World View: Repression—in exile (1998)

From the November 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The past couple of years have been a somewhat turbulent time for Tibetan refugee communities, Tibetan Buddhism in general, and for those who idealise the Dalai Lama. Far from fulfilling his fantasy status as some sort of “saintly” icon, the Dalai Lama has followed what can be seen as a political programme of repression not that dissimilar to that of the Chinese state, from which so many have fled.

In 1996 he announced a ban on the worship of a Buddhist deity called Dorje Shugden, declaring somewhat vaguely that he had discovered Shugden to be a “Chinese” spirit who was somehow physically threatening both his own life and the future of Tibet. He declared this ban not only in his capacity as a “spiritual leader”, but as head of a government-in-exile. For the Dalai Lama is the supreme head (unelected) of a state; albeit a state-in-waiting (Tibet) that is based in Dharamsala in northern India. It has a sizeable state machine; a parliament, cabinet, government departments, and most notably a Security Bureau. To fund this a tax is levied on all Tibetan refugees, non-payment of which results in official loss of “citizenship”. On the question of democracy, when the Vice President of the Tibetan parliament was asked if any political decision could conceivably be taken in opposition to the Dalai Lama he answered, “no, not possible”.

Those refusing to accept the ban on Shugden have accordingly been labelled as enemies of the state and Chinese agents and, in reference to Tibet’s provision at paper constitution, the government-in-exile has declared that, “concepts like democracy . . . are empty when it comes to the well-being of the Dalai Lama and the common cause of Tibet”. The lengths to which the Dalai Lama would be prepared to go to maintain his authority were hinted at in an interview in 1997 where he stated:

“If . . . there was only one learned Lama . . . alive, a person whose death would cause the whole of Tibet to lose all hope of keeping its Buddhist way of life, then it is conceivable that in order to protect that one person it might be justified for one or ten enemies to be eliminated . . .”

No prizes for guessing who and what is being referred to here then—and so much for peace and love.

The resulting “justified” actions taken against those refusing to comply with the deity ban have included the dismissal of all such dissidents from government employment and the report that the residents of at least one monastery were “persuaded” to sign forms in support of the ban by the presence of Indian state police. Some 300 cases of house arrest, destruction of personal property, and harassment by Dalai Lama supporters have been reported, including one case of a family being forced from their home by a large crowd, which petrol bombed and ransacked their house. In addition posters denouncing religious dissidents have become commonplace in Tibetan exile communities. These notices generally include the name, address and photo of the particular “enemy of the state” and the schools their children attend. It is little wonder that some have become refugees all over again.

The Dalai Lama recently helped promote the products of the Apple computer company under the advertising slogan “Think Different”, which is interesting when compared with an official statement of his that warns: “If you can think by yourselves it is good . . . it will not be good if we have to knock on your doors.”

Tibetans, both under Chinese rule and the rule of “their” government-in-exile, face a choice in common with the exploited majority everywhere: conformity imposed by gods and masters or the struggle for real freedom presented by socialists.

Ben Malcolm

Sting in the Tail: Institute of Dementia (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the May 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Institute of dementia

One of the influences on the thinking of Downing Street is the Adam Smith Institute. This organization is the so-called “think-tank" of the Tory Party. Their latest foray into the brave new world we can all expect under a Tory government is typical of the Tory Utopia they have in mind for all of us.

Britain, which at present is covered by five percent of forest, will have a forest covering 65 percent of the total land mass. Mines, factories and farmland will be given over to forests with wolves and bears.

Presumably these creatures will be shot, trapped and maimed by champagne-swilling landlords assisted by forelock-tugging peasantry.

"Private security firms will patrol villages and housing estates and surveillance cameras will cover the bulk of Britain. " (Guardian, 5 April)

In the Tory Utopia there will be major breakthroughs, in a privately-run Health Maintenance Organization, in dealing with dementia, cancer and AIDS.

We can only hope that scientists, seeking a cure for dementia, start their research in that dementia-ridden pocket of human stupidity called the Adam Smith Institute.

Land of hope and tory

A Tory Party Conference is a festival of unreality. The stirring chords of Land of Hope and Glory are struck as the leader emerges to thunderous applause.

The themes are loyalty, nationalism, toughness and realism . . . but most of all loyalty. The leader is everything. Mindless devotion . . . and loyalty are pledged. In reality it is all an empty sham. John Major is now finding out just how empty.

Take the case of Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, the former Solicitor General for Scotland, bon viveur and wearer of tartan trews, tartan waistcoats and for all we know tartan boxer shorts.

Speaking on BBC Scotland (4 April) he called his leader a "ventriloquist’s dummy" and a "softie".

Not that Major’s rivals fared much better. "I don’t like Clarke and I don’t trust Heseltine — I   think he’s a spiv and Clarke’s a bounder."

In the nasty world of capitalist politics, loyalty is a conference illusion. These horrible job-hunters are all falling out as they try to get their snouts deeper into the Westminster trough of power and wealth.

Another ego trip

The Detroit summit involving the seven leading industrial nations (G7) set about the impossible task of solving capitalism’s unemployment problem.

Needless to say, the attending finance ministers were less than unanimous about what should be done. America wanted Germany to relax its monetary policy in the hope that this would get economic growth moving again, but this was angrily rejected: Britain was all for a free-market approach but Japan warned of the social consequences of this, and so on.

However, numerous "Think-tanks" were not slow to offer their solution. These included the inevitable work-sharing, the spread of "wise taxes" and one which really boiled down to the jobless taking in one another’s washing.

But the summit did succeed in achieving its primary aim — to provide the opportunity for some political peacocks to strut their stuff on the world stage, and they enjoyed it so much that they agreed — and here they were unanimous to do it all over again in July in sunny Italee!

Go for the big one

 

"Paying For Our Crimes" was the title of an article by Joan Bakewell (Guardian, 21 March) in which she highlighted various groups throughout the world who want restitution for the wrongs they have suffered.

There are those British prisoners of the Japanese during World War Two who want compensation for their ordeal; American indians and Australian aborigines who demand the return of lands stolen by white settlers, and an African organization which wants an apology for slavery along with the cancellation of all Third World debt on the grounds that "We don’t owe them anything. They owe us"!

All of these claimants, or at least their ancestors, have been treated abominably, but so has the world’s working class. They have been robbed, murdered and degraded by capitalism for two hundred years but socialists do not encourage them to ask for compensation. Instead, we urge them to forget about crumbs from the table of their masters’ banquets and to take the whole feast for themselves.

Benn’s glad tidings

That big lead over the Tories in the opinion polls may seem to point to a rosy future for the Labour Party, but an article by Tony Benn in Tribune (8 April) paints a different picture.He says that the party is in an alarming" position in the constituencies:

"Party membership is down . . . young people seem uninterested in joining . . . and our historic link with the unions has been weakened. "

If this last bit means that trade unions are at last putting the interests of their members before those of Labour politicians then it is good news. Even better is that any youngsters who dislike capitalism are less likely to have an entanglement with Labour standing between them and a consideration of the case for socialism.

