinese, and how profoundly different the interpretations are. If I apply the Said/Orientalism model in Tibet, it is apparent that each interpretation fills a need, just as Orientalism fills the need of the colonizing enterprise.
My hypothesis is that the Western interpretation is the by-product of an effort of “integrating China”. And the Chinese one fills the need of nation building, both internally and externally.
First of all, it is apparent that media on both sides tell the same story differently by selectively pick and choose facts. Once the narrative is tested on the market, so to speak, and is accepted, it becomes knowledge (e.g. as part of the education system).
Secondly, each narrative/knowledge is developed as a result of political power relations. The West is unconfortable with China’s rise to prominence and wants to co-opt China by forcing it to conform not only to the “international” economic and financial system, but also to the value system of the West by worshiping the same symbols and using the same lexicon. In other words, China can never be granted a world power status unless it speaks the same language of human rights. Yes, even the grand ideal of the liberals is in fact a means of domination: it is something “we” have but “you” don’t.
In fact, Western political science studies have shown that there are many ways to achieve political/economic order. In the short term, it is heavily path-dependent (a la Robert Putnam). Just as Foucault argues in “Archaeology”, before a dominant narrative emerges, there are many alternatives. In the West, the dominant narrative is that liberalism is a necessary condition for economic superpower status. A typical example is the myth that England modernized first because of Magna Carta. Or the U.S. becomes what she is today thanks to a priori liberalism.
However, this narrrative has failed to explain what happened in China. As a result, the Chinese rightfully question its knowledge-worthiness and seeks to establish their own “truth”, except China is not yet strong enough to transform it into knowledge. For example, the Chinese learned from their own experiences that it pays to tolerate an authoritarian government to lead economic development at all costs. It is a legitimate alternative, one may say that the history of Germany, Japan and S. Korea can back it up too. However, China is still too weak to declare it the “right way out of poverty” for other poor countries (i.e. a knowledge, see Said’s quote of Nietzsche on p203).
The West certainly doesn’t like being contested. The unorthodoxiness of the Chinese success story challenges not only the dominant narrative, but also the West’s image of itself (in Orientalism, Said points out that the Orient exists in opposition but symbiotically with a Occident). And the worst of it all is that the West can’t accept that it is the Chinese who are challenging it. Hence, I can see the spite, the outrage, and the schadenfreude from the reactions after Tibet.
Just as Said says in Orientalism, every Orientalist, consciously or not, is a racist. Every free-Tibetaner (except the Tibetans themselves) is one too for they consider the Chinese not qualified to rule peoples who don’t share the East Asian heritage. “The Tibetan culture is a world heritage and China has the responsibility to maintain it” sounds like a flawless statement until one questions why Tibetan or Uyghur is a “world heritage” but the Three-Gorge, now flooded by a giant dam, is not as deserving?
It is too late and I am too tired to continue. I know full well no one will have the appetite to read this posting. That is the position I am in and I am strangely comfortable with it. Whatelse can I do? Cling to guns and religion?
By the way, I tested this idea with Joel. He shut me down even before I could finish. “Stick with the coal.” He said succinctly.
Afterword
I just found out that Said was dismayed that Foucault was a pro-Zionist. How ironic: Said admires Foucault but has to live witht the fact that the originator of his reasoning actually doesn’t share the same belief with him. In that case, I should not feel bad that Said might have sided with the pro-Tibetan movement:)
This is not the first time I imagine a dialogue with Said. In fact, after 9.11, I wrote him an email asking how he would explain the tragedy. Little did I know he was already very ill then (he died soon after). I am sure my email, unopened and unread, may still reside somewhere on a lonely server in Columbia.
‘Just as Said says in Orientalism, every Orientalist, consciously or not, is a racist. Every free-Tibetaner (except the Tibetans themselves) is one too for they consider the Chinese not qualified to rule peoples who don’t share the East Asian heritage’
You present an eloquent argument; eloquent but at best staunchly academic and at worst abhorrent.
The passage I have quoted above is what I consider abhorrent. There are a litany of very obvious reasons why I do not consider the current administration of the PRC qualified to rule Tibet (or China for that matter), none of them are related to liberalism or ‘East Asian heritage’. I do not consider Robert Mugabe qualified to rule Zimbabwe and I do not consider the United States qualified to rule Iraq- and many of them are white and liberal!
Fortunately it does not seem to be the intention of the United States to remain in Iraq indefinitely and Mr Mugabe is only mortal. The PRC and the Tibetan government in exile revise history to their own ends. If you choose to interpret that as an as yet incompletely deployed narrative you may be correct. But it is not relevant.
I am a European and a Tibet scholar. I am not adamantly pro-Tibet but your argument appalls me. It is not only a great injustice to the suffering of a people by an essentially foreign government (If Chinese police had been chasing journalists out of Australia last March would you still be bringing Orientalism into the question?) but it is an affront to all the Irish, Palestinians, Burmese, the list can continue, who have suffered incompetent governance by a neighbor who was decidedly not qualified to govern them.
Speak to some Tibetans, Iranians, Kazakhs, Afghans, or North Koreans about authoritarian rule and then come back to me on it as a means of solving anything.
Denis
This is just an aggregation of the email exchanges afterwards:
Yibing Wu
Thanks for your comment and here is my reply (sorry it is long) 5 messages
Yibing ‘Bing’ Wu Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 9:45 PM To: denis_burke@ Denis
I could feel the anger seeping through your spirited comment on my blog.
