前几天先后收到朋友先后发来的好几封邮件，都是同一个人发来的， 只因为每次都有新内容的完善。

他的执着和迫切我强烈地感受自他的信件以及附件的内容。按照他所嘱咐的，我也在第一时间内将这些英文内容发给了国内外的朋友们，尤其是一些看不懂中文的朋友们，并嘱托他们尽量转发.....

经征得他本人的同意，现将他的来信以及附件的内容转贴如下（请按照自然顺序点击阅读即可，因附件部分文本过大，所以分成了多个部分）。

在此，特别对收集、整理和发起人---我们的朋友说一声：你辛苦了，谢谢！

也希望和感谢更多朋友的共享，以使其在尽可能大的范围内得到传播和影响......

Dear friends,

As triggered by the protest during the Olympic torch relay in Paris, London and San Fransisco, the world is suddenly becoming polarized about China's human rights record.  There are very angry people on both sides of the argument (majority of Chinese on one side and a significant number of people in the West on the other side). This is very unfortunate as many of us believe that the recent attack on China was the results of manipulation by some groups who are cleverly still hiding behind the scene, and long-time lack of understanding in the West of what's happening in China. Hopefully the following email and attachments written by some individuals in the West but with perspectives different than that promoted by the general media can provide an opportunity for people to think more objectively.

Please do something to minimize the emerging conflict in the world, please forward this email to as many people as you can.  Thanks.

Best Regards,

Ray

Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:46:49 -0400 (EDT)

Subject: FW: What happened with Tibet and Beijing Olympic?

Hi,

I am forwarding this on behalf of a good friend of mine. He is a Chinese-Canadian who for many years has lived and worked in Canada, of which he calls "an example of how a global village supposed to be". Just like you and me, he is a peace-loving fellow citizen that earns a living and pays his dues to society; he is not a politician or someone that has been paid to do what he is doing now. I know that because of the tears in his eyes that he was trying to stop, and the anger that I could feel from his heart that he was trying not to show. I also know his mind is set in stepping into something that he has not done in his life: to speak out and tell people in the West the other pieces of what is happening, with a perspective that you and I might have not heard before.

I decided to help him to spread his information. I think everyone, who are believers in democracy, fairness and truth, should stop and listen to the view of him and that of people living outside US, EU, Canada and Australia (which is, by the way, at least 85% of the world population!). If you want to help them to break the blockage of news by the popular western media, please pass the following message and sources of information on to three or more of your friends.  Thank you!

This is the message from him:    

Dear friends,

If you live in the USA, one of the EU countries, Canada, or Australia, you may not be aware of the recent development that Chinese, almost all of them without exceptions, everywhere in China and in the rest of the world, are sadly troubled by what is being portrayed in the Tibet and Beijing Olympic-related news reported by the western mainstream media. Our anger and protests to the prejudice shown by the media and some politicians/people in the West, including large-scale demonstrations in many cities in the world denouncing the current campaign against China, are being ignored or only inappropriately and indifferently mentioned by the mainstream media in the West.

Many Chinese including myself are very proud and excited about the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games. With the opening-up of China, the standard of living of the people in China has raised significantly in the past 30 years. The Chinese enjoy much greater freedom in speech, culture, work, politics and many other aspects in life today.  For example, newly emerging free discussions on Chinese Internet has been instrumental in shaping some of recent Chinese government actions including its response to the slandering by CNN and some western media.  This could well be the beginning of a new form of democracy in the world, as we are entering the information-age in this century. However, the Chinese understand and expect that there is much more to be done and improved in their country.  When athletes from all over the world are gathering for the Olympics this August, we would like to take the opportunity to showcase what we have achieved so far, to demonstrate what we can contribute to the world and to cultivate friendship among our young people. All of these will create better communication between Chinese and people in the other countries so we can learn more from the world to continue improving our country.

