From: usenet@news.acns.nwu.edu (Usenet on news.acns)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Re: What About Tibet? (Re: What about China done to Korea)
Date: 3 Sep 92 23:20:56 GMT
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA

In article <3SEP199218111919@phobos.ucc.umass.edu>  
s9874194@phobos.ucc.umass.edu (s9874194) writes:
> In article <1992Sep3.150909.8125@news.acns.nwu.edu>, usenet@news.acns.nwu.edu  
(Usenet on news.acns) writes...
> >In article <2SEP199221354498@deimos.ucc.umass.edu>  
> >s9874194@deimos.ucc.umass.edu (s9874194) writes:
> >> In article <65500076@acf3.NYU.EDU>, yangze@acf3.NYU.EDU (Ze Yang, , , )  
> >writes...
> >> >usenet@news.acns.nwu.edu (Usenet on news.acns) writes:
> >> > 
> >> 
> >> I think Mr. Ze Yang is right here. According to Carl's logic, Han's  
treated
> >> Han's badly, so would treat Tibetans worse and treat foreigners the worst.
> >> However, the logic in China is probably the opposite: the far you from
> >> him the best he treat you. That is why foreigners are treated better
> >> than Chinese. In a family, when there is a guest, kids is always the
> >> one to yield. May be it is rooted in our culture.
> >> 
> >> I may be wrong. Enlight me, somebody.
> >> c.q
> > 
> > 
> >My logic is Han people will not treat people better who are not regarded as  
> >superior. The sad fact is Han people regard Tibetans at most as equal (if  
not  
> >inferior). They may treat some foreigner a bit better but not Tibetans. If  
you  
> >walk on the streets of Chinese cities and hear people talk about minorities,  
I  
> >bet you won't find a single word about their superiority. Many times you  
will  
> >hear words and sentences about how dirty, lazy and uncivilized some  
minorities  
> >are. 
> > 
> >It's good to regard all peoples equal. But in China, not all the people  
think  
> >this way. Some (if not many) people will feel happy and satisfied if they  
find  
> >people "inferior" to them. If They can not find, they will make. 
> > 
> >Take Shanghai for an example. In Shanghai, people look down upon people  
whose  
> >ancesters were from northern Jiangshu Province. In some extreme cases, some  
> >girls would not marry their fellow Shanghainese guys simply because the  
guys'  
> >father or grandfather or even grand-grandfather were from northern Jiangshu.  
> >The reason is probably northern Jiangshu was a poor area among eastern China  
> >and the first generation from northern Jiangshu usually worked as labors.  
This  
> >kind of discriminations are not rare in many parts of China. If China had  
> >different races, I bet there would be racial discrimination too.
> > 
> >Some of us may still remember the incident happened in Nanjing several years  
> >ago where a group foreign students from Africa were attacked by Chinese  
college  
> >students simply because these Africa students had Chinese girl-friends and  
made  
> >local people unhappy. If those African students had been white, there  
wouldn't  
> >have been such incident. I would point out that some (if not many) CSS here  
> >have racial discrimination too although they themselves might be  
discriminated  
> >against in the meantime.
> > 
> >I find it hard to believe that Han people treat Tibetans better as Ze Yang  
> >said. Like some CSS, Ze Yang's opinion is very self-centered. People like  
him  
> >always refuse to think from the other side. I guess this is of our "ugly"  
part  
> >of Chinese culture. We Chinese used to think China as center of the world  
and  
> >expect other peoples think this way too. This is impossible and unfair. When  
> >some of us find other people have different or opposite opinions, they  
usually  
> >feel insulted easily and attack back without logics and reasoning. I guess  
this  
> >is related to both our ugly part of culture and people's personalities.
> > 
> >Carl
> 
> Carl, I think you are right to point out that ppeople (not just Chinese
> people) would easily discriminate those people whom they  believe are 
> not superior.
> 
> However, is that a fact that Beijing has invested huge amount of money
> in Tibet and has been encourage the development of Tibet? Is that a fact
> that Tibetans has a much better life than fourty years ago (metarialisticly
> speaking)? Maybe, induvadually, Han discriminate minorities. But if you
> say the central government intentioanly suppress the minorities, especially
> Tibetans, I think that would not be fair.
> 

I have never said that the central government intentionally oppress the  
minorities. If the Tibetans do according to what the central government tell  
them to do, there would be no problem. But Tibetans have their own culture, own  
value standard and own way of lives. The difference between Han's (I had to say  
Han's instead of Chinese because many people believe Tibetans are part of  
Chinese) and Tibetans may be small, as some netter pointed out, but there are  
cases the conflicts occurs because of the difference of cultures. Then, what  
does the central government do? This is a real tough question.

The perfect solution is to equally sit down and negotiate. But things can never  
be this perfect. Only when conflict occurs, can we be able to find out whether  
the central government really regards Tibetans equal and treats them even  
better as Ze Yang said. Sadly, the answer is no. The Tibetans are oppressed  
because they are not as strong.

The reason why the central government has invested a large amount of money to  
Tibet is probably because Tibet has its rich mineral deposit and thus a  
potential area to explore. You would never know that Kuwait could become such a  
rich country if you only looked at its desert 70 years ago.


> I visited Qing Hai in 1984. I saw how underdeveloped those area is
> and I saw how hard the Hans there work to help the development. To my
> personal experience and knowladge (may be mostly from CCP's propaganda)
> I have very very hard time to believe what Dalai reported.
> 
> Back to you.
> 
> c.q.

Yes, people are working hard to develop Qinghai and Tibet, but not only Han  
people. Also, I don't think Hans develop the area to help the Tibetans. I guess  
they do it for themselves. Just like the early settlers in the US who grabbed  
land from native Indians and then developed. Can you say that they did it for  
Indians. Also, Germans and British also developed their controlled areas in  
China to some degree in the past, do you think they did it for us Chinese? In  
fact the living conditions in some controlled areas did improved. Were Chinese  
people satisfied?


Carl