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Survival or Death of the Tibetan Race

By Chen Weijian

Translated from Boxun

Apr 14, 2008

The recent protests in Tibet and the resulting bloody suppression by the communist regime once again present the world with the survival or death of the Tibetan race.

The massacre happening this time is not accidental. There are historical and practical reasons.

The historical reason was Tibet's resistance against the despotic rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in March 1959.

The CCP military announced the liberation of Tibet on October 21, 1951. However, on March 21, 1959, the Tibetans finally realized that the communist Chinese entering Tibet this second time were different from the Chinese entering Tibet in the past.

They not only wanted to rule Tibet in name, but also wanted to rule Tibet in reality—reforming Tibet in the communist way with blood and violence. Resentment or resistance would be met with killing. Thus, all regions in Tibet spontaneously formed uprisings against the CCP.

When the Tibetans learned that the CCP invited the Dalai Lama to watch a show alone in a CCP military camp, they feared that the Dalai Lama might be kidnapped. So they organized themselves and surrounded the Norbu Lingka (the summer residence of the Dalai Lama) to prevent the CCP from taking the Dalai Lama away. Afterwards, the Dalai Lama had to flee his home, because the CCP's artillery was targeting Norbu Lingka.

Soon thereafter, the CCP completely unveiled its pretense of "peacefully liberating Tibet and allowing Tibetan autonomy." It started an oppression and massacre unprecedented in Tibetan history, which killed nearly one million Tibetans.

After the massacre, the Tibetan government-in-exile led by the Dalai Lama, was established in Dharamsala, India. The Dalai Lama started a democratic reform of the government-in-exile, organized by monks and nobles. Dharamsala established the first National Assembly on September 2, 1960. It started a democratic system of directly electing the premier of the government by all citizens in 2001.

Meanwhile, the government also built temples, Buddhist colleges, Tibetan language schools, and a Tibetan medical hospital to preserve Tibetan religions and culture.

Tibet Under CCP Rule

After the CCP takeover, it almost destroyed Tibetan culture, their system of combining politics and religion, and Tibet's plantation economy in the name of socialist transformation. The CCP established a so-called Tibet Autonomous Region, under the absolute rule of the CCP, and the People's commune-economy. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, Tibet was raped and razed. The Tibetan religion and culture were recovered to some degree after the Culture Revolution, but it was under the tight control of the CCP. The so-called "Establishing a New Tibet" is aimed to thoroughly change Tibet.

Destroying the Spirit

The most painful issue for Tibetans is the destruction of their faith. Statistics recorded that Tibet had 2,711 temples and 114,103 monks and nuns before 1959. Six years later, only 553 temples and 6,913 monks and nuns existed. After the catastrophe of Cultural Revolution, only 80 plus temples and about 7,000 monks and nuns were left.

While the CCP is destroying temples, it also carries out the physical and spiritual destruction of monks. It forces them to participate in political study, to betray and expose one another, to insult the Dalai Lama, and even forces monks and nuns to have sex. Disgruntled monks are jailed. The numbers of monks who have been imprisoned or killed are countless. For monks who believe in reincarnation, the CCP's destruction of their spirits is far more unbearable than that of their bodies.

The writer of Fire Under the Snow, Paden Gyatso, said, "What I suffered most in the 33-year prison term was not hunger, being shackled, being viciously beaten, and undergoing electric shocks, but the torture of betraying and exposing others. The CCP wanted us to show our loyalty to it, so it asked everyone to report others. It forces people to sue and even frame their friends a great deal. I feared most the meetings for denouncing. If I lie, I will harm others; if I don't lie, I'll harm myself. Once one starts to harm one person, he'll go on harming another 100 people. Although being beaten is awful, the wounds can heal. However, once one loses his spirit, he will lose it forever."

Of course, the most difficult thing to accept for the monks is that the CCP forced them to slander and desecrate pictures of the Dalai Lama, who is respected as a living Buddha for Tibetans, especially for monks. For them, it is already the greatest crime to disrespect him, not to mention the desecration of the Dalai Lama.

Slandering the Dalai Lama means going to hell for them. Therefore, except for a very small number, monks will not do what the CCP asks them to do, regardless of the promised benefits provided to them since they believe in reincarnation.

In Tibet, a true monk will be classified as a political criminal by the CCP, and will either be chased out of the temple or put in jail. Thus, those Tibetan monks who are still in the temples either have betrayed their consciences or painfully suffered from their loss of conscience and committed crimes. These monks eventually kill themselves as those in the recent protests.

Chinese Modernization

Under the CCP's policy of building a new Tibet, the central government directly invested 50.441 billion yuan (approximately $7 billion) in Tibet from 1994 to 2004. Zhu Weiquan, vice minister of the United Front Work Department, said that in the "15th National Development Project" the central government's project investment, financial subsidies, and aid from all nations to Tibet was more than 72.2 billion yuan (approximately $10.5 billion).

