Support Tibet: Oppose the Pro-Tibetan Movement
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
Author’s Note: Whereas the 14th Dalai Lama once pontificated that Communist China would collapse due to what he mistakenly considered to be its ‘internal contradictions’, Communist China has in fact developed from strength to strength as the years have unfolded, and on the contrary, it looks as if the Pro-Tibetan Movement is very much on its way out. The Pro-Tibetan Movement has nothing to do with the well-being of Tibet, or the Tibetan people, but is premised entirely upon Western racialised notions of the ‘other’ and the power politics associated with the ‘permanently excluded’. The Pro-Tibetan Movement seeks to use Eurocentric anti-Chinese racism as a means to defeat and uproot Communism from the Chinese Mainland, and re-establish bourgeois capitalism in its place. Should China ever succumb to this unjust external pressure of Western neo-colonialism, the Tibetan people it once courted will find themselves ‘reduced’ to the category of ‘irrelevant’ and ‘inferior’ non-White, and treated accordingly. Western people who have fallen for the Pro-Tibetan Movement lie are participating in a mass disinformation project in the fact that it has no relevancy or substantive presence in China. This is a matter of systemic deception and distorted education. Western capitalists hate the Chinese due to their Judeo-Christian conditioning that demonises all non-Christians as ‘evil’ and being from the ‘devil’. The correct Marxist-Leninist line is to oppose the bourgeois Pro-Tibetan Movement as an important matter of ‘anti-racist’ protest. The Chinese Communist Revolution has been unfolding since 1949, and the Tibetan area of China has developed and benefitted from this growth beyond measure. Racist Trotskyites notwithstanding, the Chinese Revolution must be supported as the only legitimate Marxist-Leninist manner in which the development and well-being of Tibet can be assured and maintained. I have presented throughout this comprehensive article, a number of original Chinese language sources, all but ignored in the West, as this type of information exposes the falsehood of the rhetoric of the Pro-Tibetan Movement. Support Tibet in China – do not support Western racism against China disguised as a ‘Human Rights’ issue. The all-pervading ideology of the Pro-Tibetan Movement must be broken-up with good scholarship and correct historical analysis. ACW 13.9.2016
‘We must have a human approach. As far as socioeconomic theory, I am Marxist.’
(14th Dalai Lama - 2015)[1]
‘All these dissolving agencies acting together on the finances, the morals, the industry, and political structure of China, received their full development under the English cannon in 1840, which broke down the authority of the Emperor, and forced the Celestial Empire into contact with the terrestrial world. Complete isolation was the prime condition of the preservation of Old China. That isolation having come to a violent end by the medium of England, dissolution must follow as surely as that of any mummy carefully preserved in a hermetically sealed coffin, whenever it is brought into contact with open air. Now, England having brought about the revolution of China, the question is how that revolution will in time react on England, and through England on Europe.’
(Karl Marx: Revolution in China and in Europe - 1859)[2]
‘They took me away from my family and stuck me in a medieval situation in which I suffered a great deal. It was living a lie.’
(Osel Hita Torres: Abuse Victim of Dalai Lama – 2009)[3]
It is absolutely correct and proper to support the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China, and to wish the Tibetan people well in the practice of their unique Buddhism, and the preservation of their distinctive culture, during the ongoing process of the modernisation, and continued improvement of living standards, education, diet and health in Tibet, since the founding of New China in 1949, and the successful over-throw (and expulsion) of the bourgeois (Western) imperialist powers. Supporting the different (56) ethnic minorities of China, is a founding principle of the Communist Party of China, firmly rooted in ‘Internationalism’ and the ongoing project of uprooting all notions of bourgeois racism left behind by the Western colonialists. Supporting Tibet is correct when its departure-point is from the perspective of the ongoing and progressive unfolding of the Chinese Communist Revolution, which is in its historical epoch of building Socialism throughout the country. The over-throw of capitalism and imperialism, has led to a system-wide socio-economic reconfiguration on Scientific Socialist principles that reject all aspects of the inverted psychology and greed associated with the bourgeoisie and its middle class dominance. The Chinese State views itself entirely from the working class perspective of a proletariat that has freed itself through revolutionary action, and in so doing, secured its own right to be self-determining. In this regard, China is an ongoing and dialectical unfolding of the principles of Marxist-Leninism. Of course, this will be of no inspiration or help to those still living in capitalist societies, who are subjected to the continuous manipulation and distortion of the bourgeois education system and media industry. This is because Marxist-Leninism is the antithesis of capitalism and the theoretical and practical downfall of its privilege and presumed dominance at the point of contact. The working class in the West are still trapped firmly within an exploitative bourgeois capitalist system, and subject to the ongoing conditioning of that system which is default set as being antagonistic toward Marxist-Leninism, and any other theory or behaviour that might possess the ability to uproot its hegemony. Part of this strategy of ongoing middle class domination is the training of the working class to a) hate itself, and b) resist any and all theories or ideologies that seek to expose this fact, and make life better for the working class in its entirety. The bourgeois system achieves this by formulating an inverted approach to reality that seeks to reduce the masses of the working class to competing individuals with no class consciousness, who are trained in the classroom and workplace, that they are one another’s enemies and should spend their time fearing and attacking one another. With regards to the international working class, the extra element of ‘racism’ is added to this toxic cocktail of misinformation. The only manner in which the bourgeois system allows the White working class to temporarily unite is around false notions of ‘nationalism’ that depict all non-White workers as the enemy. This approach ensures that within national boundaries, the White working class continuously fights amongst itself, whilst temporarily uniting against any non-White workers who happen to occupy this socio-economic space. Internationally, White working class groups are taught to hate other White working class groups from other counties, as well as all non-White workers from whatever country. This pursuance of bourgeois-friendly class politics keeps the working class in a state of arrested development, whereby it is unable to unite itself in such a manner so that insight might be gained into exactly what the bourgeoisie is doing. In fact, so hopelessly lost in this mire of bourgeois disempowerment, the average worker believes that he or she is acting out of free-will and self-determination every time they pursue bourgeois class politics (that are obviously against their own working class interests). As hating other races is a key ingredient of how the bourgeois control the working class, it is essential that to its interests that all non-Chinese workers in the world a priori ‘hate’ all Chinese people. This is not as difficult as it sounds, as the foundations of Eurocentric anti-Chinese racism were laid hundreds of years ago during the colonial era.
The Catholic and Protestant Churches were at the fore-front of Western colonial expansion, and legitimised the obvious technological advantage the Industrial Revolution gave the British (and other European countries) by granting the obvious exploitation and destruction of other cultures a ‘divine’ justification. This is typical of the inverted bourgeois mind-set. That ignores the fact that the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution were the product of the use of the human mind in a logical and rational manner, breaking with the tradition of theological domination that ascribes all developments on earth as an ’act of god’ in heaven. The fact that after over a thousand years of domination in Europe the Christian Churches had not developed modern medicine or industry, is an important indication of how theistic religion exists to dominate and not ‘free’ the masses. Whilst a resurgent logic triggered and perpetuated the Industrial Revolution, the bourgeois establishment continued to hold the workers in a theological prison, asserting that all this development had been the product of ‘faith’ in a god that cannot be seen. Although the industrialised workers existed in terrible conditions created by the bourgeoisie, the very same bourgeoisie abrogated all responsibility for its suffering-inducing action by ascribing the new socio-economic conditions to the will of god, and advised the suffering workers to ‘pray’ harder in their brief breaks between long work shifts (knowing full well that such ‘praying’ would have no effect at all on the real material conditions they inhabited). Religion for the bourgeoisie is a very important aspect of the system of domination that class deploys against the workers. Religion diverts the attention of the workers away from the real and practical circumstances they experience daily on the physical plane (so that the workers cannot ‘realise’ what is actually happening and do something about it) and serves to suppress all intellectual activity in the mind, replacing it with a ‘faith’ in that which does not exist. In this regard, religious faith serves as a tradition of anti-intellectualism that is designed to keep the workers fearful of a god they cannot see, and therefore psychologically and physically unable to confront the over-powering and all-pervading power of the bourgeoisie. Internationally, and as part of the bourgeois policy of keeping the workers in all countries from uniting, the White working class is taught to ‘hate’ all religions usually associated with non-White people, and to ascribe an inferior status to those non-White workers who have been ‘converted’ to Christianity by the forces of imperialism. Chinese religion, of course, simply by the fact that it is of a non-Christian origin (and practised by a non-White people), is automatically deemed ‘inferior’ by the Western bourgeois system. Chinese religion, be it Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist, or even in the form of home-grown (but missionary imitated) Christian movements such as that associated with the Taiping Rebellion, are all viewed as a threat to the hegemony of the Western Churches and the Bourgeois system they are a manifestation of. Any threat to the Western Churches is viewed as a threat to the Bourgeois State, and is stringently attacked, misrepresented, demonised, and distorted into a thoroughly alien construct that has no meaning in China, but which represents the darkest recesses of the Judeo-Christian mind. Like all racialised distortions, the opinion of the racist is in reality entirely to do with an expression of disturbances lying deep in their mind, and nothing to do with the intended victims of that racism (i.e. the group being demonised), who are merely innocent physical targets for this negative psychic explosion. As expressed racism is the physical manifestation of internalised psychological events, the behaviour and opinion is far more informative about the educational and cultural history of the racist, than it is about the cultural habits, language or religion of the intended victim. In fact, as racism is what might be termed a highly destructive and toxic mythology, it is used by the bourgeoisie to inoculate the working class against building internationalist tendencies, and in so doing, rendering such bourgeois racist conditioning historically and ideologically redundant. Therefore, the Western working class must hate the Chinese people with an intensified racial distain that prevents the oppressed proletariat of the West from uniting with the Chinese workers and initiating a Socialist Revolution outside of China. For the bourgeoisie, contemporary Chinese culture has to be misrepresented as an abhorrent break with its otherwise ‘sublime’ imperialist past. A past it must be acknowledged, that was thoroughly unable to resist or oppose Western colonial invasion and domination of China. It is this type of Chinese culture that the bourgeoisie ‘sentimentalise’ for its own profit-infected ambitions, seeing everything ‘old’ as ‘good’, and everything ‘new’ as ‘evil’. In effect, China must exist in a state of continuous regression for it to be viewed as ‘good’ in the eyes of the capitalist West, because such a China is ‘weak’ and unable to confront the forces of capitalism. A weak China can be militarily and economically dominated from the outside, and be subject to invasion at the whim of the international bourgeoisie. Communist China, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of this idealised bourgeois image. Modern China is now economically and technologically more advanced than the capitalist West, and possesses a military that can protect its borders and regionally project power. Although China has made it continuously clear that it would prefer peace to war, it is reasonable to assume that its armed forces currently possesses the ability to inflict a defeat on the armed forces of the West, if those forces were used by the capitalist bourgeoisie to ‘invade’ Mainland China, or permanently annex Taiwan. The West, still acting very much in the model of the US-inspired Cold War, holds to the fictional lie that the Chinese military is a threat to world peace, whilst the Chinese military has not acted outside its national boundaries since 1979 (during the war with Vietnam). This record of relative peace may be compared with the forces of the USA and UK, which have, (with the collusion of NATO), carried-out illegal invasions of sovereign nations and initiated numerous (equally illegal) ‘regime changes’, whilst bourgeois State media issues a steady stream of Islamophobic rhetoric. Although compared to the bloody and destructive actions of the Western capitalist countries, China is a very peaceful country, but it must be presented to the Western working class as being lacking in human rights, being immoral and uncaring toward its own people, and of course, immensely cruel to animals, and so on and so forth. This mythology is more or less unquestioned in the capitalist West, and automatically accepted as ‘true’ with no evidence by the majority of people. Anti-Chinese racism is the agency through which these misrepresentations are conveyed, as it is considered perfectly acceptable to be racist toward Chinese people if their physical appearance and moral behaviour ‘deviates’ from that which is considered ‘good’ by the Christianised West. This is the racism that the bourgeoisie uses to manipulate the Western mind against the Chinese, and it is this very same racism that serves as the foundation of the ‘Pro-Tibetan Movement’. Those Westerners and other non-White people (including diasporic Chinese people living in the US colonies of South Korea, Taiwan and capitalist Singapore), who unthinkingly express a ‘support’ for the Pro-Tibetan Movement, are fully participating in the bourgeois protection of misrepresting China and her culture through a particularly virulent form of anti-Chinese racism. A very important distinction must be firmly established that supporting the real country of Tibet and its people, is in no way to be associated with supporting the Pro-Tibetan Movement, as the two aspirations are very different.
