Changing China

from Africa News blog:

Was South Africa right to deny Dalai Lama a visa?

By Isaac Esipisu

Given that China is South Africa’s biggest trading partner and given the close relationship between Beijing and the ruling African National Congress, it didn’t come as a huge surprise that South Africa was in no hurry to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama.

Tibet’s spiritual leader will end up missing the 80th birthday party of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a fellow Nobel peace prize winner. He said his application for a visa had not come through on time despite having been made to Pretoria several weeks earlier. (Although South Africa’s government said a visa hadn’t actually been denied, the Dalai Lama’s office said it appeared to find the prospect inconvenient). Desmond Tutu said the government’s action was a national disgrace and warned the President and ruling party that one day he will start praying for the defeat of the ANC government.

It’s the second time the Dalai Lama has been unable to honour an invitation to South Africa by Tutu after failing to make it to a meeting in 2010.

South Africa will certainly win more plaudits in Beijing, which last week agreed to $2.5 billion in investment projects with during a visit by South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe.

But pro-Tibet activists say South Africa is undermining its credentials as a country of freedom and democracy, established after the end of white minority rule a generation ago.

Dalai Lama’s laugh lines

Before the Dalai Lama spoke on the sober subjects of religion and the environment in Taiwan during a speech this week, he opened with a quip about his English.

“First thing, no grammar, no proper grammar,” the 73-year-old said with a low-pitched staccato laugh while addressing a full auditorium of residents in the southern city of Kaohsiung. “There is a danger to get misunderstandings, so I always tell you, be careful Dalai Lama’s broken English.”

His mischievous chuckle and self-depricating humour sent waves of laughter through the audience.

A day earlier, when aides accidentally broke a table in front of the kneeling religious figure, he surprised a somber crowd of about 10,000 local Buddhists with the same laugh, generating applause. During a Tibetan-langauge prayer for the same audience, he suddenly put on a purple sun visor, breaking into English to say the overhead light was too strong. That time the crowd laughed.

Quips and outbursts of laughter characterise the world-renowned Tibetan spiritual leader’s speeches as he uses humour, part of his core personality, to bring him closer to his listeners, people close to him say.

But his visit to Taiwan is hardly a joke. During his Aug. 30-Sept. 4 visit, he has prayed for hundreds who died when a typhoon hit the island last month. On his first full day in Taiwan, the Dalai Lama knelt above a massive landslide that buried a village, praying for the countless villagers who were killed as relatives of the dead stood by.

The Dalai Lama’s visit has also whipped up a new political storm between Taiwan and its long-time political rival China, which claims sovereighty over the self-ruled island and deems the India-based Dalai Lama a separatist who is seeking to split Tibet from its territory. China has cancelled or postponed a few Taiwan-related events in apparent retaliation, chilling relations with the island after a thaw that began in the middle of last year.

from Africa News blog:

Did Dalai Lama ban make sense?

Organisers have postponed a conference of Nobel peace laureates in South Africa after the government denied a visa to Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who won the prize in 1989 - five years after South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu won his and four years before Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk won theirs for their roles in ending the racist apartheid regime.

Although local media said the visa ban followed pressure from China, an increasingly important investor and trade partner, the government said it had not been influenced by Beijing and that the Dalai Lama's presence was just not in South Africa's best interest at the moment.

The conference, ahead of the 2010 World Cup, had been due to discuss how to use soccer to fight xenophobia and racism.

"We stand by our decision. Nothing is going to change. The Dalai Lama will not be invited to South Africa. We will not give him a visa between now and the World Cup," said government spokesman Thabo Masebe.

Whatever the reasoning, it angered the Nobel laureates in a country which has prided itself as a model of democracy and human rights since the end of apartheid in 1994.

Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla, one of the conference organisers said the rejection was tainting South Africa’s democratic credentials.

"The government needs to review its decision and come to the party," said Mandela, set to become a parliamentarian with the ruling African National Congress after the election in April.

