h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Tibet -China's Claim to Rule - A2186336
Author: HNM Chaiwallah. Take Action for Tibet F19585?thread=363119 - U219914


This may not be in ideal "Entry Format". If any of you editorial types want to expand areas with footnotes etc., I'll be happy to answer any questions and fill in any gaps. But please note, I'll be away from my computer between Jan 9th and 19th. Cheers.

This Entry makes me want my Sub-editor badge back. I'd love to take some credit for presenting Tibet's history so clearly, and for so comprehensively debunking China's claim to sovereignty.

Well done!

JTG

Looking good, Chai!

Small typo:

independent,( Tibet > independent, ( Tibet

The question is to why the Chinese want to hold onto Tibet. Has it natural mineral wealth or any other natural assets which would be valuable to China?

Yes, good work

One might complain that it lacks counterarguments, ie. arguments FOR Tibet being a part of China, but as far as I know, there are none...

A bit more detail on the historical bits here and there might be nice for those of us not that familiar with e.g. China during the Tangs or the Mongolian empire.

There are a few typo's here and there, in the Aiken quote "feel" instead of "fell" and the sentence "that once there was a subject nation, they must always remain a subject nation" caught my eye.

I guess it could use some tags here and there. You've just written it in "Plain text" style, right?
Change it to GuideML, add at the start of each paragraph, and at the end of them.
You may include some or tags and possibly pull out the quote with a .
See this page for more details <./>SubEditors-GuideML</.> and try experimenting with it until you think it looks good.

Remove the "China's Claim to Tibet." right below the header - no need to repeat yourself.


cheers,
~Bistro

Hello Chai

they've beaten me to it! I had the same question as ZSF - why are the Chinese so keen to lay claim to Tibet?

And then Bistroist told you about all the typos and the GuideML thing.

So there's nothing left for me to say, except it's a really great entry - and an important one.


F/b

Cracking entry

All I'd suggest is removing the first sentence, as it still works rather well without it

China mines a number of things in Tibet, including bauxite and uranium. Recently, the world's largest gold deposit was found there, which has raised debate in Australia, particularly, over ethical (or otherwise) investment in Tibet. Similarly, there is a controversial natural gas pipeline under construction, involving BP Amoco.

Tibet is also now home to a significant part of China's nuclear arsenal, commanding, as it does, the high high ground overlooking South and Central Asia. The wide open space of Tibet has also proved to be a convenient place to dump nuclear waste.

Logging is also a big incentive. Much of Eastern Tibet has been clear-cut in order to feed China's need for lumber.

40 % of all human beings get their fresh water from rivers that start out on the Tibetan plateau. All the great rivers of South and Southeast Asia trace their origins to Tibet. If you control the tap, you have a lot of influence when people are thirsty.

Hope this helps.

Good grief - I thought it was just a political want.

Good entry ChaiWallah - maybe you should sent it to a certain president and ask him about his definition of international terrorism.

I don't know much about the topic, but I do like this entry - again I think that all the other researchers have made valid points. If they are incorperated into the entry then it would become an excellent one

Aha, John! I thought there'd be more to it than pretty mountains and rancid butter. I thought there'd be mineral deposits. I didn't know about the gold. I'd forgotten about deforestation, which is pretty devastating for those lower down the mountains, as it brings with it soil erosion, so it's fairly irreversible. And control of water didn't occur to me.

All pretty solid economic reasons for wanting control.

Aha! gold, nuclear arsenal, bauxite, water.... It all makes sense now.

Perhaps some of that could go into the entry? It would give a more rounded picture of the reasons for China's in Tibet.

I hate people who seek power and influence over others

F/b

I think it would be misleading to suggest that mineral wealth, and so on, are the main reasons China wants Tibet. The expansion west was just about the first thing Mao did after taking charge in China. I think it's a pretty deep-seated thing, which you'd probably have to be Chinese to fully understand. I'm trying to think of a Western comparison... Anyone's sense of national identity is, to a great extent, based on a pretty fanciful interpretation of actual historical events, which may not even be close to reality. Look at the British empire, for example: As a boy, what I learned about it was a lot different to the history one reads about now. Real life is always more complex than our mythology. No sermon intended!

Anyway, I think China's expansion to its current proportions - more than twice as big as ever before, thanks to the swallowing of Tibet, East Turkestan, half of Mongolia, and Manchuria - has as much to do with the sense of national identity than material or strategic reasons; which is why the issue is such a sensitive one: The suggestion that Tibet doesn't really belong to China really does 'hurt the feelings of the Chinese people', as they often say. With that in mind, I think it's important to stress that speaking up for the human rights of Tibetans shouldn't become China bashing.

Anyway, that's my impression, for what it's worth. Chaiwallah's away for a few days; so I hope he won't mind my chipping in my two cent's worth to the total of... erm... well, nearly a dime now.