The Pro-Tibetan Movement has its ideological roots in historical anti-Chinese racism, which was formulated within, and emerged out of, the Judeo-Christian imagination of the West. For all intents and purposes, the Chinese people (and their culture) are associated with the ‘devil’ and all his ‘evil’ actions. This ‘demonisation’ of China has served as a useful tool for the bourgeoisie, particularly as the language differences between China and Western countries is generally insurmountable for many people. The Western bourgeoisie issues its propaganda adjusted to suit the educational and cultural needs of those it is attempting to manipulate and brain-wash. As this is the case, the bourgeoisie uses all Western languages to create a common derogatory ‘line’ that constitutes a ‘united’ approach across Europe (and the US). With regard to Chinese people living outside of China, the Western bourgeoisie has its anti-Chinese rhetoric translated into the Chinese language (generally issued through Taiwan), as a means to convert non-Mainland Chinese people to support and perpetuate Western racial stereotypes about Mainland China. As many of these Chinese ‘collaborators’ are Christian converts, this is not a difficult task to achieve, simply because such dubious action is mistakenly perceived by the perpetuators as being ‘good’. Just as the bourgeoisie works to continuously ‘separate’ and ‘isolate’ the Western working class into competing individuals antagonistic to one another, so it continues this task to plunge the Chinese people into a disunified and confused mass of people, unable to see clearly their own cultural needs, or pursue a distinct political direction suitable to their best interests. It is just as important for the Chinese working class to be as non-united as its Western counter-part – this is exactly how the international bourgeoisie controls the political situation, and maintain a Pro-Tibetan Movement that possesses no historical, cultural or religious credibility outside of the confines of its own ‘imagined’ mythology. The Pro-Tibetan Movement in fact represents what might be accurately termed a ‘Lamaist Insertion’ in the Western imagination. Yes – the business structures of the Pro-Tibetan Movement exist all around Western society, and its bizarre (and highly ‘Christianised’) form of Buddhism is available in virtually every bookshop, but nevertheless, its presence is ethereal and insubstantial in a modern, secular society. It is allowed to exist because it is a business selling religiously inspired lies to gullible Western and Chinese people who remain politically and culturally unware. The Pro-Tibetan Movement is a ‘White’ racially motivated political entity that in its mindless cynicism, uses non-White ‘Tibetans’ as its figurehead. This is the price that is paid in the pursuance of a policy of anti-Chinese racism in the West, designed to bring-down Communist China. The majority of people who support the Pro-Tibetan Movement are certainly ‘non-Tibetan’, and a great many of these misled people are White European. These people work tirelessly to present the mythology of the Pro-Tibetan Movement to the Western media, demonising the entire race of Chinese people in so doing. There is only one place where Tibetan Buddhism is correctly practised, and that is in Tibet, and in the large Tibetan communities in Southwest China. As China is presented as ‘evil’, Tibet is falsely deemed to be ‘occupied’ by the nasty Chinese people, and Tibetan Buddhism ‘suppressed’. All this falsification falls away in the face of legitimate history (despite the mythology emanating from Hollywood). In practical terms, the Pro-Tibetan Movement does not have its roots in an indigenous and spontaneous uprising perpetuated by Tibetans against the Chinese people (as its mythology suggests), but is rather firmly rooted in the presence and policies of the Criminal Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States, operating out of China and Tibet in the 1950’s. A central plank in the Pro-Tibetan Movement demonisation of the Chinese ethnicity lies in its sense of absolute and self-righteous indignation through which it applies its motivating ‘racism’, always, of course, hidden within (and behind) its agenda of pseudo-historical ‘fact’. The general manner in which the (current) 14th Dalai Lama presents the relatively ‘recent’ history of Tibet has no bearing on the experience of the history of ethnic Tibetans (living in Tibet), but it must be kept in mind that he is the public face of a Western anti-Chinese movement who is preaching (by and large) to the already converted. However, as the Western system of academia (and the bourgeois media) accept what he says (with the odd, but growing list of exceptions), the 14th Dalai Lama also serves the function of conditioning the minds of young people in the West (and beyond) to think that what he says is ‘correct’ and a ‘true’ and ‘objective’ explanation of the history of a part of the world that is remote even in China, let alone to those living in the outside world. As the 14th Dalai Lama is a Buddhist monk, he is subject to the Vinaya Discipline, which is a code of hundreds of rules designed by the Buddha in ancient India to regulate the daily lives of his monks and nuns. The first and foremost of these rules is the proscription against ‘killing’, or ‘causing’ to ‘kill’. This advice is closely followed by the further proscriptions against ‘lying’ and ‘gossiping’. The proscription against killing involves any attempt to ‘glorify’, ‘justify’, or otherwise ‘legitimatise’ warfare. Although the Buddha pragmatically recognised the right of a king to retain a standing army to defend the realm,[4] and the Theravada bhikkhus of Sri Lanka were at the forefront of leftwing anti-colonial protests and movements legitimatised by the Sangha authorities in that country,[5] the 14th Dalai Lama is not a secular king, and certainly does not represent a ‘leftwing’ liberation movement. Tibet was liberated by the Communist Party of China in 1949 led by Mao Zedong (although this policy, by necessity, has had to be ongoing). The Tibetan people were freed from the corruption of a lama-ruling elite, and the grinding and feudalistic poverty within which they were forced to exist. The Communist Party of China represents a ‘leftwing’ liberation movement that has ‘freed’ Tibet from exploitation. The 14th Dalai Lama, by comparison, represents a Western rightwing movement that seeks to destroy the victory of the Chinese Communist Party, and through the means of a counter-revolution, open-up China and Tibet to the re-establishment of the system-wide (exploitative) hegemony of the bourgeoisie and the implementation of predatory capitalism, and its preferred political mode of ‘liberal’ democracy. In effect, under the guise of ‘freeing’ Tibet from its own (and already) established ‘freedom’, he would see the middle class agencies of oppression swept back into power, with the Chinese and Tibetan peoples subjugated yet again under the stifling foreign yoke of oppression. The following is typical of how the 14th Dalai Lama uses Western notions of ‘nationalism’ (unknown amongst ethnic Tibetans) to set the stage, simultaneously demeaning and belittling the PLA (and the Chinese people’s) fight to free themselves from Western (and Japanese) domination, whilst extolling Tibetans acting under his orders, who were armed with antiquated fire-arms supplied to them by the CIA, to attack and destroy the legitimate governmental apparatus of the Chinese State:
‘The Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet has been one of the great tragedies of this century. More than a million people have died as a result. An ancient culture with its buildings, literature, and artefacts has been attacked and largely destroyed, and the living holders of its traditions have been prevented from passing them on in their homeland.
International awareness of what took place during the past fifty years in the Land of Snows may generally have grown, but what may not be so well known or appreciated is the fact that there was an armed resistance. In Kham, Eastern Tibet, in particular, where people retained the warrior-like qualities of old, groups of men banded together to oppose the Chinese by force. These guerrillas, riding on horseback and often equipped with outdated weapons, put up a good fight. They expressed their loyalty and love for Tibet with admirable courage. And although they were ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the Chinese from overwhelming Tibet, they let the so-called People’s Liberation Army know what the majority of Tibetans felt about their presence.
