Imagine a college campus without political debate. A campus where attitudes towards the government's policies are not merely a passive acceptance without question but enthusiastic support. A campus where not only the Republican Club is a relevant institution, but so popular that you yourself are a member.
You may find all these horrors on a Chinese campus, according to Matthew Forney of the International Herald Tribune. "Educated young Chinese, far from being embarrassed or upset by their government's human rights record, rank among the most patriotic, establishment-supporting people you'll meet," he said.
It's debatable to even say that these youth are "educated," given Forney's description of their education system, "which can accurately be described as indoctrination … Students learn the neat calculation that Chairman Mao's tyranny was '30 percent wrong,' then the subject is declared closed."
It disturbs me that the pro-PRC protestors on campus exhibit a similar love for Big Brother without such a syllabus. Not because my last name is McCarthy or that my precious bodily fluids may be infiltrated, but because such idiotic nationalists conflate economic progress with a successful society.
Forney quotes a Beijing human rights lawyer who said "Young Chinese have no sympathy for Tibet."
The People's Republic's phenomenal economic growth has often been at the expense of the people. Relatively primitive coal power provides 80 percent of China's electricity, belching pollution so severe that the International Olympic Committee voiced concern over the health risk to athletes in Beijing.
Power plants and factories in the area have been shut down in an attempt to clear the air, but only for the temporary benefit of their international guests.
Such are the consequences of a government run by the jingoistic morons their education system raises. At least the aging current generation of Chinese leadership has some awareness of Mao's worst excesses and the millions who died in consequence.
Those groomed to replace them have neither those experiences, nor much knowledge of the Tiananmen Square massacre and what that represented. One can hardly blame the Free Tibet movement's agitation for independence from an obviously doomed economic and political system except those in the Free Tibet movement who are morons themselves. Self- determination, along with various incarnations of Communism, created a generous portion of the previous century's misery and continues to plague us today.
When combined with the cliquish mentality of a nation state, self determination succeeded in thoroughly obliterating peace and security throughout much of Europe, Africa and Asia.
What intrinsic right do a people sharing a common language and mythology have to their own separate political system simply because they may represent a majority in certain areas?
And where has a region based such segmentations enjoyed less strife because of those divisions? It's surely not the Balkans, torn apart throughout the 1990s over ethnicity and religion.
And it's surely not in Africa, where millions have died and will continue to die for the foreseeable future as dictator's fuel their regimes with pogroms and war.
Tibet would fare no better. Comparable to the size of Alaska, Tibetans in China are limited to a mere few millions of people.
Due to settlement after the Communist Chinese invasion, Tibetan areas now have significant minorities of Han Chinese and other ethnicities with ties to the rest of China.
It is located in one of the most inhospitable places in the world and already isolated from the global community economically and culturally.
Perhaps the most repugnant idea of a Free Tibet is a Tibet under a theocracy. The Dalai Lama only allowed limited democratic elections for his government in exile in 2001, and still the government is headed by a religious figure not unlike the Pope in Rome.
The Italians, in the course of their unification wars, were wise enough to confine the Pope's temporal authority to a church and not his vast land holdings of previous centuries.
The best solution to Tibet starts with finding the truth. Even those haughty pseudo-intellectuals within China know very little about the true origins of Tibetan discontent.
To placate the younger generations, genuine concessions and limited autonomy may be necessary to stop the bloodshed. As for the older theocrats and monks, let them die off.
If China listens to Tibetans, Tibetans will stop listening to anachronisms. Tibetan dignity should not depend upon independence but upon the preservation of lives through peace and cooperation.
Chris Amorosi is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at camorosi@student.umass.edu.
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