Tibetan monasteries 'surrounded by soldiers'

[Dinner]

Originally posted by GePap
ditto

Speaking of the Chinese intervention in Korea during the Korean war. Essentially it was to push the UN forces back and to bring North Korea into puppet status for China.

[One_more_turn]

I think China has more legitmacy on Tibet than the US has on Hawaii.

[One_more_turn]

And you think remiliarizing Japan is a really good idea? We are the only country in human history that had used atomic weapons against them.

[Colon™]

Perhaps we can have a three-way war between China, Japan and the US?

[One_more_turn]

Originally posted by Colon™
Perhaps we can have a three-way war between China, Japan and the US?

That's what sinister Euros are salivating for, our so-called "allies".

Perhaps it would be better to leave you guys to the Russians.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by One_more_turn
And you think remiliarizing Japan is a really good idea? We are the only country in human history that had used atomic weapons against them.

We destroyed them, we can create them!

[Dinner]

Originally posted by One_more_turn
I think China has more legitmacy on Tibet than the US has on Hawaii.

Except the majority of people living in Hawaii want to be part of the US and the majority of people in Tibet do not want to be part of China.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Speaking of the Chinese intervention in Korea during the Korean war. Essentially it was to push the UN forces back and to bring North Korea into puppet status for China.

Don't know about this, but I do remember Mao saying to Kim when Kim asked for help: "Whatever it is, I'm willing to put wave after wave of men at your disposal. Right men?"

[Barnabas]

The chinese love playing with history, you should check out the Koguriyo issue they had with Korea in 2006 and the chinese textbooks calling G Khan a Chinese Conqueror.

[One_more_turn]

Originally posted by Oerdin

Except the majority of people living in Hawaii want to be part of the US and the majority of people in Tibet do not want to be part of China.

If it were that simple, what's preventing China of sending 10 million of other ethnicities into Tibet and reducing the natives to a small minority, as is the case with the entire United States?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Originally posted by Slowwhand, (and not Lonestar)
Truly an ass through and through. Congrats. It's not like they deserve freedom or anything.
Here's a thought. Concentrate on things you know, like collecting hats. A slit doesn't equal brains.

My, aren't we hungover today. Hair of the dog that bit you, works a charm.

Originally posted by Winston
Ladies' hats

China never invaded those, though. At least, not while I was there.

Originally posted by Oerdin, and subsequently paraphrased by Alinestra Covelia
CCP turning on Korea

If you're thinking of the Korean War (where they provided logistical and manpower support for the North), that was never their intention to personally conquer the South. At the time, assuming the worst, they might have been characterized as trying to expand the sphere of influence of communism. But here in an unusual turn of events, the historical evidence is starting to show that the Korean war came as a surprise for the Chinese leadership and came at a very bad time strategically for them. This is surprising in that most historical findings tend to color the CCP in a less than flattering light - but here it appears that the CCP had been primarily intent on launching an amphibious liberation of Taiwan during that time, and had been somewhat reluctant in aiding the Soviet Union.

Some theorists even suggest that Stalin's boycott of the UN meeting where he could have vetoed the UN support resolution was not an accident - he intentionally wanted to draw the North and China into a manpower-intensive conflict that would exhaust Chinese personnel and weaken China's growing claims to be "leader of the revolution". It's worth noting that Mao's own records speaks very bitterly of the conflict, saying that the Soviets leased the Chinese weapons and materiel but on miserly terms that the Chinese couldn't afford. (Noteworthy too that Mao lost his eldest son in the conflict, so he's hardly a neutral observer.)

Again, I'm not trying to whitewash China's involvement in the Korean war, but I'm pointing out that it seems to be a separate type of political involvement than China's involvement with Tibet, which is much more direct and more closely matches the classic definitions of invasion and annexation.

Originally posted by Oerdin
[...]it is highly unlikely the Dalai Lama had much of anything to do with the riots.

Far more likely is that local Tibet people got pissed off at local issues, Dashi's article provides details in a very balanced way, and decided to protest based on those issues. [...]

I think you're right about this. It's actually a pretty bad thing for the Dalai Lama, and a very bad thing for China. Chances are that a) he didn't have anything to do with this, as it's more of a spontaneous spark of unrest, and b) he actually can't have anything to do with it, as he's fading from relevance. The Economist magazine has been filing reports since about 2004 (it may be earlier) that surmises that a new generation of Tibetans is reaching adulthood who have never remembered the Dalai Lama's rule and who have little patience for his softly-softly approach to talking with China. If this is true, then it's bad for him because he is losing control of his homeland, but even worse is the irony is that China has almost all the responsibility for creating this situation.

Under this theory, once the Dalai Lama has disappeared into political obscurity, China's problems may worsen, not improve. There will be nobody left at the other end of the hotline for them to talk to.

[LordShiva]

Why bring poor Lonestar into this?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by One_more_turn

If it were that simple, what's preventing China of sending 10 million of other ethnicities into Tibet and reducing the natives to a small minority, as is the case with the entire United States?

Exactly the point of why so many people are claiming cultural genocide; I.E han moving into Tibet and colonizing it. As Dashi's article points out things are more complex with the majority of han moving there to take advantage of tax breaks and to find land in sparsely populated Tibet but the other side does have a point about the Government winking and nodding at the process.

[Dinner]

Nice post Alinestra.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Originally posted by Barnabas
The chinese love playing with history, you should check out the Koguriyo issue they had with Korea in 2006 and the chinese textbooks calling G Khan a Chinese Conqueror.

I don't know enough about the Koguriyo issue to comment in any way. (Though I remember reading some BBC articles on it - something about a location, culturally important to Koreans, that's currently within China's borders and which China claims historical as well as present sovereignty over, right?)

But the issue about Genghis Khan is quite legitimate. It's interesting that the latter centuries of Chinese retrospectively recognize Mongolians as an ethnic minority, and to a certain extent internalize the conquest by Genghis Khan by saying "well he was one of our guys, so it wasn't really a foreign conquest per se...". This isn't actually a Communist fiction, either. The Nationalist government certainly used the same justification (Outer Mongolia is included in the map of China as defined by the KMT, just as Tibet is), and even former dynasties including the Qing prior to their decay had irredentist or even outright claims on Mongolian territory.

A heavy part of this is undoubtedly intended as a salve to national pride. But there has been a regular cyclical history of invaders conquering large amounts of Chinese territory and then becoming Sinicized themselves over time. There were even two dynasties founded by conquerers that viewed themselves as separate, but over time gradually adopted Chinese mannerisms and Chinese dynasty names. (The Yuan, originally Mongolians under Kubulai Khan, was the first. The other was the Qing dynasty, which were Manchurians. It's worth noting too that Manchurian intermingling with ethnic Han was so complete that it is now very very hard to tell any Manchurian apart from a Han, even in their historical homeland of northeast China.)

((Chances are you might pass by a teenage girl who looks Chinese but happens to be about 6' tall. Speaking from personal experience, there is a good chance she may be Manchurian.))