Last spring, I was waiting for a bus in Cairo. Dawn was just breaking, and Tahrir Square, where the bus station was located, was empty except for the omnipresent face of Hosni Mubarak, on posters that covered giant billboards and buildings all over the city. In the cafes where men sipped tea and smoked hookahs, there was no smell of a revolution brewing. Instead, there was a lingering sense of resignation that the country might be condemned to live under Mubarak forever.
Less than a year later in January, images of the Egyptian revolution flashed across TV screens worldwide, and Tahrir Square had become unrecognizable! As people power explodes across the Arab world -- first in Tunisia, then in Egypt, now in Bahrain, Libya and elsewhere -- one can't help but wonder if we may be witnessing the fourth wave of democratization. If so, can 1.5 billion people living under the Chinese Communist Party ride this wave to democracy and freedom?
Before the dust has settled on the Arab spring, analysts are citing poverty, unemployment and corruption as the three main causes of the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Arguing that these socioeconomic conditions and statistics are missing in today's China, some are quick to dismiss any possibility of Beijing's rule being shaken by the Tunisia effect. But let us remember an enduring lesson from history. Statistics don't make revolutions; people do.
A few years ago, I traveled to Palestine to attend a conference on nonviolence with a friend of mine. One evening, after the panels and workshops were over, we found ourselves sitting with the pioneering theorist of nonviolent conflict, Dr. Gene Sharp. Discussing the likelihood of mass protests in Tibet and China, we asked him what he thought was the single most important ingredient to make a revolution.
"Hope," he answered, without a moment's hesitation, in a tone that indicated mild surprise at how we could not know such a basic fact of life.
People rise up not just because they are poor or unemployed; people rise up when they believe change is possible. After the success of the Tunisian revolution, millions of Egyptians suddenly found new hope and poured into the streets to demand change. In fact, in both Tunisia and Egypt, the revolution was not led by the poor and unemployed; it was organized and largely executed by the educated, online, middle class youth who wanted a say in the way their country was run. If revolutions are created by poverty and unemployment, why are we seeing an uprising in Bahrain, an international banking center with an educated, middle class majority? If Chinese youth are financially better off today than a decade ago, it makes them more -- not less -- likely to demand freedom and democracy.
However, while hope can mobilize people, it cannot guarantee success, which depends on strategy and tools. The mass convergences in Tunis and Cairo that filled our TV screens for weeks were preceded by months and years of behind-the-scenes strategic planning, training and organizing by groups of activists and youth leaders, who wielded the power of the internet in their nonviolent struggle.
The internet has decentralized power and exponentially strengthened the grassroots. Wael Ghonim, one of the heroes of the Egyptian uprising, said it best, "If you want to liberate a society, just give them the internet." According to Mr. Ghonim, who aptly called their uprising "Revolution 2.0," the Egyptian revolution began online.
Is China ready for a revolution 2.0? There are nearly half a billion internet users in China today. China's social media networks are expanding rapidly -- Chinese Facebook look-alike Renren has 170 million users and microblogging site Sina has 75 million users. In spite of China's great firewall, Chinese netizens have learned to circumvent the censors and read between the lines. When "Egypt" disappears from the internet, they can surmise that Cairo is in tumult. In the age of the internet, any battle against information is futile.
Nevertheless, the ultimate success of a revolution in China will depend on the effective use of strategy. In Egypt and Tunisia, activists and organizers connected with other pro-democracy forces including the Serbian youth movement that helped topple Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. They gathered in living rooms and watched films such as "Bringing Down a Dictator" about the Serbian uprising, and read books like From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp, internalizing the lesson that nonviolent movements are more powerful when they are planned strategically than when they happen spontaneously. If Chinese activists can analyze the strategic decisions within the 1989 Tiananmen movement and draw lessons from its failure, they will have a much higher chance of succeeding the next time.
Some believe the Chinese state is too ruthless to allow a nonviolent revolution, arguing that protesters will be arrested long before they reach a critical mass. But mass protest, although the most visible, is hardly the most effective form of nonviolent resistance. In places where the crackdown on street protests is swift and brutal, noncooperation and civil disobedience tactics are often more advisable. These tactics of denying obedience to the rulers, while reducing the risk of arrest and increasing the sustainability of the movement, have crippled ruthless regimes.