I see your argument, I get your point, and I understand your indignation. But I doubt you can say the same the other way. That is exactly why I framed the Tibetan issue using Orientalism.
Your argument is that an authoritarian regime, adopting an exclusive and discriminatory policy, is not “qualified” to rule an ethnic minority. In other words, social justice is the ultimate measurement of qualification to rule.
Is it so? To me, this argument sounds too much like the Orientalist argument in the “Age of Empire” (paraphrasing Hobsbawm). Back then, the justification was “civilized-ness” or “enlightened-ness”, but the grammar was awfully similar: you are not qualified to rule your subjects. Hence we are entitled to change the way things are.
Yet the real reason that the imperialists of the 19th century are entitled to change the world is that they have the power to do so. The “civilization” argument was at once a sham to cover the nakedness of power and an idol to rally a populace seeking a transcendental explanation of their labor.
So is the “social justice” argument today, I’d argue. You seem to have confused justice with fairness: justice is fairness measured in a given power configuration. Without power, there can be fairness but never justice.
That is my reflection of Foucault’s model of knowledge and power. Said substantiated this model in the study of the origin of Orientalism. But Foucault talked more than just the “procreation” side of power-knowledge. In fact, he was obsessed with the “destructive” side of the relationship: what happens when knowledge does not serve power any more. That leads to his Madness treaties.
The boundary between “madness” and “dissent” is a fuzzy one. To dissent implies one uses the same lexicons and references as the power one speaks to. To go mad implies one goes outside of the sphere of norm defined by the powers that be.
I would like to hear your characterization of the responses by many Chinese regarding the Tibet issue: would you call them “mad” or “dissident”?
I should temper my challenge by saying I consider rationality as the boundary of my consideration. In other words, I too consider many Chinese netizens as being crazy. For the rest, however, I see struggle, protest but not madness. They reason differently, use different terminologies or historical references, but they reason just as well as you do.
Let’s back away from “abstract academic debate” and back to the issue at hand, which is Tibet. You can look at the Tibet issue as a political struggle inside a particular polity which has its own history, logic and dynamics. Or you can group Tibet as one of many sufferings in the world, such as those in Palestine, Iraq, and Zimbabwe.
I have to say the latter conceptualization is extremely superficial–popular but hardly reasoned. Since you call yourself a scholar, and we know scholarship is about asking questions, allow me to ask you, a fellow scholar, some questions that you raised in your original comment:
1. Iraq: why the Europeans are so upset with the American unilateral action? If the Europeans consider justice a universal value, and they share the same beliefs as the Americans, how come the universality suddenly stopped at the Atlantic coast? Are the Europeans angry because the Americans violated a sacred tenet, or they are angry because they realize that such a tenet is not only violate-able, but is discriminatorily sothe Americans can but the Europeans can’t?
2. Zimbabwe: If Mugabe is so unpopular a ruler, the regime so isolated (in every sense of state affairs), the economy in such a dire state, the wrong to its people (white and black) so extravagant, on top of the existence of some information freedom, a legit opposition leader and strong international support, how come the populace has not risen up and overthrown the regime? The “brutal oppressive power” argument does not work with me—even a superpower like the U.S. can’t pacify a barren nation the size of a California (Iraq), how can a depleted Zimbabwe state effectively control a wild African nation without some kind of tacit recognition of justice among the populace, that is?
3. Palestine: is there a more brazen instance of colonialism then the Zionist usurp of Palestine? As a voting member in liberal democracy, can you tell me why you or your fellow citizens have failed to do anything to restore justice? Yet, to turn the argument around what is the best course for the Palestinians today? Do you think they are better off today pursuing absolute fairness or some kind of justice?
4. “The Irish”: I am not clear which Irish issue you are talking about? The Irish republican’s struggle for independence (a la Michael Collins) or today’s Northern Ireland violence? If it is the former, are you implying that if the Irish could gain independence from a declining British Empire, so could all the repressed peoples in the world today? That is quite an extraordinary claim. If it is the latter, I wouldn’t compare the Tibetans to either the Catholics or the Unionists, unless you consider the Tibetans violent fanatics who’d risk innocent people’s lives in the name of ideology. 5. North Korea: I have read news reports of North Koreans immigrants in Japan staged violent demonstrations (or even carried out sabotage actions, but I am not sure now) to protest Koizumi government’s tough stance against North Korea. How do you explain events like this? I hope you are not so naive as to tell me that all the protests are communist spies. 6. Tibet: as a scholar on Tibet, would you say that the Han-led Chinese government is carrying out religious or ethnic cleansing in Tibet? If so, how do you explain that there are thirty thousand monks in Tibet today? Shouldn’t they have been cleansed long time ago? Or you may want to characterize Beijing’s action as cultural cleansing? If so, which aspect of culture that is explicitly and violent suppressed by the government other than the worship of the Dalai Lama? If so, are you implying that the Dalai Lama is a strictly cultural figure nothing political about him at all? Who was the head of the previous Tibetan government (now in exile) again?
All I want to say to you is, you ought to look beyond absolute fairness and live beyond a Western liberal. If you are a secular rationalist like I am, being a cynic is a prerequisite. And the first thing you ought to be cynic about is your advanced degrees and educations. It is easy to let them define who you are, but a lot difficult to discover what they truly are.
