While I’m deeply disturbed by the various reports of what’s happening in Tibet and have my own strong opinions on the subject, this isn’t a political blog and I’d rather stay unblocked for now. That said, I’d like to comment on the fact that television news programs in the rest of the country are actually reporting on the situation. The facts they’re giving are sparse and - shall we say - carefully chosen, but on the 6 o’clock news tonight (which for me, comes on at 6:30 and 9:30), there was even footage of the full-scale rioting that went on yesterday in Lhasa.
For those of you outside China, what you hear about this country is rather skewed. Tibet gets a lot of coverage and is the all-star of China-bashing topics, while Xinjiang barely gets mentioned in Western media and neither do the bloggers doing time behind bars. However, in some ways the information available outside China much more plentiful than what we get here. Local reporters are not allowed to discuss many events. This is why the internet and the censoring of it are such crucial issues here. Chinese people who achieve a certain level of English, French, German or what have you, have access to a ton of information about their own country through the web that they can’t find in their native language. Thus, V-O-A and B-B-C and other websites are constantly blocked.
So I’m pondering why there has actually been coverage of what’s happening in Tibet the last few days. I have a theory. First, it may be that there was such a flurry of cell phone videos, blog posts and emails on the internet with so many different distribution points (not only YouTube, which has just now been blocked) that the government threw up its hands and said, ‘we can’t hide all this, let’s go public with our side.’ Which brings me to my second point - the coverage is predictably one-sided. The Dalai Lama and his ‘clique’ (whatever that means) are blamed for all the violence. Since when did DL preach violence as the means to resolve disputes? Anyway, by presenting the news in a certain light the powers that be probably calculated that public opinion would be against the violence and all for restoring order and stability (concepts that have been hammered away at ad nauseam the past couple of years by the propaganda machine) and all for returning the attention to having an annoyingly blissful and perfect Olympics. The evil secessionist Dalai, painted such, will be the scapegoat and the authorities’ blunt tactics hailed as a great victory for Hu’s harmonious society.
Remember, the average Chinese person does not know much about Tibet and knows nothing of 1951 or 1959. The discourse here states that Tibet was ‘liberated’ in ‘51 (from who?) and ‘59 doesn’t seem to be mentioned much… except again, with the Lama as the villain. Of the 1.3 billion people here, I’m quite sure less than 1% has even been to Tibet (including the people who live there). The lack of first-hand knowledge, plus a little white-washing equals a mass of people that pretty much have to except what they hear in the local media.
We’ll see as more events unfold just what is portrayed in the news. There’s been a curfew invoked since last Monday and I imagine martial law has also been imposed. It sounds as if most of the streets are clear but that the protesters have control of an area near an important temple and that they’ve been given a deadline of Monday to surrender or face serious consequences. The news tonight was silent on most of this, so I’m piecing it together from various sources. The government is talking tough and they mean business, but with Taiwan having a presidential vote in a week how much force can they use? And will the average Chinese person get to hear about it? Will there ever be a discussion in China as to the root causes of all of this?
Likely not. The news will report that the situation has been brought under control and that order and stability have been restored. If at all possible, no mention will be made of all the Chinese Consulates and Embassies around the world facing protests. I’m guessing the op-eds will be disgustingly one-sided. Material to laugh at, if people weren’t already dying.
However, just the fact that my wife and I got to watch this stuff on the news tonight was quite a significant event. Usually the scene would be me telling her stuff that I find on various international news sites about unrest in different regions of China. Instead, she was translating it for me. I rather like that.
Feds
Picture from Andy Wong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images