Hope this helps.

JTG

Hi guys.

I'm briefly availing of my son's computer in London. Wow, what a response, thank you all so much. In fact, the counterarguments are China's stated claims to Tibet, and I'm not well enough informed on the details of China's history to weigh in on China's behalf, if I wanted to.

Thanks for picking up on the typos, they can be easily emended.

As to other modes of presentation of the text, forgive me, but I am hopelessly inept at all that, but when I get back to Dublin, I'll get my friend Recumbentman, who is dazzlingly ept, to sort it out, lots of footnotes and all that.

Now, to the main point, why is China in Tibet.

The arguments are basically as follows:

1) Chauvinism, and Chairman Mao's desire to prove, expecially to Stalin, that China had "stood up", driven out the foreign imperialists ( particularly the Japanese ), and reasserted its old "imperial" territorial claims, plus a few extra bits, such as Tibet. China is still playing this game in the Spratley Islands, with Taiwan, and along the MacMahon line in Assam, North India.

2) Military/strategtic.
Tibet, at an average altitude of 15,000 feet, and covering nearly 1.5 million kms sq, is effectively a fortress dominating central Asia. The vast majority of China's "development" of Tibet, specifically the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region ( the former province of U Tsang ) has been military, and financed by the military.

A significant proportion of China's nuclear arsenal, maybe as much as 25%-30% is up there. The majority of the new building in and around Lhasa is either for, or owned by the PLA. Lhasa itself is now a city of 35 sq.kms, and expnading. Old Tibetan Lhasa, mainly around the Jokhang temple, is less than 1 sq.km., and diminishing. PLA barracks and other installations count for a large segment of the new building in Lhasa.

3) Minerals and resources. Approximately 40% of "China's" mineral resources are in Tibet, including gold, coal, oil, the world's estimated largest uranium deposits ( many, strangely, under Tibet's most sacred sites inc the Potala hill in Lhasa!) Many Tibetans commented on how quick the west was to aid Kuwait in the first Gulf War, for its oil reserves, but still ignore Tibet. Gas, as mentioned, and huge areas of prime virgin forest, esp. in SE Tibet, the former province of Kham. It is estimated that $54 billion worth of timber has been extracted from Tibet since the early 1950's. Only recently has China forbidden logging in the Upper Yangtse, because of the catastrophic results of the massive deforestation.

Water is soon also to be one of Tibet's biggest exploited resources. Much has been heard of the notorious Three Gorges Dam, further down ther Yangtse in China, but the Chinese are undertaking massiver damming schemes in Tibet, approx ten major dams planned in the immediate future, with all, the devatstation and displacement of local Tibetan communities that emtails. They are also talking of diverting the Brahmaputra northwards to irrigate North China's deserts.!One of Tibet's most sacred l;akes, Yamdrok Tso, has already been mined, tunnelled, and used for hydroelectric development.

4) Lebensraum. Chinese demographers back in the 1980's reckoned that Tibet could support an influx of up to 100 million Chinese! This is the single biggest threat to Tibet, as Han Chinese are already the majority population in all Tibetan cities, and likely to increase hugely once the new Xining-Golmud-Lhasa railway is up and running. This is due for completion in about two years time.

5)Nuclear dumping and chemical weapons testing. This is a controversial area. There have been many reports, but not a lot of concrete evidence, becuase any related sites are strictly off-limits. But there have been reports of radiation pollution in some areas out in the high-altitude desert,and around the old test site up near Lake Kokonor. In fact the worst nuclear pollution from test sites is over the northern Tibetan border in East Turkestan, where the Uighurs have suffered significant birth-defect incidence as a result of China's nuclear test programme.

That's it for now. Gotta get off this machine.

Wow! Not much else to say, really...


~Bistro

Crikey, Chai: there's enough for another whole entry there... .. a really interesting one at that.

Frenchbean

Hi frenchbean,

Thanks for that. Maybe that section could just be added to the main entry as a sub-section, rather than as yet another new entry. The other thing I meant to write yesterday, but forgot, is that the general figure quoted is that Tibet is the source for 126 industrially valuable minerals. So that needs to be added when I get around to a final edit.

I've just read the entry, and everyone else's comments, and all I can say is that you've done a really good job here. Thanks for writing this piece.

(I studied East Asian politics at university - the matter of Tibet was never presented as clearly as this in any of the lectures.)

Ivan.

Are you complete with this one, Chai?

Chai won't be back from London till Monday; give him a few days, he wanted to consult me about GuideML I gather.

Chai this is a really fascinating Entry. Could you clear one thing up for me - I'd always thought one of the big reasons China wanted Tibet was because of it's border with India. Do you think this is the case?