Levelling-up

"Socialists believe in levelling down while Conservatives believe in levelling-up" has been the oft-repeated claim of trie Tories down the years.

Of course, by "socialists" they mean the Labour Party, but how valid is that claim? One feature of the past 13 years of Tory rule has been the huge pay-outs that top business people award one another. The latest example is the £1.4 million Barclay’s Bank paid to the head of its broking business while offering staff in its branches a two percent pay rise. Is this levelling-up?

Then there is the Tories’ insistence that if British capitalism is to be competitive workers here will have to accept the low level of wages and conditions prevalent in Asia and eastern Europe, and they actually boast to prospective overseas investors about how this is already happening.

If “levelling-up" means bringing the wages and conditions of workers here more into line with those of the world’s sweatshops then the Tories are living up to their claim.

An old tradition

A Glasgow Tory councillor has predicted that Tommy Sheridan, leader of the council’s Militant group will be in the House of Lords thirty years from now: 

"There was nervous laughter from the Labour benches when Councillor Young reminded them: "We've seen it all before and we will see it again". Presumably, the Militant leader would be re-absorbed into the mainstream of Labour ranks on his journey to the right. And respectability. ’ (The Glaswegian, 7 March)

Well, perhaps, but that Tory councillor does have history on his side. Bigger rebels than Sheridan, "Red Clydesiders" such as Manny Shinwell and Davie Kirkwood, ended up in ermine, so maybe some of that nervous laughter was coming from Sheridan and his Militant cohorts.

What a nerve!

Several orthodox Jews jeered the Dalai Lama during a visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem yesterday, calling the Tibetan spiritual leader crazy. "You look like an intelligent man, but you're stupid, fleeing from reality," shouted one worshipper.

No, this wasn’t one of the media’s April Fool jokes because it appeared in the press ten days earlier, but shouldn’t religious people be the last ones to accuse anyone else of ‘fleeing from reality"?

Tiny Tips (2009)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

A collection of more than 3,000 inverted stamps has sold at auction in New York for more than $5 million:

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One billion people throughout the world suffer from hunger, a figure which has increased by 100 million because of the global financial crisis, says the UN:

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Cancer is a silent disease in Africa and in the developing world. World Health Organization (WHO) statistics shows that cancer kills more people in Africa than HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria combined. This is not a well-known fact, and a very disturbing one, especially since cancer diagnostics and treatment are of very poor standard in most African countries. Take for example Ghana – a country with more than 23 million people. They only have four oncologists to diagnose and treat cancer patients. WHO estimates that if we don’t take act now, more than 11 million Africans may die of cancer in 2020:

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One in four men in South Africa have admitted to rape and many confess to attacking more than one victim, according to a study that exposes the country’s endemic culture of sexual violence

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The Dalai Lama has encouraged Tibetans in exile to embrace the democratic system of electing a leader, saying it was essential to keep step with the larger world and to ensure the continuity of their government:

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Uganda has lost nearly a third of its forest cover since 1990 due to expanding farmlands, a rapidly growing human population and increased urbanisation, a government report said

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The Senate unanimously passed a resolution yesterday apologizing for slavery, making way for a joint congressional resolution and the latest attempt by the federal government to take responsibility for 2½ centuries of slavery

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Nearly twice as many US army soldiers today are either alcoholic or engage in damaging behaviour such as binge drinking than six years ago, and experts blame the rise on repeated tours in war zones:

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President Hugo Chavez is standing by his man in the Middle East, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iranians took to the streets Wednesday for the fifth straight day to protest his claim to a landslide reelection

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Zimbabwe is suffering “persistent and serious” human rights violations despite the formation of a unity government four months ago, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khansaid

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No Outsiders: Class Inclusivity (2019)

From the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two Birmingham primary schools starting the new autumn term will see the reinstatement of the ‘No Outsiders’ programme, dedicated to teaching LGBT rights and earlier suspended after being strongly opposed as non-age-appropriate by Muslim parents, an opposition widely interpreted as homophobic (BBC News, 3 July – bbc.in/2xrzTZZ).

The ‘No Outsiders’ programme presupposes that children have to be taught to accept diversity, whereas in reality the opposite is true. Outside the grip of parental or social indoctrination, children have no natural reason to be intolerant of others. Children have to be taught to be racist, sexist, or anti-gay. They are loaded with prejudice like a gun is loaded with bullets.

Muslims in Britain suffer their own share of discrimination, so you might imagine that such a marginalised group would be more sympathetic and respectful of other groups in the same situation (in the jargon, ‘intersectional’) and so less likely to dish out discrimination of their own. But you’d be wrong.

For example, racism is notorious in the gay community. For ‘a glaring personification of the lack of intersectionality that exists within broader gay culture’ see ‘Gay bars can be mind-bogglingly racist’ (LINK).

Gender surrender

Then there is the trans-terf war, which has ripped the LGBT community apart to the point where dialogue and compromise have become well-nigh impossible. This is partly a product of post-modernist ‘queer’ (LGBT) studies, in which the concept of gender as being socially constructed has moved the emphasis away from simply ‘owning’ identity towards ‘performing’ it, thus disappearing Alice-like down the rabbit hole to a Wonderland where anyone can identify as anything and any attempt to deny this is an oppressive act.

The fuss isn’t so much about women self-identifying as trans-men, it’s mainly the other way round. Many women are furious at what they see as a new form of male colonialism, in which men, accustomed to getting their way on everything else, now attempt to hijack womanhood itself. Others see it as an existential threat, a sinister plan to ‘deconstruct’ that womanhood out of existence. You can’t fight for equal rights if you don’t even exist.

Here is a domain where common sense has no sway. Is it reasonable for a man self-identifying as a woman to be allowed to swim in the women’s swimming areas of Hampstead Heath in London? No, you say? Yes, according to new rules from the City of London Corporation (Evening Standard, 23 May – LINK). If a man self-identifies as a woman, should s/he be entitled to enter women’s refuges? You might call that crazy, yet Women’s Aid has indeed caved into this very demand and changed their entry policy accordingly (LINK). Some situations you simply can’t win. An attempt to combat the colossal rate of violence against and rapes of trans-women in male prisons resulted in one trans-prisoner being admitted to a women’s prison and then committing several sex offences against women inmates (LINK).

Lesbians meanwhile are proposing to quit the LGBT collective (‘Get the L out’) in protest at the idea that someone with a penis must be accepted as an authentic lesbian, with the further implication that if they refuse to have sex with such a ‘lesbian’ they are being somehow oppressive.

