If you ask an ordinary Chinese what he or she thinks of the United States, a typical answer might be: overbearing, bossy, and a little too ready to meddle in other countries’ affairs.
If it’s someone who reads the newspaper often, then he or she might tell you: “The United States takes advantage of the ethnic separatist forces to violently interfere with China’s internal affairs and evocatively displays its consistently ruthless image to provoke China’s political limits.”
Those were the words Chinese state-run China Tibet Network (www.tibet.cn) published in its July 20 editorial, in response to U.S. President Barack Obama’s closed-door meeting with Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, at the White House last weekend.
The article, written in the high dudgeon of communist rhetoric that most members of the U.S. government would not typically understand, called Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama the “biggest joke in the world.“
The article said Obama’s meeting with the “representative of serfdom,” meaning the Dalai Lama, “once again showed the Chinese people the heartlessness and betraying nature of the United States,” especially at a time when the Chinese regime is celebrating the 60th anniversary of what it calls the “liberation of Tibet.”
“It was doubtlessly an attempt to hurt the feelings of the millions of Tibetan serfs who were liberated and the feelings of the 1.3 billion Chinese people,” the article read. “The U.S. government’s ‘Fear-of-a-Rising-China Syndrome’ under its hegemony unquestionably added a complicated shadow to the improving U.S.-China relations.”
Articles like this are directed at an audience that is not allowed access to a free press.
Despite the long-term U.S. policy of opposing Tibetan independence, and White House spokesman Jay Carney’s clarification of that after the meeting, the editorial portrayed Washington as part of an alliance with “the Dalai Lama organization“ to hamper China, a goal that supposedly began when the United States lost its Cold War communist opponent, the Soviet Union, in 1989.
“Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, ... the United States pointed its spearhead toward the socialist country of China,“ read the editorial. “The Dalai Lama organization once again entered the U.S government’s toolbox, with the United States feeding the Dalai Lama organization campaign money nonstop. The U.S. government then made the Dalai Lama a national celebrity and put him as a pawn on the political stage to attack China.”
The editorial explained to its Chinese readers that the U.S. government cares nothing about “maintaining Tibetans’ human rights and protecting their culture,” but merely to “seek justice for the Dalai Lama organization.” The Chinese regime, on the other hand, was said to stand with the Tibetan people against the Dalai Lama and the United States, to protect the religious freedom of Tibetans.
According to Amnesty International, the Chinese regime has one of the worst human rights records in the world.
The article marched on. “The U.S. government only cares about how to use the ‘Dalai Lama organization’ chess piece to hamper China. … As for the Dalai Lama organization itself, it rises and falls with the United States’ China policies.“
The “liberation” (what many call invasion) of Tibet recently enjoyed its 60th anniversary celebration. The Communist Party’s heir-apparent Xi Jinping emphasized the “fight against separatist activities by the Dalai clique.” He added that “without the Chinese Communist Party, there would have been no new China, no new Tibet.”
But Tibetans don’t quite see things that way. An exiled Tibetan group told NTD Television that locals had been ordered to keep away from the action, and that the Tibetan capital of Lhasa was under strict military watch.
“A lot of media have described Lhasa as a town of terror, because military police are everywhere,“ said Dawa Tsering, spokesman for Tibetan Government in Exile. “Many sacred temples like Jokhang Temple are stationed with snipers. All the streets are guarded by military and plain-clothed police. Monks have been told to stay in temples. There are no tourists at all.”
Another member of the group, Kelsang Gyaltsen, said that the reality of Lhasa is very different from what the Chinese regime is trying to project, and there is “absolutely no atmosphere of joy or celebration.”
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