Tibet

To Beijing, a breakfast isn't simply a breakfast. It's tantamount to backing Tibetan independence

It took three days for China’s official media to react to the news that the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, will join U.S. President Barack Obama at a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5. But Beijing’s response, now that it has finally come, is not joyous.

“Obama is acquiescing to the Dalai Lama’s attempt to split Tibet from China,” went a Monday op-ed in the China Daily, the Chinese government’s English-language mouthpiece.

“Tibet is an inseparable part of China,” it continued. “The Dalai Lama’s flight from China’s Tibet in 1959 was because of his failed attempt to maintain the serfdom in the region, under which the majority of Tibetans were slaves leading a life of unimaginable misery.”

The official Chinese narrative holds that Tibet trembled under the fist of Buddhist monks before the People’s Liberation Army marched in more than six decades ago. Since then, living standards in Tibet have increased; this year, the Chinese government has projected 12% growth in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, higher than in most other parts of the country.

But many Tibetans decry the Chinese government’s systematic repression of their religious and cultural freedoms. Possessing the Dalai Lama’s image can land Tibetans in jail, even though he has repeatedly said he is not calling for an independent Tibet but rather one in which local traditions are respected.

Tibetan monks are regularly required to denounce their spiritual leader in communist-run re-education classes. So profound is the despair among some Tibetans that more than 130 people have committed suicide since 2009 by setting themselves on fire, according to exile organizations. As they burn, self-immolators reserve their final breaths to praise the Dalai Lama and denounce Chinese rule.

More than half a century of anti-Dalai Lama propaganda has failed. The Tibetan leader is still widely venerated across the high plateau. Even Tibetan government officials are not immune, with Chinese state media reporting a crackdown on cadres who “are suspected of providing intelligence to the Dalai Lama’s separatist forces.” Last year, 15 Tibetan officials were punished for “serious violations in discipline.”

Obama has met with the Dalai Lama three times before, but always in a private setting. The National Prayer Breakfast marks the first time the pair will appear in public together. Chinese state media reported that a Chinese Vice Foreign Minister summoned a U.S. diplomat in Beijing to register official displeasure with the Feb. 5 event. News of the National Prayer Breakfast, however, will likely take time to reach parts of Tibet. Since the spike in self-immolations, Internet and phone lines have been severed in some regions.

The Dalai Lama will be appearing in public with Obama for the first time

The films preserved by the Tibet Film Archive chronicle the region's rich culture, troubled present and unsure future

Zheng Wang is the Director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS) at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Hong Kong is not Beijing, and 2014 is not 1989

Today, students are attempting to occupy the streets outside Hong Kong’s central government complex; 25 years ago, the students occupied Tiananmen in Beijing. However, Hong Kong is not Beijing, and 2014 is not 1989. These similar actions have taken place in entirely different contexts, even though Beijing’s political control is behind both of the events. It is important for us to identify the real sources of the current conflicts in Hong Kong, and not get sidetracked by simple reflections back to Tiananmen.

On the surface, the turmoil in Hong Kong is caused by Beijing’s decision regarding general elections. In reality, the deep sources of the conflict are not so different from the recent large-scale outbreaks of social tensions in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan. These tensions should not be seen as isolated political battles with Beijing, but rather should be heard as both the battle cry of China’s new identity crisis and a conflict of globalization. For these places, globalization has to some extent become “Chinaization” or “Mainlandization.” These recent events can be explained by the globalization theory “Jihad vs. McWorld.” This theory describes globalization as dialectical interactions between modern commercial fundamentalism and traditional parochialism. It argues that the expanding global commerce and the corporate control of the political process has weakened the autonomy and power of local communities, threatening the identity and culture of the smaller communities while at the same time leading to the reassertion of ethnic and religious identities.

In Hong Kong we can see clearly the effect “McWorld” has had, even though the further integration with mainland China brought prosperity to the city. But most of the advantages and profits produced by this process have gone to business tycoons and corporate elites. Much like the American rallies against the “1%” in recent years, the remaining grassroots population experiences the problems that this success has brought.

Due to the arrival of large numbers of newcomers and the flow of outside capital to Hong Kong, the real estate market has skyrocketed, pricing out much of the population while also increasing everyday cost of living. Large numbers of visitors have made the city quite crowded, leading the local people to worry that further integration will threaten their way of living, the identity of the city, and most of all the distinction of Hong Kong from the mainland that they so cherish.

In Xinjiang, Taiwan, and Tibet there is another story of globalization. The Uighurs, Taiwanese, and Tibetans feel they have been marginalized. For the Uighurs population, their response is jihad. In recent years we have seen the violent attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of mainland China. These violent actions can to some extent be seen as local resistance and rebellion in response to this marginalization and threat of identity, though any terrorist actions should be condemned.

