But no, the left would rather label the Tibetans as counter-revolutionaries, the left would rather say that Tibetans deserved to be conquered, that Tibetans were feudal, or backward, and desperately needed to be liberated by a caring army of utopian agrarian peasants. The left is a friend of the oppressed, but only as long as those who are oppressed conform to some grandiose ideology that has no basis in reality. But to hold China up on a pedestal is ridiculous. China is not an example of functional socialism. Your idealism of the PRC's political system can only lead me to conclude that you have never been there.
China is no longer a communist nation, they are as Capitalist as they come.
This paper, incidentally, was forced to shut down when Hong Kong was handed back to China because it wasn't a state-sanctioned paper. I can guarantee you that no reports of worker detentions and the awful conditions of Nike's plants in China have been reported on by China's state-run newspapers. Because the Chinese government has been in bed with Nike for years. They've been in bed with U.S. run aid agencies and oil companies for years as well. The U.S. did not force them to embrace Starbucks and McDonalds.