Although I believe that the Tibetan struggle can only be won by a long-term approach and peaceful means, I have always admired these freedom fighters for their unflinching courage and determination. And I am glad that Mikel Dunham has been able to tell these brave men’s story in this book, much as they told it to him.’[6]
Unbelievably, this Foreword appeared in a book eulogising the role of the duplicitous CIA in Tibet in the 1950’s.[7] From at least the late 1940’s, the CIA had established its so-called ‘Office of Policy Coordination’, designed solely for covert operations against Communist and other regimes deemed enemies of the United States.[8] The US deeply mourned what it interpreted as the ‘fall’ of China in 1949, and sought to destabilise the Communist regime of Mao Zedong through Tibet and Taiwan. The CIA is known to be a ruthless and blood-thirsty organisation that is empowered to use any and all underhand or despicable means to achieve its ends. It has been involved in mass murder and regime changes all over the world, including South America, Africa and Asia. It failed on the ground in Tibet, but has continued this fight outside of Tibet (and China) through a vicious anti-China campaign that uses a blend of sentimentality, Judeo-Christian dogma, false history, disinformation, murder, relocation and deliberate misinterpretation, all designed to cause ‘confusion’ and ‘doubt’ in the minds who might develop the insight to see exactly what it is the CIA (and Dalai Lama) have been doing to the Chinese people in the name of Tibet. The CIA has the function of creating a misleading narrative about Chinese and Tibetan history, as a means to destabilise the Communist Chinese State, and re-establish capitalism throughout the region. One particularly vile organ of this capitalist propaganda is the so-called ‘Radio Free Asia’, which regurgitates US anti-Chinese and anti-Communist rhetoric throughout Asia. This is essentially an exercise in bourgeois imperialism across the airwaves, informing non-White people the preferred method of ‘thinking’. Of course, the 14th Dalai Lama holds it all together, and is an ardent supporter of the capitalist system (a stance very rare in the ordained Sangha of any Buddhist tradition, due to the Buddha’s injunction against ‘greed’). What is interesting to observe is that although in general the anti-Chinese rhetoric holds for many people in the West, (perceiving as they do, either implicitly or explicitly, the Chinese to be an ‘inferior’ race), a certain number are turning against the 14th Dalai Lama and away from supporting the Pro-Tibetan Movement, which has become something of an ever desperate ‘cult’ in the West as its power has started to diminish. In fact, so bad has things got for the Pro-Tibetan Movement that in June of this year, the US Secretary of State – John Kerry – informed the government of China that America no longer supports a ‘free’ and ‘independent’ Tibet.[9] However, much of this positioning on the surface is the exercise of US pragmatism in the face of the immense and continuous economic growth in China (and Tibet). Behind the scenes, the 14th Dalai Lama and his CIA-backed Pro-Tibetan Movement continue to churn-out endless books, leaflets and TV documentaries (interspersed with the occasional movie), espousing the false-history of that movement, and going through the motions initiated unsuccessfully years ago. Furthermore, following the example of that other failed CIA movement – the cult-like Falun Gong – the 14th Dalai Lama has been linked to the practice of certain Buddhist monasteries in Tibet brain-washing young monks and nuns to ‘set fire’ to themselves as an act of apparent ‘defiance’ to the Chinese occupation and rule of Tibet.[10] What is interesting about this is that it appears to be copying the behaviour of eminent, elderly and spiritually advanced Buddhist monks who opposed the US occupation (and Christianisation) of their country of Vietnam in the 1960’s.[11] Photographs of the Venerable Thích Quang Duc sat bolt-up right and meditating as his body was engulfed in flames, sent shock-waves across the world, and is believed to have been instrumental in the eventual over-throw of the US forces in that country. Tibet, of course, is not occupied by US (Judeo-Christian) capitalists, but has been free of such ideology and disruption since 1949. The 14th Dalai Lama, in his attempt to invert and falsify history, tries to erroneously equate ‘free’ Communist Tibet, with occupied and oppressed Vietnam. This is typical bourgeois fantasy with no grounding in material fact. What the 14th Dalai Lama is party to, is the over-throw of an already ‘free’ Tibet, and the instigation of a ‘new’ era of Western domination (similar to the situation in Vietnam throughout the 1960’s). However, once the CIA set the Eurocentric script, the Dalai Lama was happy to use his status as a historical figure to ‘sell’ this false ‘line’ of history to his adoring public. It is a blue-print of a script that has a list of evets that did not happen, learnt off by heart and continuously reproduced in the place of the suppressed actual facts. This why the 14th Dalai Lama (who is a Buddhist monk) is a liar by any objective standard. Since his engagement with the CIA he has continuously broken his vows against ‘lying’ and ‘gossiping’.[12] In 1999, a typical bourgeois tome following the pseudo-academia of the 14th Dalai Lama (and his Pro-Tibetan Movement) was published by the author Charles Allen. This is just one book amongst thousands that misrepresents Tibetan history at exactly the same time as it claims to be representing it in the name of ‘freedom’. Allen’s book presents itself as something of an impartial travelogue, exploring Tibetan history and its link to ‘Shangri-La’ – a vague bourgeois myth about far-off Asia. However, the veil of ‘disinterested’ analysis is soon dropped at various points in the narrative, exploding into vitriolic anti-Chinese sentiment. The following quote is typical of Allen’s method of conveying his politics (a tactic typical of the Pro-Tibetan Movement genre):
‘Nawang Dorje and his friend were Khampas, men from the Kham district of eastern Tibet celebrated as warriors and notorious as brigands. The Khampas had played a leading role in the uprising against the occupying Chinese which had started in Lhasa in 1956, eight years after the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had occupied Tibet in order to restore it to the bosom of the Chinese motherland (a claim of sovereignty that no international court of law would uphold, based chiefly on the grounds that the Manchu emperors actively intervened in Tibetan affairs for almost two centuries until all Chinese representatives were expelled from Lhasa in 1912. Tibet was declared to be part of China in 1931, but when the Chinese government attempted to exercise control it was rebuffed. Tibet remained fully independent until October 1950, when Chinese “liberation forces” advanced into Tibet to “liberate 3 million Tibetans from imperialist aggression”. In April 1951 a fatal 17 Point Agreement was concluded between the two governments, by which Tibet agreed to “return to the big family of the Motherland” in return for certain guarantees, including internal autonomy in matters of custom and religion and the continuance of the existing political system). Nawang and his friends had fought with the Khampas against the Chinese until they were forced to retreat across the border into Nepal. With support from the CIA and the Indian government, the Khampas had then set themselves up in Mustang, a little chuck of Nepal jutting into the Tibetan Plateau. Pressured by the Americans and the Indians on the one hand and by the Chinese on the other, the Nepalese government had been placed in a very awkward position. Finally, it acted against the Khampas.
The bullet rattling around inside the chest of Nawang’s friend came not from a Chinese but a Nepalese rifle. His band of Khampas had been chased out of Mustang by the Nepalese Army, then caught in an ambush and broken up. His was in the spring of 1967.
This year was the worst in Tibet’s history. In the previous autumn we three VSO’s in Kathmandu had cycled to the Chinese Embassy to watch its entire staff gather outside its corrugated tin gates for spontaneous demonstrations of support for the Great Helmsman. All wore blue Mao caps and blue Mao suits with red Mao badges in their lapels, and waved their copies of The Thoughts of Chairman Mao in red plastic folders while they screamed and stamped and waved themselves into mass hysteria. It was comic and yet chilling.’[13]
The anti-Chinese racism is palpable, especially in the final paragraph. Chinese people must be ridiculed for having a distinct culture and choosing to follow it regardless of the risk of racially motivated Western scorn. The 14th Dalai Lama’s rhetoric in support of the CIA (quoted above), is virtually line for line repeated by Allen in this extract (and in fact throughout his entire book). It is as if both are writing from a controlling and centralised ‘script’ that gives the CIA-approved pseudo-history of China and Tibet. Typical of Pro-Tibetan Movement rhetoric, is the habit of its various authors to state with the utmost authority, facts and figures that could only have been derived from Chinese language sources – without ever acknowledging this fact, or indeed providing the Chinese language sources. It is also interesting that Allen, whilst demonising and misrepresenting the Chinese presence in Tibet, he chooses to omit the British Indian Army invasion of Tibet which occurred between 1903-04. Pro-Tibetan Movement authors generally steer-clear of this period in Tibetan history, as they risk falling into the trap of having to admit that the only time Tibet was ever invaded by a ’foreign’ power in the 20th century, was when British troops occupied Lhasa, committed atrocities against the Tibetan people, and then illegally forced the Tibetan authorities to ‘sign’ a treaty with the British, falsely implying that Tibet was an ‘independent’ nation existing outside of China’s sovereignty – these are the well-known and real historical facts behind the Tibetan Lamaist authorities attempting to severe their legal link with China in 1912.[14] Reality, however, and the Pro-Tibetan Movement are only nodding acquaintances. Such a distorted image of Tibet has been created and generated by the Western imagination, that it is difficult for ordinary people interested in what is happening in Tibet from gaining any reliable facts. Anything ‘Chinese’, due to the anti-Chinese racism, is automatically deemed ‘bias’, whilst the Pro-Tibetan Movement constantly agitates for the defeat of Communism and the instigation of capitalism in China and Tibet. The sense of moral outrage associated with the Pro-Tibetan Movement stems from the fact that it is a Judeo-Christian movement that manifests at the point of contact through a veneer of Tibetan Buddhism. The early Christians were of course Jewish, and they ascribed to themselves (and to their ‘new’ Christian doctrine) the sense of ‘specialness’ usually reserved for orthodox Jewish adherents. This ‘specialness’ is theological in nature (originating within Jewish scripture) and states that the Jewish ethnicity is comprised of god’s ‘chosen’ people, living on earth. By definition, all those who are not Jewish, are not god’s ‘chosen’ people living on earth. When the Christians were expelled from Judaism in the early centuries of the common era, the Christians, although formerly ‘breaking’ their Judaic-roots, nevertheless retained the Jewish sense of ‘specialness’, which they now applied only to themselves as Christians. The original Jewish people were depicted as ‘betrayers’ and ‘rejecters’ of the Jewish Messiah (Jesus) and thereby deemed ‘evil’ as a consequence (this is the basis of much subsequent antisemitism). As Christianity gained political power within the Roman empire, it immediately set-about separating the world into arbitrary categories of ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Far from containing any moral impetus, this categorisation simply became a means to punish any individual or group that ‘disagreed’ with the politicised theology of the church. As a result, many Christian groups that did not follow the Pauline ideology of the Roman Catholic Church were persecuted by that church into a state of extinction – with the Roman Catholic Church falsely describing these events as ‘persecutions’ perpetuated by non-Christian outsiders, upon unsuspecting and peace-loving Christian groups spread throughout Palestine and beyond. This effectively dishonest approach, ensured that the Roman Catholic Church was never formally associated with its early crimes (against its own kind), and that its own sense of ‘specialness’ and ‘victimhood’ was enhanced. The Roman Catholic Church, in an attempt to remove any and all Christian theological challenges to its political ascendency, initiated a policy of what amounted to the ethnic cleansing of genuinely different schools of Christian thought. This charade masquerading as ‘history’ has come down to the present time, apparently teaching the world that the ‘good’ Christian church was attacked by non-Christian outsiders, who were in reality the ‘evil’ servants of the devil. This established paradigm replaces the ‘facts’ of history with the politicised ‘dogma’ of the Roman Catholic Church, and automatically ‘demonises’ all non-Christians without exception. For the expressed purposes of the Pro-Tibetan Movement, the Western political establishment has co-opted this false historical sense of Judeo-Christian persecution, and applied it the contemporary situation in China and Tibet. Despite the prevalence of Western racism aimed equally at all non-White peoples in the world, it has been expedient for the Western architects of the Pro-Tibetan Movement to extend to the Tibetan people the mystical status of Judeo-Christian ‘specialness’, automatically ascribing ‘goodness’ and ‘godliness’ to the Vajrayana Buddhist nation that up until 1949, existed within a brutal feudalistic state, administered by a clique of corrupt ‘high lamas’. Tibet had no connection with Christianity, and through its distinctive, non-Western culture, followed habits and traditions that would insult or inspire fear in any Christian. The practice of ‘sky burial’, for instance, involves the family of a deceased person (or their chosen representative), taking the dead body of their loved one onto a high mountain, and literally ‘chopping’ it into pieces, with the chunks of bone and flesh then fed to the waiting vultures. Many bowls within Tibetan Buddhism are made from the skull-caps of human remains, as are various religious implements made from femur or humerus bones, etc. Being a very poor feudalistic state, many Tibetans lived in a state of serfdom or outright slavery, with the high lamas retaining their power through the routine torture and brutalisation of the illiterate populace. One method of punishment, for instance, used to involve the eyes being ‘scooped’ out of the eye-sockets through the use of a specially designed ‘spoon-like’ implement. Another method involved the shin muscles being removed, the word ‘dog’ branded on the fore-head, and the practice of sewing a condemned individual into a yak-skin. As the skin contracted in the heat, it became very difficult to breathe. The condemned individual was then thrown into a river to drown. Flogging and general beatings were routine, and to be preferred to the more ‘colourful’ punishments that were available.