Such protestors in turn are pejoratively labelled TERFs (Trans-Excluding Radical Feminist) by transgender activists. Do most trans-women really expect to speak for all women? Do they really have a male colonial agenda? Do they really expect lesbians to accept them as ‘dykes with dicks’? Almost certainly not. Most trans-women would just like to get through the day without being spat on or hospitalised. They are rejected as men, obviously, but women are also slamming the door on them as women. So they are treated as sideshow freaks, as something less than human, as a perfect target for violence and murder (‘Transgender hate crimes recorded by police go up 81%’, BBC News, 27 June – bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48756370).

Why has this situation blown up now? It’s partly a matter of technology. Successful transitioning from one sex to the other has not been possible until comparatively recently, so society has never really had to deal with this debate before. It raises all sorts of new questions about what we mean by gender, and whether we can continue to see things in binary categorisations (male/female, straight/gay) or whether in fact these are more like shades on a spectrum. And academic LGBT theory is running far ahead of the herd. Capitalism has only very recently started to normalise homosexuality, and then only in some places, and that has an ancient pedigree. There is really no precedent for people changing biological sex, and that is a challenge too far for those brainwashed with gender stereotypes and looking for someone easy to punch.

Now even anarchist and class-war political groups have waded in and taken up mutually hostile and hard-line positions. Liberals wanting to do the right thing are utterly perplexed. Express an opinion at your peril.

This is the war of all against all, the political nightmare of identity politics, a world of echo chambers and mutual rage, a world where everyone shouts and no one listens, where class consciousness evaporates and the working class eats itself alive. Who’s right, in all this? That’s just the point – everybody and nobody. Identity politics is never a battle of right versus wrong, it is always a tragedy of right versus right. In the multiple pile-up of discriminations capitalism engenders, nobody escapes completely innocent or unscathed.

So much for gurus

You might at least expect the Dalai Lama to rise above it all. But this widely-revered guru and living saint (and self-declared feminist), again caused a furore recently by reiterating his 2015 remarks that any female Dalai Lama ‘must be attractive, otherwise it is not much use’ and ‘[If not] people, I think prefer, not see her, that face’ (Telegraph, 2 July – LINK).

What would happen to the identity debate in socialism, a world of free association and free access, where nobody has power over anyone? There are no gurus to guide us there either. Nobody knows how gender and sexuality may evolve when society has stopped making war against itself. Perhaps there will be a continued trend towards post-humanism, as organic and machine technology converge in symbiosis. Maybe more people will want to change sex, or live as multiple sexes, whatever that means. Conversely it’s possible that the current preoccupation with sexual and gender identity will come to be seen as irrelevant, an obsessive hang-up among many others typical of the capitalist age. From our barred window looking out from the current madhouse, we can’t even say for sure what sanity looks like.

What is likely though is that people will adopt the practical limitation of freedom not licence. What this means is that you are free to do anything you like but you do not have licence to impose on the freedom of others. Anyone who objects to this is free to style themselves as an ‘oppressed minority’, however in a democracy there are always minorities, and not getting your way on everything is not the same thing as oppression.

Divided we fall

Returning to the present, the 2014 film Pride told the true story of lesbian and gay activists making common cause with striking Welsh miners who, for their part, had to confront their own entrenched homophobic attitudes. The film’s feel-good message was unequivocal – if we are workers, whether we’re gay, straight or whatever, we’re on the same side in the class war, and fighting the bosses is what brings us together. Class consciousness transcends all and unites all.

The problem is, this consciousness of being part of a class prevails best when the external class threat is felt urgently and equally by all affected workers, as in the case of a strike or a lockout. But it’s rare for a threat to be that localised and acute. The class war is not just a street battle or a strike, as the Left romanticise it. Class is really the dynamic expression of minority ownership of the means of living. We, the overwhelming majority excluded from and by this ownership, feel its force whenever we have to get up for work, tolerate our boss, pay our bills, swallow our dignity and accept our limitations.

Some workers face additional problems that come at them in different ways depending on who, when and where they are. Some of these forms may be just annoyances, but others can spell deadly danger. Sometimes they come from the police and the state, but often they come from other workers who are angry and ignorant and ready to lash out at somebody vulnerable and within reach. If you belong 100 percent to what society calls ‘normal’ then you won’t be especially vulnerable or exposed, and you might be tempted to downplay these effects as trivial, or even imaginary. But if you are exposed, they can loom so large that they fill your horizons and eclipse all other things. And here is why class consciousness begins to fracture and fall apart. When you suffer as a victim, you don’t care if you’re helping to victimise others. If you’re a battered wife, you don’t care if you’re also a racist. If you’re a male with your head under the boss’s foot, you don’t care about your attitude to women. If you’re attacked as an Asian, you don’t care if you’re also homophobic. Individual identities become locked into silos, and communication is cut off. Class consciousness is dead. Game over.

Hijacking at the intersection

If you don’t want the capitalist class to win, you have to force people out of these silos by offering a generalised view of discrimination they can all relate to. Intersectionality was an attempt to do this, by creating a common framework of overlapping or ‘intersecting’ discriminations, but which has largely been taken out of context and distorted.

The trouble is, some people are too fired up to focus on common frameworks, and will seize any excuse to promote their unique victimhood (the ‘I’m more oppressed than you’ game). As soon as you accept the idea that people really do have different experiences of discrimination, and you try to understand these differences in order to work together, they will twist this into a promotion of their own agenda.

This is not a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater, however. If your class consciousness is strong and coherent, then acknowledging as workers your different lived experiences will only make you stronger. And make no mistake, it is vital to acknowledge these different experiences, because in the past what has passed for class politics on the left has too often been the uni-dimensional preserve of a dominant identity group while other groups were ignored, marginalised or even excluded. In practice this leads to a self-perpetuating cycle in which like attracts like and the circle never widens. It’s no good if you’re attracting one person but putting off nineteen or twenty others because they fear they won’t fit in. Class consciousness, properly understood, is more than just being against capitalism and bosses, it is also about ending minority ownership and all discrimination, and it requires some positive attributes too, like inclusivity, empathy, the ability to listen and share, to criticise honestly and to be open to criticism in the same way. This is the class consciousness socialists need to create, because it’s the only kind strong enough to defeat capitalism, and that means including all workers, with nobody left outside.

Paddy Shannon

Turmoil in Tibet (1959)

From the May 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rebellion in Tibet, its draconian suppression, and the escape of the Dalai Lama, have exploded like a star-shell to illuminate a world in the Iron Curtain's dark shadow. Events in Tibet have been compared with the recent suppression in Hungary and while there is a resemblance, both revolts and the backgrounds have been reported everywhere befogged with misunderstanding or misrepresentation by people who do not seem to have a clue as to what the factors are that make society tick.

A Britisher says his piece
Mr. Hugh Richardson, the last British representative as Officer-in-Charge of the British Mission in Lhasa from 1947-1950 writing in The Observer, 5th April, 1959, gave a sincere, emotional, but woolly-headed review of the happenings and the historical background there. He said that the benefits of science conferred by the Chinese were illusory to the Tibetans when compared with the freedom to retain their old customs. He also naively berated Mr. Nehru for the part he played, “There is still no word from him of condemnation of the use of force beyond anything that an internal affair could warrant. Is such circumspection necessary or honourable?” He also makes out a case against the Chinese invasion on grounds of pure illegality.

