Say Anything Blog

My first reaction was to snort and say, yeah, right.

The Chinese have Tibet in the grip of an iron fist and will be as ruthless - even more ruthless - than they were in putting down the uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Let’s see - angry monks against tanks and soldiers with no moral issues with firing into crowds. Hmmmm. Tibet - backwards and timid, won’t have a chance.

But then I read the rest of Anne Applebaum’s column and she brings up some interesting points. One of which, by the way, is an obvious one - we didn’t think the Soviet Union would crumble as fast as it did, either. She also makes a comparison with Czarist Russia and others that fell apart because of the rebellion their own citizens and, in some cases, of “client” nations:

Cellphone photographs and videos from Tibet, blurry and amateurish, are circulating on the Internet. Some show clouds of tear gas; others, burning buildings and shops; still others, monks in purple robes, riot police and confusion. Watching them, it is impossible not to remember the cellphone videos and photographs sent out from burning Rangoon only six months ago. Last year Burma, this year Tibet. Next year, will YouTube feature shops burning in Xinjiang, home of China’s Uighur minority? Or riot police rounding up refugees along the Chinese-North Korean border?

That covert cellphones have become the most important means of transmitting news from certain parts of East Asia is no accident. Lhasa, Rangoon, Xinjiang and North Korea are all places dominated, directly or indirectly, by the same media-shy, publicity-sensitive Chinese regime. Though we don’t usually think of it that way, China is in fact a vast, anachronistic, territorial empire, within which one dominant ethnic group, the Han Chinese, rules a host of reluctant “captive nations.” To keep the peace, the Chinese use methods not so different from those once used by Austria-Hungary or czarist Russia: political manipulation, repression by secret police and military force.

But then, modern China bears surprising resemblances to the empires of the past in many other ways, too. Like its Soviet imperial predecessor, for example, China encompasses both an “inner” empire, of which Tibet and Xinjiang are the most prominent components, as well as an “outer” empire, consisting most notably of its Burmese and North Korean clients. Like its French and British predecessors, the Chinese empire must wrestle constantly with nations whose languages, religions and customs differ sharply from those of the imperial power and whose behavior is therefore unpredictable. And like all of its predecessors, the Chinese imperial class cares deeply about the pacification of the imperial periphery, more so than one might think.

Interesting article. Click over and read the whole thing.

Of course, it could be wishful thinking on the part of the author - and me. But then, once upon a time we all wished the Soviet Union would just go away.

And it did.