For anyone with a serious interest in the Tibetan resistance against Communist Imperialism, this book is a must. Most books on the resistance focus almost entirely on the Dalai Lama, and are suffused with a sentimental image of Tibetan culture. This book is not. It’s a hard-headed analysis of the political events since the Conquest. One feature I like is that the Dalai Lama is more often referred to by his personal name, Tenzin Gyatso. Another, that some time is spent discussing the Tibetan Charter, by which the exiled community was transformed into a functioning democracy, and which created a template for a future democratic Tibet. This document deserves serious study by the world’s democratic underground.
The first half of the book deals with the efforts of the CIA to exploit the situation of the Tibetans for purely strategic geo-political reasons. CIA agents provided clandestine training and supplies for a small number of Tibetan resistance fighters — actions kept from the knowledge of the Dalai Lama, who did not approve of the strategy. Apart from Buddhist scruples, he was probably all too aware that U.S. policy was tied to the Taiwanese regime of Chiang Kai-shek, who was just as determined as Mao to keep Tibet as an imperial conquest. U.S. administrations at no point intended to support the cause of Tibetan independence. However, they convinced a number of young Tibetans to sacrifice their lives under the illusion that they would. Of course, when Nixon and Kissinger made their disgusting pact with Mao, they wasted no time in double-crossing the Tibetans. The authors describe these events with less overt contempt than I would chose to, but the facts are all there. They do not, however, come to terms with the role of Conservatism in such betrayals (one of the authors worked in the Reagan administration).
The second part of the book deals with the remarkable way that the Tibetan cause survived American treachery, living on to this day as a dramatic example of underdog survival. America’s literary underground, notably Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, played a curious role in these events. The story is taken up to the point of the Beijing Olympics.
The book is not toothless — the authors merely write more politely than I would choose to. They do a good job of exposing the cynical fraud of “constructive engagement”, and this passage, puncturing the delusion that the Internet will promote democratic reform, should be studied closely by everyone:
The most outrageous aspect of the Internet’s failure to transform China lies not with the failure of technology, but the moral failure of leading “Netizen.” To do business in China and gain access to its consumers, executives at technology firms have become willing enforcers for China. Microsoft and Google have both helped China block information through their search functions or block access to blogs the Chinese government wants to restrict. Yahoo! has exceeded this by helping China convict political dissidents for exercising basic human rights.
Take the case of the Chinese journalist Shi Tao and engineer Wang Xiaoning, who were each sentenced to ten years in jail for the crime of writing articles promoting democracy and posting them on Yahoo! Groups Web site. The evidence used to convict the men was handed over to Chinese authorities by Yahoo, Inc., after the Chinese asked for details of their Internet and e‑mail usage. Yahoo! routinely tracks the Internet usage of all its customers in order to market the data, mainly to advertising firms. Microsoft’s gmail is worse in that it scans the contents of every e‑mail and reads key words.
When Congress looked into the matter in 2006 after prompting from human rights organizations, Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang, whose net worth is an estimated $1.9 billion, had his company deny any knowledge the Chinese request was for the purpose of prosecuting the democracy activists. Yang changed his tune after congressional investigators determined that the Chinese request stated explicitly that the purpose was a probe for “illegal provision of state secrets,” a catch-all category frequently used to prosecute political dissidents.
Under grilling by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Yang’s corporate attorney claimed that Yahoo! was merely complying with the “lawful demands” of Chinese authorities. Yang’s arrogance prompted the late Congressman Tom Lantos, a human rights champion, to berate him and the attorney as “moral pygmies.”
The authors go on to mention, all too briefly, the kind of cyber-assaults that the Beijing regime carries out on people outside China. As the recent target of one of those assaults, I know all too well that even as insignificant a person as myself, theoretically safe in cosy Canada, can be targeted by these barbarians.
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