Regards,
Bing Wu
– Visit me at: http://www.wuyibing.com
Denis Burke Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 6:26 AM To: Yibing ‘Bing’ Wu Yibing Wu,
Thank you for your well thought out response, and I assure you there is no need to apologize for its length.
There was no anger intended in my spirited comment. I had hoped to engage with your blog in serious terms on an issue that you correctly assume I feel very strongly about.
You are correct when you say that I do not understand your indignation. It is precisely because I find it impossible to understand your indignation that I described your posting as abhorrent. I think your argument is very well crafted, I think your response to my argument is even more so.
Before I address your questions I must ask you one- it seems the only reason you would assume that I am liberal (which you evidently do) is because of my ’spirited’ response. What does Said have to say about that? What does Avishai Margalit have to say about that more to the point?
You described my embedding Tibet within the context of the greater world as ’superficial-popular’. This is a fair charge, I have just the same reaction to comparisons between Abkhasia and Kosovo. However, we are arguing here on different grounds. Tibet does indeed have its own history, logic and dynamics. I hope you do not find me bull headed when I point out that the PRC entered willingly into a global community with shared values, making the post-1950 situation in Tibet, including its history, logic and dynamics, more than a matter of the local as I hope to illustrate below.
1. Iraq: Because for over 50 years people around the world have been trying to build and develop a global community which has found some universal values, the American administration’s decision to ignore the obvious political manifestation of that community and proceed unilaterally, many Europeans (along with people from all over the world including China) are angry. Your questions are good food for thought and I will gladly consider them, but they are not relevant to my argument. I took issue because you argued that all free Tibet supporters are racists- and then you ask me why all Europeans are angry with the war in Iraq? If you felt anger seeping through in my comment it is only felt on this side at your generalizations.
2. I believe what you say about Zimbabwe is precisely the sort of superficial- popular argument you mentioned.
3. Palestine is a thorny issue and one I suspect we disagree strongly on and would perhaps distract us from the argument at hand. Suffice it to say I do not think that Israel’s presence on the map is the most brazen instance of colonialism in modern times but I do not feel adamantly that my point of view is correct. I also need to again level the question of why it would only be the responsibility of those in a liberal democracy to address this terrible situation? Should they continue to seek some sort of justice or fairness? Fukuyama’s borrowed rendering of thymos is the common thread to the Irish, the Palestinians, and the Tibetans. Without some recognition of these peoples sense of self (defined however they or you would like to) then the problems will persist and they will remain discontent and feeling oppressed and those of us who have a hope of a better world on common terms some day should be preoccupied with it.
4. Today’s Northern Ireland violence?
5. I fail to see why you are calling upon me to explain why some North Koreans were protesting in Japan. I do not have the first idea. I could speculatively offer that they are in favour of their government, that they are nationalists in spite of not liking their government, or that they simply do not like to see Japan behaving that way towards Korea. Are any of these ideas insightful? I doubt it. The point remains, people leave North Korea reporting torture, malnutrition and brain washing. I hope you are not so naive as to assume that they have all been planted there by Seoul? I hope you are not so taken with the idea of authoritarian government that you cannot understand why torture, preventable famines and brain washing are really beneath our collective dignity at this stage in our history?
6. As I mentioned on your blog- I am not adamantly pro-Tibet. Are the Han-led Chinese government carrying out ethnic cleansing? Not to the best of my knowledge. Violent- suppressive government? Your words, not mine.
You misunderstood my original argument. I was referring to this: “Every free-Tibetaner (except the Tibetans themselves) is one [a racist] too for they consider the Chinese not qualified to rule peoples who don’t share the East Asian heritage.”
The Peoples Republic of China does not seem to be qualified to govern Tibet because its policies there have failed the people especially within the context of the situation’s own politics, history, logic, and dynamics. I did not intend to frame Tibet in the context of the rest of the world- I transposed your logic to other contexts in an effort to reveal how frightening your thinking is if you follow it through.
I mention Mugabe because I dismiss his ability to govern based on his track record in governance- not on the colour of his skin or his cultural background- my objection to him (oddly echoed in official Chinese and other ‘East Asian’ media) is not racist. I mention Ireland because the overwhelming majority of Irish people found British rule compromised the tolls that used to identify themselves for its duration and not merely as the empire dwindled. Both of these peoples are white Europeans with very similar cultures. Incidentally the problem with Ireland pre-1922 and the problems (though rarely violence) experienced by Northern Ireland today stem from the same root. The IRA and the Loyalist paramilitary groups represent a very small part of a larger dispute over national identity. Your use of the word Catholic hints at a common misreading of this situation. Those in Northern Ireland who are neither fundamentalist nor violent would, and often do, sympathize often with Tibet, Palestine, and Catalonia.
What you fail to recognise about Tibet is that in spite of its geography, background, history and the ethnic make up of its government, what has been happening there for the last half century is neither fair, just nor right by anyone’s standards (and I am not speaking of global shared values or European liberal values). I am prepare to be contradicted on this-but please point to a value system that can justify it.
My argument is not as well realized as yours, nor as well articulated. I am most grateful to you for replying and for doing so cordially (particularly when it seems you have mistaken me for a hot headed hippy) and I would be greatly interested in hearing more of your thoughts.