Largely unknown to the world, Tibetans today are engaging in a growing noncooperation movement. Since a 2008 uprising erupted across Tibet, China's militarization of the Tibetan plateau has snuffed out all signs of dissent in the streets. But the revolution did not disappear; it simply moved indoors. Tibetans are now making a conscious effort to speak only in Tibetan, to eat only in Tibetan restaurants, or to buy only from Tibetan shops. Tibetans are channeling their spirit of resistance into social, cultural and economic activities that are self-constructive (promoting Tibetan language and culture) and non-cooperative (refusing to support Chinese institutions and businesses). The fact that Tibetans are able to wage a quiet, slow-building nonviolent movement in the most repressive political climate shows that there is a way to mobilize people power against the Chinese regime.
In spite of China's image as a high-functioning economy, many of the social causes of mass discontent that exploded in the Arab world -- endemic corruption, income inequality, labor unrest, inflation, pollution -- continue to plague the nation. Since 2008, China has witnessed the Tibetan uprising, the Uyghur uprising in East Turkestan, and 90,000 mass incidents of public unrest each year. The Chinese government spends almost as much money on maintaining internal security as on its national defense. This underlines the overwhelming danger the regime faces from within its own empire.
2011 marks exactly a century since a previous generation of Chinese overthrew the Manchu dynasty and established a republic that lasted till 1949. This week, as organizers of a "Jasmine Revolution" issued calls for protest rallies every Sunday in thirteen cities in China, I started to feel that the stars are aligned against dictatorships everywhere. If the Chinese people seize this opportunity by combining nonviolent tools with strategic planning, they stand to liberate a quarter of the world's population. It is about time.
Tenzin Dorjee is a writer, musician and activist. He is the executive director of Students for a Free Tibet.
Tihomir Kukolja: The Danger of Dispensationalism in the Middle East
Kari Henley: How to Start a Movement in 3 Minutes
Here is a photo of those Tibetans who represent the people of Tibet, Tibettan Bhuddism, and tibetan people in other provinces of China...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-03/04/c_13761478.htm
See for yourself.
There are 56 recognized "Nationalities," (minorities) living in China, and each and every group has full representation. Nothing like this exists in the US two party system.
There is a difference, in my mind, between mob rull, where the majority can keep getting elected to the seats, while minorities cannot garner enough votes to win a seat, unless they become "pragnmatic," give up their main issues, and "move to the center."
In China, those who represent "minority groups meet with their people, in villages, town, cities, where each resident can bring their petitions to the reps. Then the reps draft their "reports and requests," and submit them to the Council.
But whatever you maf feel about the Chinese system of representation vs the American system, from the photo you can plainly see that neither the Da Lie Lama nor the Students for a Free Tibet are there, because they do not reside in Tibet, and therefore do not represent the interests of the tibetan people living in China.
Please do look at the photo, seeing is believing.
Do you think the absence of people who would be immediately arrested signifies anything? Even your propaganda's own logic makes no sense. The fact that Chinese govt. doesn't let Students for a Free Tibet or the Dalai Lama shows that they, unlike their apologists, know how popular the former are and how despised the Chinese occupation is.
Also, here is a great story, showing exactly how the propaganda is spread, by using photos of another place or year, to falsly claim their is a jasmine revolutionary spirit in China.
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20110226_1.htm
be sure to read the small line of explaination under each faked story which is all part of the covert disinformation campaign, paid for by you and me, American taxpayers!
For example, under the first story it explains that the photo was really taken in 2005 of an anti japanese demonstration!
Check it out! This is exactly how the Students for a Free Tibet are taken in! This really is a shame!
If you want transparency and accuracy in reporting in and about China, freedom of the press for Chinese and Tibetans would be a wonderful start.
I think you misread what I wrote...
>For example, under the first story it explains that the photo was really taken in 2005 of an anti japanese demonstration!
Check it out! This is exactly how the Students for a Free Tibet are taken in! This really is a shame! <
I explained that this kind of psyc ops is HOW the Students for a Free Tibet, SFT, are taken in. ie, fooled by MSM fake news stories.
The events reported in those stories never happened, and the photos were taken at different places and at different times.
I posted a link that reports about China, and which is not soft on China. I could have posted the Chinese link, to anti-CNN, but it's not in English, so you cann't reat the commentary.