[15] Although within Chinese Buddhism it is the norm for monks and nuns to pursue a strict vegetarian diet, the monks and nuns of the Tibetan traditions tend to routinely eat meat. Certainly when the great Chinese Chan Master Xu Yun (1840-1959) visited Tibet in 1888/89 he was appalled by the fact that the Tibetan Buddhist Sangha did not follow the Vinaya Discipline.[16] Furthermore, the previous 13th Dalai Lama ordered a massacre of Chinese and Tibetan Christian converts during the Lama Rebellion that he initiated, that took place in Southwest China in 1905. This also included the murder of entire families (who had refused to return to Tibetan Buddhism), and any Western Christian missionaries who were present. Order was only restored when the Qing imperial army entered the area and executed the lamas responsible. This chain of ‘un-Christian-like’ behaviour culminated with the 14th Dalai Lama (and other Tibetan nobles) formerly welcoming the Nazi German envoys of Adolf Hitler[17] into Tibet during the 1930’s and 1940’s, the ally, of course, of imperial Japan, the forces of which had invaded China (in the 1930’s).[18] None of this ‘real’ history of Tibet would serve to mark the feudalistic Tibetan people as being particularly ‘Christian’ in either outlook or practice. It is only within modern times, that the 14th Dalai Lama has had to adjust its lamaistic Buddhist traditions to take on a more apparent ‘Christian-friendly’ interpretation and functionality. This is indicative of how the 14th Dalai Lama has changed the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism to come into line with Western expectations, prejudices and political aspirations. The CIA has given the 14th Dalai Lama the task of ‘Christianising’ Tibetan Buddhism whist simultaneously ‘demonising’ China and the Chinese people as being inherently ‘evil’ and not quite ‘human’.[19]
Tibet has modernised dramatically since 1949. The 14th Dalai Lama and the CIA occasionally attempt to disrupt this progression every so often by agitating from the outside, but it has become ever more apparent that the mythology that underlies the Pro-Tibetan Movement is now becoming just as redundant in the West, as it is irrelevant in the East. The 14th Dalai Lama has historically painted himself into a difficult ideological corner to leave. He is trapped in a web of lies of his own making, inspired entirely by Western anti-Chinese racism. If Communist China ever did collapse, the capitalist West would immediately ‘abandon’ the Pro-Tibetan Movement and render its non-White ethnic ‘Tibetan’ members firmly into the camp of the racially inferior ‘other’. The ‘specialness’ with which the Judeo-Christian, capitalist establishment currently treats the Pro-Tibetan Movement only exists to destroy Communist China. Its basis is hypocrisy and its function is that of racism. The forces of Western imperialism have always attempted to ‘turn’ non-White ethnic groups against one another, so that they cannot unite together and effectively confront the ‘White’ threat. Chinese and Tibetan people live quite happily together in both China and Tibet, and have done so ever since the Tibetan invasion of Southwest China over a thousand years ago (an act of Tibetan aggression that effectively fused the two countries together). The Tibetan empire was considerably larger than the geographical ‘plateau’ that marks present-day Tibet. It existed between the 7th and 9th centuries, and at its peak included the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Gansu. Buddhism filtered slowly into the Tibetan region from around the 2nd century CE, but did not start to make any serious in-roads until the 8th century CE. Even at this time, however, many non-Buddhist Tibetans resented the presence of this ‘foreign’ religion in their country, as it was usurping and displacing the established Bon religion. Interestingly, modern (i.e. post-1949) Tibetan scholarship outside of Tibet has its academic premise very much rooted in the Pro-Tibetan Movement, and was devised (initially by non-Tibetans) to justify the CIA-Dalai Lama nexus with regard to its interpretation of Chinese and Tibetan history. In 1977 in Zurich, a conference was held originally referred to as the ‘Seminar of Young Tibetans’ (SYT), but in the true spirit of ‘revisionism’ that underpins the Pro-Tibetan Movement, it was soon rebranded the ‘International Association for Tibetan Studies’ (IATS).[20] The purpose of IATS is to implicitly support the Pro-Tibetan Movement (and justify its ongoing existence), whilst explicitly appearing both ‘separate’ and ‘distinct’ from it. Although Western academia has been complicit (without acknowledgement or apology) to the US-generated ‘Cold War’ ideology, openly demonising the International Communist Movement in the most absurd and ‘ahistorical’ manner, certain elements of it decided that with regards to the subject matter of Tibetan Studies (Tibetology), it was prudent to quietly ‘move away’ from some of the most obvious and crass academic positions (previously motivated by anti-Chinese racism), and the ridiculous re-writing of history that the CIA and Dalai Lama had been extensively peddling through the Western media, educational facilities, film industry, etc. This development may well signify a new era in the CIA management of the Pro-Tibetan Movement, creating the false paradigm that the IATS movement is ‘independent’ of any external influences, and therefore ‘objective’ in its analysis. At the 11th meeting of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS) in Germany in 2006, it was decided that the ‘Young Tibetan Seminar’ (YTS) would be re-established as a separate and distinct branch of IATS, designed as an academic platform for newly qualified academics (coming through Western or similar educational facilities), to write papers on various issues surrounding Tibet, China and of what the bourgeois West perceives as the ongoing illegitimate Chinese ‘occupation’ of Tibet. The ‘First International Seminar of Young Tibetans’ (ISYT) was held at the British School of Oriental and African Studies situated in London, between the 9-13 of April, 2007, sponsored by various bourgeois establishments, including Aris Trust Centre for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, University of Oxford, the Duke of Marlborough, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain, etc.[21] Although a priori ‘anti-Chinese’ throughout, this 2007 conference presented its research data in an objective manner that steered clear of any obvious and rabid anti-Chinese racism prevalent throughout the Pro-Tibetan Movement since its earliest days. This type of initiative appears to be designed to ‘normalise’ the Pro-Tibetan Movement and its flawed interpretation of history by providing what appears to be a legitimate and objective ‘academic’ study of the China-Tibet situation. However, in its search for legitimisation and ‘truth’, this type of biased research, restricted on all sides as it is by its anti-China stance, does stray into the realms of reliability. Part of this attempt of respectability is the claim by IATS that Chinese scholars from the Communist Mainland of China are now invited and participate in its conferences, although, of course, no Chinese names occur in the list of contributors for 2007. However, one article of note does tend to undermine the Western and Pro-Tibetan Movement position that the Tibetan culture is separate and distinct from that of China. The article entitled ‘The Role of Confucius in Bon Sources: Kong tse and his Attribution in the Ritual of Three-Headed Black Man’, written by Kalsang Norbu Gurung, thoroughly dismisses this flawed analysis, and clearly exposes the influence of Chinese Confucianism in early pre-Buddhist culture. In other words, the ‘mystical’ and ‘other worldly’ indigenous Bon religion of Tibet is not ‘Tibetan’, but ‘Chinese’ in origin. This reality highlights the problems the Pro-Tibetan Movement has maintaining a legitimacy in this time of mass communication and the internet, where every statement of the 14th Dalai Lama can be immediately ‘researched’ and objectively ‘assessed’ for its ‘truth’ value. Prior to the advent of the internet, this was a very difficult task for most people in the West, and so they were subject to the unquestioned propaganda of the CIA-backed 14th Dalai Lama and his Western-inspired anti-Chinese rhetoric. Research regarding Tibetan history, culture and Buddhism happens all the time in Tibet and in China, but this immense body of authentic knowledge is by and large ‘ignored’ by the Western academic community, controlled as it is by the US political intrigues of the day. In 2013, the following statement was issued in China entitled ‘Tibet: New Atmosphere in Application of Socialism’, which reads:
‘Tibetan New Year’s Eve – 2013
A letter originating from the Tibetan area of China, stated that it is proper and correct to remember the source of one’s happiness and prosperity in society, and that this has been historically dependent upon the good guidance of the Communist Party of China (CPC). This has led to many important advances and advantages within Tibet society, and has contributed to establishing the material conditions, to make the Buddhist practice of wishing happiness and blessings on all living beings, a practical reality. On Tibetan New Year eve (2013), in Lhasa’s three major temples – the Zhaibung Monastery, Sera Monastery, and Gandan Monastery – (and other places), the monks came together to express their appreciation of the CPC, and for the rapid and important developments that have happened lately throughout Tibet, (and over the decades since liberation) that have raised the living standards and quality of life for ordinary Tibetan people. This message of good will was delivered to the central government in Beijing, through the office of the district committee of the CPC in Tibet. The central government immediately responded with ‘thank-you’ letters, expressing a sense of gratitude, and asking for the Buddhist monks to pray the welfare of the people, and peace throughout the country. This letter also included a sincere request made to the CPC district committee, conveying a general attitude of respect from the Buddhist establishments (and their monks and nuns), to General Secretary Xi Jinping, expressing gratitude and thanks to the CPC. At this time of Spring (and renewal across the land), this was considered a very pleasant New Year occurrence of great cultural importance.
This letter signifies a new openness in Tibet, whereby the Buddhist establishments fully recognise, that through CPC guidance, Tibet has developed rapidly, and that this material development has led to the ‘improvement of physical conditions that has allowed the monks and nuns of Tibet to peacefully pursue their spiritual paths of cultivating a higher consciousness’. Better material conditions have raised living standards, relieved poverty, raised education standards, and improved public health throughout Tibet. As things are going so well in Tibet, the Buddhist establishments have never been so close to the CPC at all levels. In fact, the harmonious relationship between government officials and the Buddhist authorities has been likened to that existing between family members. This has come about over the previous year, because the CPC has made a special effort to improve relationships between the government and the Buddhist temples. Government officials, working from the premise of ‘Internationalism’, and ‘respect’ for all different peoples, have made regular visits to the temples in Tibet, and offered extensive help aimed directly at these religious communities. Monks and nuns have been offered many incentives to gain a good and modern education, whilst pursuing their chosen Buddhist paths, and to understand that the CPC considers the Buddhist religion an important part of the country’s culture, that should cultivate a sense of patriotism and emphasise law and order as a means to retain harmony throughout the entirety of society. A peaceful and orderly society can economically and materially grow and advance, and this is good for Buddhism. The main points of this initiative is the development of unity and peaceful co-operation at all levels, so that everyone has a say, and that misunderstandings can be resolved. This is part of the reconstruction process for a new and vibrant ‘Socialist’ Tibet. The CPC has respectfully requested that the Buddhist establishments assist the government in this task, and focus their efforts upon the maintaining of a good and strong Buddhist practice.