Your original post and your reply are praise worthy as black and white scholarly assessment. The questions you are not asking yourself go beyond scholarly insight- and first amongst them is this; Are you actually condemning as racist the desire of people all over the world to see a peaceful resolution to a terrible situation just because the situation concerns China?
I thank you for your advice on looking beyond my not so advanced degrees. I endeavour constantly to look beyond western liberal thinking but I am not particularly cynical. I am rather idealistic and this, on occasion, has led people to assume that I am stuck on western liberal thinking- oddly enough I have found many Chinese, Tibetans and Koreans who share these ideas (but maybe they watch too much American TV). They are not the same thing and the day that we collectively accept that idealistic thinking is purely western or naive is the day we lose something very precious.
Regards,
Denis
Yibing ‘Bing’ Wu Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 12:40 PM To: Denis Burke Denis
After reading your last email and my previous one, I realized that I did not make myself clear why I brought up those country cases. What I wanted to say is that people are too accustomed to a stylized way to look at things (oppressors vs. liberators, right vs. wrong, etc.), but may have missed some of the obvious questions which, in fact, outline the dynamics of power politics in a way that scientists use to demonstrate invisible forces.
I recognize that I probably went out of my league when I tried to cover too many cases, e.g. Northern Ireland. What is more, although I had a common theme behind all those questions, I did not spell out the theme for you (as I mentioned earlier). Hence, the cases may have appeared as irrelevant or unrelated to each other.
But they are not. The common theme behind all those questions is that what is unfair may not be unjust. What is fair may not be righteous (e.g. European anger). It is a mistake to consider fairness or righteousness in a vacuum. Once you factor in power relations the real picture is a lot different from a superficial, stylized impression.
To put it more bluntly, I do not believe there is a universal, INVIOLABLE code of conduct. If I am not mistaken, this thinking is what really abhorred you and led you to comment that “I transposed your logic to other contexts in an effort to reveal how frightening your thinking is if you follow it through”.
In fact, I am aware of the heaviness of my logic. I call myself a cynic not because I use it as a “hedge” to defuse the disappointment I feel when real life turns out much darker then I wished for. No. I do believe in my logic. I think that is the gist of our differences. I reject the promise of a Positivist world view. If such a view may be thought of as the legacy of a Continental tradition that began with Comte or Kant, I belong to a different camp that of the Anglo-American Empiricist/Pragmatist school. I assumed that you are a liberal particularly because I detected the idealist element in your reasoning.
I should really take a pause here for we are now talking more about beliefs than reason. If I offended you by labeling you, I do apologize in advance. But you must believe me when I say I don’t mean “idealism” in a mocking way. When I use the word, I don’t use it in the vernacular sense (i.e. hot-headed hippy). Rather, it is the foundation of an alternative world view.
This being said, I just can’t find myself subscribe to this world view it is not valid, nor is it operation-able. Not valid in the sense that it is not backed up by real world events. Not operation-able in the sense that such a world view cannot be translated into substantial, course-altering action.
Let’s begin with the first point. In almost every case we discussed, there is a significant and enduring (if not permanent) gap between what it should/ought to be and what actually happened. This is the same thing as the fairness-justice difference I mused about earlier. It is one thing if the discrepancies (between an envisioned world and the real one) appear occasionally and randomly. It is another if they happen all the time. In other words, when the world always turns out dramatically different from what you think it should be, what should you think “what is wrong with the world” or “what is wrong with my belief”? For example, after the British abolished slavery, some enlightened English wondered aloud why the Americans didn’t follow their example. After the Americans finally assimilated the Indians, they are now offended when Chinese started to compare the Tibetan issue to the Natives. The arguments were similar we made the mistake, we know we were wrong. But you shouldn’t repeat our mistakes! You see, it is as if there is a Platonic world out there. However, again, when reality repeatedly violates the Ideal, should you still believe in the sanctity of the Ideal?
On the second point, that the idealist belief is not operation-able, I want to stress that I mean “course-altering” operations. In the case where the Taliban decided to blow up Buddhist statues, there was no lack of consensus on “right” or “wrong”. Yet was that consensus alone sufficient to alter the course of history? Then there is an even more extreme example in the cannibalistic Idi Amin, who, despite being nearly universally condemned, died in the hands of time not man. I raise those examples not to upset your senses or to distract from our discussion. Instead, what I am trying to say here is that the moral outrage (or the appeal of the righteousness) **alone** is rather powerless.
Not that I don’t believe one should hold any sort of standard. In fact, I can’t bring myself to say that “humanity” is an empty word. At the same time, however, I realize that such a standard (same as what you mean by “value system”) works only on those who also believe in such a standard and in a relatively limited sphere (geographical as well as cultural) that is also aligned with raw power (not in the sense of delivering physical violence, but the ability to change course of history). Actually, the raw power needs the standard as much as the other way around. Because people inherently seek transcendental meanings in their daily labor, the significance of symbol, ritual and language are often just as powerful. In short, they are symmetrically important and mutually enhancing (think of Weber’s Protestant ethics thesis and Said’s Orientalism. But there is a lot more to that per sociologists like Dirkheim, Bourdieu and Geertz).
