Mencius in Lhasa

There are people in the PRC, brave people, who are willing to stand up to power and present facts that run contrary to both popular perceptions (which, after all, are shaped by official media control) and political interests:

A group of prominent Chinese lawyers and legal scholars have released a research report arguing that the Tibetan riots and protests of March 2008 were rooted in legitimate grievances brought about by failed government policies — and not through a plot of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

The lengthy paper is the result of interviews conducted over a month in two Tibetan regions. It represents the first independent investigation into the causes of the widespread protests, which the Chinese government harshly suppressed. The government blamed the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan exiles in Dharamsala for the unrest.

Mencius comes to mind here not just in the style of the critique - openly challenging power holders - but also in its substance.  Consider this:

The report also said: “When the land you’re accustomed to living in, and the land of the culture you identify with, when the lifestyle and religiosity is suddenly changed into a ‘modern city’ that you no longer recognize; when you can no longer find work in your own land, and feel the unfairness of lack of opportunity, and when you realize that your core value systems are under attack, then the Tibetan people’s panic and sense of crisis is not difficult to understand.”

This makes me "think about barley" as Mencius would have us do:

Mencius said: "In good years, young men are mostly fine.  In bad years, they're mostly cruel and violent.  It isn't that Heaven endows them with such different capacities, only that their hearts are mired in such different situations.  Think about barley: if you plant the seeds carefully at the same time and in the same place, they'll all sprout and grow ripe by summer solstice.  If they don't grow the same - it because of the inequities in richness of soil, amounts of rainfall, or the care given them by farmers...(11.7).

Obviously, some young Tibetan men in Lhasa violently rioted in March, 2008.  What the report is asking (as Mencius asks) is, essentially: why did they act in that manner?   What were the causes of the violence?  They are not inherently bad individuals but, rather, they have found themselves in intolerable circumstances.  When they compare their situations to those Han-Chinese immigrants in Lhasa who have moved in and taken good jobs and are prospering, they are enraged by the difference and discrimination.  And that anger, born of exclusion and poverty, can explode into violence.  This strikes me as rather similar to the racial problems in the US over the years, divisions and discrimination especially between black and white.  

Thus, the question becomes, what will the PRC government do to address the disparities?  The first thing that needs to be done is to openly recognize that the core of the problem is internal to the PRC. The report makes this point as well:

The report also cast blame on the governing structure in Tibetan regions, saying that there had been problems adapting Tibetan culture and society to the “ruling state’s systems.” It also criticized the central government for putting into power incompetent Tibetan local officials who, the researchers said, play up the threat of separatist movements to acquire more power and money from Beijing.

The report quoted Phuntsok Wangyal, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet, as saying, “They are unable to admit their mistakes and instead put all of their effort into shifting accountability onto ‘hostile foreign forces.’ ”

This goes to the heart of CCP power.  The "incompetent Tibetan local officials" are Party apparatchiks. The central authorities cannot let go of them because to do so would undermine the power of the single Party and open up possibilities for alternative sources of local power.  (Note to all fenqing out there: "alternative sources of local power" does not here suggest Tibetan separatism but, simply, greater Tibetan autonomy within the PRC). Socio-economic improvement in Tibet would seem to require political reform, something the CCP has studious avoided these past twenty years.

As Phuntsok Wangyal says, Party leaders must admit their mistakes in managing Tibet, and stop looking to blame outside forces.  Something Mencius would also agree with:

...in ancient times, when the noble-minded made mistakes, they knew how to change.  These days, when the noble-minded make mistakes, they persevere to the bitter end.  In ancient times, mistakes of the noble-minded were like eclipses of the sun and moon: there for all the people to see.  And when a mistake was made right, the people all looked up in awe.  But these days, the noble-minded just persevere to the bitter end, and they they invent all kinds of explanations. (4.9)