East-West Station

Back last October when the Dalai Lama was awarded the US Congressional Gold Medal, I remember reading a particularly cretinous comment by Tibet’s hardline Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli.

“We are furious,” Tibet’s Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, told reporters in China. “If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world.”

Hmmm…sometimes a bit of hyperbole can add spice and I guess sometimes overblown rhetoric is what your audience wants, and politicians know it of course. But the comment above just seemed to me almost unbelievably stupid on several levels.

Surely he doesn’t need to whip up his Chinese audience into a frenzy about the Dalai? He could dismiss him much more calmly and that would do the job for his “constituency”. Because news about Tibet and about the Dalai is of course of great international interest, and so doesn’t Mr Zhang know that his remarks will be translated and whisked around the world? Didn’t he realize that the foreign audience reading that quote would think he’s a total muppet?

Further, despite what Mr Zhang may wish, the Dalai Lama is still very much revered by the majority of Tibetans and so you can add them to the list of those offended or baffled by his boorish posturing.

Tibet is a very sensitive topic and the CCP does itself no favours if one of its main spokesmen makes ignorant insensitive comments. My guess is that almost any non-Chinese who read the above remark would think that Zhongnanhai has sent their most annoying moron to the top of a mountain to get him out of their hair. But of course Mr Zhang is still supposed to be representing the CCP and so you’d think that some of the party elders would have had a quiet word in his ear and told him to wise up and tone it down a bit, lest he tarnish the image of the party with his embarrassing crassness.

Well, apparently not. The big oaf is back at it again and this is the latest drivel to gush from his ignorant gob:

“The Dalai is a wolf in monk’s robes, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast,” said Zhang Qingli

Did this guy ever get an education I wonder? How on earth did he get his position…who’s his Dad? Someone really needs to tell him it’s like so not cool anymore to sound like you just stepped out of a pamphlet from the Cultural Revolution.

Why “Ogre” though? Well, because Mr Zhang’s rhetoric reminds me of the ogre in WH Auden’s poem, August 1968. This was written soon after the Soviet Union sent tanks into Prague to ruin their “Spring”. Some of the USSR’s attempts to justify their actions prompted Auden to pen the following:

August 1968
W. H. Auden

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.

That said…I do not think independence for Tibet is feasible and I think that Western demands for a “Free Tibet” are misguided and usually counterproductive. Also, I am not Buddhist and I do not think the sun shines out of the Dalai’s behind…but he does seem to me to be civilised, rational, peace-loving, and worthy of respect. He has unambiguously and repeatedly opposed violence and he has made it very clear that he does not seek or expect Tibetan independence. He says that he wants “meaningful autonomy”, and what he means by this I am not sure, but I bet he’d be up for a reasonable compromise.

So maybe the CCP should sack the unpolished and absurd Zhang and start talking to the Dalai Lama. That would be much more valuable and impressive than another few thousand spiffy new skyscrapers or miles of railway.

My favourite online read had been blocked for the last few days, ever since it started covering the troubles in Tibet in fact. I groaned at this and went through good old Tor, and so could still get my daily dose of filthy western propaganda.

But - and I am wondering if this is more than a coincidence - the block just got lifted… shortly after the publication of this article, which began:

We face at least three difficulties in reacting to the unfolding tragedy of the Tibetans. We don’t know enough about what’s really going on, because the Chinese authorities are determined to prevent us finding out by expelling journalists, ratcheting up their customary censorship of the internet (including guardian.co.uk), and telling lies.

What I am wondering is whether this would be a coincidence or whether someone is employed to seek out potential PRC PR gaffes and rectify them? If the readers of The Guardian get wind of the fact that their favourite rag is being blocked in China they might think (even) less of the CCP, might they not?

Maybe. Seems a bit far fetched, and would Beijing really give a duck about what Guardian readers think? Even in the runup to the Olympics?

Well, anyways, it was a nice coincidence. And to end with, here’s a wittily snidey point that Timothy Garton Ash makes in the same article as above

It may be worth calling for United Nations observers to be sent in to Tibet, though China will doubtless veto that. As important is to insist that the Chinese authorities keep the promise they have made - and are now breaking - to allow foreign journalists free movement around the whole of China in the runup to the Olympics. (If they don’t let reporters go to Tibet, this can only mean that Tibet is not part of China.)