It is because this realization or, more precisely, because I am more sensitive to this power-discourse relationship than to the universality of human rights, that I claimed supporting Tibetan independence is the same as challenging China. When I said “every is a racist”, I was following Said’s statement which, if I dare to speculate, is modeled after Nietzsche’s claim “God is dead” it is not about whether God is really dead or not, but a cry to shock the ready (but still wandering) minds into attention.
I also take exception with your characterization of my argument on Tibet: I said the Chinese government is violently suppressive only when it comes to Dalai Lama. I am also disappointed that you, as a Tibetan specialist, didn’t give the Chinese government more credit for its respect of Tibetan culture.
To the first point, I would say that, first, I have read Dalai’s autobiography in Chinese. He is no Desmond Tutu or Nelson Mandela. His view of the world is not lack of ethnic discrimination. Secondly, because Dalai is the head of a political party that openly advocates Tibetan independence, I consider the tension between Dalai and Beijing not a religious-secular confrontation as widely portrayed in the Western news media, but a secular power struggle. It is not as if Dalai and Beijing disagree on what is the proper way to prostrate, it is who to prostrate to. I am not saying all power struggles are equally dirty. But if the world recognizes Beijing’s sovereignty over Tibet, it is Beijing’s prerogative to consolidate political power across the land. If the debate comes down to that the Tibetans choose theocracy but the Chinese government decide to untie politics and religion by marginalizing Dalai Lama, the West is really in no place to comment on that.
To the second point, I would say Beijing has done what is reasonable for Tibet. You should know that central transfer to Tibet far exceeds resource extraction from Tibet, at least since the 2000s. The notion that China proper is pillaging a resource-rich Tibet is just a slander. I have come across Barry Sautman’s several articles on Beijing’s dealings in Tibet. I don’t know what you think of him, but he told me things I wasn’t aware before. As a Chinese native now living in the States, I do read China’s defense on its Tibet policy. What Sautman did was to collaborate some of the assertions made by the Chinese government and regular citizens.
If you are a Tibetan specialist, I don’t need to tell you how complicated Sino-Tibetan history has been. The mistrusts, hostilities and conflicts have been there for centuries and, more importantly, gone both ways. Therefore, today’s ethnic tension and political struggle in Tibet is not unprecedented. It is not like China suddenly decide to invade an innocent Shangri-La where people eat nothing but organic and practice nothing but yoga. Of course, I don’t believe the other nonsense that Tibetans were slaves to the Lamas prior to 1950. Even if it were true, Han Chinese really have no business to pass judgment, particularly when many contemporary Han Chinese lived no better.
What really happens in Tibet today must be somewhere in between. We don’t know the truth not because we don’t have access to the facts (even the Chinese news lockout cannot prevent cell phone pictures being leaked out on the Internet), but because our perception has been heavily colored by what we like to believe. You keep saying that you are not ardently pro-Tibet. But this is so relative that, as the recipient of this assurance, I still have no idea how far apart we are.
I was infuriated by some of the obvious media lies on Tibet during the height of the tension. You probably have heard (and I saw them myself) that Washington Post used pictures of Nepal police beating up Tibetan protestors as proof of Chinese brutality. CNN cropped a picture where Tibetan protestors were the aggressors attacking a military truck to tell a complete different story. Many Chinese charged that the Western media conspired to make China look bad. I think that is too simplistic a reading of human nature and the media. Instead, the facts are doctored to tell a more believable story, to construct a more cohesive narrative. In other words, the interaction between the media and the Western public is not as much a “let me tell you”, but “I told you”. Compare the Tibetan story to that of Georgia the media report on the conflict in that confusingly-named part of the world, at least initially, was a lot more tentative.
Without an opinionated media, the public would be at a loss of how to interpret events happened outside their sphere of senses. But equally true is that, without a readily receptive public, the media would not bother to invest in the effort to tell the story. This is another reason I do not think it is relevant to focus on who is or is not a racist.
I understand your criticism largely lay in my statement’s broad inclusion. I regret if it offended you. After this long contorted effort to explain myself, I hope you can see better where I came from, or why I chose not to qualify my statement.
It has been exhaustive writing down my thoughts. But I find the experience very rewarding. For that, I want thank you for your participation in this dialogue, for your thoughtfulness and encouragement. I truly feel indebted.
Bing
BTW, if you don’t object, I intend to include your last email in a blog post. I will remove it if you do have a problem. Thanks! [Quoted text hidden] [Quoted text hidden]
Denis Burke Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 2:09 PM To: Yibing ‘Bing’ Wu Dear Bing (if I may?),
My apologies for the delay in my responding but I wanted to take some time with my reply.
Thank you for a well considered and enlightening e-mail. If I may crudely squeeze you into the box of ‘realist’ in international relations terms, I find your case for this perspective rather impressive.
As you say we are, in this, talking more about belief then anything else. But I hope you can indulge me and share your opinion on some of my thoughts related to those beliefs. I tend towards a positivist perspective for many reasons. Not because I see some universal code of ethics, values or sense of justice- but because I feel the more that people build interdependence in economic terms, the more people taste peace, and the more that cultures and systems of ideas press up against each other the more necessary and universally agreeable it becomes to cultivate a shared framework of what is and is not acceptable. Furthermore, measured historically I feel that our collective progress does lean towards cooperation and a coexistence free from antagonism (if not actual peace).