Like many people in the West, most Chinese people are disturbed by the recent events in Tibet. But after watching the scenes of violence and arson by the rioters, the Chinese believe that their government is doing the right thing to restore order. What the Chinese government has done is not more than what any responsible government should be doing in handling a situation like the 2005 civil unrest in France or the Los Angeles riots of 1992. But clearly this is not what is depicted by the western mainstream media in the past few weeks.

However, we believe, if you are presented with facts, additional information and other perspectives, you will take all information into account, establish your own judgment, and perhaps do more researching on your own.  That is what we would like you to do, just listen to some other sources of information that you may have not known before, starting with the attached article “Why Washington Plays ‘Tibet Roulette’ with China”, written by William Engdahl, who is the author of a book that you may have read, “A Century of War”.

Some people feel that their culture and political system are superior and should be adopted by others, and they also think that any different points of view are the result of brainwashing by a government or a party. Contrary to this, Chinese including those in China do have the capability in forming their own opinion.  Majority of them are interested in understanding events in the world, and begin to develop appreciation for which of the things in the outside world is good for them. We want greater freedom and more individual rights, but we know this cannot be achieved over-night, and should not be done at the expense of the collective rights. This may be different than what people could accept in the West, but it is part of our life philosophy.

Due to the stigma of foreign imperialism in the past, the Chinese people do not want their domestic policies to be dictated or monitored by outside powers. There are probably two significant achievements related to human rights that the Chinese have made in the past 50 years. The first one is that all Chinese people can now be the master of their own country.  You will not able to find a sign in China today similar to that posted in front of park-gates in foreign concession areas in Shanghai in the 1940’s, forbidding Chinese and dogs entering the parks.  The second achievement is the elimination of probably the world’s last slavery system under the Lamaist state in Tibet, controlled by the Dalai Lama with the support of British imperialists before 1951.

For decades, anti-China human rights groups in the West have spent millions of dollars denouncing China. To many Chinese, it seems that this lobbying is the only voice that's acceptable or newsworthy by the mainstream media and governments in the West. But times are changing: we need to be open-minded and objective. The recent well-organized and funded sabotages of the Olympic torch relay in Paris, London and San Francisco (and not in other cities) and their aftermath have sparked a confrontation between the very angry Chinese all over the world and some people in the West who now feel that China is No.1 threat to the world’s peace. Many of these people are belong to our younger generations. These young people will soon replace us to manage the affairs in the world. Do we want them to continue moving toward the two extreme ends of a polarized world in the future? It is especially more important that we show them how to be open-minded, objective and fair.  Let's help our children enjoy a better world of peace and harmony in the 21st century - it is our moral responsibility!  If you agree with me, please forward this message and the attachment to at least three of your friends or colleagues, so they can also think over this matter.

    Thank you.

    GLH

This is the article that he mentioned in the message:

      (first attachment)

More background on and similar view from William Engdahl can be found on this site: http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/index.html

If you interested in reading books presenting Tibet-related background material with perspectives (not necessarily Chinese) that is not mentioned by the media, here are some that I found:

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2403.php http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act=justtop&url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/90.1/br_107.html

Some articles also with different perspectives:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8731

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/ausland/artikel/921/169428/

(in German, written by a former German Ambassador to China)

Here is one article criticizing some Hollywood movies related to Tibet:  (second attachment)

Cheers,

Attachment 1:

Why Washington Plays ‘Tibet Roulette’ with China

© by F. William Engdahl, 5 April 2008

Washington has obviously decided on an ultra-high risk geopolitical game with Beijing’s by fanning the flames of violence in Tibet just at this sensitive time in their relations and on the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. It’s part of an escalating strategy of destabilization of China which has been initiated by the Bush Administration over the past months, and which includes the attempt to ignite an anti-China Saffron Revolution in the neighboring Myanmar region, bringing US-led NATO troops into Darfur where China’s oil companies are developing potentially huge oil reserves. It includes counter moves across minerals rich Africa. And it includes strenuous efforts to turn India into a major new US forward base on the Asian sub-continent to be deployed against China.