Development and discrimination in Tibet

A Tibetan slap on the bum

By Emma Graham-Harrison

I was trying to take photos of pilgrims near the Potala Palace in Lhasa, with my government minders telling me to hurry up (we had a neighbourhood committee to visit) and the pilgrims looking uncomfortable as I snapped away at their devotions.

Suddenly a smiling old woman, dressed like she had stepped out of an engraving of 19th century Tibet, hobbled up behind me and gave me a resounding smack on the bum.

I wondered if this was guerrilla revenge for taking people’s photos without asking – something I’ve always hated doing but felt obliged to attempt.

But when I turned around she was grinning like my little sister did when she pulled the same trick on me years ago. The woman’s face lit up, showing a few remaining teeth, as she roared at the joke.

Later I asked a Tibetan translator accompanying us on the trip whether it was meant as a playful reprimand. She shook her head and laughed as well.

“It’s just her way of showing that she’s close to you, that you are younger and from somewhere else, but she feels a connection.”

The war that changed China

Thirty years ago today, China invaded its one-time Communist ally Vietnam to “teach it a lesson”, to the delight of Beijing’s newfound friend, Uncle Sam, which was still smarting from having lost its own Vietnam War.   The attack came on the heels of Washington switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing and a closed-door meeting between China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and U.S. President Jimmy Carter in Washington.   Three decades on, it remains unclear just how much Deng told Carter about the incursion and whether Washington offered any assistance such as satellite imagery of Vietnamese troops and military bases.   Until the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the U.S. State Department declassify minutes of the meeting, the world will not know for sure whether the United States offered to back China in the event the Soviet Union rushed to Vietnam’s rescue.   Now the great wheel of history has turned again, and 30 years on, the United States is seeking China’s help in applying pressure on another Communist neighbour, North Korea.   China’s foray into Vietnam was brief yet in some ways disastrous. Its troops suffered terribly against the battle-hardened Vietnamese who were fighting on their home soil.   But there is no arguing that the invasion was a watershed event that smoothed the way for China to mend fences with the West.  American investors, tourists and students flocked to China.  Western and Japanese aid and loans flowed in, while trade and investment mushroomed, helping to transform the world’s most populous nation from an economic backwater into an export powerhouse and the world’s third-biggest economy.   In an apparent quid pro quo, China abandoned its longstanding policy of “liberating” Taiwan and offered “peaceful reunification” in an overture to the self-ruled island it has claimed as its own since their split in 1949 amid civil war.   Also in 1979, Deng invited Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to visit, prompting the latter to renounce advocacy of Tibetan independence, beseech CIA-armed and -trained Tibetan guerrillas to end their struggle and send his older brother to China on fact-finding trips.   The United States softened its criticism of human rights abuse in China, including the imprisonment of dissident Wei Jingsheng for challenging Deng at the height of the Democracy Wall movement.   American Sinologist David Shambaugh described as a “marriage of convenience” the teaming up of the United States and China to curb Soviet expansionism. (http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/06/opinion/edshambaugh.php)   On a lighter note, American culture invaded China. Many Chinese traded their Mao suits for jeans or business suits and dined at McDonald’s and KFC outlets. Hollywood movies and rock ‘n’ roll — once considered decadent by China’s ideologues — swept many Chinese off their feet.   The honeymoon abruptly ended on June 4, 1989, when Chinese troops crushed student-led demonstrations for democracy centred on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. China slipped into diplomatic isolation in the face of U.S. sanctions.   China broke out of isolation and forced the United States to deal with it after menacing Taiwan with war games in the run-up to the island’s first direct presidential elections in 1996. Bilateral relations see-sawed in the ensuing years, hitting low points when NATO bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese jet fighter over Chinese airspace.   Fast forward to February 2009. When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits on Friday, she will be dealing with a richer, more confident and assertive China.  Again, but now in peacetime, it will be a China that needs the United States as much as the United States needs China.   The United States needs China to help rein in a nuclear North Korea and help nurse the global economy back to health. But China’s abrupt slowdown in growth and exports shows that it remains yoked to U.S. fortunes.

