NEWTON'S OPTIC:FOLLOWING LAST night's broadcast of the RTÉ evening news, I feel it is important to join all the other important writers in Ireland by voicing my support for China's actions in Tibet, writes Newton Emerson
RTÉ has used selective reporting and manipulative footage to suggest that Tibetans are somehow the innocent victims of Chinese exploitation. But this is not a simple case of China shafting Tibet. China has spent a great deal of money on new schools, roads and hospitals in the region and this entitles it to take certain liberties with the population.
The Tibetans are hardly passive partners in this relationship, having exploited China themselves during the Tang dynasty. Tibet has also been exploited by India, Mongolia, Nepal and even Britain, which shows that shafting Tibet is just part of traditional life in central Asia.
Although it is rarely acknowledged in the West, most ordinary Tibetans are quite happy to be exploited by China while most objections are led by a backward clique of Buddhist religious conservatives. It must also be remembered that Tibet consented to Chinese advances at the 1914 Simla Convention and China is merely observing that convention.
As an important writer, I am deeply concerned that recent unbalanced reporting reflects a deeper prejudice against Chinese people in general. However, I am not concerned that taking this stance implies all Chinese people want to shaft Tibet. It is true that Tibet is actually being exploited by the Chinese communist party, which a neo-imperial cultural absolutist might describe as a "perversion" of democracy.
However, research indicates that as many as one man in five could have Chinese tendencies and it is not for us to judge those men by the standards of our own prissy morality. Instead, we must judge them by the standard of their poetry.
China is a very old civilisation, perhaps three or even four times older than Tibet, which makes it much more sophisticated and worldly than ordinary countries. This is reflected in its poetry in a way that is somehow not a reflection on its behaviour.
Consider, for example, the pure ascetic beauty of the opening triplet in Man Bai Sun's Song dynasty epic Behind the Gate of Heaven:
The Forbidden City wakes
A eunuch airs the laundry
The Emperor has no clothes
Such literary magnificence clearly stands apart from anything that might have inspired it, especially if the question of what inspired it arises in a classroom context. You can never be too careful where teenagers are concerned.
Sadly, many of the complaints about China's conduct in Tibet are really motivated by a hatred of the Mandarin language. If there is any doubt about this, it is surely dispelled by the first verse of Han On Me's Ming dynasty sonnet The Gorge Rises Up:
There is no way across
Between these two faces
We must make a great leap
Having made that great leap, it is easy to see how the world's largest and fastest-growing language might threaten insecure English speakers and lead them to misrepresent the exploitation of Tibet.
Some critics will say that of course I am pro-Mandarin because I am orange. To that I can only reply that it was not me who brought fruit into it.