This letter of gratitude is indicative of a reinvigorated Tibet. The temples are orderly, clean and well managed, and the monks and nuns go about their daily practice with a smile upon their faces. The Buddhist establishments advocate the following of law and order as part of the practice of Buddhism – both inside and outside the temple. This CPC initiative has ironed-out any misunderstandings, and smoothed over any points of contention. This policy has been so successful that all elements of disharmony have been thoroughly removed. In this new era of greater transparency and openness, the Tibetan Buddhist est
‘We must have a human approach. As far as socioeconomic theory, I am Marxist.’
(14th Dalai Lama - 2015)[1]
‘All these dissolving agencies acting together on the finances, the morals, the industry, and political structure of China, received their full development under the English cannon in 1840, which broke down the authority of the Emperor, and forced the Celestial Empire into contact with the terrestrial world. Complete isolation was the prime condition of the preservation of Old China. That isolation having come to a violent end by the medium of England, dissolution must follow as surely as that of any mummy carefully preserved in a hermetically sealed coffin, whenever it is brought into contact with open air. Now, England having brought about the revolution of China, the question is how that revolution will in time react on England, and through England on Europe.’
(Karl Marx: Revolution in China and in Europe - 1859)[2]
‘They took me away from my family and stuck me in a medieval situation in which I suffered a great deal. It was living a lie.’
(Osel Hita Torres: Abuse Victim of Dalai Lama – 2009)[3]
It is absolutely correct and proper to support the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China, and to wish the Tibetan people well in the practice of their unique Buddhism, and the preservation of their distinctive culture, during the ongoing process of the modernisation, and continued improvement of living standards, education, diet and health in Tibet, since the founding of New China in 1949, and the successful over-throw (and expulsion) of the bourgeois (Western) imperialist powers. Supporting the different (56) ethnic minorities of China, is a founding principle of the Communist Party of China, firmly rooted in ‘Internationalism’ and the ongoing project of uprooting all notions of bourgeois racism left behind by the Western colonialists. Supporting Tibet is correct when its departure-point is from the perspective of the ongoing and progressive unfolding of the Chinese Communist Revolution, which is in its historical epoch of building Socialism throughout the country. The over-throw of capitalism and imperialism, has led to a system-wide socio-economic reconfiguration on Scientific Socialist principles that reject all aspects of the inverted psychology and greed associated with the bourgeoisie and its middle class dominance. The Chinese State views itself entirely from the working class perspective of a proletariat that has freed itself through revolutionary action, and in so doing, secured its own right to be self-determining. In this regard, China is an ongoing and dialectical unfolding of the principles of Marxist-Leninism. Of course, this will be of no inspiration or help to those still living in capitalist societies, who are subjected to the continuous manipulation and distortion of the bourgeois education system and media industry. This is because Marxist-Leninism is the antithesis of capitalism and the theoretical and practical downfall of its privilege and presumed dominance at the point of contact. The working class in the West are still trapped firmly within an exploitative bourgeois capitalist system, and subject to the ongoing conditioning of that system which is default set as being antagonistic toward Marxist-Leninism, and any other theory or behaviour that might possess the ability to uproot its hegemony. Part of this strategy of ongoing middle class domination is the training of the working class to a) hate itself, and b) resist any and all theories or ideologies that seek to expose this fact, and make life better for the working class in its entirety. The bourgeois system achieves this by formulating an inverted approach to reality that seeks to reduce the masses of the working class to competing individuals with no class consciousness, who are trained in the classroom and workplace, that they are one another’s enemies and should spend their time fearing and attacking one another. With regards to the international working class, the extra element of ‘racism’ is added to this toxic cocktail of misinformation. The only manner in which the bourgeois system allows the White working class to temporarily unite is around false notions of ‘nationalism’ that depict all non-White workers as the enemy. This approach ensures that within national boundaries, the White working class continuously fights amongst itself, whilst temporarily uniting against any non-White workers who happen to occupy this socio-economic space. Internationally, White working class groups are taught to hate other White working class groups from other counties, as well as all non-White workers from whatever country. This pursuance of bourgeois-friendly class politics keeps the working class in a state of arrested development, whereby it is unable to unite itself in such a manner so that insight might be gained into exactly what the bourgeoisie is doing. In fact, so hopelessly lost in this mire of bourgeois disempowerment, the average worker believes that he or she is acting out of free-will and self-determination every time they pursue bourgeois class politics (that are obviously against their own working class interests). As hating other races is a key ingredient of how the bourgeois control the working class, it is essential that to its interests that all non-Chinese workers in the world a priori ‘hate’ all Chinese people. This is not as difficult as it sounds, as the foundations of Eurocentric anti-Chinese racism were laid hundreds of years ago during the colonial era.
The Catholic and Protestant Churches were at the fore-front of Western colonial expansion, and legitimised the obvious technological advantage the Industrial Revolution gave the British (and other European countries) by granting the obvious exploitation and destruction of other cultures a ‘divine’ justification. This is typical of the inverted bourgeois mind-set. That ignores the fact that the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution were the product of the use of the human mind in a logical and rational manner, breaking with the tradition of theological domination that ascribes all developments on earth as an ’act of god’ in heaven. The fact that after over a thousand years of domination in Europe the Christian Churches had not developed modern medicine or industry, is an important indication of how theistic religion exists to dominate and not ‘free’ the masses. Whilst a resurgent logic triggered and perpetuated the Industrial Revolution, the bourgeois establishment continued to hold the workers in a theological prison, asserting that all this development had been the product of ‘faith’ in a god that cannot be seen. Although the industrialised workers existed in terrible conditions created by the bourgeoisie, the very same bourgeoisie abrogated all responsibility for its suffering-inducing action by ascribing the new socio-economic conditions to the will of god, and advised the suffering workers to ‘pray’ harder in their brief breaks between long work shifts (knowing full well that such ‘praying’ would have no effect at all on the real material conditions they inhabited). Religion for the bourgeoisie is a very important aspect of the system of domination that class deploys against the workers. Religion diverts the attention of the workers away from the real and practical circumstances they experience daily on the physical plane (so that the workers cannot ‘realise’ what is actually happening and do something about it) and serves to suppress all intellectual activity in the mind, replacing it with a ‘faith’ in that which does not exist. In this regard, religious faith serves as a tradition of anti-intellectualism that is designed to keep the workers fearful of a god they cannot see, and therefore psychologically and physically unable to confront the over-powering and all-pervading power of the bourgeoisie. Internationally, and as part of the bourgeois policy of keeping the workers in all countries from uniting, the White working class is taught to ‘hate’ all religions usually associated with non-White people, and to ascribe an inferior status to those non-White workers who have been ‘converted’ to Christianity by the forces of imperialism. Chinese religion, of course, simply by the fact that it is of a non-Christian origin (and practised by a non-White people), is automatically deemed ‘inferior’ by the Western bourgeois system. Chinese religion, be it Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist, or even in the form of home-grown (but missionary imitated) Christian movements such as that associated with the Taiping Rebellion, are all viewed as a threat to the hegemony of the Western Churches and the Bourgeois system they are a manifestation of. Any threat to the Western Churches is viewed as a threat to the Bourgeois State, and is stringently attacked, misrepresented, demonised, and distorted into a thoroughly alien construct that has no meaning in China, but which represents the darkest recesses of the Judeo-Christian mind. Like all racialised distortions, the opinion of the racist is in reality entirely to do with an expression of disturbances lying deep in their mind, and nothing to do with the intended victims of that racism (i.e. the group being demonised), who are merely innocent physical targets for this negative psychic explosion. As expressed racism is the physical manifestation of internalised psychological events, the behaviour and opinion is far more informative about the educational and cultural history of the racist, than it is about the cultural habits, language or religion of the intended victim. In fact, as racism is what might be termed a highly destructive and toxic mythology, it is used by the bourgeoisie to inoculate the working class against building internationalist tendencies, and in so doing, rendering such bourgeois racist conditioning historically and ideologically redundant. Therefore, the Western working class must hate the Chinese people with an intensified racial distain that prevents the oppressed proletariat of the West from uniting with the Chinese workers and initiating a Socialist Revolution outside of China. For the bourgeoisie, contemporary Chinese culture has to be misrepresented as an abhorrent break with its otherwise ‘sublime’ imperialist past. A past it must be acknowledged, that was thoroughly unable to resist or oppose Western colonial invasion and domination of China. It is this type of Chinese culture that the bourgeoisie ‘sentimentalise’ for its own profit-infected ambitions, seeing everything ‘old’ as ‘good’, and everything ‘new’ as ‘evil’. In effect, China must exist in a state of continuous regression for it to be viewed as ‘good’ in the eyes of the capitalist West, because such a China is ‘weak’ and unable to confront the forces of capitalism. A weak China can be militarily and economically dominated from the outside, and be subject to invasion at the whim of the international bourgeoisie. Communist China, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of this idealised bourgeois image. Modern China is now economically and technologically more advanced than the capitalist West, and possesses a military that can protect its borders and regionally project power. Although China has made it continuously clear that it would prefer peace to war, it is reasonable to assume that its armed forces currently possesses the ability to inflict a defeat on the armed forces of the West, if those forces were used by the capitalist bourgeoisie to ‘invade’ Mainland China, or permanently annex Taiwan. The West, still acting very much in the model of the US-inspired Cold War, holds to the fictional lie that the Chinese military is a threat to world peace, whilst the Chinese military has not acted outside its national boundaries since 1979 (during the war with Vietnam). This record of relative peace may be compared with the forces of the USA and UK, which have, (with the collusion of NATO), carried-out illegal invasions of sovereign nations and initiated numerous (equally illegal) ‘regime changes’, whilst bourgeois State media issues a steady stream of Islamophobic rhetoric. Although compared to the bloody and destructive actions of the Western capitalist countries, China is a very peaceful country, but it must be presented to the Western working class as being lacking in human rights, being immoral and uncaring toward its own people, and of course, immensely cruel to animals, and so on and so forth. This mythology is more or less unquestioned in the capitalist West, and automatically accepted as ‘true’ with no evidence by the majority of people. Anti-Chinese racism is the agency through which these misrepresentations are conveyed, as it is considered perfectly acceptable to be racist toward Chinese people if their physical appearance and moral behaviour ‘deviates’ from that which is considered ‘good’ by the Christianised West. This is the racism that the bourgeoisie uses to manipulate the Western mind against the Chinese, and it is this very same racism that serves as the foundation of the ‘Pro-Tibetan Movement’. Those Westerners and other non-White people (including diasporic Chinese people living in the US colonies of South Korea, Taiwan and capitalist Singapore), who unthinkingly express a ‘support’ for the Pro-Tibetan Movement, are fully participating in the bourgeois protection of misrepresting China and her culture through a particularly virulent form of anti-Chinese racism. A very important distinction must be firmly established that supporting the real country of Tibet and its people, is in no way to be associated with supporting the Pro-Tibetan Movement, as the two aspirations are very different.