Because Tibet has been off the beaten track of world trade, surrounded by land and without any ports conveniently available, she has been left severely alone by the great Capitalist groupings of the world whose main basis of transport is the steamship. Trade with Tibet had to be carried on with the aid of caravans for moving the merchandise, and this obsolete method renders out of the question cash crops and mining ventures, two of the great standbys of this profit-making age.

But there is a certain amount of trade with the contiguous countries, and this is to a large extent in the hands of the Tibetan nobles who, unlike the British aristocrats of last century, do not consider indulging in trade to be beneath them.

Tibet entered the Twentieth Century committed by the leanings of its ruling theocracy towards isolationism, and straining to get rid of its vassalage to Peking. The nobles wish to keep all of the profits of exploitation. The Tibetan ruling class is closely supported by the princes of the Buddhist church, who co-operate to preserve a subject-class docile, and amenable to the demands of their masters. Marx was by no means the first to realise that religion is the opiate of the people! Both British and Russian governments at that time had ambitions which extended to Tibet. But Prime Minister Arthur J. Balfour stated the British case simply, “It would be a serious misfortune to the Indian Government and a danger to our northern frontier, should Tibet fall under any European influence other than our own ” (Eastern World, December, 1956).

Tibet, a weak country, was but a pawn in the game of power politics then, as in the present fracas.

Would the Chinese Nationalists act the same ?
Chiang Kai-shek, the discredited Nationalist from his retreat in Formosa, criticised the Chinese government for their part in the affair and promised the Tibetans his support. He also proposed to organise an airlift, but the Tibetans, though they have not studied the Bible, probably know better than to lean upon a broken reed. Both the “Communist” and the Nationalist governments of China act on behalf of Chinese Capitalism. The “Communist” government of China has taken over from the Nationalists the map of China showing Tibet as being included within the country's boundaries.

But the tongue-in-cheek protestations of Chiang Kai-shek ring hollow to those who remember his activities in 1950, when the Chinese “liberated” Tibet. Lhasa's appeal of November 7th, 1950, to the United Nations for help against “the armed invasion of Tibet for the incorporation of Tibet within the fold of Chinese Communism, was presented in the United Nations, as a resolution by El Salvador. The Chiang Kai-shek delegate from Formosa opposed entering the item on the agenda on the challengeable grounds that Tibet had been part of China for 700 years.” In fact, as hollow as the sympathy for Tibet expressed by the press both here and in America. Chiang Kai-shek was allowed to have his way: neither Britain nor the United States rose to make an issue of the Tibetan nobles' right to self-determination, i.e., the right of the Tibet ruling-class to exploit the subjugated and keep the loot all to themselves. Apparent good intentions on the part of ruling-classes, when probed in the light of Socialist knowledge, so frequently appear as having economic motives. Whenever principles conflict with self-interests it seems as though it is always the principles that are jettisoned. The right to self-determination becomes the right to exploit: a rose by another name! The Tibetan government, standing alone, was forced in May, 1951, to submit to "Peaceful Liberation,” otherwise known as invasion and subjugation.

“Liberations”
The “liberation” of Tibet by the so-called Communist government of China in 1950-1 was by no means the first time that the country has seen invaders. The first Gurkha invasion from the south was in 1788, but in 1792 the Chinese government despatched an army of both Tibetans and Chinese under Chinese leadership and in the arctic cold of winter forced the Gurkhas to retire. The Chinese closed the frontier, but in 1841 an invading force from Kashmir were almost exterminated by the Tibetans. A Gurkha invasion of 1855 opened the country up to trade with the Indian sub-continent which was then governed by the British.

But Tibet, long regarded romantically by Europeans as the Land of the Lamas, is of strategic importance in the virtually New World that is Asia, and the country can be compared there much in the same way as control of the Middle East is regarded as vital by Western interests. Fairly recent events surely underline the truth of this contention. But Tibet no longer acts as a buffer zone; instead, it constitutes a forward area for Chinese penetration into South Asia.

Missiles from the Roof of the World

The Chinese are constructing airfields in Tibet. The Tibetan plateau of 12,000 foot altitude provides, in this age of jet bombers, an air base unique in the world. Calcutta is only about 550 miles from Lhasa. According to a report in the Eastern World, December, 1956, north of Tibet, through Kansu and Sinkiang, work is progressing on the Lanchow-Urumchi Railway, scheduled for completion (with a link to the Soviet Turk-Siberian Railway) in 1960. In August, 1956, Georgi Pokrovsky, a Soviet natural scientist, in a magazine article, proposed the construction of a Trans-Hymalayan railway running from the Soviet Union across Sinkiang to Kashmir and on to Delhi, thus connecting the Soviet Union, China and India by rail.

Those are all tremendous undertakings, and some of them are only projects for the future. But it is to the future that Peking and Moscow are looking, and the blueprints fit together. And in that context Tibet is being developed as a base from which China would be enabled to manoeuvre. For land power, not sea power, dominates Asia. Tibet thus becomes a factor in world strategy.

China and Tibet

Most of the 4,500,000 Tibetans actually live within the confines of China in the areas bordering on Tibet. Only about 1,000,000 live in Tibet proper, under political allegiance to Lhasa. Their social classification is roughly: 50,000 nobles and merchants, 150,000 monks, 800,000 serfs. About one-seventh of the population is in the monastaries—more than one man in four. Those who are not in the church have mostly swallowed the religious bait, hook, line and sinker, and live in subjection to the nobles. They live, imprisoned by the ties of their religious convictions.

A Reuters report published in the Far Eastern Review (November 1952) on developments in Tibet describes how the Chinese, using the Tibetan ruling-class governmental control of the population, are developing the country. As a reprisal for the Chinese occupation, the U.S.A., who are the main buyers of the wool crop (the chief item of export to the outside world), stopped purchases, in conformity with their policy of no trade with Communist countries. This brought about a minor crisis among the Tibet traders, but the Chinese met it by buying about 4 million pounds of wool for the China home market. While the Tibetan ruling-class co-operate with the Chinese government and the latter rally to their aid in time of trouble, it is only those who believe the State Capitalism of China is really Communism, that would consider these two groups to be other than two of a kind.

