China's Midnight Deadline Looms

China's Olympic hopes could hinge on how authorities react as their midnight ultimatum to Tibetan rioters expires ...

Updates at end of post.

BEIJING - It's nearly 2,000 miles from where I sit in Beijing to Lhasa, roughly the same distance as it is from Los Angeles to Detroit, or a bit further than from Paris to Moscow. For most Chinese it may as well be even further away than that. Access to websites with accurate and independent information about what is going on in Tibet and the surrounding provinces is blocked or not available in Chinese. What they do get is the official word from the government-controlled media, if they get that at all. Tibet may be a huge story in the international media, but for China it's on the bottom of page one, relegated to page two, or absent entirely.

I was talking to a Chinese co-worker today about what was going on in Tibet and came across a similar reaction to the ones I've been reading about; that the Tibetans are ungrateful, that the Chinese are bringing them progress, healthcare, education, technology, and that their feudal lifestyle of the past basically ensured their enslavement under a clique of Buddhist fundamentalists. Of course this is how the Chinese government usually puts it as well, so her reaction was not out of the norm. While some of the claims about progress may be valid, the problem with this reaction is that it fails to take into account any Tibetan views. Chinese almost never hear any Tibetan voices on how they feel about Chinese rule. They never hear about their fears of loss of culture or the influxes of ethnic Han Chinese immigrants. The reaction to the generosity (most Chinese feel they are helping the Tibetans by ruling them) China bestows on them are never heard in the Chinese press. The Dali Lama is not quoted, only caricatured as leading a thuggish, separatist clique. When an average Tibetan is eventually quoted, you can be 100 percent sure they are saying something positive about Chinese rule. No debate. End of discussion. The state-controlled Chinese press is there to accentuate the positive, not throw any doubt on the people's great experiment. I should know. I've been editing this "stuff" (self-censorship in action there) for the past year now. But more on that some other time.

It's also hard to know what to make of the statements of the Tibetan government in exile statements. They have their own propaganda to spread and their own agenda to achieve. These protests did come at the time China is holding its major annual parliamentary meetings in Beijing, and with the Olympics just five months away, the stakes couldn't be higher.

This is why tonight's midnight deadline is so important for China. Will the authorities show restraint? Or will they resort to mass arrests, house to house searches, organized brutality? And if they do, how will the international community react? Will Tibetans share the blame for the chaos if it turns for the worst? Is it largely out of the Dali Lama's hands now, if he ever did have any sway over the actions of recent days, or are certain Tibetans using him as the good-cop to their bad?

My intent in writing this post was to bring your attention to some of the news coverage on this story from the international press and blogs in China. Due to restrictions on foreign press coverage from Tibet, it's hard enough to get in there in normal times, let alone now. The Foreign Correspondents Club of China is asking the Foreign Ministry for greater access to Tibetan areas, though things move rather slowly here so I doubt their call will do much. There's currently only one correspondent inside Tibet. James Miles from The Economist happened to be there before the riots started, and is now reporting for that publication and the Times of London. His latest is a great mood piece on what it is like being in Lhasa right now as the deadline approaches. I believe the Christian Science Monitor also had someone inside Lhasa who is now out, but they do have Peter Ford roaming the provinces just outside of Tibet where clashes have started to spread.

For commentary, these are some of the latest interesting pieces ...

Kurt Streeter at the LA Times talking baseball and Beijing's image problem. He likely didn't hear about the group of Cub Scouts that were barred from the field the LA vs. SD game this Saturday (which I was at, by the way, and can say that other than there being only one entry point and heavy security which delayed my entry by an hour, the ballpark was great and game went well). The Wall Street Journal has some history on the conflict. The London Telegraph utters the T word. At The Guardian, a spotlight on grievance.

In the China blogs your first stops should be ...

Danwei and EastWestNorthSouth, which have nice collections of coverage here (some of which I can't currently get into). Xinjiang-based The Opposite End of China, for a few galleries of photos. Beijing Newspeak and Imagethief have wide-ranging commentary as always. Also check in at Cup of Cha and Black and White Cat, which both talk of web troubles, RConversation on whether discussion is possible, and Time's China Blog for updated information.

Below I'll update stories with new information as they come in on Beijing time. My rss feeds are currently sluggish and a lot of sites are hard to get to from here. If you come across stories of interest, post them in your comments.

9:12pm: A story from The Guardian on China's efforts to block international news stories and broadcasts.

9:10pm: And so it begins, and before the deadline. The Washington Post is reporting that hundreds of Tibetans have been rounded up in house-to-house searches in Lhasa.

8:53pm: At Reuters, the daughter of the late 10th Panchen Lama urges ethnic unity.

Comments

[wonderingstar]

Thank you Michael for this reporting from Beijing. It's amazing how much you are able to report on even if some of your websources are blocked. Your link to the James Miles piece at the Times of London Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3564470.ece) is especially interesting as one of the reader's comment includes a reference to this book: http://www.amazon.com/CIAs-Secret-War-Tibet/dp/0700611592. Hmmm. First I've heard of this, but why does this not surprise me?

[Michael Standaert - Huffpost Blogger]

Hi, Wonderingstar. Yeah, that was in 1959 I believe, though I don't know that much about it. I don't think you can really connect it to the current situation though. Neither the U.S. or any other country has any interest in China breaking apart. The aftermath would be catastrophic.

[leonidasofsparta]

The situation for tibetans this year is dire, with the loss of 500,000 animals from cold 3,000,000 tibetans face starvation and the communists will see to it that many now do die. People like you ,Michael, help the Chinese communists just as much as those souless polititians and businessmen you would berate. Tibetans are fighting for the most basic human rights yet apologists like you try to equate the 2 sides chinese military on 1 side a few brave tibetans on the other . If the tibetans are to survive much longer people they will need a miracle. Meanwhile in the west they are ignored by the very people who claim to defend the rights of the weak and oppressed. Oh! and there is nothing on this on the front page of the huff post. Hows that for cowardice. wouldn't want to upset our good friends in the chinese intelligence and security services would we. Long live the dalai lama.