Whereas the Hong Kong students went to the street to protest, a group of Hong Kongese business tycoons went to Beijing and met with the Chinese leadership. Beijing was pleased to gain their support. It is similarly common in Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang for elites to have maintained good relations with Beijing. The CCP has garnered support from the successful elites, while keeping their growth tied closely to Beijing. There are many cases of major Taiwanese corporations having relocated their headquarters from Taiwan to the mainland. The huge market the mainland offers has brought enormous profits to the Taiwanese business community. For example, a Taiwanese company in Mainland China manufactures almost all iPhones.

This phenomenon can be explained by another theory of globalization: “integrated on top, collapsed on the bottom.” When the elites of the different regions and industries gain from globalization, they become more united and integrated behind the banner of shared economic interests. On the other hand, even though the living standards of people in the grassroots have been improving in recent years, they have suffered many of the negative consequences of the globalized economy, such as the demise of their established traditions, cultural morality, and identity.

It is in this identity crisis that the different groups have chosen to express their protests. The recent student movement in Taiwan against the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement with China has been the Taiwanese response. While the protests in Hong Kong and Taiwan should not be confused for any type of jihad like that of the Uighurs’, they nonetheless underscore common issues. Unfortunately, Beijing is not well versed in handling identity issues. Identity-based conflict is different than interest-based conflict. People won’t change their cultural identity, whether by intimidation or by compensation. Both the proposition of bribes and the threat of use of force often only worsen a situation, as people remain steadfast to their identity. Beijing lacks an understanding of this concept and how to remedy it.

Hong Kong’s problem will continue for as long as the structural sources of conflict cannot be addressed. The identity crises in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan, and Tibet will surely become Beijing’s real tests and dilemmas. How well the Chinese leadership deals with these crises will determine China’s rise and future development. From this perspective, the identity issues have a real global impact, as does the street movement in Hong Kong.

Zheng Wang is the Director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS) at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Beijing bans some Muslims from observing Ramadan, or boarding public transport while veiled, but it allows millions of others to practice their religion without hindrance

The road to Linxia, in China’s vast, sere northwest, is known locally as the Quran Belt, with a profusion of newly built mosques and Sufi shrines lining the motorway. Some are built in a traditional Chinese style, with pagoda-like eaves; others, with their green tiled domes, echo Middle Eastern architecture.

With violent unrest affecting northwestern Xinjiang, a spotlight has been cast on that area’s Muslim Uighurs, who have long chafed at rule from Beijing. But the Uighurs, some of whom yearn for autonomy from the People’s Republic, are not the biggest Muslim population in China, which has more adherents to Islam than the European Union. That distinction belongs to the Hui, a 10.5 million-strong group that is also the second largest of China’s 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. One of the Hui centers of Islamic learning is the Wild West town of Linxia, in Gansu province, where Sufi traditions remain vibrant.

With the bloodshed in Xinjiang escalating — the most recent clash late last month, which the Chinese government labeled a “violent terrorist attack,” saw nearly 100 people killed, according to an official count — authorities have intensified a crackdown on spiritual expression by Uighurs. (Tibetans face religious repression too as their disenchantment with Chinese rule grows.) But this does not mean that Beijing is curtailing Islam nationwide. Indeed, members of the Muslim Hui community are enjoying a flowering of faith in what is, officially, still an atheist communist nation.

Linxia’s Islamic places of worship are just one symbol of this religious boom. Ismail, a Hui who works for a state-owned enterprise in the Ningxia autonomous region, says he openly practices his faith. “Of course, I fast during Ramadan,” he says. “All my Hui friends do it, too. It’s our obligation as Muslims.” But a Uighur college student says he and his classmates were not allowed to do the same. “[Han university authorities] make sure we eat at the cafeteria. They say they don’t want us to be tired, but I don’t believe them. It is because we are Uighur.”

Hui participation in the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca has increased over the past several years, say scholars. Another sign of renewed religious commitment: Ismail says he has noticed more Hui women in his hometown wearing veils in recent years. “As more Hui women receive education, they learn more about their own identities,” he says. “As a result, they realize the protection brought by Islam and are starting to wear veils more.”

By contrast, a local paper in the Xinjiang town of Karamay reported last week that residents with long beards, headscarves, veils and clothing with an Islamic crescent moon and star would not be allowed to board public buses while the city played host to a sporting event. In Kashgar, a Silk Road outpost that is a repository of Uighur culture, the local government has promoted a campaign called Project Beauty that urges Uighur women to “show your pretty faces and let your beautiful hair fly in the wind.” Uighurs also have a hard time getting passports to travel abroad, especially to go on the hajj.

“It’s not an issue of freedom of religion,” says Dru Gladney, one of the foremost academics studying Chinese Muslims. “Clearly, there are many avenues of religious expression that are unfettered in China, but when you cross these very often nebulous and shifting boundaries of what the state regards as political, then you’re in dangerous territory. Obviously this is what we see in Xinjiang and in Tibet.”

Unlike Tibetans or Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language and are racially distinct from the Han, the Hui are not agitating for increased autonomy, much less a split from China. One reason may be influenced by geography. While Uighurs are concentrated in Xinjiang, and Tibetans clustered on the high plateau in far western China, the Hui are spread out across the nation. True, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is dedicated to them, but Hui communities exist in practically every major Chinese city. A significant population lives in Beijing.

