(My1510.cn group blog) The Hijacking By The Western Media And The Tibetan Elite. By Chairman Rabbit. April 30, 2008.
The occurrence of certain things recently, especially the patriotic manifestations of the overseas Chinese, has made the western/American media (at least among the mainstream ones) slowly and gradually provide more coverage, attention and concern about the China angle and the sentiments of the Chinese people in order to appear more objective. In my opinion, even without an open acknowledgement or apology, certain people within the western media have realized that their coverage on Tibet (and the Olympic torch relay) was seriously misleading and created negative consequences. Obviously, their biases still exist because they arose from structural problems. On one hand, this is a matter of issues and cultures. On the other hand, it is the consequence of the commercialization of the media -- they need to pay attention to the feelings of their readers and tell them what they want to hear.
Recently, the New York Times published Shaila Dewan's article
Dewan's article made a more detailed analysis of the psychology and activities of the overseas Chinese students, and it is more objective than the preceding article. Of course, various prejudices were still present. For example, it held very stringent requirements for the information that were offered by the students. When the students provided the infant vital statistics in Tibet after 1951, it said that the students "did not provide any means for comparison with mortality rates in China or other countries." This is stretching it too far. The students are not making a scholarly report and they are not experts on this issue. They were more like presenting certain situations that the westerners did not realize in order to balance the information. It is too stringent to demand that they attain the standards of academic debate in this case. This is all the more so because the data and facts provided by the Tibet independence side were not scrutinized by the western media using the same rigorous scholarly standards. If you like, you can say that when the Chinese bring forth such information, it must be political propaganda; absent any rigorous attempt to justify it, it is unconvincing or even erroneous. Meanwhile, anything offered by the Tibetan independence side will be readily accepted. This is a double standard that is very unfair. Behind this phenomenon lie some deeply entrenched prejudices.
The article also said:
Students argue that China has spent billions on Tibet, building schools, roads and other infrastructure. Asked if the Tibetans wanted such development, they looked blankly incredulous. “They don’t ask that question,” said Lionel Jensen, a China scholar at Notre Dame. “They’ve accepted the basic premise of aggressive modernization.”
It is not hard to see that the reporter was skeptical about the views of the students. I have participated in many forums on Tibet, and I never heard any westerners questioned the Tibet independence supporters or sympathizers: ""Do the majority of Tibetan people need and care most about independence, religion and culture?" I have never heard anyone asked this kind of question. Here, most westerners' assumptions are: These lofty political rights, culture and pursuit of values are obviously more important than the quest for basic economics, existence and materials!" Of course, they have never done any public opinion polling in Tibet. Instead of being supported by facts, their ideas are propped up by their belief values. With these beliefs, they will obviously give even more sympathy to the Tibetan independence movement.
Similarly, the reporter doubted the relationship between the Dalai Lama and the Nazis brought up by the students, and claimed that the students "denied that the Chinese government was oppressing Tibetan culture and religion."
Also, the article gave full coverage to the extreme actions of the students while failing to discuss the more rational and warm exchanges coming from the majority of the Chinese students.
Of course, the article also had some good points, such as:
- Although the article still hold onto certain kinds of prejudices, it also included many of the viewpoints of the students, such as the fact-based judgments about the Tibet riots as well as the double standards and hypocrisy harbored by the western world towards China.
- The disillusionment of the overseas Chinese students in the western media (and the western world)
- The Chinese students directly questioned the existing prejudice of the west: All the Chinese people have been simply brainwashed and incapable of independent thinking
- The Chinese students still lack practical experience and artistry in their protests
Finally, the reporter did some analyses of the motivations and value preferences of the Chinese students. But this did not go further than the previous article China's Loyal Youth in the New York Times. They basically think that the attitudes of the Chinese youth are derived from (1) they are the beneficiaries of modernization; (2) they received patriotic education (that is, they have been "brain-washed").
The facts on which they base their opinions on are highly problematic. "That may be, some experts suggest, because the students whose families can afford to send them abroad are the ones who have benefited the most from China’s economic liberalization." In the United States, the majority of the students are graduate students and researchers who get by through their university scholarships. They are in the United States because of their academic excellence. But here the experts are saying that the overseas students come from rich and affluent upper-/middle-class elite families which can afford their children to study in private schools in the United States.