The current Tibet operation got the green light in October last year when George Bush agreed to meet the Dalai Lama for the first time publicly in Washington. The President of the United States is not unaware of the high stakes of such an insult to Beijing. Bush deepened the affront to America’s largest trading partner, China, by agreeing to attend as the US Congress awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal.

The immediate expressions of support for the monks of Tibet from George Bush, Condi Rice, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel most recently took on dimensions of the absurd. Ms Merkel announced she would boycott attending the August Beijing Summer Olympics as her protest at the Beijing treatment of the Tibetan monks.

What her press secretary omitted is that she had not even planned to go in the first place. She was followed by an announcement that Poland’s Prime Minister, the pro-Washington Donald Tusk, would also stay away, along with pro-US Czech President Vaclav Klaus. It is unclear whether they also hadn’t planned to go in the first place but it made for dramatic press headlines.

The recent wave of violent protests and documented attacks by Tibetan monks against Han Chinese residents began on March 10 when several hundred monks marched on Lhasa to demand release of other monks allegedly detained for celebrating the award of the US Congress’ Gold Medal last October. The monks were joined by other monks marching to protest Beijing rule on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.

The geopolitical game

As the Chinese government itself was clear to point out, the sudden eruption of anti-Chinese violence in Tibet, a new phase in the movement led by the exiled Dalai Lama, was suspiciously timed to put the spotlight on Beijing’s human rights record on the eve of the coming Olympics. The Beijing Olympics are an event seen in China as a major acknowledgement of the arrival of a new prosperous China on the world stage.

The background actors in the Tibet actions confirm that Washington has been working overtime in recent months to prepare another of its infamous Color Revolutions, these fanning public protests designed to inflict maximum embarrassment on Beijing.

The actors on the ground in and outside Tibet are the usual suspects, tied to the US State Department, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the CIA’s Freedom House through its chairman, Bette Bao Lord and her role in the International Committee for Tibet, as well as the Trace Foundation financed by the wealth of George Soros through his daughter, Andrea Soros Colombel.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the latest unrest to sabotage the Olympic Games “in order to achieve their unspeakable goal”, Tibetan independence.

Bush telephoned his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao, to pressure for talks between Beijing and the exiled Dalai Lama. The White House said that Bush, “raised his concerns about the situation in Tibet and encouraged the Chinese government to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama’s representatives and to allow access for journalists and diplomats.”

President Hu reportedly told Bush the Dalai Lama must “stop his sabotage” of the Olympics before Beijing takes a decision on talks with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

Dalai Lama’s old friends

In the West the image of the Dalai Lama has been so promoted that in many circles he is deemed almost a God. While the spiritual life of the Dalai Lama is not our focus, it is relevant to note briefly the circles he has chosen to travel in most of his life.

The Dalai Lama travels in what can only be called rather conservative political circles.

What is generally forgotten today is that during the 1930’s the Nazis including Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler and other top Nazi Party leaders regarded Tibet as the holy site of the survivors of the lost Atlantis, and the origin of the “Nordic pure race.”

When he was 11 and already designated Dalai Lama, he was befriended by a Nazi and officer of Heinrich Himmler’s feared SS, Heinrich Harrer. Far from the image of the popular Hollywood film with Brad Pitt, Harrer was an elite SS member at the time he met the 11 year old Dalai Lama and became his tutor in “the world outside Tibet.” While only the Dalai Lama knows the contents of Harrer’s private lessons, the two remained friends until Harrer died a ripe 93 in 2006.1

That sole friendship, of course, does not define a person’s character, but it is interesting in the context of later friends. In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, and formerBeijing Ambassador, CIA Director and President, George H.W. Bush, the Dalai Lama demanded the British government release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity. The Dalai Lama had close ties to Miguel Serrano2, head of Chile’s National Socialist Party, a proponent of something called esoteric Hitlerism. 3

Leaving aside at this point the claim of the Dalai Lama to divinity, what is indisputable is that he has been surrounded and financed in significant part, since his flight into Indian exile in 1959, by various US and Western intelligence services and their gaggle of NGOs.