The Pro-Tibetan Movement has its ideological roots in historical anti-Chinese racism, which was formulated within, and emerged out of, the Judeo-Christian imagination of the West. For all intents and purposes, the Chinese people (and their culture) are associated with the ‘devil’ and all his ‘evil’ actions. This ‘demonisation’ of China has served as a useful tool for the bourgeoisie, particularly as the language differences between China and Western countries is generally insurmountable for many people. The Western bourgeoisie issues its propaganda adjusted to suit the educational and cultural needs of those it is attempting to manipulate and brain-wash. As this is the case, the bourgeoisie uses all Western languages to create a common derogatory ‘line’ that constitutes a ‘united’ approach across Europe (and the US). With regard to Chinese people living outside of China, the Western bourgeoisie has its anti-Chinese rhetoric translated into the Chinese language (generally issued through Taiwan), as a means to convert non-Mainland Chinese people to support and perpetuate Western racial stereotypes about Mainland China. As many of these Chinese ‘collaborators’ are Christian converts, this is not a difficult task to achieve, simply because such dubious action is mistakenly perceived by the perpetuators as being ‘good’. Just as the bourgeoisie works to continuously ‘separate’ and ‘isolate’ the Western working class into competing individuals antagonistic to one another, so it continues this task to plunge the Chinese people into a disunified and confused mass of people, unable to see clearly their own cultural needs, or pursue a distinct political direction suitable to their best interests. It is just as important for the Chinese working class to be as non-united as its Western counter-part – this is exactly how the international bourgeoisie controls the political situation, and maintain a Pro-Tibetan Movement that possesses no historical, cultural or religious credibility outside of the confines of its own ‘imagined’ mythology. The Pro-Tibetan Movement in fact represents what might be accurately termed a ‘Lamaist Insertion’ in the Western imagination. Yes – the business structures of the Pro-Tibetan Movement exist all around Western society, and its bizarre (and highly ‘Christianised’) form of Buddhism is available in virtually every bookshop, but nevertheless, its presence is ethereal and insubstantial in a modern, secular society. It is allowed to exist because it is a business selling religiously inspired lies to gullible Western and Chinese people who remain politically and culturally unware. The Pro-Tibetan Movement is a ‘White’ racially motivated political entity that in its mindless cynicism, uses non-White ‘Tibetans’ as its figurehead. This is the price that is paid in the pursuance of a policy of anti-Chinese racism in the West, designed to bring-down Communist China. The majority of people who support the Pro-Tibetan Movement are certainly ‘non-Tibetan’, and a great many of these misled people are White European. These people work tirelessly to present the mythology of the Pro-Tibetan Movement to the Western media, demonising the entire race of Chinese people in so doing. There is only one place where Tibetan Buddhism is correctly practised, and that is in Tibet, and in the large Tibetan communities in Southwest China. As China is presented as ‘evil’, Tibet is falsely deemed to be ‘occupied’ by the nasty Chinese people, and Tibetan Buddhism ‘suppressed’. All this falsification falls away in the face of legitimate history (despite the mythology emanating from Hollywood). In practical terms, the Pro-Tibetan Movement does not have its roots in an indigenous and spontaneous uprising perpetuated by Tibetans against the Chinese people (as its mythology suggests), but is rather firmly rooted in the presence and policies of the Criminal Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States, operating out of China and Tibet in the 1950’s. A central plank in the Pro-Tibetan Movement demonisation of the Chinese ethnicity lies in its sense of absolute and self-righteous indignation through which it applies its motivating ‘racism’, always, of course, hidden within (and behind) its agenda of pseudo-historical ‘fact’. The general manner in which the (current) 14th Dalai Lama presents the relatively ‘recent’ history of Tibet has no bearing on the experience of the history of ethnic Tibetans (living in Tibet), but it must be kept in mind that he is the public face of a Western anti-Chinese movement who is preaching (by and large) to the already converted. However, as the Western system of academia (and the bourgeois media) accept what he says (with the odd, but growing list of exceptions), the 14th Dalai Lama also serves the function of conditioning the minds of young people in the West (and beyond) to think that what he says is ‘correct’ and a ‘true’ and ‘objective’ explanation of the history of a part of the world that is remote even in China, let alone to those living in the outside world. As the 14th Dalai Lama is a Buddhist monk, he is subject to the Vinaya Discipline, which is a code of hundreds of rules designed by the Buddha in ancient India to regulate the daily lives of his monks and nuns. The first and foremost of these rules is the proscription against ‘killing’, or ‘causing’ to ‘kill’. This advice is closely followed by the further proscriptions against ‘lying’ and ‘gossiping’. The proscription against killing involves any attempt to ‘glorify’, ‘justify’, or otherwise ‘legitimatise’ warfare. Although the Buddha pragmatically recognised the right of a king to retain a standing army to defend the realm,[4] and the Theravada bhikkhus of Sri Lanka were at the forefront of leftwing anti-colonial protests and movements legitimatised by the Sangha authorities in that country,[5] the 14th Dalai Lama is not a secular king, and certainly does not represent a ‘leftwing’ liberation movement. Tibet was liberated by the Communist Party of China in 1949 led by Mao Zedong (although this policy, by necessity, has had to be ongoing). The Tibetan people were freed from the corruption of a lama-ruling elite, and the grinding and feudalistic poverty within which they were forced to exist. The Communist Party of China represents a ‘leftwing’ liberation movement that has ‘freed’ Tibet from exploitation. The 14th Dalai Lama, by comparison, represents a Western rightwing movement that seeks to destroy the victory of the Chinese Communist Party, and through the means of a counter-revolution, open-up China and Tibet to the re-establishment of the system-wide (exploitative) hegemony of the bourgeoisie and the implementation of predatory capitalism, and its preferred political mode of ‘liberal’ democracy. In effect, under the guise of ‘freeing’ Tibet from its own (and already) established ‘freedom’, he would see the middle class agencies of oppression swept back into power, with the Chinese and Tibetan peoples subjugated yet again under the stifling foreign yoke of oppression. The following is typical of how the 14th Dalai Lama uses Western notions of ‘nationalism’ (unknown amongst ethnic Tibetans) to set the stage, simultaneously demeaning and belittling the PLA (and the Chinese people’s) fight to free themselves from Western (and Japanese) domination, whilst extolling Tibetans acting under his orders, who were armed with antiquated fire-arms supplied to them by the CIA, to attack and destroy the legitimate governmental apparatus of the Chinese State:
‘The Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet has been one of the great tragedies of this century. More than a million people have died as a result. An ancient culture with its buildings, literature, and artefacts has been attacked and largely destroyed, and the living holders of its traditions have been prevented from passing them on in their homeland.
International awareness of what took place during the past fifty years in the Land of Snows may generally have grown, but what may not be so well known or appreciated is the fact that there was an armed resistance. In Kham, Eastern Tibet, in particular, where people retained the warrior-like qualities of old, groups of men banded together to oppose the Chinese by force. These guerrillas, riding on horseback and often equipped with outdated weapons, put up a good fight. They expressed their loyalty and love for Tibet with admirable courage. And although they were ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the Chinese from overwhelming Tibet, they let the so-called People’s Liberation Army know what the majority of Tibetans felt about their presence.