Photo Credit: A Vietnamese border guard stands next to a border marker between China’s Guangxi and Vietnam’s Lang Son provinces on Jan. 13, 2009. REUTERS/Kham

Mackeben rows back on robe protest

A German water polo player who had earlier this year floated the idea of his team wearing orange robes a symbolic protest at the Olympics against China’s Tibet has changed his mind, saying the Tibet issue is far too complex and that he knows too little about China to organise such a demonstration.

Soeren Mackeben, 29, told Der Spiegel news magazine this week:  “I’ve become more sceptical towards all sides in the meantime.” Mackeben had first proposed wearing the orange robes — the same colour as the Tibetan monks — in an interview in March.   

“I was asking during an interview about the events in Tibet what sort of protest I could envision and that’s when I mentioned the robes,” Mackeben said. “That naturally had quite an echo in the media. In the meantime, I’ve learned that the issue is too complex to take a clear position on it.”

Mackeben said he did not know enough about China, even after studying the issue and paying a visit to China’s ambassador to Germany in Berlin.

“I spent an hour asking the ambassador questions,” Mackeben said. “Afterwards they gave me two bags filled with books. I’ve become too sceptical to put an orange robe one. I want to concenrate on water polo. It’s going to be very difficult to get a glimpse into how China really is.”

Picture of Soeren Mackeben (R) celebrating a goal at the FINA Men’s Water Polo Olympic Games Qualification Tournament by Sergio Moraes.  

Explorer running with the torch

Wong How Man is one of China’s best known and most active explorers, whose accomplishments include an expedition that discovered a new source of the Yangtze, China’s longest river.   

More recently the Hong Kong native and his group, China Exploration & Research Society, have taken on a number of conservation projects in Tibetan areas of China — work that helped him land a spot as an Olympic torch runner last week.

Wong, one of Time magazine’s Asian heroes, carried the torch briefly on a section of the route in Qinghai province — home to many Tibetans — on June 23, opting for the lower-key destination to draw attention to his work rather than the more controversial leg in Tibet.

He wrote an e-mail about his experience to Reuters Taiwan bureau chief, Doug Young:

Q: Can you give some quick thoughts on the experience?   

A: Outside of Everest and Lhasa, this is highest relay site (Shangri-la is about same elevation as Qinghai Lake).  Again, not counting Everest, this is only site in a natural setting and synonymous with much of my work, dealing with nature, wildlife and culture.  

Q: What were some of the most enduring memories you took away from your participation?  

Bach on Beijing

I caught up with IOC vice president Thomas Bach for an interview the other day in his Berlin office.

Bach has been one of the most eloquent opponents of any boycott of the Summer Olympics in Beijing — leading a lightning pro-Games campaign earlier this year when tensions in Tibet flared.

The man who won a gold medal in fencing for West Germany in 1976 in Montreal was more than happy to talk openly in his soft southern German accent about a wide range of issues.  

But the smile disappeared from Bach’s face when I asked about comments last week from Zhang Qingli, Tibet’s Chinese Communist party boss: “We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique.”  

Bach had already seen the remarks made in conjunction with the Olympic torch relay through the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.  

“I don’t consider that to be an acceptable formulation, especially at the Olympic torch relay,” Bach said. “It’s essential that one carefully chooses the right words — there is after all a dialogue going on now with representatives of the Dalai Lama. And that evidently did not happen here. That is not the type of language that is appropriate for the dialogue and for the Olympic torch relay.”  

Bach said German Olympians would be free to express their opinions about any issues at all in China — but political demonstrations are forbidden.

Politics and the Olympics over the years

WASHINGTON – The Olympics are supposed to be all about sports, not politics, right?

Wrong.

Although the Games began in 1896 with the hope that sporting events between nations could bring about a more peaceful world, they have not escaped politics.

Over the past 112 years, nations have boycotted the Games for political reasons, others have been denied entry by the International Olympic Committee and in 1972 Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinian insurgents.

Click here for a photo slideshow “Politics and the Olympics”, narrated by noted American sportswriter Frank Deford published by the U.S.-based Council of Foreign Relations.