Leaving aside Africa for a moment, everywhere in the world can report proportionately fewer and fewer people every passing year who are required to undergo heavy physical toil on a daily basis. This is a major contrast to the world of 1800. The 20th century was the first in 1000 years without a war between Britain and France, the 21st will almost certainly be the first without a war between France and Germany. Indeed all of the European nations Sun Yat Sen described as warlike have been tamed and western Europe has not seen a war for 60 years. I will not bore you with other examples such as disease eradication or similar cases that could be made for Asia and its neighbors but I am sure you catch the drift of what I am saying. I do not see the gap you describe between what happens and what ‘ought’ to happen as so enduring or permanent
There is no question that there are also major blunders and set backs on an all too regular basis. But without these awful catastrophes it is likely that much would be lost in the balancing. We learn a lot slower collectively than we do individually because it takes the persuasion of strong willed intelligent people (to take your example of the American slave holder) that what they are doing needs to be reconsidered, like trying to convince a child to heed his brother’s mistakes. Without this questioning and balancing we become a race of idiots. The tragedy is that this delays us when previous lessons have proven that we ‘ought’ to take action in cases like Rwanda and many now say Sudan. Rather than say that these are mistakes that we are by our nature somehow likely to repeat forever, I think it is rather slower progress but progress nevertheless.
At my most cynical I would describe the nation state system as a positive if one if only because it allows for a virtual government monopoly of violence. Without that monopoly we quickly sink back into anarchy and lawlessness. Security studies 101 describes this as the basic problem of the international system, that without effective governance we still have to deal with the laws of the jungle. I think we are better than that. I think a great part of the reason why so many people are angry with the Bush administration is because they have undermined what governance was there and horribly tarnished the leadership of the first country to achieve global recognition as a leader (if not always global respect).
These are beliefs and not anything I can quantifiably support but, for just that reason, I would like to hear what you have to say about them.
To turn to Tibet: I must first insist on clarifying something- I do not call myself a Tibet specialist, I leave that claim to people with a great deal more experience and maturity than I have yet achieved. Rather I call myself a Tibet scholar because I have researched and written a lot on the topic. Though I am not dispassionate I am confident that I approach the matter objectively and without agenda.
It is precisely because I have been commended for my balanced approach that I felt compelled to reply to your blog posting. Even considering arguments on all sides I can’t help but find myself compelled to think that the government in Beijing is mishandling the situation.
“I also take exception with your characterization of my argument on Tibet: I said the Chinese government is violently suppressive only when it comes to Dalai Lama. I am also disappointed that you, as a Tibetan specialist, didn’t give the Chinese government more credit for its respect of Tibetan culture.”
You would be correct to take exception to such a characterization of your argument but that was not my intention. I was hoping to draw your attention to how much you seemed to be assuming about my views originally and there was no reason to suppose that I would agree. I do not give the Chinese government credit for its respect of Tibetan culture. I give it more credit than many, but that is still not much. Incidentally I don’t give the American or Australian governments much respect for the indigenous cultures of their countries either. My understanding of the situation suggests that Chinese government policies on Tibetan culture are at best badly conceived and at worst calculated to cultivate further dependence. I see nothing to credit in cultural respect for a culture that is mired in religiosity that still leaves literally hundreds of monks and nuns making a risky journey to leave ever year. There are other examples I am sure you are familiar with that I do not find commendable. I hesitate to slam the Chinese government as oppressive on the cultural front, but they are getting it wrong and whether that is through design, chauvinism or incompetence I am not yet convinced.
In every other respect I agree with what you said about Tibet and China in your mail. I do think the Western media and Chinese media give horribly tainted pictures of what is happening there. I think that the lies on all sides extend to history and that the Chinese narrative is too simplistic, the Tibetan story sensational and selective and the Western interpretation does not bear to be called history.
I need to ask you to elaborate on the secular-religious argument I think. As it stands I do not think there is any question that the Dalai Lama is head of a political entity that is claiming to be pursuing autonomy within China. Let me tread carefully here- I know there are reasons why he almost certainly could not deliver true autonomy even if it were possible and I am also aware that ‘autonomy’ should be taken with a pinch of salt. But what I am not grasping is this: The ongoing protests in Tibet and imprisonment of people for their political views vis a vis the Dalai Lama suggest to me that- rightly or wrongly- there are a great many ethnic Tibetans who feel that they are marginalized and disenfranchised because the government the Dalai Lama seems to represent is not in Tibet. Now whether one sees the Dalai Lama as the next Hitler or as a simple Buddhist monk (I do not mean to imply that you see him as either) Beijing has a situation where they must (as you say) consolidate their political power and in so doing they chose (in my opinion) to marginalize the Dalai Lama thus marginalizing those people who claim that he is their rightful spiritual and temporarl leader. This potentially makes it a question of self determination. Furthermore, that the man (if he made it past childhood) that the Dalai Lama recognized as the Panchen Lama would also be his political second. The Dalai Lama and, evidently, a great many Tibetans in Tibet seek internationalization of their perspective because they see their self determination compromised and their government in exile just as many French did during World War II. China can refute that claim but as a member of the United Nations it could and should be doing a better job of refuting it.