It is the agenda of the Washington friends of the Dalai Lama that is relevant here.

The NED at work again…

As author Michael Parenti notes in his work, Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth, “during the 1950s and 60s, the CIA actively backed the Tibetan cause with arms, military training, money, air support and all sorts of other help.” The US-based American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA front, publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in the group. The Dalai Lama’s second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA

in 1951. It was later upgraded into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet, according to Parenti.4

According to declassified US intelligence documents released in the late 1990s, “for much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama.” 5

With help of the CIA, the Dalai Lama fled to Dharamsala, India where he lives to the present.

He continues to receive millions of dollars in backing today, not from the CIA but from a more innocuous-sounding CIA front organization, funded by the US Congress, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED has been instrumental in every USbacked Color Revolution destabilization from Serbia to Georgia to Ukraine to Myanmar. Its funds go to back opposition media and global public relations campaigns to popularize their pet opposition candidates.

As in the other recent Color Revolutions, the US Government is fanning the flames of destabilization against China by funding opposition protest organizations inside and outside Tibet through its arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED was founded by the Reagan Administration in the early 1980’s, on the recommendation of Bill Casey, Reagan’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), following a series of high-publicity exposures of CIA destabilizations, assassinations and destabilizations of unfriendly regimes. The NED was designed to pose as an independent NGO, one step removed from the CIA and Government agencies so as to be less conspicuous, presumably. The first acting President of the NED, Allen Weinstein, commented to the Washington Post that, “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” 6

American intelligence historian, William Blum states, “The NED played an important role  in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, funding key components of Oliver North's shadowy "Project Democracy." This network privatized US foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs, and engaged in other equally charming activities. In 1987, a White House spokesman stated that those at NED "run Project Democracy." 7

The most prominent pro-Dalai Lama Tibet independence organization today is the International Campaign for Tibet, founded in Washington in 1988. Since at least 1994 the ICT has been receiving funds from the NED. The ICT awarded their annual Light of Truth award in 2005 to Carl Gershman, founded of the NED. Other ICT award winners have included the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation and Czech leader, Vaclav Havel. The ICT Board of Directors is peopled with former US State Department officials including Gare Smith and Julia Taft. 8

Another especially active anti-Beijing organization is the US-based Students for a Free Tibet, founded in 1994 in New York City as a project of US Tibet Committee and the NEDfinanced International Campaign for Tibet (ICT). The SFT is most known for unfurling a 450 foot banner atop the Great Wall in China; calling for a free Tibet, and accusing Beijing of wholly unsubstantiated claims of genocide against Tibet. It makes good drama to rally naïve students.

The SFT was among five organizations which this past January that proclaimed start of a "Tibetan people's uprising" on Jan 4 this year and co-founded a temporary office in charge of coordination and financing.

Harry Wu is another prominent Dalai Lama supporter against Beijing. He became notorious for claiming falsely in a 1996 Playboy interview that he had “videotaped a prisoner whose kidneys were surgically removed while he was alive, and then the prisoner was

taken out and shot. The tape was broadcast by BBC." The BBC film showed nothing of the sort, but the damage was done. How many people check old BBC archives? Wu, a retired Berkeley professor who left China after imprisonment as a dissident, is head of the Laogai Research Foundation, a tax-exempt organization whose main funding is from the NED.9

Among related projects, the US Government-financed NED also supports the Tibet Times newspaper, run out of the Dalai Lama’s exile base at Dharamsala, India. The NED also funds the Tibet Multimedia Center for “information dissemination that addresses the struggle for human rights and democracy in Tibet,” also based in Dharamsala. And NED finances the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

In short, US State Department and US intelligence community finger prints are all over the upsurge around the Free Tibet movement and the anti-Han Chinese attacks of March. The question to be asked is why, and especially why now?

