"He is a black president, and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln's major significance for that movement. Thus, on [Tibet] we hope that President Obama, more than any other foreign leader, can better, more deeply grasp China's stance on protecting national sovereignty and territorial integrity." ● Obama arrives in Shanghai tomorrow. China is pre-emptively detaining dissidents (via Instapundit). ● Related: Obama snubbed the Dalai Lama in DC this week (and that's a first, Bush and Clinton met with him every time).
Tibet is exactly like America's Civil War South, says China.
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also, several generals name Lee.
Not a peep from Obama about human rights. Apparently he's using the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition as his guide to negotiations.
Thanks, Xeni! You are one of the few voices reporting on Tibet (and others!). You consistently present with a rare balance of wisdom and compassion. Your efforts are greatly appreciated! Please continue.
Apparently Reuters are http://www.pressrun.net/weblog/2009/11/obama-video-in-singapore-omits-human-rights.html rather than Obama. Granted, a peep is just a peep.
"We will not agree on every issue, and the United States will never waver in speaking up for the fundamental values that we hold dear – and that includes respect for the religion and cultures of all people. Because support for human rights and human dignity is ingrained in America."
curse my linking skills.
this is the link I was trying to post.
Obama does not say much, but he does not say nothing.
Antinous:
Oh, he talks about them. . . in the same generalized, grandiose terms he talks about many other things. But when it comes down to brass tacks, he prefers "pragmatism" and "soft power." Of course, how do we expect a leader who pelts rural areas of Asia with drone ordinance and won't examine human rights abuses in his own country to care how other states abuse their populations?
I surrender. link
So, how would we in the US presumably respond to a foreign country which insisted, as a high priority, that any discussion of policy feature the dire need to restore the government of the Confederacy, complete with reinstitution of chattel slavery?
What is the focus of this post? China's odd interpretation of American history? Because I found the two addendums to be opposed. The Ottawa piece notes that the dalai lama was okay, if disappointed with the meeting nit happening. And he appears to have been understanding in his remarks. The WSJ op-ed piece seems to be taking a somewhat cynical potshot at the presidents campaign slogan. Neverminding that the republicans campaign slogan, country first, would seem to be in support of Chinese control of tibet.
But it's also late and I'm exhausted, and everything seems confusing right now.
If the message was international politics is weird and complicated and contradictory, message received. And I concur.
China actually invoked Lincoln to defend themselves:
"spokesman Qin underscored -- and possibly intensified -- the political temperature of the issue by citing Obama's background and admiration for President Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the secession of the southern states and sought to abolish slavery, which Qin likened to Tibetan society under the Dalai Lama."
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE5AB1BF20091112
Yes, the flood of carpetbaggers pouring in to exploit the local natural resources without compensation to the locals does resemble the aftermath of the US civil war. I don't recall the Yankees burning all of the Southern churches to the ground though. Nor pursuing campaigns of involuntary sterilization for "mental defectives" such as those susceptible to religion and other superstitions.
I'm not sure about the Conquering Armies phase either. The Tibetans were far more overmatched than the Confederacy was. It's not as if there were any battles that were even a draw for the Tibetans.
Anyway, if the Communists were all that concerned about slavery wouldn't they have been better off to address their own extensive use of slaves? A friend of mine, along with millions of others, spent nine years as a slave during the Cultural Revolution: in her case on a pig farm. The typical slave labour population during the Mao Dynasty was about 10 to 15 million with annual death rates of around 9% - much better than the Russians rate but then the climate is a lot better in China.
Stop repeating this inane meme, please. China officially abolished slavery in 1910 and still had 4 million children treated as slaves in 1930. And still has slavery in the provinces. The collectivization of Chinese society, forced work camps, mass murders and atrocities of the Cultural Revolution were ethically comparable or worse, and far worse in terms of violent loss of life, than Tibet's caste-based society. And China's communist version of serfdom lasted long after serfdom was abolished in Tibet.
This business about how the progressive Chinese rescued those backward Tibetans from slavery is the vilest sort of propaganda.
You're right. Tibet should be free. Also Texas should be returned to Mexico.
Only if that's what the Texans want. Sorry, but making false analogies is a pretty weak argument. It fails on multiple levels: 1. Your argument doesn't consider what the Tibetans want, 2. self-determination is not equivalent to a return to a previous regime and 3. the Dalai Lama has repeatedly stated that he does NOT seek independence for Tibet, but he has to keep saying it over and over because the Chinese government continues to claim that he does.
So Tibet vs. China is really about wage-contract slavery versus slavery? Because that's how I read the US Civil War: two different ways of exploiting workers, neither looking out for the workers' interests. Wage slavery is better for management than slavery because wage slavery means you don't have to take care of the workers. If a worker falls ill or dies, management replaces them with another worker who is roughly equally economically compelled to enter the workforce or risk the horrors of poverty.
NewsFromNeptune.com's Carl Estabrook rightly describes it:
Estabrook also cites a letter from Lincoln to Horace Greeley where Lincoln says "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery." followed by clear explication of how little Lincoln cared for or against slavery. Lincoln really wanted wage-labor not slave-labor.
While I'm no enormous fan of the PRC, life under the Dalai Lama in Tibet doesn't appear to have been all sunshine and rainbows either.
However, when remarks about restoring the sovereignty of Tibet are responded to with allegations of slavery, do you really think they'd bring that back? Just because historically they've had their own human rights abuses doesn't mean Tibet would have to pick up exactly where they left off, if they were to gain independence. In fact, with the world watching, I think it'd be pretty difficult to simply say, "Okay, we're back! Bring on the slaves!" So I don't know that it really makes sense as a justification for China's actions.
Actually, I wonder more about the similarities between Tibet and the questionable circumstances surrounding, say, the annexation of Hawaii. Maybe Obama's non-response is more genuinely American than railing against other nations while turning a blind eye to their own history of imperialism.
you really do like cake, that's like 5 slices right there!
I presume that you would then be equally aghast at naive requests for Israel to return (more) Palestinian territory.
What's in the bag stays in the bag!
I would just like to point out that technically, mainland China is a rogue province of Taiwan. The PRC has more similarities to the Confederate States of America than Tibet does. So I propose the PRC return sovereignty to the Republic of China (aka Taiwan), and all of this will be settled.
I *told* Lincoln that ignoring the right of secession would come back and bite us in the ass. I *told* him, but would he listen? Noooooo!
China's point may have been that neither they nor the US values the maintenance of a state as a voluntary activity. That is, "The South" wanted to cease volunteering its participation in the Union, so the North went to war to prevent it. It is rather embarrassing...fight a revolutionary war to rid yourself of the divine right of kings...enter into voluntary government...then when one group wants out throw a giant war.
Now I don't know a thing about Tibet but if a group wants to withdraw participation in a larger state that's fine with me...Tibet or the South (if the problem was slavery the North could have instituted tariffs or individuals could have voted with dollars...oh that's right, we have a democracy which lets us votes in "pleases").
@#21 Tibet was nominally part of the Chinese empire for a few years, then went on its own merry way for 320 years before the Chinese Communists finally remembered they existed. Over 300 years of defacto independence, including a couple of wars with Britain (which at the time didn't declare war on China, but against the Tibetans).
se:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_expedition_to_Tibet
Their mistake was not "opening" the country to the west and establishing full independent diplomatic relations with the western powers.
So no analogy with US or any other countries states seceding.
Also comparing the Tibet of the 1940's to what the Tibet of today MIGHT have been is obfuscationist-I imagine an independent Tibet would have been like Nepal, Bhutan, or Thailand