A stock argument of the ChiCom apologists when you get into the Tibet business is: “The ruling classes in old Tibet were beastly to the poor people. They were very cruel, and the social system very backward. We rescued the Tibetan people from all that!”
Two debating points here.
- You are either a country, or you’re not. Tibet has its own historic territory, its own language and script, its own religion and calendar, its own styles of dress, architecture and cuisine, its own customs and folkways. If the Tibetan people don’t constitute a country, who does? Now, being a country entitles you to independence. It entitles you to run your own affairs. You may run them badly, leading to suffering for your people: that is your own business, up to a distant point. The Maoists in China, for example, treated the Chinese people abominably, massacring them in the “movements” of the 1950s and 1960s, and watching indifferently while 25 or 30 million of them starved to death in the great famines of 1959-1961, brought about by the ChiComs’ crazy agricultural policies. Should some more civilized power have invaded and occupied China in 1960 to rescue the Chinese people from all that? Should someone invade and occupy North Korea now, on the same principle — the principle the ChiComs claim as justification for their occupation of Tibet?
- This is precisely the justification the Japanese gave for their occupation of northeast China in the 1930s. “China is a mess,” declared the Japanese, quite truthfully. “We will bring them stability and good government. We will suppress the warlords. We will build hospitals and schools.” (They certainly put up some good solid buildings in the Japanese style. I got married in one.) What is the difference between Japan making that claim in respect of China in the 1930s, and China making it in respect of Tibet in the 2000s?