I remember this too. Baking bread in the morning and listening to the radio at 5 AM to hear what was happening in China - and it was so amazing, there was such hope, such energy. And then it was crushed.
And Tibet. Crushed. Its culture, obliterated. And the PNC gov giving reports much like the Bush Administration, where everything is opposite day. We respect the traditional culture, meaning, we wiped it out.
They say, and I quote, from their white pages, released by the Information Office of the State Council of the PRC - "The state respects and safeguards the rights of Tibetans... As society progresses, some decayed, backward old customs despising laboring people that bear a strong tinge of the feudal serf system have been abandoned, which reflects the Tibetans' pursuit of modern civilization..."
shorthand: we are doing everything we can to obliterate their culture and traditions.
There are a lot of contradictions in the back and forth of propaganda..
For one thing, Tibet WAS a feudal society. It was run by the lamas, and most people were INCREDIBLY poor. (many still are, too, though) Tibet, being so high, doesn't have a lot of farmland, and the farmland it does have is not of high quality.. malnutrition there was very bad, and this was compounded by the fact that Tibetan Buddhists DON'T EAT MEAT..
But, by all accounts, those lamas were also incredibly popular, and considering the backwardness, they did rule well, and were considered to be fairly just, far more so than the Han Chinese who basically invaded Tibet (for the upteenth time, granted, as China had been in Tibet off and on for almost 1000 years)
The thing that never gets mentioned is that Tibet has the worlds largest uranium deposits, because of the way the Earth's crust is folded there.
I think thats the real reason China so aggressively pursued the conquest of Tibet.
In 1950, following the revolution, China had a huge debt to the Soviet Union. They repaid that debt very quickly, but at a HUGE cost in lives...
The Tibetans say much of the debt was repaid in uranium.. from Tibet..
