For almost as long as it has existed, China has been one of, if not *the* most introverted civilizations on the planet. Although I’m sure that the communist government has done a great deal of “cultural engineering,” I simply don’t foresee any sort of massive world conquest.

My hypothesis is that the communist government is playing things by the book. Marx predicted that every civilization will go through a period of successful capitalistic growth. The Chinese government is currently allowing this to happen, milking the country’s vast supply of cheap labor in the process. Once the balance of trade even remotely begins to shift against China, they’ll close their doors, and begin to focus inward once again.

Marxist theory, and the remainder of China’s history as a civilization both predict this.

The world is perfect as it is.

What a load of privileged bullshit!

Last I checked we’re grappling with scarcity; in many places fundamental scarcity like food, potable water, and shelter from the elements. Unless you’ve got a Star Trek replicator or a way to convert the naturally existing heavy water into a sustainably controlled fusion reaction, our world is far from perfect.

I think that was a mantra, not a statement of fact.

The country is going to be filled with the world’s media and hundreds of thousands of spectators bearing all sorts of gadgety goodness. There’s no way that the the Games are not going to expose all sorts of totalitarian nonsense. Watching the Government try to cover it up is going to be more entertaining than watching the athletes wheeze and compete!

Tell me, I’m all agog, what are you trying to say???

Anyhow, I’m sure all of this is coming out of the Tibetan’s frustration with the huge swell of Han Chinese with the opening of the recent train into Tibet across the Qinghai Plateau. This is what they mean by the sudden swell of ethnocide… it’s simply people using the train… looking for more work. I fully suspect is really a local problem about migrant labor disputes, as opposed to Beijing suddenly cracking down on protests.

China is stupid in that they don’t have anyone really explaining this sort of thing to the world… as their knee-jerk reaction is to always suppress news and hide the situation. I wish someone could get the friggin’ story straight. And, even H.H.D.L. said this is not a reason to boycott the Olympics. I fully agree, this is a domestic dispute, and he’s not going to do anything to stop it, nor should he.

China very much deserves to host the Olympic games. It’s the first time since the 1968 Olympics were held in Mexico City that a developing country hosted the games. As an event, it’s been a tremendous boon to the environmental “movement” in the country and has brought the infrastructure in Beijing up to where it should have been. I really only see it as a good thing. And for cripes sake… considering the list of human rights abuses perpetrated by the U.S. in another countries and in the name of democracy… you honestly think we could stand up to the same scrutiny? Where do you draw the line? So, don’t think for a second China doesn’t deserve to host the games… it’ll be a defining moment for China and a point of optimism for a lot of other developing nations.

This is direct breach of undertakings given to the IOC

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/03/20/2196023.htm

You had to have been there, Noen needs a bum pat, not an ass kick right now.

1.Get list of Olympic sponsors.
2.Write letters stating that they’re being boycotted for aligning themselves with an oppressive totalitarian government oppressing the Tibetan people (and more besides).
3.???
4.World Peace

The 1968 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XIX Olympiad, were celebrated in Mexico City in 1968. Mexico City beat out bids from Detroit, Buenos Aires and Lyon to host the Games in 1963. The Games were preceded by the Tlatelolco massacre, in which hundreds of students were killed by security forces ten days before the opening day.

The games are going on with or without a boycott. For every televised event, there are dozens of non-televised ones, so they can fill air time with archery trials if they have to. As for empty venues…if there’s one thing that China is not lacking, it’s people to fill the stands.

What would happen if athletes took off their jackets at the opening ceremony to reveal Free Tibet tee shirts? I almost believe that the army would open fire on them. Realistically, a lot of athletes will wear pro-Tibet garb throughout the two weeks. Will they be detained and harassed? Is China capable of resisting the temptation to repress someone who gets on their nerves? They have yet to demonstrate that kind of restraint.

I’m in full agreement with Antinous @24 that not buying crap you don’t need is the best way to go, and buying non-Chinese equivalents is frequently possible. But not so with electronics, which for some of us are necessities of life–not toys but business and scientific tools, as necessary to the good we try to do in the world as a hammer is to a carpenter’s.

It seems to me that a good place to start with the whole boycotting China thing might be to starting writing Dell, Toshiba, HP, Motorola, et al and asking them for certified non-Chinese products.

I would happily pay more for non-Chinese electronics, but as near as I can tell they simply aren’t available at any price.

What a boycott tries to achieve is a shift in consumer attitude. Even if Chinese products are unavoidable, the timing of the the purchasing decision is still significant. Our complex global economic life is also vulnerable to when things happen, not just if they do finally happen. Money is always lent and borrowed at interest. Delays in moving product because your customer is exhausting other avenues has just as much impact as them not buying at all.

