Global Voices » Minax

China and Tibet: Democracy in Exile

Minax — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 03:03:02 +0000

Being a Tibetan in exile is a loss that manifests in many forms: the loss of homeland and natural rights fall within that. To some degree, the loss is also a blessing in disguise. Exile bestows upon Tibetan refugees in Dharamshala a reinforced national identity, a free voice, the right to practise and spread their religion without fear of persecution and the right to vote. All of these are denied to Tibetans who remain in a Han-Chinese ruled Tibet.

Chinese American academic Jianglin Li, author of 1959 Lhasa, was in Dharamshala on October 3 to observe the preliminary election of the Kalon Tripa, the leader of the Cabinet of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), a pressure group subordinate to the 14th Dalai Lama. The CTA's stated goal is to “rehabilitate Tibetan refugees and restore freedom and happiness in Tibet”. The CTA is commonly known as the Tibetan government-in-exile.

As Li described in her photographic journal of the election, voters turned out in droves at local polling stations. It is impossible to ignore the smiles on their faces.

The process of electing the Kalon Tripa (Chairman of the Kashag or Cabinet) is similar to a popular vote for the head of state in western democracy. Alongside it was the election of the senate, however, with a Tibetan twist. Li explained the election rule:

议员共40名，西藏三区各10名，四大教派加苯教各两名，加起来就是40名。僧人可以投两票，一票投给他所在的地域，另一票投给他所属的教派。比方说，一个来自康区的黄教僧人，他可以投一票给代表康区的议员，还可以投一票给代表格鲁派的议员。

The senate consists of 40 seats with 10 for each of the three traditional Tibetan regions The remaining 10 seats are distributed equally among four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Bon. So a monk of Gelug school and the Kham origin would vote for the seat of Kham and Gelug.

According to the Election Commission 79,449 people registered to vote. In the last general elections in 2006, 72,771 people registered to vote, but the number that actually voted remained less than 50 percent of those registered. The official figure of the Tibetan exile population is about 150,000. (via Tibet Sun)

It is hard to imagine that when the 14th Dalai Lama first arrived in India in 1959, via the treacherous Himalayan path, only a small number of people accompanied him. In the years that immediately followed, over 20,000 Tibetans followed the same route to exile. Attempts to pass through what is now the Chinese border have never ceased, seemingly undeterred by frequent fatalities. A YouTube video taken by a group of western mountaineers and circulated widely online, shows Chinese border guards opening fire on a group of unarmed Tibetan civilians in 2006, as the latter attempt to cross the border. Many of the Tibetans are young and scarcely equipped for the journey.

Li related her own experience with the Tibetan in exile:

目前，作为藏人，想要行使你的民主权利，你先得流亡，让你的身份成为“流亡藏人”。不过，其实我自己也一样，我的民主权利来自美国，而非中国。我行使自己的民主权利，先得让自己变成“美籍华人”。。。

A present, a Tibetan has to go exile in order to exercise their right to democracy. Actually, I am in the same situation, my right to democracy comes from the U.S, not from China. I have to turn myself into “American Chinese” in order to exercise my right.

Li's remark certainly resonates among the Tibetan activists. Prominent Tibetan poet and writer Woeser, who lives under constant surveillance in her Beijing home and has been banned from leaving China, linked to Li's journal on her blog, the Invisible Tibet (post deleted see cache). She relates to Li's observation about the “lucky” refugees:

而在我的人生中，我从未有过自己做主参与投票选举的经历……

However in my life, I have never voted in an election out my own will.

The election in India was quite smooth. However, in Nepal, the process had been disrupted by local officials. Tibet report writes:

…the instability that has been the highlight of the Nepalese Government has provided the Chinese Government with willing officials there who play into their hands to deny basic and fundamental rights to Tibetan refugees in Nepal. On October 3 we witnessed on such attempts when local officials seized ballot boxes from the Tibetan community in Nepal’s capital, who were participating in this worldwide elections.