Industrialisation goes on apace

  Many factories, including an automatic repair plant, an iron works, bricks and tiles plants, saw mills, and a chemical plant, are now in operation. Hydro-electric or steam power stations have been built in Lhasa, Shigatse and Chamdo. Many Tibetan homes which once used yak-butter lamps or had no illumination at night at all, are today using electric light. Over 4,000 miles of motor roads have been constructed and many bridges built; some of them are remarkable feats of engineering skill. These roads link up all the major cities and towns and the principal agricultural, pastoral and handicraft areas which seven years ago were solely dependent on yak, horse and donkey caravans for the transportation of goods. They also connect Tibet with Chinghai, Sinkiang. Szechwan and other parts of China. A passenger air service is now running between Lhasa and Peking. Several airfields have been constructed both for civil and military aviation. Many towns and settlements have sprung up along the newly built highways. Nagchuka, a point along the Chinghai-Tibet highway where there were only a few cottages and tents before, today has become a town with banking, postal and telegraph, trading and health services. A free primary school has also been opened. New dwellings in great numbers have been added in Lhasa, Shigatse, Chamdo and Gynagtse. Industrial activities have given Lhasa a modern look. Its uninhabited northern outskirts are now dotted with factories and living quarters.
  More than 500 species of farm crops and vegetables have been successfully cultivated by the three agricultural experimental farms located on the high Tibetan plateau. Corn has been grown in Shigatse, nearly 12,000 feet above the sea level. Tibetans are being helped by Chinese workers to develop agriculture and livestock breeding. There are now about 80 primary schools attended by more than 6,000 pupils. Last year the first secondary school was opened. Students are given free board, clothing and books. During their study period they get pocket money. There are now three well-equipped general hospitals and several smaller hospitals and clinics in Tibet. About 4.000 Tibetans are now studying in higher institutions in Peking and other cities of China. More Tibetans are being trained locally and in China as doctors, nurses, teachers, radio-operators, tractor drivers and skilled workers.
 The China-geared economic revolution is gradually creating a new social consciousness. Radio, newspapers and cinema are gradually breaking the long-standing barrier of backwardness.

But it must not be thought that China is acting from purely altruistic motives. Tibet is rich in a range of minerals, including uranium—the raw material of atomic power and atomic bombs—according to Chinese surveys.

  China is doing a very commendable job in improving the economic conditions of Tibet. Industries are being developed, agricultural reorganisation is being carried out, the transportation and communication system is being rapidly extended, illiteracy is being removed and health improved, and, above all, mineral surveys are being conducted to utilise vast untapped resources. So far the surveys have revealed that there are more than 30 kinds of mineral resources of industrial value in Tibet. Besides precious metals, coal and iron, Tibet is said to be rich in uranium. There is no doubt that preliminary exploitation of Tibetan mineral resources will be undertaken before 1962. When the envisaged industrial revolution takes place Tibet will become an important economic unit of China. Already it has been established that about two-thirds of the northern Tibetan plateau is very good cattle grazing ground. Hence plans are afoot to make the area China’s major livestock breeding zone in the future. Specially picked Chinese families are being settled in Tibet to help the projected industrialisation of the region and to render smooth the Sino-Tibetan racial unification. The region therefore has become a reservoir for Chinese settlers. Tibet, which has an area of about 12.3 per cent, of that of China, has a total population of only about 1,200,000.

—Eastern World, August, 1958.

Chinese in Mongolia—a foretaste of happenings in Tibet

Mongolia bordering China in the north has already experienced a full-dress rehearsal of what is now taking place in Tibet. The former country, also remote, with a lama dominated population, has already had a taste of "liberation,” Chinese style. Mongolia, a vast country dominated by its cattle baron aristocracy, who look askance at the teeming Chinese settlers. As in Tibet, some are engaged in mining. The coal deposits there, for instance, are estimated at 2,000 million tons. Chinese agriculturalists are swarming in, turning the ancient open pasture lands into farms. Mass trials of Mongolians and killing off the disaffected have been the order of the day, and make a mockery of Article 72 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China dealing with the protection of minorities.

In Mongolia as in Tibet when economic motives beckon, all other considerations have to give way, and the Chinese government behave like any old-time colonial power, except that they falsely act in the name of Communism. 

Who are the transgressors in Tibet ?

The Chinese authorities, probably feeling more secure in their grip of Tibet, and therefore more independent of the services of the Tibetan ruling-clique, had begun clamping on taxes, especially on the monasteries, which have tremendous influence, and had never before been taxed. The Tibetan court, steeped in traditional ways of thought, probably found that a conversion of their feudal economy, almost overnight, into a colonial appendage of a Capitalist power, was a bit too much to stomach, and that they could no longer co-operate, and so they went whilst they still had the chance to get away.

The Dalai Lama and his retinue has been reported as having crossed the Indian frontier, no doubt with heavy hearts, but also with a caravan loaded with gold and jewels. Moreover, it appears that the contents of his palace, reported as having been looted, are insured in India for a vast sum. The Indian government are considering whether they will allow him to build a palace there. Whilst the Dalai Lama may feel miserable he will, apparently, at least be able to be miserable in comfort.

But what is the lot of those who have been left behind: Newspapers report that practically all the young able-bodied men in Lhasa have been separated from their families and driven off by the Chinese apparently to forced labour camps. The Chinese appear to be trying to close the frontier, when, liquidation, a euphemism for extermination, will become the order of the day. The sum total of human suffering there mounts up. Once again, there is a resemblance between the fairly recent events in Hungary, in the plight of the refugees, who, for the moment, are fleeing across the frontiers. Once again, there is a break-up of families and the horror of both young and old at being uprooted and driven out, but this is an almost continuous process in a class-dominated society. The Tibetan refugees now join the grim procession: before them the Dutch from Indonesia, the Hungarians, the 900,000 Arab refugees in the Middle East, the Muslims who fled from India, the Hindus from Pakistan and the continuous stream from East Germany. This column of spectres will go on, it seems, while Capitalism lasts.

The trouble in Tibet is a revolt of the feudal rulers against the imposed rule of State-Capitalist China—these are the transgressors in Tibet. Whichever side wins, the underprivileged on either side will still continue to be exploited, even though serfs become wage-slaves. Tibet compares with Hungary in that, once again, it is a quarrel between ruling-cliques and is not worth the shedding of one drop of workers' blood on either side.

Frank Offord

Protests in Tibet (1988)

From the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

In October there was a series of riots and demonstrations in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, in which several thousand people took part and perhaps a dozen were killed. The violence was directed against the Chinese-run government and against ordinary Chinese who are sent to work in Tibet. The Chinese rulers responded with a show of military force, imprisonments and expulsion of journalists. amounting to the imposition of a police state.

According to official government policy, the Tibetans form one of the 54 "minority nationalists" who, together with the majority Han Chinese, constitute the inhabitants of China. The minorities, who are primarily distinguished in terms of language, make up only six per cent of the population, though this means over 60 million people. The Tibetans number getting on for four million, about half of whom live, together with a smallish number of Chinese migrants, in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. This supposedly means that Tibet is autonomous in internal affairs but its relations to other parts of China and other countries are determined by the Chinese government in Beijing. In fact such autonomy is a sham as, quite apart from the lack of political democracy throughout China, nearly all important posts in Tibet are held by Hans and not by Tibetans.