I am inclined to feel that there is no smoke without fire. There is signifcant evidence to suggest persecution and torture are being used to consolidate Chinese political control of Tibet and Xinjiang. Again, under its international agreements China has internationalized these questions itself. If it is not the case then Beijing has put itself in a position where it must be prepared to explain that. This is not something specific to China; anyone who freely enters their country into agreements that claim they will uphold certain standards should probably uphold those standards, credibly refure any accusations that they are not upholding those standards, or sign off the international agreement. The word ’should’ in that sentence is bothering me, but I think I owe you an overview of my feelings on Tibet so I will not mince words.
More than 60 governments around the world (far beyond what could even vaguely be defined as the Western world) have expressed through resolutions, acts, and decrees that they are alarmed by what has happened in Tibet. It is the fact that Beijing does not seem prepared to compromise remotely that pushes me to the pro-Tibetan side of the spectrum. Why Tibet has turned into a human rights issue is unfathomable. But the Dalai Lama pushed it that way, and China- for whatever reason- was unable to discredit him in Tibet or abroad.
I particularly enjoyed John Powers work on the historiography of China and Tibet and would recommend it.
I hope this mail has gone some way towards informing you about my opinions. It’s difficult to speak so generally.
I hope to hear from you further and I thank you again for respectfully and intelligently informing me of another perspective,
Regards,
Denis
> Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2008 12:40:47 -0700 > From: yibing.wu@ > To: denis_burke@ > Subject: Re: Thanks for your comment and here is my reply (sorry it is long) [Quoted text hidden] [Quoted text hidden]
Yibing ‘Bing’ Wu Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 4:33 PM To: Denis Burke Dear Denis,
I enjoy our conversation very much. Suffice to say, I care not as much as being able to convince you as to have a chance to think deeper, organize my thoughts and articulate them. Again, I thank you for your very thoughtful arguments–they really help me to think.
I particularly appreciate your example of European progression over the last century (for the sake of simplicity, in this letter I will use Europe to mean Western Europe). For one, it poses the question whether the history of France-Germany relation can be served as a fair analogy for that of China-Tibet. In other words, if I cannot justify Hitler’s occupation of France, how can I justify China’s annexation of Tibet? This question appears to be easy to answer but I actually have a hard time convincing myself other than to say that the world might have made a mistake when it recognized China’s total sovereignty over Tibet.
However, if this sovereignty issue is a historical fact and not up for challenge, I still can’t find myself faulting Chinese government’s policy on Tibet in a fundamental way.
Before I go any further, I have to identify my position since it matters: I am not an apologist for the Chinese government per se. I participated in the 1989 student movement and consider myself a follower of the Western liberal tradition.
Now back to Tibet. The reason I took you to task for “not giving the Chinese government enough credit” is because I didn’t consider Chinese policy errors deserve the groundswell of condemnation from the West. Apparently, you disagreed and said 60 nations all criticized China for not up to speed on human rights standards. To further clarify my arguments, I will say that, if we put aside past sins for now (from which both Han and Tibetan suffered but should be accounted for separately), China has done a fairly humane job ruling Tibet GIVEN THE CIRCUMSTANCE (as I said before, I don’t believe there is a telos of human rights). Therefore, I pointed to racism to explain my perceived discrepancy. I will elaborate my points more here.
Tibet–even without the Eastern part that Dalai also claims–accounts for a large portion of Chinese territory. Given how densely populated the rest China is, given the fact that the Chinese government cannot possibly run the country without asserting control over the whole territory (e.g. the long unitary history), among many other reasons, it is inconceivable to me that any modern Chinese government would willingly agree to a Dalaian Tibetan autonomy which would limit migration and the nomenclature power from the center. In fact, is there any successful autonomy model that you think may work in Tibet? Belgium? Scotland? Tanzania? Quebec? The list may go on but I hope you would, as I do, dismiss every one of them.
The reason I talk about autonomy is because Han migration and political leadership are at the core of the Tibet problem. And I would posit that both issues are more closely identified with sovereignty than autonomy. If you agree with this point, and you recognize China’s sovereignty over Tibet, then would you agree too that Dailai’s demand of autonomy is a de facto challenge of sovereignty?
I am sorry if I appear to you as beating a dead horse (i.e. the sovereignty issue). You may readily concede on China’s sovereignty already. If so, then the burden of proof is on you to convince me why China’s harsh actions against some Tibetans are not normal policing activities but human rights abuse?
I understand your question: since the Tibetans truly love Dalai and consider the government in exile as their only representative government, to deny Dalai’s government goes against Tibetan people’s free will and is thus a gross human rights violation.
I do NOT agree with the conditions of this statement that all Tibetans are so politically “enlightened” that they would rather die than live under any other government that is not Dalai’s. In fact, I will say that this pattern–a vocal, combative minority elite claiming the right to represent a apathetic majority–exists among many other peoples in the world as well. In Tibet’s case, the subjects’ devotion to Dalai has a strong religious component. In a secular society, such devotion should not be uncritically treated as political authority. In the meanwhile, the Chinese government is adequately fulfilling its public service functions in Tibet, and is going out of its way to preserve the linguistic, cultural and religious tradition (in the sense that many projects are paid for by central transfer and grants). Therefore, I’d say the only contention left is limited to the political arena. If so, bending someone’s political will can hardly be called human rights violation.
Although I too have doubts as to what the ideal Han-Tibetan relation should be, I still believe that much of the Western condemnation is misplaced to say the least. And as I mentioned earlier, I felt it was disproportional and unjustified (hence my charge of racism).