(T B C.)

Attachment 2:

TIBETIAN CHINESE ARE NOT AMERICAN INDIANS

(What the Western Media Would Not Publish)

By Bevin Chu, December 3, 1999

(Selected from Antiwar.com)

Bevin Chu is an American architect of Chinese descent registered to practice in Texas. Currently living and working in Taiwan, Chu is the son of a retired high-ranking diplomat with the ROC (Taiwan) government. His column, "The Strait Scoop," now appears Fridays at Antiwar.com.

HISTORY ACCORDING TO HOLLYWOOD

Humanitarian Interventionists and Benevolent Global Hegemonists and some Christian religious leaders and myopic followers of animistic Lamaism (a twisted form of Buddhism), most of whom lack even a rudimentary understanding of China's long and complex history, share a particularly nasty trait. Many of these Globocops imagine because they have downloaded a few pages of separatist propaganda from tibet.org, and shed a tear or two while watching "Seven Years in Tibet," that qualifies them as China experts. They believe this qualifies them to pass judgment about whether China "deserves" to remain intact or be forcibly Balkanized by the World's Only Remaining Superpower. Their attitude rivals that of the most contemptible 19th century imperialists.

I have seen Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" once in the theater and several times on cable, and I never cease to be deeply moved by what screenwriting teachers term "a good story, well told." The same holds true of Neil Jordan's political biography "Michael Collins," about the famous, or infamous Irish revolutionary of the same name.

I do not however assume merely because I have enjoyed a well scripted and well produced two hours of entertainment that I have necessarily learned anything substantive about English, Scottish or Irish history. I retain enough presence of mind to recall Hollywood's record of playing fast and loose with historical facts, motivated by either commercial considerations or the filmmakers' political biases.

I certainly do not leave the theater convinced of either the rightness or wrongness of Scottish secession. Instead I remain scrupulously neutral. The issue of Scottish secession is one for the English and the Scots to settle between themselves. Why should I, who am neither an Englishman nor a Scots, behave like a damned busybody and stick my nose into something which is none of my business?

Now if only the Globocops would have the decency to do likewise after watching "Kundun" or "The Wind Horse."

CHINA'S WEST IS NOT THE AMERICAN WEST

One especially disturbing aspect of the Tibet crusade in America is that Hollywood, academia, New Agers and the Washington establishment have drawn patently misleading parallels with American history. These comparisons of European immigrants to Han Chinese, and American Indians to Tibetan Chinese, have led to a grotesque collective misunderstanding.

This dangerously egocentric, even narcissistic way of experiencing the world may get America into deep foreign policy hot water. In fact, it has. When such historically irrelevant parallels are drawn what non-Chinese get is worse than ignorance. What non-Chinese get is the illusion of understanding.

Unfortunately most of what is readily available in English on the web regarding contemporary Tibet is predictable PC orthodoxy. The few rebuttals which are available in English are summarily dismissed by the intellectual orthodoxy as not credible simply because they are posted by Chinese or ethnic Chinese sources and do not support the "correct" conclusions.

Tibet is a region of China. It has been since the 13th century. Obviously one needs to refer to Chinese history and Chinese historians to learn about it. Most of that data is obviously going to be in Chinese. Yet it is only virulently anti-China Tibetan secessionist propaganda written in English which is automatically accorded the status of unassailable truth. The China bashers' attitude reeks of colonialist arrogance.

Far better to not know anything, and retain the humility that accompanies such ignorance, than to imagine that one knows all one needs to know to pass moral judgment and demand military intervention. As the old saw goes, "the problem isn't what people don't know, it's what they know that just ain't so."