Apart from South Asia, the election also took place in Europe and North America among Tibetan exiles. Chopathar described the election scene in New York in the comment section of Woeser's post (see the cache link above):

纽约的投票现场非常热烈壮观，人进人出，因为大堂里人太多，一部分投完票的人必须得出来。投票地点在曼哈顿。
我很早就去了，我排队排到了第一位，当然是第一个签名和领到选票及投票的。为自己苦难的祖国图伯特尽一份心，我感到无上光荣。
Chopathar 10.04.2010 纽约市

The polling station in New York was extremely busy with people constantly coming in and leaving. As the lobby got overcrowded, those who had cast their votes must leave first to make room for others. The polling station was at Manhattan. I arrived very early and cast my vote first. Of course, I was the first to sign in, collect my ballot paper and vote. I feel incredibly proud to do something for my suffering motherland Tibet. Chopathar 10.04.2010 NYC

The final elections to decide the composition of the Kalon Tripa will be held on 20 March 2011. Thubten Samdup, the Dalai Lama’s representative in Northern Europe, created a website to attract more candidates. From the questions which have been posted for the future candidates, readers can get a sense of the most critical preoccupations of Tibetans-in-exile:

What is your position on the China Tibet negotiations and what would you do differently?
What measures do you believe we, the Tibetan community in exile, can take to effect positive changes in the lives of Tibetans residing inside Tibet; especially those confronting land rights issues, unwarranted detentions, and inequalities in competing for education and jobs?
What would you do to revitalize our large Tibetan settlement camps and reverse the current trend of many young Tibetans leaving their communities in order to find employment elsewhere?
What would you do to improve the standard of education in our school system and how would you help young Tibetans preserve their culture while in exile?

China: From heroic to ignorant masses, and then…

Minax — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:06:47 +0000

The Chinese communist ideology has been eroding rapidly in the past two decades due to economic development. Traces of its revolutionary belief can still be found in political propaganda pieces published in the state owned media. Words like “the masses” marks the past ideological imprint.

However, in recent years, the term “the masses” is more and more associated with large scale protests, or the so-called “mass incidents”. From the perspective of local government, such kind of “mass incidents” implies social instability and has to be repressed. And hence, “the mass” becomes more and more in association with negative adjectives. A typical example can be found in a report earlier this year on social unrest in Luliang County of Yunnan Province in which hundreds of farmers confronted the police. The local state owned media then quickly described “the mass” as those “who are ignorant of the truth and facts are stirred up by a small cohort of vicious power in the village…”

To rescue “the masses” from negative connotation that jeopardizes the communist party's revolutionary legacy, the Propaganda Department of Yunnan province issued a notice demanding local media to stop using terms like “刁民（sly and difficult people)” and “恶势力（vicious power)” and to stop labeling the masses as “不明真相 (ignorant of the truth and facts)”, “別有用心 (having secret and ill-intentioned motives)” or “一小撮人 (a handful of people)”.

The liberal-orientated South China Metropolitan (Nandu) Daily and the Beijing News promptly responded to the ban with editorials (Links: Nandu; Beijing News) in the subsequent two days. Nandu Daily traced the use of the term “ignorant of the truth and facts” back to a Xinhua News Agency's article on a social unrest in Jilin Province in July and pointed out that:

云南省委宣传部门的通知，激起了对一张“不明真相”的政治和社会标签的检讨。清理和检讨这些难孚人心的陈词滥调，也就是承认和检讨公共生活中那些心照不宣的权力之恶。这种恶既包括官员滥权的投机，也有媒体不能自主的跟从。因此，这对公权力是一种进取，于媒体是一种反思。但更重要的原则是，其实没有谁可以给公众随意贴上或者撕下所谓不明真相的标签，因为历史的真相始终掌握在他们的手里。

The notice issued by the Propaganda department of Yunan Province has stirred up a critical reflection of the political labeling of the mass as “ignorant of the truth and facts”. The cleaning up of cliche is an acknowledgment of the existence of evil power and deeds in the public domain. Government officials abusive use of power supported by state owned media is part of such evil deeds. Therefore, the notice is a progressive move in monitoring the powerful. And the media should reflect on its role. More importantly, no one can label or tear off the label of the so-called “ignorant of the truth and facts”, as the truth of the history is at the hand of them (the mass).