The reporter's theory of "the material benefits of modernization" is actually an analysis of motives. It included some partial truths, but it also ignored certain other facts such as the patriotic students believing completely in their value system including patriotism. To reduce their values down to material benefits is a vicious debasement. This is comparable to Barack Obama's speech about "bitter" and "cling" to characterize how many small-town American believe in religion and worship guns due to economic disenfranchisement.
This shows that the west (and the western media) fails to understand the substance of contemporary Chinese nationalism. On one hand, Chinese nationalism is based upon a sense of pride about a 5,000 year old civilization. On the other hand, it is also built upon the contemporary history of exploitation (and the sense of victimization) -- the Chinese cannot get over the repeated invasions of Chinese sovereignty and territoriality by foreign nations.
Nevertheless, we note that the western media is providing a fuller picture in their media coverage about China. We have to continue to watch this patiently.
There is another article in the Los Angeles about the feelings and activities of the American Chinese. It is worth reading: Chinese Americans feel sting of Olympic protests.
The actions of the overseas Chinese are noteworthy. They live overseas and they deal with non-Chinese people every day. They witness western prejudices and their sense of disillusionment is strong. Under these challenges, their Chinese identity is reinforced daily. Their actions are very much related to their daily experiences.
During the past month of so, the Christian Science Monitor has done some good reporting on China because they are more objective than the other western media. I checked with some Americans, and many of them believes that it is one of the top-quality newspapers in the world. It provides the western angle, and it also pays attention to the Chinese situation and angle. The articles are more objective than those in other media. Business newspapers such as Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal are good too.
Next I want to discuss the value system of the westerners and the sympathy for the Tibetan independence movement. Many westerns (including common folks as well as intellectuals) are easily inflamed by the aura of Tibetan independence with political concepts and slogans such as "rights," "freedom" and "self-determination."
When these regular people who lead excellent materialistic lives sit down in a warm and comfortable room in a developed country to talk about these distant issues that are totally unconnected to their own existence, they can hardly imagine how the ordinary Tibetan (or the majority of the world who are still living in relative poverty) cope with the challenges of life and or what their urgent needs are. They project their own demands and values onto these people. Here, I am not saying that people living in abject poverty do not have political demands. I am saying that they have simpler and more mundane materialistic needs that affect their basic survival and these are often disproportionately undervalued, disregarded or given secondary importance.
A western liberal intellectual may have a great deal of interest in preserving the culture of a pre-industrial society. But what do the ordinary members of this society think? Perhaps they want to embrace globalization and pursue a better life while abandoning some of their own culture and customs. But the intellectual elite might feel that this is cultural genocide and therefore call to oppose globalization and preserve the cultural values. They even think that the members of this pre-industrial society are too ignorant to realize that these demands represent their best interests.
When Tibet has this Shangri La-like romantic image in the west, it is unavoidably linked to the wave of thinking about anti-modernity, anti-globalization and multi-culturalism.
I personally feel that the Tibet independence movement is led by the elite (including the lamas). The movement reduces the broad demands of the ordinary Tibet citizens on various issues down to a single issue -- independence (or self-determination), as if the solutions of all the problems are based upon this lone issue. So if this single problem is solved, then all the other problems will be solved as well. In practice, self-determination cannot solve those problems. In fact, it can even worsen the situation. This is how the elite has hijacked public opinion. Objectively speaking, we cannot say that the elite represents what the common folks thing. One has to be careful before making this conclusion (even though certain viewpoints of the elite represent the interests of the common folks). Only the people can represent themselves.
The movement of the Dalai Lama is a single issue movement, by which all the problems are reduced down to self-determination. In truth, the Dalai Lama and his exile government have away from China for a long time and they are out of touch with the daily experiences, needs and demands of the Tibetans in China. One cannot represent others just by self-proclamation because this is not a one-sided decision. This explains why the Dalai Lama has certain unrealistic political demands in his discussions with the Chinese government. If he can return to Tibet and communicate with the locals and reflect their demands, then I think that the political idea of the entire movement will be different.
When I attend the forums on the Tibet issue, I have the impression that the Tibetan independence movement people do not want to see Tibet improve (of course, they would never publicly say so). They want darkness everywhere in Tibet. The darker things are, the more meaningful their movement is. If everything is bright in Tibet and the people are prospering, then their movement and even their own existence would lose their meaning. This prejudice is extremely strong and it guides their views of the issue.
The Chinese government needs to continue to develop Tibet in various ways, so that the Tibetan people can enjoy full prosperity of economy, society and culture. This will win over the hearts of the people and continue to marginalize the Tibetan independence movement.
