In Celebration of the Ego
One cannot help wondering what China hoped to gain from the recent celebrations in Lhasa making the 20th anniversary of the founding of ‘Tibetan Autonomous Region’. The original idea undoubtedly was to reap publicity harvest from showing the world how happy and prosperous the Tibetans are and how grateful they are to the almighty Party. That motivation, however, disappeared as soon as the Chinese realized that Tibetans cannot be trusted to act ‘happy and prosperous’ when foreign newsman are wheeled in amongs them. The group of Peking-based correspondents who were treated to a preview of the coming festivities earlier failed to turn out reports favourable to China. Rather than risk a repeat performance of this after the number of journalists covering the event to a trusted few. As a result, the international media, even while reporting the Radio Peking and New China News Agency'’ description of the celebration, laid more stress on the fact that independent journalists were not permitted to attend this happy occasion.
So if favourably publicity outside was not the object of the whole exercise, could it have been aimed at appeasing the country’s population? There does not appear to have been much hope of that either judging from earlier reports of fressh rounds of arrests, deployment of additional troops and installation of machine guns on roof-tops.
The delegation from Peking is said to have brought a few hundred kilograms of tea, 90,000 digital clocks and 10,000 metres of silk for distribution among the people. If that is all it takes to placate even the 1.78 million, which the Chinese claim to be the Tibetan population, for 30 years of suppression, it is small wonder that totalitarianism, despite widespread opprobrium, continues to thrive in various parts of the world. Despots everywhere seem to need pompous, self-congratulatory celebrations to reassure themselves of the hold they have over the people. Only this can explain the festivities in Lhasa.
One cannot help wondering what China hoped to gain from the recent celebrations in Lhasa making the 20th anniversary of the founding of ‘Tibetan Autonomous Region’. The original idea undoubtedly was to reap publicity harvest from showing the world how happy and prosperous the Tibetans are and how grateful they are to the almighty Party. That motivation, however, disappeared as soon as the Chinese realized that Tibetans cannot be trusted to act ‘happy and prosperous’ when foreign newsman are wheeled in amongs them. The group of Peking-based correspondents who were treated to a preview of the coming festivities earlier failed to turn out reports favourable to China. Rather than risk a repeat performance of this after the number of journalists covering the event to a trusted few. As a result, the international media, even while reporting the Radio Peking and New China News Agency'’ description of the celebration, laid more stress on the fact that independent journalists were not permitted to attend this happy occasion.
So if favourably publicity outside was not the object of the whole exercise, could it have been aimed at appeasing the country’s population? There does not appear to have been much hope of that either judging from earlier reports of fressh rounds of arrests, deployment of additional troops and installation of machine guns on roof-tops.
The delegation from Peking is said to have brought a few hundred kilograms of tea, 90,000 digital clocks and 10,000 metres of silk for distribution among the people. If that is all it takes to placate even the 1.78 million, which the Chinese claim to be the Tibetan population, for 30 years of suppression, it is small wonder that totalitarianism, despite widespread opprobrium, continues to thrive in various parts of the world. Despots everywhere seem to need pompous, self-congratulatory celebrations to reassure themselves of the hold they have over the people. Only this can explain the festivities in Lhasa.
posted by editorla at
9:27 PM
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