by Elizabeth S. Dahl, Guest Contributor
I completely understand and sympathize with the outrage people feel about the repressive treatment of Tibetans and others in the PRC. However, as someone who teaches Chinese politics, I want to caution those who agree with Jonathan Zimmerman about how to deal with the People's Republic of China (PRC). There is an important question of how to be most effective in addressing these concerns to Chinese leaders and thereby promoting constructive change.
As a good professor of 20th–century American history, Professor Zimmerman is operating from a Western understanding of the politics of protest. The American, French, and British protesters who blocked Olympic torchbearers also probably share this worldview.
Unfortunately, such tactics are not completely understood by Chinese leaders, nor even by many of the mainland Chinese. (Note how some China supporters now are jogging alongside the Olympic torch to prevent future attempts to disrupt the torch relays.) Based on a complex mix of different cultural factors and issues of historical memory, Chinese leaders view such actions as driven by “troublemakers” from former imperial powers who want to keep a rising country from reaching its true potential. This interpretation means that such protesters will not change minds in Beijing. Indeed, some Chinese leaders may be so insulted by such “unseemly” actions that they will crack down all the more on dissidents within their borders.
Fortunately, as so often is the case, there are ways of peaceful protest that may be more effective. In this particular situation, there even is a key figure who demonstrates such an approach: the Dalai Lama. By embodying a quiet, peaceful, reasonable attitude toward Chinese oppression—merely advocating nonviolence, greater autonomy for Tibetans, and even granting the right for the Chinese to hold the Olympic Games—the Dalai Lama is a model of courage along the lines of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. It is no wonder that Chinese leaders find him a particular thorn in their side. It is because he is potentially far more dangerous to them than a protester trying to seize the Olympic torch or Western professors who send them a petition decrying Chinese repression. Those who want to change China would be well served to follow the Dalai Lama’s humble example. When it comes to China, the crucial point is that “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”
Another positive approach is to educate oneself about Chinese history, going farther in the past than 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre to begin to understand the conditions that made such an event possible. For example, the “hundred years of humiliation”—the period when China was carved up by imperial powers—continues to have an impact on the worldview of Chinese leaders and citizens alike. A greater understanding of Chinese culture and politics will show us better ways to address such issues.
Elizabeth S. Dahl is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. This article appeared in slightly different form as a letter to the editor in The Omaha World-Herald on April 15th, 2008.