The problem with a "free press" is that it can print propaganda like this, and get away with it. Even folks like you get fooled.
The money for this propaganda is in Tibet Apropriations 2010 budget, (between $14-$20 million.)
Free Press does't guarentee you get true facts, unvarnished truth, free from government concocted propaganda.
Here is an idea, a press that free from government propaganda,here and in China, NOT just China. China has a right to keep US government propaganda out of it's media.
The timing of the story above is interesting, coming as it does right before the push to protect tibet Apropriations from the budget cut axe.
I suppose swallowing such crude propaganda makes your apologetic of Chinese brutality of Tibetans seem reasonable. If you have something you can present that Students for a Free Tibet have wrong, present it. But of course you cannot and have to resort to McCarthyistic attempt at discrediting them. While Tibetan society had of old was replete with problems, your absurdity of 95% slave is disproved by the widespread opposition to the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950's by Tibetans, who opposed it tooth and nail and died in great numbers doing so. Implicit in that 'argument' is that Mao was simply liberating Tibet. That's as believable as any white man's burden apology for imperialism.
Here's a useful website http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
Michael Parenti has a PhD in political science from Yale University and he wrote an excellent article called "Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth"
"Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.”
As for Parenti, there's no one too low for him to embrace in classic the enemy of my enemy is my friend realpolitik logic. His support and apologies for Milosevic show what kind of standards Parenti holds.
See here http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/article.php?id=425 for an expose on Parenti's methodology and debt to Maoist sources and propaganda about writings on Tibetans:
In his descriptions of old Tibet, Parenti predominantly draws on the work of four historians - Anna Louise Strong, A. Tom Grunfeld, and Roma and Stuart Gelder. The fact that all of these historians had a romantic predilection towards Maoism and drew mostly on Chinese government statistics should surely be cause for concern as far as their legitimacy as source material. One certainly wouldn't trust the Indonesian government's party line on Aceh or East Timor. Or, for that matter, the U.S. government's continued assertion that the Iraqi people welcome the current American occupation. Such manipulations of public sentiment, in which an occupation is presented as 'the will of the people,' are – as a rule – only employed to further the agenda of the occupier.
I am wondering who funds the Students for a Free Tibet and how they were created in the first place? i am especially interested to know if NED is involved, either directly or indirectly? NED, as some may know, but not everyone, is the privitized are of the CIA, thanks to President Ray Gun.
My second question is what is the position of the Students for a Free Tibet on the Dalai Lama's refusal to emancipate the serfs and slaves in China's Tibet, from 1950-1959?
My third question is asking how the living standards for the serfs and slaves, 95% of the population under the Da Lie Lama's rule, changed?
Tharpa Chotrin
Vastly Different...Chinese culture is inextricably bound with corruption and nepotism in the form of "guanxi", but as a party member I'm sure you know this. Also how many years has the Chinese dictatorship held on to the reins now? Hmm?
天有不測之風雲
"Maybe we'll see Communist party allow an opposition in the future."
Yeah right because "The Chinese Communist Party opposes one party rule"
Lawyer Liu Shihui wore a shirt with a piece of this quote quote by former president Liu Shaoqi: ‘The Communist Party opposes the one party rule of KMT, AND ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT WANT ONE PARTY RULE!" needless to say he was arrested.
http://observers.france24.com/content/20090522-arrested-subversive-shirt
He also was hooded and beaten for no reason recently...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/21/china-lawyer-beaten-protest
No matter how many posts you make on HP, or how many absurdly disingenuous Yao Ming and Jackie Chan China promo videos you air in Times Square, or how many soldiers you make drum at the same time during your opening ceremony, or how many precent your GDP increased last quarter...the rest of the world doesn't care. Most Chinese people I've encountered are so clueless about the fact that China will always be reviled by the developed world until it makes substantial reforms to its political system and starts taking human rights seriously. but i can't ask you to stop doing your job, so keep posting away...
“Since Deng Xiaoping's Open Door policy in the 1970s, the Chinese government has lifted 200 million Chinese citizens into the middle class and developed hundreds of cities along the coast. Now the interier is being developed as ancient cities such as Xian, Chengdu, Chongqing can see similarities to the coastal cities.”