After the Third Tibet Issue Working Meeting, there are 62 national projects and 716 items for Tibet. However, most of them are not what the Tibetans need. The support from Hunan Province, for example, was a 12-meter-high statue of Mao Zedong. This does not support Tibet, but is a great insult for the Tibetans.

Another instance is that one of the 10 great construction projects in Tibet was a stadium, but the Tibetans do not use it. There are still some other development projects, such as golf courses, which have nothing to do with the Tibetans. These tall Western style buildings are not compatible with Tibet's traditional culture. They have changed Tibet's original architectural style.

Presently, the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, is a city quite like other cities in China. There are many modern buildings. On the streets of Lhasa, it's hard to take a picture limited to only Tibetan-style buildings.

While building modern buildings in Tibet, the CCP sends many Chinese to Tibet under the name of developing Tibet, which changes the ethnic population of Tibet. According to an estimate by the Tibetan government-in-exile, about 7.5 million Chinese immigrants have moved to Tibet, in addition to the police and army stationed in Tibet. Therefore, presently, the population of Chinese exceeds that of the Tibetan people.

Moreover, the population growth of Tibetans remains a major problem for the Tibetan race. Many Tibetans are monks and nuns, so the Tibetan population cannot grow. Under such a special cultural background, it should not carry out the one-child policy of birth control as in China.

Although the CCP allows them to have a two-child policy on the surface, in reality, it enforces the one-child policy in Tibet as in China. With the development of the economy, more and more Chinese enter Tibet to make a living. According to the Tibet Autonomous Region Government, about 50,000 people immigrate to Tibet every year.

After the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was launched, more Chinese entered Tibet to find jobs. And there are many tourists. According to the estimate from the tourism sector, about 2.5 million people will travel in Tibet every year after the launching of the railway. The number of tourists is almost equal to the population of Tibet.

Communist Party Culture Assimilation

Since the CCP has ruled Tibet, although Chinese-Tibetan bilingual education was initially implemented in school (Tibetan ceased to be used in school during the Cultural Revolution), since 1997, in name of facilitating Tibetans' future life and work, Chinese was made the main language in schools. The remaining Tibetan curriculum has been primarily Chinese culture and communist party culture related, such as the contribution of Princess Wencheng (a Chinese princess who married Gongtsen Gampo of Tibet in 635) to Tibet and Jiang Zemin's "Three Represents" (communist ideology), and other such material.

Chinese has been used in higher-education classes because the Tibetan language does not lend itself to modern technology. In area of TV, broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, and others, Chinese is also the main language while Tibetan is secondary. Tibetan has been only started to be used in TV programs since 1999, and is limited to12 hours daily.

In summary, in real life Tibetans are unable to find work without knowing Chinese. All businesses and state enterprises in Tibet require the Chinese language. Tibetan employees have to be able to speak Chinese to communicate with others. In the Lhasa protest this time, many participating Tibetans are ones who are unable to find work. The unemployment rate in Tibet is as high as 40 percent. In such a reality, many Tibetans only learn Chinese and not Tibetan at all.

When large numbers of Chinese rushed into Tibet, Chinese customs were brought into Tibet and affected Tibetan culture. The Tibetans also started smoking and drinking, wearing fashionable clothes, going to karaoke, pursuing a modern lifestyle, and frequenting brothels, which became numerous in Lhasa. Even more ridiculous is that erotic fashion shows have been conducted in front of the Potala Palace.

Even the peaceful Buddha sect is unable to avoid the wave of worldly customs. Regardless of how splendid the restored temples are, they are temples in name only, and function as tourist sites. They have become the CCP's cash cows that require expensive entry fees. The famous Jokhang Monastery used to be a place for Tibetans to worship Buddha, and many Tibetans traveled far kowtowing and kneeling all the way to Lhasa, but they could not enter the temple because of the high ticket prices.

Ecological Devastation

The CCP's construction in Tibet is actually ruining Tibet. While destroying Tibetan culture, it has also caused a major calamity to Tibet's ecology. The Tibet's Government-in-exile researchers have discovered that the CCP's exploitation of Tibet's rich mining resources and the large emigration of Chinese have caused the vulnerable Tibetan ecological system to go out of balance.

Half of the more than 4,000 lakes in Tibet have dried up. The water level of the famous Anto Lake Qinghai is continuously declining, the Huang carp in Qinghai have died in large number, prairies became deserts, large forests were cut down, all causing serious damage to Tibet's ecological environment.

According to the statistics from 1955 to 1985, the timber shipped inland from the Aba Tibetan autonomous prefecture alone can, if laid out end to end, circle the globe 13 times.