Most of the minority nationality areas are in the backward and isolated lands around China's borders, which often gives them strategic importance. Many are also sources, or potential sources, of raw materials — in Tibet's case, minerals such as uranium and plutonium and also timber. So for both military and economic reasons many new roads have been built into and across the inhospitable Tibetan plateau, bringing in tourists as well as soldiers.

We can leave it to the nationalists of all varieties to decide whether Tibet "ought to" belong to China. Certainly it was for centuries a theocracy ruled by a king-cum-pope. the Dalai Lama, regarded by the faithful as a reincarnation of Buddha. Lamaism is a variant of Buddhism, involving a massive religious bureaucracy run by so-called monks who were quite prepared to kill and torture in order to maintain their rule. The ordinary peasants were virtually serfs, oppressed by the priests and landowners and mentally stultified by their uncomplaining acceptance of Buddhism.

The Chinese "Communist” Party gained power in the rest of China in 1949 and in Tibet the following year. Their policy of introducing state capitalism was not at first pursued very actively throughout most of Tibet, which was far from China's major population centres but gradually anti-Chinese sentiment (on nationalist, religious and economic grounds) built up. In 1959 there was a large-scale revolt in Tibet, put down by Chinese troops with great loss of life, and the Dalai Lama fled to exile in India. Land was then confiscated and redistributed, industries were started and many Han workers brought in to help run them. The "Cultural Revolution" saw much destruction of monasteries, mostly by young Tibetans, in what are now seen by the government as regrettable excesses.

Tibet is now used by the Chinese ruling class as a source of cheap and abundant labour and raw materials. Goods such as dried milk and leather shoes are made in Tibet and sold elsewhere in China or exported. Vast areas of natural forest are being denuded of timber. Religious feelings remain strong and traditional-style worship is still practised. Few Tibetans speak Chinese and fewer of the Hans sent to Tibet learn Tibetan.

The October protests were probably triggered off by a number of causes. The "reforming" policies of the Chinese government under Deng Xiaoping have led to greater contacts with abroad, which in Tibet's case mainly means overseas tourists (there's now a Holiday Inn in Lhasa). At least some Tibetans now have some knowledge of the outside world and hopes of their views being reported there. The Dalai Lama's visit to the United States in September must have focused their attention and many still regard him as a living god.

But above all, life for the ordinary Tibetans is just plain hard, with no legitimate means of protest. They must work long hours and can afford only poor-quality food. Alas many cling obsessively to their traditional faith, spending large parts of their pitiful wages on religious items and performing prodigious feats of prostration. A recent rainbow and a solar eclipse were widely seen as omens for the end of Chinese rule in Tibet.

It is not clear whether the Tibetan protestors simply wanted an end to Chinese occupation. a return to the pre-1949 situation, or what. No doubt there are various different strands among the protests, including monks anxious for the restoration of religious power and ex-landlords wishing to become part of the ruling class again. But it is clear enough that the view of many ordinary Tibetans that their problems are caused by the Chinese-run regime is wrong-headed. A change of rulers will not lead to liberation — whether in Tibet, South Africa or Nicaragua.

Paul Bennett

Not Half (2017)

Book Review from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Why the Dalai Lama Is a Socialist: Buddhism and the Compassionate Society'. By Terry Gibbs, (Zed Books £12.99)

He isn’t, of course, but that does not mean this book is without value. The eye-catching title aside, there is relatively little here about the Dalai Lama, and the book is really about how some forms of Buddhism (which is often described as a philosophy rather than a religion) make similar-seeming claims to Marxism.

The Dalai Lama has in fact described himself as ‘half-Marxist, half-Buddhist’, but all the ‘Marxist’ part of this seems to mean is being concerned with equality and the condition of the majority. Some Buddhist views, it is claimed, deal with topics such as alienation and ideology that are important topics within Marxism too. Buddhism argues that people experience themselves as alienated and see nature and other people as things to be manipulated. Alienation, Gibbs suggests, is an inevitable result of living in a class society and, among other things, it motivates people’s consumption habits, such as always wanting the best and latest version of some gadget. Workers are deluded, in Buddhist terms, and have a false consciousness in Marxist terms (though Gibbs seems unaware that Marx never used the term ‘false consciousness’). But it is not clear that the Buddhist perspective adds anything, or that Marxism and Buddhism are really that similar, other than superficially.

There is a brief acknowledgement that Buddhist movements have contributed to suffering, but no reference to, for instance, the slaughter of muslim Rohingyas in Burma. A useful discussion deals with coltan, a mineral found in smartphones, which is produced in appalling conditions in Central Africa.

As for the kind of society that should replace capitalism, Gibbs is not at all clear, though a reference to ‘socialist Cuba’ is hardly reassuring. She also advocates a sustainable social system: ‘Such a global society would be marked by democratic processes that affirm mutuality, horizontality and respect as well as recognize our interdependence as the various cultures, races, religions, species and ecosystems sharing this planet.’ A guiding principle of this system would be ‘big C compassion’, which seems to mean being engaged with other humans, non-human animals and the rest of nature; perhaps this is what described also as a ‘sense of universal responsibility’.

As this last point suggests, this book is all a bit vague, and it is clear that Buddhism involves a number of different versions, many of them extremely mystical. Moreover, there is more to creating a truly democratic and sustainable society than showing compassion, whether with a big or little ‘c’.     

Paul Bennett

World View: Tibet – from feudal theocracy to a market economy (2003)

From the January 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prior to AD 600, when Buddhism first began to penetrate Tibet its central doctrine had already been perverted into what came to be called Lamaism. The idea of a saving Buddha who reappears every 5,000 years as a man, and who through successive reincarnations has gained perfection, was being vulgarised into a phantom hovering between heaven and earth, attended by a host of demons. Moreover, the discipline imposed by Buddha of conversion by means of meditation had largely given place to a formal monasticism. This degeneration had, since the religion established itself in Tibet, advanced through its contact with the original demon-worship which, for a time, succeeded in driving Buddhism underground. By the 15th and 16th centuries the metamorphosis into Lamaism was complete.

A Dalai Lama, who is supposed to be the reincarnated Buddha of India, was at once a king and a High Priest. He ruled despotically in both civil and religious affairs, with an ordered series of “spiritual” officers and monks. At one time, about one man in every six or seven was a monk. The whole force of the Tibetan state was directed towards obtaining revenues which maintained the monasteries, their land, and the privileged lamas or officials. When a Dalai Lama dies, and his successor is elected, he in turn becomes a Buddha.

In 1897, a British explorer, A. Henry Savage Landor, spent about six harrowing months in the country. On his return to Britain he wrote two large volumes entitled: In The Forbidden Land – An account of a journey in Tibet, Capture by the Tibet Authorities, Imprisonment, torture, and Ultimate Release. (Victorian explorers rarely wrote short books with snappy titles.)