I’ve been reading the Guardian Online a lot during the last few weeks and it’s amazing how much they cover China these days. And a bit odd there’s so little on India.

More on that later perhaps, but first of all just a snippet from the Guardian’s coverage of the American election process. What do you make of this guy, I wonder?

Unlike his main rivals for the Republican leadership who are on their second - or in Mr Giuliani’s case, third - wives, Mr Romney’s family life seems impossibly wholesome. He and his wife, Ann, have been together since their first date - which was to see The Sound of Music - and have brought up five sons, who are all now married themselves.

“Bring forth men-children only. For thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males.” Macbeth

I have never heard him speak, and it could well be that if I met him I would find him charming and a man of genuine integrity….but just from that snippet I found him deeply creepy and he set my “cynic’s sixth sense warning alert” ablaring.

Why is that I should distrust a man who married young, stayed faithful, looks good, seems sound, and is rich and successful…forgetting for a moment the fact that he’s a Mormon?

I think it is due to having seen “The Dead Zone” at an impressionable age. This guy even looks like Martin Sheen! And so it is that some stubborn part of me suspects that that if he gets into power he will bring about a nuclear apocalypse in order to hasten the second coming of Joseph (Jesus) Smith and usher in a paradise of chisel-jawed white men with several rosy-cheeked submissive wives. Hallelujah!

The position of President of the US is by far and away the most important in the world. If we had had Gore instead of Bush for the last 8 years I am completely sure the world would be a much better and safer place. And America would still have broad international respect, rather than the resentment and mistrust engendered by Bush.

Let’s hope the next one is a sensible (Democrat) humanist and not a religious (Republican) nutter. Please Buddha, let it be.

Travelling through eastern Europe shortly before the Berlin wall came down I can remember marvelling at how much the commies were into paperwork and bureaucracy.

But this story really takes the proverbial biscuit:

In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.”

Erm…how to express how ridiculous this is, and how remarkably wrong-headed on so many levels? And also how you have to wonder how they are planning on enforcing it. On the spot fines for unauthorised reincarnations? Or are they going to try to “send them back” to get their visas?

The whole half-baked scheme was cooked up as a response to the Dalai Lama’s declaration that he refuses to be reincarnated in Tibet while it is still under Chinese control. But if this is the case isn’t China going to have to send its reincarnation police to another country to bust the newly born DL shortly after the present version (incarnation) shuffles off his mortal coil? Apparently not…the point of the exercise is to disqualify any monk reincarnated outside of China, because they won’t have the right paperwork. Hmmmm, I guess they must have a lot of faith in people’s respect for temporal rubber stamps. (And what kind of rubber stamp are they going to use anyway? What is the hanzi for Reincarnation Permit?)

A commentator on religion from the British Daily Telegraph got very angry about it and wrote these harsh words on his blog

It takes a minute or two to get your head round this stuff, but essentially it’s just more disgusting bullying by a colonial power that doesn’t allow freedom of religion. But, hey, China is an EMERGING MARKET so guess: does the West (1) give a toss or (2) not give a toss?

I see his point, but I am more inclined to see the whole thing as a farce which will quickly prove unenforceable and be quietly dropped. It would makes the Chinese government a global laughing stock, surely. Wouldn’t it? I mean, even Monty Python couldn’t come up with this idea.

One thing seems certain though, when the present Dalai Lama does die there’s going to be some trouble.

Some of the things I end up doing in China are bizarre.

This weekend I will have to put on a suit and read out 10,000 words to the camera about the proper upkeep and maintenance of some Dalian washing machines that are due for export and need an accompanying video to fulfill some new legal requirements.

I got sent the document tonight for a preview and learnt that I am going to have to try to say stuff like the following with a suit and a straight face…

Firstly inspect all the piping joints, flange connections, valve rods and shaft seal for leakage. You can use phenolphthalein test paper for ammonia system.

If oil temperature is too high, the oil sticky degree will reduce and oil film effect becomes weak. It will lead to leakage on shaft seal. In addition, high oil temperature will quicken the aging distortion of O type ring.

Jesus wept, this is gabbledy gobbledygook. And what the hell is a flange anyway? And how do you pronounce “phenolphthalein“?

I’m going to need a few stiff drinks after this one. The pay’s good though!