Racially and linguistically, the Hui — whose ancestors include Persian, Central Asian and Arab traders who plied the Silk Road and intermarried with local Chinese — are virtually indistinguishable from China’s Han majority. Often, it is only the presence of a white prayer cap that differentiates a Hui man from his Han counterpart. Partly because of their cultural affinity to the Han and their geographic dispersal, the Hui are far more integrated into mainstream Chinese life than those ethnic minorities living in China’s borderlands.

“The way [the government treats] the Uighurs and the Hui is completely different,” says a foreign scholar who studies the Hui, requesting anonymity. “The standard line for the Uighurs is that everything is oppression and violence and conflict, and the standard narrative for the Hui is that they are complicit with state power and that they are not real Muslims. The Hui are considered the good Muslims and the Uighurs the bad Muslims.”

That division has implications for the future of Xinjiang, which was once predominantly Uighur but has played host to waves of government-encouraged internal migration. While many of the recent arrivals who work at military or state-owned farms and mines are Han, other newcomers are Hui. China’s 2010 national census recorded 983,015 Hui in Xinjiang, up from 681,527 in the 1990 count. During the 2009 rioting in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi that killed around 200 people, one reported refrain from extremist Uighurs spread across social media: “Kill the Han, kill the Hui.”

The Hui’s forebears include a long line of military generals loyal to imperial Chinese governments. (There were, however, Hui rebels who battled the late Qing dynasty from a base in Ningxia.) The Hui also excelled at trading, a talent which spread their numbers across China. Even in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, many trinket stores and restaurants near the main city square are now owned by Hui merchants. The Hui, along with the Han, were targeted when ethnic violence broke out in Tibetan regions in 2008. Indeed, ancient history in China’s far west is filled with battles between Tibetans, Uighurs, the Hui and the Han, with borders and allegiances shifting like desert sands. Animosities endure. “Post-2008 [violence in Tibet] and 2009 [bloodshed in Xinjiang], it’s like it’s every group for themselves,” says the foreign Hui scholar.

External influences are also becoming more important in Chinese Islam. The proliferation of Middle Eastern–style mosques in Linxia mirrors the rise of purist Salafi Islam across the world, from Indonesia to North Africa, in which a unified faith trumps indigenous variations. “In China, the Hui have extraordinarily illustrated this beautiful accommodation between Chinese culture and Islam,” says Gladney, who teaches at Pomona College in California. “But with the rise of social media and an idea of one Islamic world, this historic accommodation is being debated.”

Gladney notes that Hui clerics have studied at Egypt’s al-Azhar University, one of the world’s most important centers of Islamic learning, while around 300 Hui live in the holy Saudi Arabian city of Medina. “For 1,300 years, the Hui have been able to not only survive but thrive,” says Gladney. “But we have to also remember that revolutions in Chinese Islam have tended to come from increased communication and travel abroad, and we’re in a period where the Hui with the right connections are doing just that.”

— With reporting by Gu Yongqiang / Beijing

Ancient mating patterns seem to have given these plateau dwellers an odd advantage

When you or I go up to high altitude, we gasp for a while, maybe faint, and then gradually adapt. The way we do it is by furiously generating more red blood cells, to increase the blood’s ability to absorb oxygen, which gets thinner the higher we go. But we pay a price: all of those extra blood cells can make the blood sticky, leading to a risk of high blood pressure, heart attack and, in pregnant women, the delivery of low-birth-weight babies.

We pay that price, that is, unless we’re natives of the Tibetan plateau, where people live more or less cheerfully at altitudes of 13,000 feet and more. The secret lies in their genes—mostly in a gene known as EPAS1, which allows them to absorb scarce oxygen without creating extra blood cells. But while genetic traits are often created by mutations within a given species, this one evidently came from outside. According to a paper just published in the current Nature, the Tibetans’ ancestors evidently mated with a now extinct human species known as the Denisovans, which went extinct somewhere around 40,000 years ago.

It’s no surprise that matings have happened between modern humans and other human species. We share a fair number of genes with the more familiar Neanderthals, for example, who were the Denisovan’s distant cousins. But it’s not clear (although it’s certainly possible) that Neanderthal genes gave our ancestors any specific evolutionary advantages.

For Tibetans, though, the high-altitude gene allowed them to colonize a region nobody else could survive (some Han Chinese, which make up more than 90% of the population of China, also have the gene, but it’s relatively rare). “We found part of the EPAS1 gene in Tibetans is almost identical to the gene in Denisovans,” said lead author Rasmus Nielsen, of the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement, ” and very different from all other humans.”

What’s perhaps even more surprising is that the scientists had Denisovan genes to work with in the first place. “The only reason we can say that this bit of DNA is Denisovan, said Nielsen, “is is because of this lucky accident of sequencing DNA from a little bone found in a cave in Siberia. We found the Denisovan species at the DNA level, but how many other species are out there that we haven’t sequenced?”