1) “You are not informed”. This is an old Soviet-apologist favourite, going right back to “I’ve been over to see the future, and it works!” It is a lovely blanket dismissal that only works on the conscientious and honest, who are genuinely interested in being part of a reality-based community. It has not effect on the people who deploy it, because of course their consciousness has already been raised so they are “informed” in the only way that matters: on the official party line of the dominant ideology.

2) “Worse has been done by someone else somewhere else.” Again, pure Soviet-era stuff, hardly smelling musty at all. No one has ever been able to explain to me why this “argument” is anything other than a non sequitur unless you accept collective identity and collective guilt, which I don’t. But in a global forum like BoingBoing, the accusation that it is “us” who are guilty of some undoubted crime is simply wrong. For example, I am a Canadian, and to blame me, even a little bit, for the American atrocities in Iraq is just wrong.

Please do go ahead and blame me for the state of native reserves in Canada, though, which is pretty appalling in some places. But show me how such conditions, subject to daily hand-wringing and detailed articles in our national media, and to open and informed debate both within and without Parliament at both the national and provincial level, in any way relates to the violent suppression of news about ethnic protests in Chinese-occupied Tibet.

3) “Tibetans should be grateful for the modernization of their country by the Chinese occupying power.” This is the last-gasp argument of colonial occupiers everywhere, and very similar to the late-stage claims of the that talking head from Princeton at the very end of the Cold War that the industrial modernization of Russia under Party control would stand as a lasting positive legacy that justified the tens of millions dead in the gulags no matter what happened. This claim that gratitude is required does not in itself constitute anything resembling an argument, of course, but the unstated premises seem to be that:

a) If the Chinese occupying power had not killed a million Tibetans in the past fifty years Tibet would still be locked in a medieval theocracy.

b) Not being locked in a medieval theocracy is a better thing than being alive.

c) Dead people ought to be grateful for getting better things.

d) Grateful people ought not to riot or protest against the people who killed them.

e) Therefore Chinese occupying power should be free from riots or protests by the million dead Tibetans they have killed in the course of the past 50 years.

I might have left a few steps out, but I think that’s the gist of it.

No one is defending the state of Tibet as it was in 1950, any more than Gandhi was defending the situation in India prior to British imperial rule. Gandhi was indeed grateful, as were many Indians, for the benefits of British civilization, just as many children are grateful for all they have received from their parents.

Today, ethnic Tibetans are asking for their country back, just as Indians did half a century ago. Perhaps that makes them ungrateful. The Chinese occupying power has responded by blacking out news from the region, and doing god knows what beneath that darkness.

None of the apologists here have done anything that comes close to justifying the actions of the Chinese occupying power in Tibet.

Defying a Chinese government directive not to gather in groups, monks at Tongren in Qinghai Province burned incense on Sunday to protest a crackdown against demonstrations in Tibet.

*

Article Tools Sponsored By
By DAVID LAGUE
Published: March 18, 2008

BEIJING — China raised the death toll from the violent anti-Chinese protests in Tibet last week to 16 on Monday, but said its security forces had avoided using lethal force, countering Tibetan exile groups that said at least 80 had been killed.

Related
China Tries to Thwart News Reports From Tibet (March 18, 2008)
Times Topics: Tibet

Scattered protests by ethnic Tibetans continued in the neighboring Chinese provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan, as well as in Gansu. As the paramilitary police and troops were deployed to quash those protests, international pressure mounted on China to show restraint in dealing with dissent in advance of the Olympic Games, to be held in Beijing in August.

Demonstrations also reached Beijing, with about 80 students at the Central University for Minorities staging a sit-down protest on the campus late Monday night.

University officials were negotiating with the students, witnesses said, but failed to persuade them to disperse.

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” —Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

As far as electronics go, I have not checked recently but LG products used to be entirely Korean made with Korean componentry. I know that doesn’t help with computers and the like, but it’s a start.

Takuan, quoting people who uncritically accept the Dalai Lama’s numbers does not help your cause. From Parenti: “The official 1953 census–six years before the Chinese crackdown–recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.” He footnotes that, if you want to check his sources. (See link @8)

Michael Parenti, Peter Hessler who wrote the Atlantic Monthly article, and I are not Chinese.

Tom @114, your claim, “ethnic Tibetans are asking for their country back,” suggests there are no class issues at work here. Here’s something from the Washington Post, a conservative paper that has no love for the Chinese:

Tibet’s former slaves say they, too, don’t want their former masters to return to power.”I’ve already lived that life once before,” said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshiped the Dalai Lama, but added, “I may not be free under Chinese Communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave.”

China never asked. China permits no vote. China kills any who suggest a vote.

What do the uncritical China supporters have to say about voting?