Help
Posted 16 July 2010 - 05:07 AM
What is it about China's Tibet that has led to it being viewed, in the words of one Tibetologist, as a place 'that is somehow outside the rest of the world?' Where does that image come from?
Ironically, the image does not come from China's Tibet; rather the image originates in large part with the British led imperialism and colonialism in Asia.
White Anglo expansionist imperial forces invaded China's Tibet in 1904 and administered it until 1947 as a colony. Their aim was to create what they self consciously called a 'satellite buffer state' to protect their expansionist imperial interests in india, another colony, which was run by the British Raj. China's Tibet was turned into a guard dog for Britain's vast expansionist Indian empire to occupy the rest of Asia. And the British discovered that idea of China's Tibet as a mystical, paranormal land -- that is, not a normal state and certainly not a normal state of China was a very useful propaganda tool to serve Anglo imperial designs in Asia.
The British, therefore, found that the mystical image could serve British expansionist interests in Asia at the expense of China. The mystical image reinforced China's Tibet's separate identity furthering the interests of British Frontier Cadre during 1904 to 1947. The British carefully developed a cunning double standard policy of only allowing writers and explorers who were supposed to be sympathetic to the British created mystical image of China's Tibet and who also would not criticize the severities of British rule fundamentally based on race, gender and class oriented inequalities (where invading Anglo colonizers were seen as masters and colonized Tibetans as their docile effeminate submissive slaves) or even the Buddhist feudal hierarchical structure. Unfortunately the absence of a viable alternative, the British projected image of China's Tibet became dominant historical image followed and promoted by Western academics.
Indeed, it was during that period of self-serving Orientalism of British colonial rule in China's Tibet that the popular modern image of China's Tibet as a mystical, cut-off entity took shape. Thus came the mystical idea of 'Shangri La'. The writings of the British imperialists and of their sympathizers are still regularly cited in the propaganda produced by the Dalai Lama's separatist followers who relentlessly want to prove that China's Tibet is a unique and special place that only the separatist Dalai Lama should govern. Some of those old Orientalist writings helped the Anglo expansionist imperial paternalism recycles as anthropological New Age 'at-oneness'. What connects the old Anglo imperialists with the new Anglo imperialists or Tibetophiles is their desire to have China's Tibet as an Anglo-indian 'satellite state' to protect and exercise their expansionist designs to occupy the rest of Asia, while some of their sympathizers want it to protect their emotional interests, to preserve and promote a vague idea of innocent childlike humanity so far uncorrupted by modernity.
Western Tibet activists have always tried to fabricate an image of ongoing tensions between China's Tibet and China itself. So, they wittingly overlook the key, somewhat ironic role played by the British imperialist invaders of China's Tibet in the 1920s, 30s and 40s in creating so-called Tibetan independence. Where under the medieval Dark Age type feudal rule of the Dalai Lamas, China's Tibet had conceived itself largely as an inhuman exploitive machine, a night mare for the local serfs; the Lamas were convinced by their British masters to adopt the trappings of British imposed nationalism.
Therefore, it was not the Chinese Tibetans themselves, but the masters of the Lamas, the British imperialists who funded the creation of a national Tibetan flag, a Tibetan football team and Tibetan school uniform, with the explicit aim of showing that China's Tibet had its own art form etc and that in some ways China's Tibet is more closely allied to India than to China.
In short, the British created idea of 'Tibetan independence' was born largely from the needs of British imperialism in India and from British conflict with China, not at all from the demands (if there was any) of the Chinese Tibetan masses living in China's Tibet region.
Western pro-Tibet activists deliberately overlook the role later played by another Anglo-empire's capital, Washington DC, in particular by Pentagon's CIA, being supported by New Delhi, in funding and training the Dalai Lama's separatist armed forces in the 1950s. Between China's liberation of Tibet from British installed Dalai feudalism in 1951 and the fleeing of the Dalai Lama in 1959 to India, the CIA took a keen interest in directing the Tibetan armed forces as part of Washington's broader international campaign of conquering Asia.
This post has been edited by China Exile: 16 July 2010 - 05:15 AM