And he did a Terrific job too! Turning your country into the world’s sweatshop and selling a significant portion of your population into slavery. Foxcon workers can tell you how much they love their jobs. Though I guess he was better than Mao, who was responsible for the deaths of 60 million people as a result of his egotistical mania and TERRIBLE management skills. But don’t sweat it, stuff like this happens all the time in LIBERAL WESTERN DEMOCRACIES….
Oh yeah and Deng did such a great job handling the Tiananmen protests, what a great man to misquote. He said 黄猫 btw.
China has not done anything different from the other 4 Asian tigers (Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong). I remember when Hong Kong was fill with small factories making plastic toys for the west in the 50s and 60s. I have read the situation of the Foxcon workers in Shenzhen, and I find it ironic that you're not levying your complaint towards Apple because they're profiting off their labour. Why doesn't Apple give Foxcon a larger percentage of the profit so that Foxcon workers can have a higher wage?
I assume you're talking about the 3 bitter years in China, the famine that killed 45 million people because of Mao's insistance on socialist ideology and maintaining his own power rather than investing in the economy and opening up to the West, which Deng Xiaoping did. Deng opened China to the West in the 70s and improved the economy.
As for Tiananmen Square protest, it was a crossroad in history and Deng shouldn't have caved to the hardliners like Li Peng to send in the troops. Tianmen Square costed Deng dearly politically and China was on the verge of regressing to Maoist ideology as Deng's successor Zhao Ziyang was forced to resign. But you know who became the new successor? It was Zhu Rongji, the major of Shanghai who didn't declare marshall law during the protest.
Meanwhile if you're a CEO of Goldman Sach you're getting paid millions of dollars in bonuses paid by taxpayer dollars because you're too big to fail.
"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is brought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat."
-- Deng Xiaoping
The Mayor of Shanghai made the decision to keep the police, and the PRC off the streets and away from the energised mobs. The only police presence I saw was immediately in fron to the French and American Consulates, which is where the millions took their protests, not Gorby's march thru Shanghai.
meanwhile, the US Sterrit, and two other US warships were in Shanghai. Coincidence?
My students in a post grad econ class were evenly divided then, not unlike politics here in the US. Does the US believe that the Chinese people, unlike the American people must all be of like mind, or they should help one side overthro the government?
All I can say, is here in the US, fear of socialism is alive and well, and McCarthyism is ever pesent.
Current Chinese President Hu Jintao's term is between 2004 to 2012 and before Jiang Zemin was in power from 1993-2003. Chinese Presidents have actual term limits and they cannot appoint their own children into power.
It has always surprised me, how little Western intellectuals understand China and yet they make loud proclaimations to judge and even incite revolution.
Since Deng Xiaoping's Open Door policy in the 1970s, the Chinese government has lifted 200 million Chinese citizens into the middle class and developed hundreds of cities along the coast. Now the interier is being developed as ancient cities such as Xian, Chengdu, Chongqing can see similarities to the coastal cities.
Despite all of its successes, China is still very much a developing country and still has a billion people to lift up from poverty. The only important thing is to keep stability and continue to build infrastructures and improve the economy to lift as many people out of poverty. Every other path is a dead path.
Bottom line is that China is not a dictatorship but rather a carefully maintained conglomerate. Few people feel the need to be "liberated." As long as the government can maintain a sense of economic growth and personal prosperity among a large enough swathe of the population there will be no viral revolution. The government can maintain the status quo much more effectively when operating as a unilateral executive branch adjusting to individual events. This is the major point that Western China-watchers fail to grasp.
I'm skeptical that a Chinese democracy would do much to help Tibetans, Uyghurs, or other minorities anyway. China is ~92% Han Chinese and ~98% of the population lives in the southeastern half of the country (look at pop density map: http://ed101.bu.edu/StudentDoc/Archives/ED101fa06/cmg10/china-map-pop.jpg). I like the idea of small-scale, localized revolution. I think that's realistic.
Today Beijing enjoys 87% citizenry support, according to Pew Research.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MB26Ad01.html
The truth is that if China had not taken action in 1989 (TAM), you'd see yet another ex-USSR, probably with a territory only 2/3 the current size, no growth, a GINI twice as bad as today, and ever worsening minority relationships. That is, ALL of the disadvantages and no gains on just about any count. Today's system can at least boast of protecting the most important human right in a developing nation - that of the right of the largest number of citizens to improve their lives year in and year out. China needs at least another 100 years of that.