Han Yao, a senior economics major, found his collegiate home at PLU. Coming from Beijing, China, Yao transferred to PLU and will be graduating in May and hopes to pursue graduate studies in the U. S. However, his desire to be educated in the United States does not dampen his pride for China and especially his hometown with the upcoming summer Olympics.

“Two events, badminton and gymnastics, will be held at my former school,” Yao said.

The pride that Yao exudes when discussing the upcoming summer games represents the nationalistic pride that Chinese youth feel about welcoming the globe into their culture.

“The Olympics gives China and its people a great opportunity to show the world our country and culture after the new China has been founded,” Yao said. “We just want to make more friends in the world.”

PLU is home for many Chinese students looking for a western education in the United States. In recent weeks, the explosion of news coverage on China’s relationship with Tibet and the visit of the Dali Lama to Seattle, as well as the impact of the Olympic torch events around the world have implications for the PLU community.

The pressure placed on China by western influences during this twilight before the Olympic Games is something that China has dealt with since it became a nation state. After World War II, the pressure for China to become a nation state was a challenge because the historical dynastic structure of Chinese rule did not incorporate the 56 national cultures into one centralized entity. The centralization of Chinese identity has always been a problem for the Chinese government, said Greg Youtz, PLU professor of music and expert on China.

During the revolutionary years after 1949, when China developed communism as its national government structure, the diplomatic relationship between China and the U. S. was severed until 1979. A clear line was drawn between the eastern influences of communism and western capitalistic ideals.

“For much of the 20th century, China has struggled with unwelcome external influence in its international and internal affairs,” said Adam Cathcart, assistant professor of history.

When former U. S. President Richard Nixon traveled to China for the first time during his presidency, the wall between the east and the west seemed to crumble. Ever since the global economy has been developing with a directive that participants like China must adopt capitalistic practices. China has ultimately shifted some of its economic policies to incorporate capitalistic practices. It has achieved a great increase in economic power in the last decade.

Since China received the bid in 2001 for the 2008 games, the politics of the situation have become complicated. International media and global leaders have waved China’s human rights record over their heads and brought it to the forefront. This attention has stressed that the Olympics could be an incentive for China to “clean up” its human rights abuses.

“Even in the selection process, the Olympic committee politicized their decision,” said Neal Sobania, director of the PLU Wang Center for International Programs. “This is an opportunity for China to demonstrate to the world its progress in human rights”.

The international pressure on China reached a new level in recent months with regard to the Chinese conflict with Tibet.

“There is a high level of sensitivity in China that foreign powers are trying to decouple Tibet from China,” Cathcart said.

Cross-cultural communication

When protests broke out in Tibet and surrounding areas March 10, they marked the 49th anniversary of the Chinese People Liberation Army’s suppression of a Tibetan uprising. In 1959, the Dali Lama, the religious and political leader of Tibet, fled and has been living in the northwest corner of India ever since with an estimated following of tens of thousands of Tibetan exiles, Cathcart said.

Ever since the 1989 Tienmann Square demonstrations, Tibet has attracted international attention. However, an unbiased understanding of the true situation in China is complicated by the western media’s perspective and the Chinese central news agency Xinhua, which controls all media to the provinces in China.

“It is hard to know what the protests are really about because of the large amount of masking of information,” Cathcart said. “Essentially, the Tibetans are opposing what they see as colonization by ethnic Chinese and their unwelcome enmeshment in China’s increased capitalism. On the other hand, the Beijing government wanted to use the Olympics to showcase its investment in Tibet and that region’s economic development. It appears that the Olympics are bringing this contradiction to a head”.

When the protests broke out March 10, Xinhua virtually cut off all news about the unrest for four days, Cathcart said.

Chinese students at PLU have been concerned with this issue and there is cultural distrust of western media. Chinese expatriates have turned to the Internet as a way to discuss the events going on in China. Blogs have begun and been a part of the Chinese expatriates expression of their opinions about the happenings in China.

Tibet and China...49 years later

The young Chinese people responded to the protests. This reaction inspired the younger generation of Chinese citizens to protect the nationalistic feelings and promote the power of China rather than allow the criticism by external forces to infiltrate the Chinese system.

“What the Tibetans did not realize is that using the spotlight on China to gain attention backfires,” Youtz said. Youtz went on to say that when the west reacts violently against China, it only buckles down to a greater extend and restricts the information it releases.

The Chinese-Tibetan relationship can be viewed from many different perspectives, but the over-arching opinion is that Tibet’s struggle for autonomy will never be realized, Youtz said.

“Tibetans in exile need to figure out that independence is not going to happen,” Youtz said. “What they should focus on is preservation of culture, not a state.”

Looking at history and understanding that China only emerged as a nation-state in the early 20th century, Cathcart points out that historians and will endlessly debate the relationship of the Tibetan monarchy to Chinese dynasties prior to 1911. However, taking into account China’s border war with India in 1962 and other factors, he recognizes that Tibet is regarded as a Chinese area and is likely to remain so in his lifetime.

Tibetans argue that they should receive independence because they have their own active and thriving language. Since prior to 1951 Tibet was under the rule of the Dali Lama, Tibetans argue that their autonomous government was stripped from them and that the Chinese should reinstate their sovereignty.

At the moment, China places limits on the number of monks who can be in the Buddhist temples in Tibet. Monks are also required to sign agreements that say they do not believe in the Dali Lama, Youtz said.

“From a western perspective, China is working to do a lot of things to help develop Tibet by providing school incentives, subsidies for home improvements and better transportation infrastructure,” said James Thoburn, a junior Chinese Studies major who studied in Chengdu last semester and visited Tibet.