TIBETAN CHINESE ARE NOT AMERICAN INDIANS

For example, projection of "collective guilt" over the mistreatment of American Indians is with little doubt the psychological root of most pro- Dalai activism. Unfortunately the pro-Dalai faction has confused its own internal psychology with a foreign nation's history. Just because they feel "liberal guilt" about America's Indian minority does not mean that China's history actually conforms to their internal guilt and historical misunderstanding. This is why so many western sympathizers of Tibetan independence are taken aback, stunned even, when they discover that most Tienanmen pro-democracy leaders do NOT support, and in fact vehemently oppose Tibetan and Taiwan independence. The sympathizers' projection has been so extensive that they are trapped in a "virtual reality" of their own making.

The relationship between majority Han-Chinese and minority Tibetan-Chinese does NOT historically parallel that of European-Americans and Native Americans. The territory of modern China includes Tibet not because "the Han-Chinese conquered Tibetan-Chinese" the way European-Americans conquered American Indians and Hawaiians. (E.g., "Dances with Wolves"). Instead both Tibetans and Hans were conquered by the Mongols under the leadership of Genghis Khan and grandson Kublai Khan in the 13th century. When the Mongol or Yuan Dynasty collapsed a century later, it was supplanted by a Han-Chinese dominated Ming Dynasty, which inherited jurisdiction over the Mongol empire, including the Tibetan region. This is how Tibet, and of course Mongolia, became part of China.

Those who insist on "victim-victimizer" dichotomies might be tempted on leap to yet another equally simplistic conclusion, that "both Tibetans and Hans were victims of Mongol aggression." This ignores the fact that both "victims" and "victimizers" subsequently intermarried extensively, not under duress, but of their own volition, rendering the issue of victimization moot and irrelevant.

The bottom line is that Tibet was not "invaded" or "annexed" by China in 1959. Because by then the Tibetan region had been part of China for seven centuries, five centuries longer than these United States of America have even been in existence. One does not "invade" or "annex" what is already one's own territory. Beijing dispatched troops to prevent secession by the serf-owing elite which objected to the abolition of slavery, not to implement annexation. Hardly the same thing.

One can argue the merits or demerits of secession, but that is another issue entirely. Rather than debate the issue honestly however, the Dalai Lama and his Hollywood camp followers prefer to lie about history. They are counting on popular ignorance of the details about exotic and distant Cathay and Shangri-la, calculating that the general public will believe whatever is fed them if it is presented in a convenient and satisfying Manichean "good versus evil" framework.

REDS, NOT RED HERRINGS

The false equation of Tibetan-Chinese with American Indian has predictably led to the false attribution of racist motivations to Beijing's abolition of serfdom and crushing of Tibetan secession. Beijing's Tibet policies are being falsely equated with everything from Nazi genocide of Jews to Nato's allegations of Serbian "ethnic cleansing."

If one is determined to force the Chinese experience into an American mold, one could perhaps equate the militarily powerful Mongols with one of the aggressive, nomadic tribes such as the Comanche, and Tibetans and Hans with less aggressive, agrarian tribes such as the Hopi or Navahoe. The point is that all of China's major ethnic subcultures are native Chinese, including so-called Hans.

Now that communism is dead, sympathizers of the Dalai Lama, many of whom were sympathizers of Mao Zedong, seem to have forgotten what communism was all about. Communism was a political ideology obsessed with economic equality. Communism adjudged who was good and who was bad on the basis of its fatally flawed economic theory. To communist true believers the relevant question was to which economic class do you belong. Are you a capitalist victimizer or a proletarian victim? Ethnicity to communism was always irrelevant.

The Chinese Communists were no exception. They committed their atrocities because they were fanatical radical egalitarians, "coercive egalitarians." The Lamaist theocracy was targeted because it engaged in the economic exploitation of Tibet's serfs.

When Red Guards vandalized monasteries in Tibet they were doing precisely the same thing to Zen Buddhist monasteries, Taoist monasteries, Christian churches, Jewish synagogues all over the rest of China. They were not doing anything so narrowly parochial as singling out the Tibetan subculture for "cultural genocide." Rather they were motivated by disgust for what they perceived as vestiges of unjust economic systems throughout China.