The absent/omnipresent subject

Tianya forum writer, Chao Yong, noticed that in the discussion of the Yunnan propaganda department's move, the subject - “the masses”- of the negative label of “ignorant of the truth and facts” has been omitted and its absence paradoxically marks its omnipresence in the Chinese political history -

在革命年代里，“群众”常常是作为一个褒义词出现的。究其原因，主要是因为“群众”乃革命的主体。…而毛泽东更是把“群众”推向了政治峰顶，他说：“群众是真正的英雄，而我们自己则往往是幼稚可笑的。不了解这一点，就不能得到起码的知识。”这种表扬让“群众”扬眉吐气，也让他们陷入一种集体幻觉之中，以为群众运动就是正确的，群众的眼睛就是雪亮的。实际上，无论从哪方面看，“群众”都不可能自己为自己释义与正名；只是因为革命，他们才被生产出了一种“政治正确性”。

In the revolutionary era, “the masses” has a positive connotation as “the masses” is the subject of revolution… Mao Zedong once said “The masses are the true heroes, while we are often ignorant and laughable. If we don't understand this, we fail to acquire basic knowledge.” Such kind of praise had empowered “the masses” and resulted in a collective illusion that all mass movements are politically correct and the masses are always right. In reality, “the masses” could not define themselves, their “political correctness” was manufactured by the revolution.

另一方面，当“告别革命”的时代来临之后，“群众”的地位则开始下降，其词性也由褒义而中性，由中性而贬义…然而，改革年代，阶级斗争被束之高阁，下岗工人、无业游民、上访农民等等不再是革命的主力或帮手，而是变成了社会的不稳定因素。改革所依傍的对象也不再是无产阶级，而是有产阶级（中产阶级乃至新富阶层）。“群众”本来就没有经济上的优势，接着又失去了政治上的庇护，结果，他们被逼向了底层——这是经济、政治、甚至道德意义上的最底层。与此同时，相关部门与媒体也开始了对“群众”的舆论围剿。于是每当群体性事件发生，相关报道总会把“群众”指认为“不明真相”。这种固定搭配既唤醒了“群众”的本来涵义——乌合之众，也是对“群众”的“丑学”赋形。而通过“不明真相”的反复涂抹，“群众”也最终完成了其词性的蜕变与转换，被指涉的对象也被丑化和妖魔化了。

As the era of “farewell to revolution” began, the status of “the masses” kept declining from a positive connotation to a neutral connotation, and then from a neutral connotation to a negative connotation… In the reform era, class struggle has been abandoned. Unemployed workers, visit petition farmers are no longer subjects or supporters of the revolution. They have turned into social instability factors. The economic reform does not depend on the proletarians but the property owners (middle class and new rich). “The masses” do not have economic power and lose their political protection, they are forced to become the subalterns in all aspects - economically, politically and morally. At the same time, government sectors and state owned media start to create negative public opinion of “the masses”. Whenever mass incident occurs, the media reports quickly depict “the masses” as “ignorance of the truth and facts”. Such kind of labeling has retrieved the original connotation of “the masses” as the aggregation of the lumpen and eventually imposed a negative image to “the masses”. The repetitive use of the adjective “ignorance of the truth and facts” has successfully transformed and demonized “the masses”.

From “the masses” to “the citizen”

由此看来，无论是“群众是真正的英雄”还是“不明真相的群众”，说到底都是“意识到形态国家机器”的生产之物。经过这番忽而捧上天忽而摔到地的加工制作后，“群众”本身究竟是什么，反而变得晦暗不明了。而鉴于“群众”一词已被意识形态严重污染，我就觉得相关部门在禁用“不明真相”一词的同时，也该把“群众”一起禁用。或曰：把“群众”打入冷宫，谁来代替它出场呢？答案很简单：公众、公民或者民众。

Both labels, “the masses are the true heroes” and “the masses are ignorant of the truth and facts”, are manufactured by “the state apparatus”. After all these manipulations of the term, the meaning of “the masses” has been blurred. Since “the masses” has been severely contaminated by ideology, I suggest that the establishment should ban “the masses” altogether with “ignorant of the truth and facts”. If we abandoned the term “the masses” who or which subject would enter the scene? The answer is simple: the public, the citizen or the people.

In the comment section, many echoed Chao's view:

群众一词，现在已有贬义的成分，一说群众，必是和不明真象联系起来。可悲！政府是谁的政府？党是谁的党？

The term “the masses” already has negative connotation nowaday. Whenever the masses is mentioned, it is associated those who are ignorant of the truth and facts. Pathetic! Whose government does the present government belong to? and whose Party?

群众就是平头百姓，只有作为公民时才能显现作为“人”的权利。

The masses are ordinary people. They can only exercise their rights as human beings when they are citizens.

用什么不一样呢?公众\民众\群众不都等于百姓.替党说话还是替百姓说话就以经把百姓与党分割了.

What are the differences among these terms? the public\the citizens\the masses - all refer to ordinary people. The fact that (the media) has to choose between speaking for ordinary people or for the Party has tore apart the people and the Party.