One example of China incorporating Tibet into its national identity is the development of the Beijing Olympic mascots. One of the five fuwa or icons, intended to represent diversity for the Beijing games, is of a Tibetan antelope.

“This is a subtle way to say that it’s OK to include Tibet when talking about China,” Cathcart said.

Protests around the Olympic Torch

The Olympic torch has been a significant icon since it began traveling the world, prior to the Olympic games. The tradition of the torch began with the Berlin Olympics in 1936. But until this year it never had to be extinguished to mitigate the unrest the procession instigated.

“The torch is a rallying point that is too easy to focus on,” Sobania said. “Tibetans felt that they had to use a large public event because it gives an opportunity to draw attention to the issue.”

Both Cathcart and Youtz see the Beijing Olympics as China’s “debutante ball” and a beginning for China to act as a mature player on the world’s stage.

Across the world, the Olympic organizers are scaling back the length of the routes for the Olympic torch to travel in order to protect the torch.

Dali Lama visits Seattle

Amidst the young Chinese expressing their discontent with the protesters of the Olympic torch, the recent visit of the Dali Lama to Seattle for the Seeds of Compassion conference only escalated the feelings and tension related to the conflict between China and Tibet for Chinese students at PLU.

Many PLU students, including junior math and physics major Andy Guinn attended the Dali Lama’s events in Seattle.

“I think he does an excellent job at advocating peace where violent attempts at solutions can be prevalent. The most amazing thing for me was being able to watch him smile and laugh about things that are seeminly serious.”

Yet the American student support of the Dali Lama’s visit was countered by the anger that Chinese students at PLU felt.

“I was mad about the Dali Lama’s visit because I feel that what he says is always different than what he does,” Yao said. “He preaches this message of non-violence, but if he is and does what he really claims to do, then he should have prevented the people who planned the riot.”

Yao believes his claim is supported by the recent riots around the Olympic torch, led by Tibetans, that have incited violence and caused global unrest.

During Thoburn’s visit to Tibet in October, he acquired a different view of Tibet than the Dali Lama expressed during his visit to Seattle.

“There is this Shangri La point of view that Tibet would be this utopia under the Dali Lama’s rule,” he said.

Thoburn quickly pointed out that westerners do not understand that the Dali Lama has not been living in Tibet for almost 50 years and that even the majority of the population living in Tibet does not know life under the Dali Lama.

Every time the debate over Tibetan autonomy erupts in China, the central government in Beijing revisits the feudalistic history of Tibet pre-1951. Before the People’s Liberation Army entered Tibet in 1951, Tibet had incredibly high infant mortality rates and Tibetans were treated slaves to the Dali Lama, Thoburn said.

The Dali Lama’s message of non-violence did not resonate with many of the Chinese students at PLU. In fact, several students participated in protests against his visit at the University of Washington.

“If Dalai’s ideas regarding the compassion and things like that are always followed by his political pursuits, then western people should be warned that he doesn’t deserve respect and trust. And all his words are just lies,” Yao said.

Hope for the future

While this conflict seems so embedded in the political landscape of Asia, ideas for peace do exist and the potential to create harmony between Tibet and China does exist.

“The time is ripe for dialog,” Youtz said. “This Dali Lama has a long history of seeing what China has to offer.”

Reports suggest that the Dali Lama’s brother has been in low-level contact with Beijing for months, Youtz said. The low level diplomatic talks symbolize a Tibetan and Chinese willingness to attempt to find a compromise to the situation.

Yet, the responsibility to find peace does not fully fall on the Chinese government in this situation. The pressures of western media and the high levels of criticism expressed by many western journalists and newspapers these days can continue the discord.

“The west needs to find more constructive ways to voice concerns,” Cathcart said. “Both sides need to be mature enough to find ways to work this out.”

With the Beijing Olympics, China assumes a new level of prominence on the world’s stage and opens itself up to global influence and inspection.

“There is a huge misconception that China should have it together, but [China] has not been a nation state for very long. One has to look at China as it exists today,” Thoburn said.

If one thinks of China being a single entity only after the revolutionary years, then modern Chinese history dates from 1976, 32 years ago. In those 32 years, China has organized and developed the world’s largest population into an economic machine.

“To deny that a problem exists is indefensible,” Youtz said. “World leaders need realistic solutions, not ideological positions.”

Last week Youtz and Cathcart led an open forum to discuss these issues with PLU students. After participating in a candlelight vigil for some of the victims of the violence in Tibet, about twenty Chinese students arrived at the forum to engage in a long discussion about the issues.

“This was a chance for us to test our commitment to dialogue about some of the toughest questions that are facing the U.S.-China relationship today and tomorrow,” Cathcart said.

PLU provides a unique forum for Chinese students to openly discuss the situation with the guidance of professors like Cathcart and Youtz to encourage students to live by Mao Zedong’s idea, “seek truth from facts.” Because there are gaps in the media coverage of the China-Tibet issue both in China and in the west, people can easily become overly emotional about their positions, Youtz said. Therefore, the charge of an academic institution is to provide the tools to continue open discussion about the issues in a constructive, fact-based context.

“Coming to PLU is an amazing opportunity,” Sobania said. “It is a chance to see media coverage here without any restrictions and to explore those opinions.”
The challenges of the Beijing Olympic Games in August are multi-faceted and unsolvable by the pressure of western media. However, the dialog and conversation that can occur about the situation in China between American and Chinese students can further cultural understanding.