The Dalai Lama's allegation that Chinese Communist violence against Tibet's serf-owning elite was racially motivated ethnic cleansing is a red herring. Chinese Communists were evil because they were coercive egalitarians. Chinese Communists were never racist.

IF THIS BE GENOCIDE, MAKE THE MOST OF IT

In fact if the Chinese Communists had really been racially motivated, they could have deliberately and cynically left Tibet's Ancient Regime in place.

Traditional Tibet's theocracy imposed a policy of "er xuan yi" (from two choose one) and "san xuan er" (from three choose two) on the Tibetan people. They dragooned enormous numbers of hapless Tibetan boys into the priesthood , where they would remain celibate for life. This draconian policy resulted in an alarming decline in Tibet's population in recent centuries.

Adherence to a religious practice of strict celibacy led to the eventual extinction of the Shaker sect in America. Chinese Communist Party failure to intervene in China's Tibetan region would have, by default, abetted a similar process of Tibetan self-extinction. CCP intervention has instead led to a population increase. Beijing emerges an unlikely hero in this respect. Yet Beijing is ritually and reflexively accused by self-styled do-gooders of "genocide," both "cultural" and racial. Ironies abound.

GENGHIS KHAN AND WILLIAM OF NORMANDY

The fifty-six officially acknowledged ethnic groups in China, including but not limited to Tibetan-Chinese, Moslem-Chinese, Mongolian-Chinese, Manchurian-Chinese, and Han-Chinese, would be more instructively compared with certain ethnic groups in the west and not others. The relationship between Mongolian-Chinese and Han-Chinese, and Manchurian-Chinese and Han-Chinese in particular, parallels that between English of Norman descent and English of Saxon descent following the Norman Conquest. What made me think of this was a corny old Hollywood movie which I had seen before, but which just ran again on cable here in Taipei - "The Black Rose, " 1950, starring Tyrone Power, Jack Hawkins and Michael Rennie.

THE BLACK ROSE

The hero, Walter of Gurney (Tyrone Power) is the illegitimate son of a Saxon Lord denied his inheritance and birthright by the Norman King Edward (Michael Rennie.) Embittered, Gurney abandons England, which he feels is no longer his country and journeys to the middle-east, joining Kublai Khan's army which is about to invade China. He meets the title character "The Black Rose" who is not a flower, but a woman named Maryam, a teenager played by an 18 year old actress who didn't look a day over 13. Tyrone Power and sidekick Jack Hawkins rescue her from life as a concubine in Kublai Khan's harem. She falls in love with the hero and a typically chauvinistic 1950's type relationship follows in which he treats her like a mere "wench."

At the beginning of the film the Tyrone Power character vows undying enmity for intolerable Saxon victimization under Norman rule. By the end of the film however he is reconciled to a future in which Saxons and Normans live together in peace. What is intriguing to me is how the events in Britain and China occurred at very nearly the same time, the 12th century, making the Marco Polo-ish linkage chronologically consistent and unintentionally underscoring the parallelism, at least for me.

The aspect of the film that intrigued me was not the pyscho-sexual "Lolita" subplot, but the Norman-ruled Britain parallel to Mongol-ruled China. Let me stress that the historical parallel with China was not something the filmmakers intended, but merely a connection I made in my own mind.

NORMANS AND SAXONS, MONGOLS AND HANS

Both settings are virtually clichés in swashbuckler action adventure movies. Just as "The Black Rose" and countless Robin Hood related tales center on the conflict between Norman conquerors and Saxon conquered, so countless Taiwan and Hongkong swordfight swashbucklers set in the Southern Sung dynasty and late Ming dynasty deal with Mongol and Manchu conquerors and Han conquered.

Just as these once powerful animosities are "ancient history" in modern Britain, so they are in modern China. Is there any Anglo-Saxon Englishman alive today who actually nurses animosity toward "Normans" for the Battle of Hastings? Is there any "Han" Chinese (good luck finding a "pure" Han Chinese by the way) alive today who actually nurses animosity tow