Of the lamaseries (monasteries), Landor observed that they are usually very rich, and that the Lamas

“are not backward in learning how to exhort money from the ignorant worshippers under pretences of all kinds. Besides attending to their religious functions, the Lamas are traders at large, carrying on a smart business, and charging a very high interest rate, which falls every month. If this is not paid, all the property of the borrower is confiscated, and if this proves insufficient to repay the loan the debtor becomes a slave of the monastery”.

The Lamas, noted Landor, lived in comparative luxury. And, he added:

“The larger lamaseries receive a yearly Government allowance, and considerable sums are collected from the oblations of the faithful, while other moneys are obtained by all sorts of devices which, in any country less religious than Tibet, would be considered hardly honourable and often even altogether criminal. To anyone acquainted with Tibet, it is a well-known fact that, except in larger towns, nearly all the people besides brigands and Lamas are absolutely poor, while the monks themselves and their agents live and prosper on the fat of the land. The masses are maintained in complete ignorance, and seldom is a layman found who can write or even read. Thus everything has to go through the Lamas' hands before it can be sanctioned.”

The lamaseries and the Lamas, and all the property belonging to them, were absolutely free from all taxes and dues to the state. Each monastery had a number of “depraved Lamas” who were slaves of the Grand Lama. Indeed, as early as the tenth century,

“Powerful monastic orders became major players in the fragmented power structure. Feudal leaders sent their sons into Buddhist institutions as a way of ensuring the maintenance of family authority. These local noble families became an increasingly strong force in the monasteries. Often the position of abbot was no longer chosen from among the monks, but was passed down within families from uncle to nephew . . . By the 13th century monastic dynasties controlled much of Tibet” (Lee Feigon, Demystifying Tibet).

Very little had changed by as late as the beginning of the 20th century.

During the latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Tibet's trade, principally in wool, but also in salt, gold and silver, increased considerably, despite the fact that there were no roads in the country. Many of the traders, however, were Nepalese, Chinese or Indian. Tibetan farmers and herdsmen exchanged their products, sometimes using various currencies, for industrially-produced commodities. Nevertheless, commodity production was, as yet, far from universal in Tibet. Most production was in the form of handicrafts or for personal and family use. And prior to 1950, there were still 2,5000 monasteries in the country.

Imperialist rivalries

But by the end of the 19th century, Tibet had become a focus of imperialist rivalries. The Dalai Lama began to edge the country closer to an alliance with Tsarist Russia, whilst the Panchen Lama favoured China. The British feared a Russian plot to undermine their domination of India and elsewhere in Asia. However, by 1906, the British largely gave up what they had previously gained, except for a number of trade missions and, sometime later, three permanent Postal Agencies. China continued to send their armed forces into eastern Tibet.

In 1913 the Dalai Lama had fewer than 3,000 ill-trained troops to combat the Chinese incursions, or to quash internal rebellions and banditry. But shortly after, Britain supplied the Dalai Lama with 5,000 modern rifles as well as military training for the Tibetan army. In 1917 the Tibetans defeated a Chinese force in Kham, and extended their border as far as the Upper Yangtze river. Besides the Dalai Lama's modern army there was Tibet's older armed forces provided by the ruling monasteries, armed only with bows and arrows, spears and a few 17th-century muzzle loaders. Of the situation, Feigon commented:

“the contrast between the two armies had begun to excite opposition. Most of the money needed to fund the new army's expansion came from a land tax. Virtually all land in Tibet was owned by either aristocrats or monasteries and was worked by serfs. The more the need to support the military grew, the more taxes were increased on these estates. In effect, the old aristocracy was paying for the army that would in turn diminish the nobility's authority. Moreover, military leaders often came from families of low social position . . . These new leaders did not always approve of the nobility's traditional privileges . . . Like Tibet's aristocracy, its religious establishment opposed the army's growing influence. Before the twentieth century, almost all government revenues funded the monasteries, not the military. Monks became resentful of the army . . . The foreign manners and dress of the new troops exacerbated the situation.”

A destroyed monastery: the Chinese hoped to break the power of the lamas by breaking their hold over Tibetan minds

By 1920 the animosity grew strongest in eastern Tibet, where the Lhasa government had stationed 10,000 troops, virtually the entire army; and where the taxes imposed were the most severe. Conflict erupted between the Dalai Lama, who commanded the new army, and the Panchen Lama who was the owner of a large estate. The two had long been at odds. In 1922 the Panchen Lama appealed to the British to help him resist the Dalai Lama. When the British refused, the Panchen Lama fled to China, where he remained for the next fourteen years. The so-called reformers, led by the Dalai Lama, soon began to fight among themselves, and the reforms ground to a halt by 1925. By 1930 the Tibetan government lost eastern Tibet to the local Chinese warlord. The Dalai Lama was forced to reduce the size of the army; and by 1932, the Chinese had pushed the Tibetans back west of the Yangtze river. “As the Tibetan government weakened and the Chinese government strengthened, Tibet assumed an increasingly vulnerable position” (Feigon). In 1933 Britain established a new, permanent mission to Lhasa in an attempt to counter Chinese influence. They even tried to introduce golf and soccer to Tibet. And shortly after, Himmler, on behalf of Nazi Germany, sent an expedition, led by Ernst Schaefer, to Tibet in an attempt to prove that the Tibetans were a lost Aryan race.

From 1927 until 1949, there was a civil war between the Nationalist forces of the Koumintang (KMT) and the Chinese Red Army, led by the "Communist" Party. By 1949, the Chinese Red Army had driven the KMT from the Chinese mainland, and the Communist Party now controlled the country. As direct British influence had been removed from India by 1947, so Mao Tse-tung decided that time was ripe for China to assert her authority over Tibet and in 1950 the Red Army invaded. They met little resistance from the Tibetan army, although the Khams, a fierce, warlike tribe, gave the Chinese forces some trouble. Fearful of exile, the Tibetan establishment pressured the Dalai Lama to remain in the country. On 28 September the Tibetan National Assembly ratified the agreement, and the Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa and the Potala Palace.

During the early part of the 1950s the Chinese authorities did not control internal policy in Tibet. However although they refrained from interfering in central Tibet they began to transform eastern and outer Tibet. In 1954 the Dalai Lama accepted an invitation to visit China and, against the advice of his ministers, stayed there for almost one year. Whilst there, he seems to have been influenced by Maoist ideas. On his return, he wanted to divide the monastic lands among the Tibetan peasants, but was surprised when the Chinese authorities opposed his plan and supported the Tibetan landowning class. The Chinese constructed an airfield 60 miles north of Lhasa. They also began to cut down the forests, for timber, in the eastern part of the country. Many former Tibetan serfs now became wage-workers, employed by Chinese contractors in the timber camps and on road building. Numerous nomads began to settle down. By 1956 there was unrest in Kham and other areas of eastern Tibet. In the words of John Prados:

“Economic development, industrial, production, even the introduction of money, required fundamental changes in a society that had used barter as a primary form of exchange . . . The Chinese situation worsened in Kham . . . the people rose up against the lowland Chinese. Khampa partisans managed to block the Kamgting road at three points . . . Kham and Ambo were the provinces the Chinese attempted to split off from Tibet, calling them Inner Tibet and incorporating them into the Chinese provinces of Sikiang and Tsinghai . . . by 1956, unrest was spreading” (Presidents' Secret Wars).

