Tibet and the “people who don’t know the truth”

An interesting opinion piece by Huang Guan of Xinhua, called ‘Let’s have fewer “people who don’t know the truth”’, appeared in newspapers in China during July. The piece related to an incident at Tonghua Steel Mill, where thousands of workers fearing job losses began a strike which escalated into the eventual killing of the head executive at the steel mill.

The piece is particularly interesting because it emanates from state media and is primarily a criticism of government officials who characterize these increasingly common incidents as the product of ‘people who don’t know the truth’, without reflecting on the government’s own responsibilities or the nature of the grievances behind the incidents:

“First off, if it is true that the “people who don’t know” are deluded or instigated by a few “who have ulterior motives”, why can the violence not be prevented by letting these people know the truth? Can you not placate the antagonism when it is still brewing by a timely release of the truth? By accusing the people of not knowing the truth, one cannot align himself with the truth; instead, it exposes the fact that some government agency failed to do their job (to inform).

Secondly, criticizing the participants of these mass incidents as ignorant is no different than denying their judgment to tell right from the wrong, which, obviously, is untrue. There is no denying that lack of information plays a role in these incidents. But more often than not, there is a more fundamental cause.

…the interpretation of mass incidents as ignorant people misled by a malicious few makes one suspicious of the government trying to evade its own responsibility. The occurrence of mass incidents in recent years are usually related to incompetent performance and mishandling of local governments.”

It is precisely these kinds of labels that have been used to characterize any sign of Tibetan dissent, especially since March 2008. In the language of Chinese government hardliners, either Tibetans are willfully led by an external enemy – the ‘evil Dalai Clique’ intent on destroying China – or they are misguided troublemakers who are, as yet, unaware that they have been living in a communist paradise for the last 60 years.

Both those characterizations miss the mark – Tibetan dissent is genuine, spontaneous and homegrown, it often comes from young people who have never known anything other than communist rule and all who participate are fully aware of the costs of dissent to them and those around them. The continued refusal by Beijing to acknowledge the depth and causes of discontent in Tibet means that Beijing is also unable to make the right policy choices to improve the situation. That is harmful for Tibetans and for the central government.

One of the challenges that Tibetans and their supporters face is to reach a point where commentators like Huang Guan or Chinese officials or ordinary Chinese citizens can begin to draw parallels between their own mistrust of the way the government characterizes and responds to mass incidents, and the factors that lie behind the Tibetan mistrust of Beijing.

As the Xinhua piece says: “People mostly want to live peacefully, but their eyes are sharp.”

(Photo Caption: The Beijing News–July 27, 2009)