Although I believe that the Tibetan struggle can only be won by a long-term approach and peaceful means, I have always admired these freedom fighters for their unflinching courage and determination. And I am glad that Mikel Dunham has been able to tell these brave men’s story in this book, much as they told it to him.’[6]
Unbelievably, this Foreword appeared in a book eulogising the role of the duplicitous CIA in Tibet in the 1950’s.[7] From at least the late 1940’s, the CIA had established its so-called ‘Office of Policy Coordination’, designed solely for covert operations against Communist and other regimes deemed enemies of the United States.[8] The US deeply mourned what it interpreted as the ‘fall’ of China in 1949, and sought to destabilise the Communist regime of Mao Zedong through Tibet and Taiwan. The CIA is known to be a ruthless and blood-thirsty organisation that is empowered to use any and all underhand or despicable means to achieve its ends. It has been involved in mass murder and regime changes all over the world, including South America, Africa and Asia. It failed on the ground in Tibet, but has continued this fight outside of Tibet (and China) through a vicious anti-China campaign that uses a blend of sentimentality, Judeo-Christian dogma, false history, disinformation, murder, relocation and deliberate misinterpretation, all designed to cause ‘confusion’ and ‘doubt’ in the minds who might develop the insight to see exactly what it is the CIA (and Dalai Lama) have been doing to the Chinese people in the name of Tibet. The CIA has the function of creating a misleading narrative about Chinese and Tibetan history, as a means to destabilise the Communist Chinese State, and re-establish capitalism throughout the region. One particularly vile organ of this capitalist propaganda is the so-called ‘Radio Free Asia’, which regurgitates US anti-Chinese and anti-Communist rhetoric throughout Asia. This is essentially an exercise in bourgeois imperialism across the airwaves, informing non-White people the preferred method of ‘thinking’. Of course, the 14th Dalai Lama holds it all together, and is an ardent supporter of the capitalist system (a stance very rare in the ordained Sangha of any Buddhist tradition, due to the Buddha’s injunction against ‘greed’). What is interesting to observe is that although in general the anti-Chinese rhetoric holds for many people in the West, (perceiving as they do, either implicitly or explicitly, the Chinese to be an ‘inferior’ race), a certain number are turning against the 14th Dalai Lama and away from supporting the Pro-Tibetan Movement, which has become something of an ever desperate ‘cult’ in the West as its power has started to diminish. In fact, so bad has things got for the Pro-Tibetan Movement that in June of this year, the US Secretary of State – John Kerry – informed the government of China that America no longer supports a ‘free’ and ‘independent’ Tibet.[9] However, much of this positioning on the surface is the exercise of US pragmatism in the face of the immense and continuous economic growth in China (and Tibet). Behind the scenes, the 14th Dalai Lama and his CIA-backed Pro-Tibetan Movement continue to churn-out endless books, leaflets and TV documentaries (interspersed with the occasional movie), espousing the false-history of that movement, and going through the motions initiated unsuccessfully years ago. Furthermore, following the example of that other failed CIA movement – the cult-like Falun Gong – the 14th Dalai Lama has been linked to the practice of certain Buddhist monasteries in Tibet brain-washing young monks and nuns to ‘set fire’ to themselves as an act of apparent ‘defiance’ to the Chinese occupation and rule of Tibet.[10] What is interesting about this is that it appears to be copying the behaviour of eminent, elderly and spiritually advanced Buddhist monks who opposed the US occupation (and Christianisation) of their country of Vietnam in the 1960’s.[11] Photographs of the Venerable Thích Quang Duc sat bolt-up right and meditating as his body was engulfed in flames, sent shock-waves across the world, and is believed to have been instrumental in the eventual over-throw of the US forces in that country. Tibet, of course, is not occupied by US (Judeo-Christian) capitalists, but has been free of such ideology and disruption since 1949. The 14th Dalai Lama, in his attempt to invert and falsify history, tries to erroneously equate ‘free’ Communist Tibet, with occupied and oppressed Vietnam. This is typical bourgeois fantasy with no grounding in material fact. What the 14th Dalai Lama is party to, is the over-throw of an already ‘free’ Tibet, and the instigation of a ‘new’ era of Western domination (similar to the situation in Vietnam throughout the 1960’s). However, once the CIA set the Eurocentric script, the Dalai Lama was happy to use his status as a historical figure to ‘sell’ this false ‘line’ of history to his adoring public. It is a blue-print of a script that has a list of evets that did not happen, learnt off by heart and continuously reproduced in the place of the suppressed actual facts. This why the 14th Dalai Lama (who is a Buddhist monk) is a liar by any objective standard. Since his engagement with the CIA he has continuously broken his vows against ‘lying’ and ‘gossiping’.[12] In 1999, a typical bourgeois tome following the pseudo-academia of the 14th Dalai Lama (and his Pro-Tibetan Movement) was published by the author Charles Allen. This is just one book amongst thousands that misrepresents Tibetan history at exactly the same time as it claims to be representing it in the name of ‘freedom’. Allen’s book presents itself as something of an impartial travelogue, exploring Tibetan history and its link to ‘Shangri-La’ – a vague bourgeois myth about far-off Asia. However, the veil of ‘disinterested’ analysis is soon dropped at various points in the narrative, exploding into vitriolic anti-Chinese sentiment. The following quote is typical of Allen’s method of conveying his politics (a tactic typical of the Pro-Tibetan Movement genre):
‘Nawang Dorje and his friend were Khampas, men from the Kham district of eastern Tibet celebrated as warriors and notorious as brigands. The Khampas had played a leading role in the uprising against the occupying Chinese which had started in Lhasa in 1956, eight years after the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had occupied Tibet in order to restore it to the bosom of the Chinese motherland (a claim of sovereignty that no international court of law would uphold, based chiefly on the grounds that the Manchu emperors actively intervened in Tibetan affairs for almost two centuries until all Chinese representatives were expelled from Lhasa in 1912. Tibet was declared to be part of China in 1931, but when the Chinese government attempted to exercise control it was rebuffed. Tibet remained fully independent until October 1950, when Chinese “liberation forces” advanced into Tibet to “liberate 3 million Tibetans from imperialist aggression”. In April 1951 a fatal 17 Point Agreement was concluded between the two governments, by which Tibet agreed to “return to the big family of the Motherland” in return for certain guarantees, including internal autonomy in matters of custom and religion and the continuance of the existing political system). Nawang and his friends had fought with the Khampas against the Chinese until they were forced to retreat across the border into Nepal. With support from the CIA and the Indian government, the Khampas had then set themselves up in Mustang, a little chuck of Nepal jutting into the Tibetan Plateau. Pressured by the Americans and the Indians on the one hand and by the Chinese on the other, the Nepalese government had been placed in a very awkward position. Finally, it acted against the Khampas.
The bullet rattling around inside the chest of Nawang’s friend came not from a Chinese but a Nepalese rifle. His band of Khampas had been chased out of Mustang by the Nepalese Army, then caught in an ambush and broken up. His was in the spring of 1967.
This year was the worst in Tibet’s history. In the previous autumn we three VSO’s in Kathmandu had cycled to the Chinese Embassy to watch its entire staff gather outside its corrugated tin gates for spontaneous demonstrations of support for the Great Helmsman. All wore blue Mao caps and blue Mao suits with red Mao badges in their lapels, and waved their copies of The Thoughts of Chairman Mao in red plastic folders while they screamed and stamped and waved themselves into mass hysteria. It was comic and yet chilling.’[13]
The anti-Chinese racism is palpable, especially in the final paragraph. Chinese people must be ridiculed for having a distinct culture and choosing to follow it regardless of the risk of racially motivated Western scorn. The 14th Dalai Lama’s rhetoric in support of the CIA (quoted above), is virtually line for line repeated by Allen in this extract (and in fact throughout his entire book). It is as if both are writing from a controlling and centralised ‘script’ that gives the CIA-approved pseudo-history of China and Tibet. Typical of Pro-Tibetan Movement rhetoric, is the habit of its various authors to state with the utmost authority, facts and figures that could only have been derived from Chinese language sources – without ever acknowledging this fact, or indeed providing the Chinese language sources. It is also interesting that Allen, whilst demonising and misrepresenting the Chinese presence in Tibet, he chooses to omit the British Indian Army invasion of Tibet which occurred between 1903-04. Pro-Tibetan Movement authors generally steer-clear of this period in Tibetan history, as they risk falling into the trap of having to admit that the only time Tibet was ever invaded by a ’foreign’ power in the 20th century, was when British troops occupied Lhasa, committed atrocities against the Tibetan people, and then illegally forced the Tibetan authorities to ‘sign’ a treaty with the British, falsely implying that Tibet was an ‘independent’ nation existing outside of China’s sovereignty – these are the well-known and real historical facts behind the Tibetan Lamaist authorities attempting to severe their legal link with China in 1912.[14] Reality, however, and the Pro-Tibetan Movement are only nodding acquaintances. Such a distorted image of Tibet has been created and generated by the Western imagination, that it is difficult for ordinary people interested in what is happening in Tibet from gaining any reliable facts. Anything ‘Chinese’, due to the anti-Chinese racism, is automatically deemed ‘bias’, whilst the Pro-Tibetan Movement constantly agitates for the defeat of Communism and the instigation of capitalism in China and Tibet. The sense of moral outrage associated with the Pro-Tibetan Movement stems from the fact that it is a Judeo-Christian movement that manifests at the point of contact through a veneer of Tibetan Buddhism. The early Christians were of course Jewish, and they ascribed to themselves (and to their ‘new’ Christian doctrine) the sense of ‘specialness’ usually reserved for orthodox Jewish adherents. This ‘specialness’ is theological in nature (originating within Jewish scripture) and states that the Jewish ethnicity is comprised of god’s ‘chosen’ people, living on earth. By definition, all those who are not Jewish, are not god’s ‘chosen’ people living on earth. When the Christians were expelled from Judaism in the early centuries of the common era, the Christians, although formerly ‘breaking’ their Judaic-roots, nevertheless retained the Jewish sense of ‘specialness’, which they now applied only to themselves as Christians. The original Jewish people were depicted as ‘betrayers’ and ‘rejecters’ of the Jewish Messiah (Jesus) and thereby deemed ‘evil’ as a consequence (this is the basis of much subsequent antisemitism). As Christianity gained political power within the Roman empire, it immediately set-about separating the world into arbitrary categories of ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Far from containing any moral impetus, this categorisation simply became a means to punish any individual or group that ‘disagreed’ with the politicised theology of the church. As a result, many Christian groups that did not follow the Pauline ideology of the Roman Catholic Church were persecuted by that church into a state of extinction – with the Roman Catholic Church falsely describing these events as ‘persecutions’ perpetuated by non-Christian outsiders, upon unsuspecting and peace-loving Christian groups spread throughout Palestine and beyond. This effectively dishonest approach, ensured that the Roman Catholic Church was never formally associated with its early crimes (against its own kind), and that its own sense of ‘specialness’ and ‘victimhood’ was enhanced. The Roman Catholic Church, in an attempt to remove any and all Christian theological challenges to its political ascendency, initiated a policy of what amounted to the ethnic cleansing of genuinely different schools of Christian thought. This charade masquerading as ‘history’ has come down to the present time, apparently teaching the world that the ‘good’ Christian church was attacked by non-Christian outsiders, who were in reality the ‘evil’ servants of the devil. This established paradigm replaces the ‘facts’ of history with the politicised ‘dogma’ of the Roman Catholic Church, and automatically ‘demonises’ all non-Christians without exception. For the expressed purposes of the Pro-Tibetan Movement, the Western political establishment has co-opted this false historical sense of Judeo-Christian persecution, and applied it the contemporary situation in China and Tibet. Despite the prevalence of Western racism aimed equally at all non-White peoples in the world, it has been expedient for the Western architects of the Pro-Tibetan Movement to extend to the Tibetan people the mystical status of Judeo-Christian ‘specialness’, automatically ascribing ‘goodness’ and ‘godliness’ to the Vajrayana Buddhist nation that up until 1949, existed within a brutal feudalistic state, administered by a clique of corrupt ‘high lamas’. Tibet had no connection with Christianity, and through its distinctive, non-Western culture, followed habits and traditions that would insult or inspire fear in any Christian. The practice of ‘sky burial’, for instance, involves the family of a deceased person (or their chosen representative), taking the dead body of their loved one onto a high mountain, and literally ‘chopping’ it into pieces, with the chunks of bone and flesh then fed to the waiting vultures. Many bowls within Tibetan Buddhism are made from the skull-caps of human remains, as are various religious implements made from femur or humerus bones, etc. Being a very poor feudalistic state, many Tibetans lived in a state of serfdom or outright slavery, with the high lamas retaining their power through the routine torture and brutalisation of the illiterate populace. One method of punishment, for instance, used to involve the eyes being ‘scooped’ out of the eye-sockets through the use of a specially designed ‘spoon-like’ implement. Another method involved the shin muscles being removed, the word ‘dog’ branded on the fore-head, and the practice of sewing a condemned individual into a yak-skin. As the skin contracted in the heat, it became very difficult to breathe. The condemned individual was then thrown into a river to drown. Flogging and general beatings were routine, and to be preferred to the more ‘colourful’ punishments that were available.