Mining has also led to serious destruction of the environment. Since working the Nima county gold mine, 47,025 acres of high quality pasture was destroyed, and the mining vehicles have destroyed 25,500 acres of pasture. In a recent CCP report, the potential value of iron ore in Golmud City alone may be as much as 4.7 billion Yuan (about $670 million). Mining will begin in 2008, and the estimated annual production will reach five million tons.

Since the Qinghai-Tibet railway opened, the CCP will further expand the mining of Tibet's natural resources, further damaging the ecology. Although the CCP has provided much aid to Tibet in recent years, it also has taken a lot of Tibetan resources and destroyed a lot of Tibet's way of life. It is impossible to quantify the damage it has caused.

The Sacrilege of the Holy Land, People, Nationality, Culture and Gods

The destruction of nature is not just a problem of the way of life to Tibetans, but it is a problem damaging its soul. To a Tibetan, all things have souls and a myriad of things have gods. Land, water, grass, and forest all are gods, and these gods have all protected Tibetans. Once humans destroy the land, water, grass, and forest, people lose the protection of these gods and suffer disasters.

This kind of God of Nature thinking is a very important part of Tibetan culture. Therefore, regardless of how much economic gain is had, to Tibetans who value the next life more than the present world, it portends a disaster of being extinguished by heaven. It is just like the disaster of digging up an ancestral grave to Chinese people.

Tibet has already been changed beyond recognition by the CCP. Tibet, as a culture and a way of life, is comprehensively vanishing. Tibetan monks are the foundation of Tibetan culture. The public may not have a strong sense about the fading of the nation, but to the foundation of this culture, it is worse than death.

When monks are required to recite the scriptures under the "new discipline" to be loyal to the CCP and to oppose the Dalai Lama, as Buddhists, it is as if they have already died. After Sinicizing the education in Tibet, there is no reciting of scripture in temples anymore. When being used as scenic sites selling high-priced tickets for a huge profit, temples are no longer holy lands for salvation. When Tibet's sacred mountains were exploited, Tibet lost the gods' protection. Therefore, to a Tibetan monk, Tibet has come to the moment of life and death.

If there is no revolt, no struggle, Tibet will to vanish. Then, the Tibet that has high-rises is no longer their Tibet—the Tibet that has music and songs night after night and wanton luxurious living is not their Tibet. The Tibet that has rumbling trains is not their Tibet. The Tibet that has Chinese-speaking schools, TV, and radio stations is even more so not their Tibet.

Tibet's nationality is unique in that all its people believe in Buddhism. They have a unique way of life. The world is changing. Tibet is changing, too. Just like the change of Dharamsala, it has changed from a society of a combined government and religion to a democratic society. But this is by their choice, a choice of progress.

The change that has happened in Tibet is not by the Tibetans' own choice. It is a choice imposed upon them by the CCP. This change is a kind of massacre, a massacre of a nationality and a culture. If the CCP does not collapse, Tibet, as a culture, will disappear.

The Dalai Lama witnessed everything that has happened in Tibet under the tyranny of the CCP. He said with tears in his aged eyes that Tibet, as a unique culture, was going to vanish within 15 years. To a nationality, the vanishing of its culture is equivalent to death.

In today's Tibet, it is no longer a question of how much human rights or how much culture can be preserved, but a question of life and death of a race. As a weak nationality, regardless how much its strength of compassion, regardless how strong its tenacious spirit, under the suppression of the cruelest despotic political power and the great-nation chauvinism instigated by the CCP, they are incapable of saving themselves.

No Hope Without Global Action

To enable Tibet to survive, they must rely on the international society's conscience and justice and to rely on international society's strong economic strength to force the CCP to launch peace talks with the Dalai Lama and to provide Tibet a unique autonomous status—only then, can Tibet be saved.

If the international community is concerned only with their own interests and does not care about the survival of a nationality, does not care about the vanishing of a compassionate Buddhist nationality from the world, does not care about the wisdom, compassion, and happiness brought to the world by the Dalai Lama, Tibet as a culture will vanish from this world forever.

To Tibet's monks and people, the CCP is truly too powerful, and resistance is futile. To them, if they do not explode in silence, they are going to die in silence. Although today's Tibetan protest is another desperate attempt that has no hope of success, it announces to the world that at a time when the Tibetan nationality is dying under the tyranny of the CCP, this nationality has not died silently, but its people have resisted with their flesh and blood. They yelled with their bloody weeping voices to the world!

History will remember these brave warriors' fighting for the existence of their nationality, and will also remember their desperation before the death of a nationality. During the life and death of Tibet's nationality, as a Chinese who carries this blame, we have no alternative but to fight the CCP tyranny side by side with Tibetans.

At the conclusion of this article, we pray for Heaven's mercy, not to allow Tibet, as a nationality to die under the despotic CCP regime.