Re: [Marxism] In Solidarity with the People of Tibet (or why I oppose an international solidarity movement)

[Saul Thomas <stthomas@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My purpose in querying Fred Feldman was to get him to either 
substantiate or stop asserting that the Chinese government has a policy 
to make Tibet a Han majority province. He's still done neither. In 
response to my argument that there is no Chinese policy to promote 
overwhelming Tibet with Han settlers, he changed his claim slightly, 
saying that it's happening anyway, regardless of whether the government 
promotes it:

> The issue is whether the Tibetans are being forcibly
> required to accept the transformation of their native territory into a
> demographically Han-Hui province. And his argument gives no indication that
> this is not the case. 

In fact, I did give indication that this "demographic transformation" is 
not taking place--for example, when I argued that it is "not what is 
happening". I pointed out that Han and Hui migrants are are 
overwhelmingly temporary, they are not allowed to buy land outside of 
the cities and the government hasn't settled them there, and unlike the 
Tibetans they are subject to strict birth control policies. As Fei Jiao 
points out, I also said that the vast majority of Han would never 
consider permanently moving to Tibet because the extreme elevation makes 
it very inhospitable for people not born and raised there. On Thursday I 
referred to an important article on Tibet that Louis posted two days 
before which spoke directly to the "demographic transformation" claim, 
and noted that Fred apparently hadn't read it ("Tibet: Myths and 
Realities"  http://www.marxmail.org/tibet.pdf). I quoted a few 
paragraphs for him, but it appears he didn't bother to read those, 
either. I won't quote it again, but I will paraphrase it to the effect 
that, contrary to the claims of the exiles, which he seems to be relying 
on, the Tibetan population is expanding rapidly, and that and the number 
of immigrants to Tibet is nowhere near what it would take to overtake 
the Tibetans.  Fei Jiao provides further data that Tibetans still make 
up the overwhelming majority in Tibet, and that permanent Han migration 
has been minimal. I am absolutely not making a "natural Sinification" 
argument to explain the supposed transformation into a Han-Hui province, 
because I argue that the transformation he speaks of is not taking 
place. I could be wrong, but I'd need to see some data to be convinced 
of that.

Fred then let loose with a series of rhetorical questions, and 
insinuated that since Han immigration to Tibet is illegal, and the 
government is turning a blind eye to it, "gotcha!", the government must 
be promoting a policy of turning Tibet into a Han-Hui majority province. 
By this fallacious logic, someone to the right of Lou Dobbs could argue 
that there is a conscious policy by the government of the  United States 
to create an ethnic majority of Mexicans in the US. But setting that 
aside (and here my answer will disagree with that of Fei Jiao): Fred's 
premise is wrong, because internal migration is no longer illegal in China.

> Is China now a country where people
> move freely from province to province in search of jobs or other
> opportunities?
Yes.

> Are there no longer laws that restrict this? Does the
> government claim no power to control this as it used to?
>   
Correct, there are no longer laws that restrict this, and the government 
no longer claims the power to control this as it used to. Restrictions 
on travel and work in China have been loosening ever since the 
capitalist reforms started, and less and less enforced. In 2003 the 
administrative regulation which allowed police to detain and repatriate 
migrant workers was abolished. It is estimated that 100 million people 
have left their homes and legally taken up work in other places, the 
vast majority congregating in the cities and manufacturing zones in 
eastern China. There are still residence permits, but these for the most 
part do not restrict work--lack of a permanent residence permit for a 
given place means that people are not entitled to social welfare 
benefits accorded to permanent residents of that locality. Individual 
work units, however, such as taxi companies, might require that an 
employee be a permanent resident of the area in question in order to get 
a job. Certainly, this puts migrants at a disadvantage, and they are 
often discriminated against and often treated as second class citizens. 
But they are not illegal in the cities in eastern China, and they are 
not illegal in Tibet. Thus the nefarious goals of the Chinese government 
cannot be demonstrated through the assertion of a selective "blind eye" 
to illegal Han and or Hui migrants. And again, for the nth time, the 
number of migrants in Tibet is not great enough to or indicative of a 
governmental desire to turn Tibet into a non-Tibetan province of China.

And to repeat yet again, my whole point in discussing this is for the 
very limited goal of trying to get Fred to either substantiate or stop 
promoting the idea that the Chinese government has a policy to "solve 
the Tibetan problem" by turning Tibet into a Han (or Han-Hui, as his 
latest email claims) province. Regardless of one's position on the 
national question in general or Tibet in particular, one should not 
repeat the extreme propaganda of the exile movement, which has been 
shown to outright lie about Chinese oppression before (such as with the 
completely manufactured and utterly discredited claim that the Chinese 
Communists killed 1.2 million Tibetans), without being able to 
substantiate it. For my part, I have never once argued that China's 
Tibet policy is good, or that what Han migration there is into Tibet is 
good. I have never said that Tibetans are treated as equals by all Han, 
but have said that they are very often the victims of racism. I did 
point out that Tibetans benefit from various affirmative action and 
other preferential policies, but that these are not nearly enough to 
erase the inequalities that exist. Due primarily to reasons of geography 
and history, including most crucially the recent capitalist 
transformation, Tibetans are generally much poorer than Han, and 
particularly the Han in Tibet (who are not the poorest of migrants). I 
believe that this is the root cause of the discrimination that exists. 
Finally, I also argued that there is little reason to think that 
inviting the Dalai Lama, whose coterie has for many years lied about 
Chinese policy and whose politics have often been abominable (he has not 
only been backed by US imperialism, but he has backed US imperialism in 
other places, demonstrating that he is much less non-violent and 
anti-war than most people seem to believe), back to take over Tibet is 
going to solve these problems.

David's point about the definition of "Tibet" is something that Fred 
never raised, but it also is addressed in the article Louis posted 
above. The "Greater Tibet" claimed by the exile community is an extreme 
irredentist claim, and includes almost one fourth of the total land area 
of China, largely comprising areas in which Tibetans have not formed the 
majority for many hundreds of years or never formed the majority at all. 
The NYT op-ed yesterday by the former director of the Free Tibet 
Campaign in London argues that the Dalai Lama should publicly renounce 
that claim. I doubt that's the "Tibet" Fred was talking about.


> This brings us to the question of the Dalai Lama, and negotiations with
> same. Thomas accuses me of proposing to turn Tibet over to the Dalai Lama.
> I am getting used to this charge. Ben Courtice, I recall, accused me of
> calling for turning Kosova over to Serbia because I had called for
> unconditional withdrawal of US forces, without regard to what would happen
> as a result. Still my position.

Actually, these sound like different charges to me. It appears that Ben 
Courtice accused Fred of not supporting an imperialist-backed 
secessionist movement enough. I stated that I thought the Chinese 
government had good reason not to trust the Dalai Lama, and that there 
were better ways to solve Tibet's problems than to deliver Tibet over to 
someone who has long championed an imperialist-backed secessionist 
movement. Maybe Fred is right and the Dalai Lama has turned over a new 
leaf and is better than I believe. I heard the DL on Democracy Now the 
other day favorably comparing the Mao era to today's China. That was 
quite interesting. I doubt it's a clip they're going to play on Radio 
Free Asia.

Saul

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