[15] Although within Chinese Buddhism it is the norm for monks and nuns to pursue a strict vegetarian diet, the monks and nuns of the Tibetan traditions tend to routinely eat meat. Certainly when the great Chinese Chan Master Xu Yun (1840-1959) visited Tibet in 1888/89 he was appalled by the fact that the Tibetan Buddhist Sangha did not follow the Vinaya Discipline.[16] Furthermore, the previous 13th Dalai Lama ordered a massacre of Chinese and Tibetan Christian converts during the Lama Rebellion that he initiated, that took place in Southwest China in 1905. This also included the murder of entire families (who had refused to return to Tibetan Buddhism), and any Western Christian missionaries who were present. Order was only restored when the Qing imperial army entered the area and executed the lamas responsible. This chain of ‘un-Christian-like’ behaviour culminated with the 14th Dalai Lama (and other Tibetan nobles) formerly welcoming the Nazi German envoys of Adolf Hitler[17] into Tibet during the 1930’s and 1940’s, the ally, of course, of imperial Japan, the forces of which had invaded China (in the 1930’s).[18] None of this ‘real’ history of Tibet would serve to mark the feudalistic Tibetan people as being particularly ‘Christian’ in either outlook or practice. It is only within modern times, that the 14th Dalai Lama has had to adjust its lamaistic Buddhist traditions to take on a more apparent ‘Christian-friendly’ interpretation and functionality. This is indicative of how the 14th Dalai Lama has changed the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism to come into line with Western expectations, prejudices and political aspirations. The CIA has given the 14th Dalai Lama the task of ‘Christianising’ Tibetan Buddhism whist simultaneously ‘demonising’ China and the Chinese people as being inherently ‘evil’ and not quite ‘human’.[19]
Tibet has modernised dramatically since 1949. The 14th Dalai Lama and the CIA occasionally attempt to disrupt this progression every so often by agitating from the outside, but it has become ever more apparent that the mythology that underlies the Pro-Tibetan Movement is now becoming just as redundant in the West, as it is irrelevant in the East. The 14th Dalai Lama has historically painted himself into a difficult ideological corner to leave. He is trapped in a web of lies of his own making, inspired entirely by Western anti-Chinese racism. If Communist China ever did collapse, the capitalist West would immediately ‘abandon’ the Pro-Tibetan Movement and render its non-White ethnic ‘Tibetan’ members firmly into the camp of the racially inferior ‘other’. The ‘specialness’ with which the Judeo-Christian, capitalist establishment currently treats the Pro-Tibetan Movement only exists to destroy Communist China. Its basis is hypocrisy and its function is that of racism. The forces of Western imperialism have always attempted to ‘turn’ non-White ethnic groups against one another, so that they cannot unite together and effectively confront the ‘White’ threat. Chinese and Tibetan people live quite happily together in both China and Tibet, and have done so ever since the Tibetan invasion of Southwest China over a thousand years ago (an act of Tibetan aggression that effectively fused the two countries together). The Tibetan empire was considerably larger than the geographical ‘plateau’ that marks present-day Tibet. It existed between the 7th and 9th centuries, and at its peak included the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Gansu. Buddhism filtered slowly into the Tibetan region from around the 2nd century CE, but did not start to make any serious in-roads until the 8th century CE. Even at this time, however, many non-Buddhist Tibetans resented the presence of this ‘foreign’ religion in their country, as it was usurping and displacing the established Bon religion. Interestingly, modern (i.e. post-1949) Tibetan scholarship outside of Tibet has its academic premise very much rooted in the Pro-Tibetan Movement, and was devised (initially by non-Tibetans) to justify the CIA-Dalai Lama nexus with regard to its interpretation of Chinese and Tibetan history. In 1977 in Zurich, a conference was held originally referred to as the ‘Seminar of Young Tibetans’ (SYT), but in the true spirit of ‘revisionism’ that underpins the Pro-Tibetan Movement, it was soon rebranded the ‘International Association for Tibetan Studies’ (IATS).[20] The purpose of IATS is to implicitly support the Pro-Tibetan Movement (and justify its ongoing existence), whilst explicitly appearing both ‘separate’ and ‘distinct’ from it. Although Western academia has been complicit (without acknowledgement or apology) to the US-generated ‘Cold War’ ideology, openly demonising the International Communist Movement in the most absurd and ‘ahistorical’ manner, certain elements of it decided that with regards to the subject matter of Tibetan Studies (Tibetology), it was prudent to quietly ‘move away’ from some of the most obvious and crass academic positions (previously motivated by anti-Chinese racism), and the ridiculous re-writing of history that the CIA and Dalai Lama had been extensively peddling through the Western media, educational facilities, film industry, etc. This development may well signify a new era in the CIA management of the Pro-Tibetan Movement, creating the false paradigm that the IATS movement is ‘independent’ of any external influences, and therefore ‘objective’ in its analysis. At the 11th meeting of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS) in Germany in 2006, it was decided that the ‘Young Tibetan Seminar’ (YTS) would be re-established as a separate and distinct branch of IATS, designed as an academic platform for newly qualified academics (coming through Western or similar educational facilities), to write papers on various issues surrounding Tibet, China and of what the bourgeois West perceives as the ongoing illegitimate Chinese ‘occupation’ of Tibet. The ‘First International Seminar of Young Tibetans’ (ISYT) was held at the British School of Oriental and African Studies situated in London, between the 9-13 of April, 2007, sponsored by various bourgeois establishments, including Aris Trust Centre for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, University of Oxford, the Duke of Marlborough, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain, etc.[21] Although a priori ‘anti-Chinese’ throughout, this 2007 conference presented its research data in an objective manner that steered clear of any obvious and rabid anti-Chinese racism prevalent throughout the Pro-Tibetan Movement since its earliest days. This type of initiative appears to be designed to ‘normalise’ the Pro-Tibetan Movement and its flawed interpretation of history by providing what appears to be a legitimate and objective ‘academic’ study of the China-Tibet situation. However, in its search for legitimisation and ‘truth’, this type of biased research, restricted on all sides as it is by its anti-China stance, does stray into the realms of reliability. Part of this attempt of respectability is the claim by IATS that Chinese scholars from the Communist Mainland of China are now invited and participate in its conferences, although, of course, no Chinese names occur in the list of contributors for 2007. However, one article of note does tend to undermine the Western and Pro-Tibetan Movement position that the Tibetan culture is separate and distinct from that of China. The article entitled ‘The Role of Confucius in Bon Sources: Kong tse and his Attribution in the Ritual of Three-Headed Black Man’, written by Kalsang Norbu Gurung, thoroughly dismisses this flawed analysis, and clearly exposes the influence of Chinese Confucianism in early pre-Buddhist culture. In other words, the ‘mystical’ and ‘other worldly’ indigenous Bon religion of Tibet is not ‘Tibetan’, but ‘Chinese’ in origin. This reality highlights the problems the Pro-Tibetan Movement has maintaining a legitimacy in this time of mass communication and the internet, where every statement of the 14th Dalai Lama can be immediately ‘researched’ and objectively ‘assessed’ for its ‘truth’ value. Prior to the advent of the internet, this was a very difficult task for most people in the West, and so they were subject to the unquestioned propaganda of the CIA-backed 14th Dalai Lama and his Western-inspired anti-Chinese rhetoric. Research regarding Tibetan history, culture and Buddhism happens all the time in Tibet and in China, but this immense body of authentic knowledge is by and large ‘ignored’ by the Western academic community, controlled as it is by the US political intrigues of the day. In 2013, the following statement was issued in China entitled ‘Tibet: New Atmosphere in Application of Socialism’, which reads:
‘Tibetan New Year’s Eve – 2013
A letter originating from the Tibetan area of China, stated that it is proper and correct to remember the source of one’s happiness and prosperity in society, and that this has been historically dependent upon the good guidance of the Communist Party of China (CPC). This has led to many important advances and advantages within Tibet society, and has contributed to establishing the material conditions, to make the Buddhist practice of wishing happiness and blessings on all living beings, a practical reality. On Tibetan New Year eve (2013), in Lhasa’s three major temples – the Zhaibung Monastery, Sera Monastery, and Gandan Monastery – (and other places), the monks came together to express their appreciation of the CPC, and for the rapid and important developments that have happened lately throughout Tibet, (and over the decades since liberation) that have raised the living standards and quality of life for ordinary Tibetan people. This message of good will was delivered to the central government in Beijing, through the office of the district committee of the CPC in Tibet. The central government immediately responded with ‘thank-you’ letters, expressing a sense of gratitude, and asking for the Buddhist monks to pray the welfare of the people, and peace throughout the country. This letter also included a sincere request made to the CPC district committee, conveying a general attitude of respect from the Buddhist establishments (and their monks and nuns), to General Secretary Xi Jinping, expressing gratitude and thanks to the CPC. At this time of Spring (and renewal across the land), this was considered a very pleasant New Year occurrence of great cultural importance.
This letter signifies a new openness in Tibet, whereby the Buddhist establishments fully recognise, that through CPC guidance, Tibet has developed rapidly, and that this material development has led to the ‘improvement of physical conditions that has allowed the monks and nuns of Tibet to peacefully pursue their spiritual paths of cultivating a higher consciousness’. Better material conditions have raised living standards, relieved poverty, raised education standards, and improved public health throughout Tibet. As things are going so well in Tibet, the Buddhist establishments have never been so close to the CPC at all levels. In fact, the harmonious relationship between government officials and the Buddhist authorities has been likened to that existing between family members. This has come about over the previous year, because the CPC has made a special effort to improve relationships between the government and the Buddhist temples. Government officials, working from the premise of ‘Internationalism’, and ‘respect’ for all different peoples, have made regular visits to the temples in Tibet, and offered extensive help aimed directly at these religious communities. Monks and nuns have been offered many incentives to gain a good and modern education, whilst pursuing their chosen Buddhist paths, and to understand that the CPC considers the Buddhist religion an important part of the country’s culture, that should cultivate a sense of patriotism and emphasise law and order as a means to retain harmony throughout the entirety of society. A peaceful and orderly society can economically and materially grow and advance, and this is good for Buddhism. The main points of this initiative is the development of unity and peaceful co-operation at all levels, so that everyone has a say, and that misunderstandings can be resolved. This is part of the reconstruction process for a new and vibrant ‘Socialist’ Tibet. The CPC has respectfully requested that the Buddhist establishments assist the government in this task, and focus their efforts upon the maintaining of a good and strong Buddhist practice.
This letter of gratitude is indicative of a reinvigorated Tibet. The temples are orderly, clean and well managed, and the monks and nuns go about their daily practice with a smile upon their faces. The Buddhist establishments advocate the following of law and order as part of the practice of Buddhism – both inside and outside the temple. This CPC initiative has ironed-out any misunderstandings, and smoothed over any points of contention. This policy has been so successful that all elements of disharmony have been thoroughly removed. In this new era of greater transparency and openness, the Tibetan Buddhist est