Where you failed to persuade me is what I perceived your over-reliance on the European experience. Your seem to suggest that Europeans learned the hard way how to live in peace with each other and it is a lesson the whole world should learn from to avoid further bloodshed. You also argued from your positivist outlook that progress may be slow but there is no doubt the world is moving toward a more enlightened, more human equilibrium.
I respect your argument: the conclusion you draw is from your own (collective) experience, hence is verifiable and falsifiable. However, my counter argument is, however profound and valuable the European experience is, it is not the only model of historical progression–not only do different parts of the world have different patterns of development, they also have different equilibria (in terms of co-existence with neighbors).
In your last reply you used the brother analogy. In my last email, I believe I questioned Plato (or a Platonic concept of world in peace). Those two examples are very telling of our differences: whereas you see a linear progression along time line, I see the world in a lot more parallel fashion.
Since you brought up nationalism in Europe, let’s use it as a case study. Again, I assume that your point is, Europe has learned from past mistakes and overcome the old Nationalist ethos. Today the European Regionalism is a better way to organize an international community (which I strongly agree). In other words, Europe has achieved a higher equilibrium. Other regions will likely progress toward the same level of equilibrium–whether they learn from European or their own mistakes.
My argument is that the European experience is only relevant in the European context. Other regions have very different kind of nationalism thus evolved very differently. For example, European nationalism evolved largely from battles against absolutist monarchism. First generation nationalism scholars like Hans Kohn wrote eloquently about this point. Other like Ernest Gellner linked nationalism to socio-economic changes brought by industrial revolution. To sum them up, the English and French nationalist movements were mostly civil wars, not foreign wars. The formation of national identity and the rise of representative governments coincided with large scale industrialization.
In that sense, the early nationalism is even different from the latter German, Italian and Russian ones, and certainly much more so than the Turkish, Chinese and de-colonialized countries variations. There is a lot stronger ethnical element in the latter/later ones. The German nationalism was defeated in WWII but I’d say it didn’t reincarnate into a more liberal being until after the 1960s (I remember Schroeder praised Joschka Fischer and his cohorts for “demanding more liberty than were given”).
The later nationalism (and there are different versions among them too, e.g. the Latin American cases) may be better described as ethno-nationalism (per Connor Walker). They rose more or less in the context of two major developments: the struggle against colonialism/imperialism and the pursuit of modernization. Therefore, they bear a more existential, defensive and exclusive disposition, follow a different trajectory than the European breed. Not surprisingly they also manifest themselves very differently.
For example, the existence of the EU and its consultative, participatory and fraternal style is largely the result of the legacy of European nationalism which has a stronger liberal element than an ethnic one (to a non-European like me, it seems that although the French may not like the English but during the French revolution at least, they seemed to hate the Bourbons even more). After the Glorious Revolution (a milestone in the development of liberal nationalism), the Parliament invited a foreigner (William the Orange) to takeover—this may make sense in a European context, but is entirely unthinkable in Asia.
Yet later nationalism has its own paths and milestones. In the case of Zionism (which I consider as another variation of nationalism), although most of its founding members were European liberals, it has evolved into one of the most exclusive and discriminatory form of nationalism today. Others have their own eccentricities if viewed from European point of view. Yet they are no less legitimate in the sense they are just as enduring and powerful. Would they grow to more like the European model? Yes and No. Yes in the sense that the conflicts will be less violent and bloody. No in the sense that they will maintain their own modi operandi for generations to come. Not because people involved are stubborn or ignorant. Rather, their approach to regional decisions is based on their past experiences. They don’t just change because Europe has changed.
Let us once again go back to Tibet. Chinese and Tibetan nationalism are mostly ethno-nationalism. Neither polity has had a liberal revolution that totally transformed an absolutist, top-down and uni-culture society. When two peoples are locked in a tight corner, one cherishes total devotion to a demagogue (Tibet) and the other demands individual sacrifice for the sake of collective good (China), their behaviors toward each other are not that hard to predict. Just having a remote third party example (Europe) hardly matters at all in this case.
That is why I didn’t consider Chinese government’s actions are so outrageous that they deserve such a stern condemnation. You mentioned that 60 nations joined the chorus. I am insulted but amused too–for the same reason: many of them just don’t have the moral authority to point fingers at others. But put my personal feelings aside, I would reason that this many different countries must be on different paths and at different equilibria. When this eclectic group start singing praise for human rights together, you’d wonder whether they are singing the same thing or just paying lip service.
I don’t know whether we can really convince each other. But for me, I’d be happy if I am able to communicate my thoughts effectively enough so you start to revisit some of the assumptions you hold as naturally given. You have asked many tough questions and I fully expect they will influence my thinking in the future.
Regards,
Bing
At what stage were the Tibetans ever asked what they wanted for their own future. Any culture that imposes its own rule over another culture is imperialist, and the Chinese government has been quite strident in denouncing all forms of imperialism and colonialism. Yet that is precisely what it is practising in Tibet.
Other imperialist powers have abandoned their old empires. Britain no longer rules India, or even Hong Kong, which it created. Yet China still holds on to its old empire, and attempts to justify it by calling it “an indivisible part of China”. (France also did that with its North African empire, but it did not last.)
For the Chinese to continue to impose their own rule, and their own ideas, on Tibet, is pure, unadulterated, imperialist arrogance.