Unsurprisingly, the United States assisted the revolt. In 1956 the CIA supplied the rebels with weapons and other equipment; it trained commando squads, first in Taiwan and then in America, where it conducted special classes and, later, smuggled and parachuted Tibetan commandos into eastern Tibet. The Dalai Lama, helped by the CIA, fled to India, but returned shortly after. By 1957 there was open warfare in Kham. The Chinese airforce bombed a number of villages; and the CIA sent more and more arms into eastern Tibet. In 1959 unrest spread to Lhasa, where there were large demonstrations against the Chinese occupation. These were violently crushed. Again, the Dalai Lama fled to India.

The Chinese government sent in troops in large numbers and took complete control of the country. It confiscated land owned by “rebels” and officially abolished serfdom. War was declared on the monasteries, and many monks, nuns and former aristocrats were jailed. Thousands fled to India and Nepal. The CIA supported the rebels well into the 1970s. On 9 September 1965 Tibet became an “Autonomous Region” of the People's Republic of China.

Industrial and radical change

During the so-called Cultural Revolution (1966-77) the Chinese Red Guards destroyed 80 percent of central Tibet's monasteries. By 1978 only eight monasteries remained out of two thousand. Many were destroyed brick by brick. The political and economic power of the monks was completely destroyed. In 1990 the population of the Autonomous Region of Tibet was unofficially put at 2.5 million of whom 100,000 were Chinese (Han) workers. Unofficially, there were, and probably still are, between 100,000 and 250,000 Chinese troops in the country.

By the standards of Western Europe or North America, Tibet is not as yet heavily industrialised. Nevertheless, capitalism and a market economy now prevail. In 1992 the Chinese expanded Lhasa airport. The government approved 41 joint-partner enterprises with Nepal, Malaysia, Germany and a number of other countries. Export enterprises, including ones specialising in traditional handicrafts, grew. Indeed, according the Lee Feigon, “Chinese businessmen and manufacturers have even copied traditional Tibetan handicrafts, and begun to mass-produce them.” Han entrepreneurs have pioneered many investments, opening businesses throughout Tibet. By 1994 the Tibet Trust and Investment Company's shares were traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Although not on a large scale, Tibet now has an iron and steel industry, and motor repair factories and factories manufacturing farm implements. Gyangtze has a large carpet factory, mass-producing “traditional” Tibetan carpets.

According to John Gittings, writing in the Guardian (17 June 2001), the Chinese authorities in Tibet aim to make the country “a market economy which will allow private enterprises to become the most dynamic factor in Tibet”. Gittings adds, however, that economic reforms in Lhasa “have created a city where corruption co-exists with hard-nosed commercialism, where prostitution thrives in areas previously better known as places of spiritual pilgrimage and where citizens may own computers and wide-screen TVs, but not necessarily toilets or running water”. The Chinese admitted last year that the standard of living of “ethnic Tibetans”, including “farmers and herdsmen”, was only half the national Chinese average.

In 1990 the exiled Dalai Lama accused China of “wantonly cutting down the vast forests, strip-mining the soil, overgrazing the plains, and using agricultural pesticides and chemical fertilizers that have destroyed the delicate ecology of his (sic) country”. He proposed that Tibet “should become the planet's largest natural, reserve”, and that the country “could return to the simple life of its ancestors”. What a hope! Tibet, including the so-called Autonomous Region, and the eastern part of the country incorporated into China proper, is now wholly an integral component of the world market, capitalist, system. There can be no turning back to the “simple life” of feudalism.

Peter E. Newell

Pieces Together: One To Miss (2009)

From the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

ONE TO MISS

"His birth was marked by a double rainbow and a new star, he hit 11 holes-in-one in his first game of golf, finishing 38 under par, and throughout his life he has performed heroic feats impossible for mere mortals. When he shouts, ‘huge storms happen’. The life of North Korea's ailing leader, Kim Jong-il, has long been extravagantly window-dressed by the state's diligent chroniclers, but now it is about to get the full regal treatment with a new movie chronicling his exploits from childhood to living legend. North Korea's state media said this week that the first part of a multi-series documentary about Mr Kim's birth, childhood and early achievements, when he developed ‘military ideas and theories and tactics of [his father] President Kim Il-sung’, has already been produced. Although other propaganda movies extol Mr Kim's boundless virtues – one records that he came down from the heavens accompanied by a huge snowstorm – this will be the first to "comprehensively deal ... with his revolutionary exploits", said the Korean Central News Agency." (Independent, 17 July)

GOD AS A HISTORY MAKER

"The Christian right is making a fresh push to force religion onto the school curriculum in Texas with the state's education board about to consider recommendations that children be taught that there would be no United States if it had not been for God. Members of a panel of experts appointed by the board to revise the state's history curriculum, who include a Christian fundamentalist preacher who says he is fighting a war for America's moral soul, want lessons to emphasise the part played by Christianity in the founding of the US and that religion is a civic virtue. ... One of the panel, David Barton, founder of a Christian heritage group called WallBuilders, argues that the curriculum should reflect the fact that the US Constitution was written with God in mind including that ‘there is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature’, that ‘there is a creator’ and ‘government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual’....Another of the experts is Reverend Peter Marshall, who heads his own Christian ministry and preaches that Hurricane Katrina and defeat in the Vietnam war were God's punishment for sexual promiscuity and tolerance of homosexuals." (Guardian, 22 July)

MORE RELIGIOUS NONSENSE

"The Dalai Lama may not be the first person who comes to mind for business advice but, as the Buddhist monk wrote in his new book, capitalism can profit from Buddhism's principles and values. In The Leader's Way, published this month by Broadway Books, the spiritual leader of Tibet wrote that both business and Buddhism attach importance to happiness and making the right decisions, and a company without ‘happy employees, customers and shareholders will ultimately fail.’ Citing Buddhist basics such as good intentions, a calm mind free of negative thoughts and a realization that nothing is permanent, the Dalai Lama and co-author Laurens van den Muyzenberg tackle timely issues such as corporate compensation, malfeasance and the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. … ‘When I started this project, I was not sure that companies could act in such a way that they could deserve a thoroughly good reputation. Now I am convinced that they can,’ the Dalai Lama wrote. Profit, for example, is ‘a fine aim,’ but not the main role of business, which is ‘to make a contribution to the well-being of society at large,’ he wrote." (Yahoo News, 28 July)