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

And now, an apology from China.
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By Michael Trend
Daily Telegraph
(Filed: 24/04/2005)

This document was discovered last week on a photocopier of the State Council in Beijing and passed to me by a concerned official.


Dear Tibet,

The People's Republic of China has, as you will have noticed, recently been insisting that Japan should repent for historical wrongs. Anxious not to be accused of hypocrisy and double standards, we have decided to set a good example by writing to you now to repent of our wrongdoing in your country.

It is a matter of much regret to us that we invaded your country in 1950. In particular, we offer a full apology for the way in which we put down the popular uprising of 1959, during which we recorded, in one of our own army documents, 87,000 deaths through military action (although this figure did not include, as has since been pointed out to us, those Tibetans who died at that time as a result of suicide, torture and starvation).

We also ask forgiveness for the hundreds of thousands of other Tibetans who have died since that time as a result of our deliberate policies. That we forcibly sterilised so many Tibetan women and subjected so many others to mandatory abortion is now a matter of deep shame for us. We unreservedly apologise to those women who have been raped, especially those, including nuns, detained in prison.

Indeed we are very sorry that we have held so many people in prison over the years. We deplore our lamentable failure to recognise the basic human rights of the Tibetans. We deeply regret our use of false detention and torture. Consequently, we will immediately release Tenzin Delek Rinpoche and all other political prisoners from jail and we undertake to return the Panchen Lama, whom we abducted 10 years ago, to Tibet.

Likewise, our abuse of Tibet's natural resources causes us great unease. What fools we were so aggressively to deforest such large tracts of your country. The effects of this for your ecology and economy are highly disturbing to us. More-over, we now view with profound distress the destruction of almost all of your religious buildings during the Cultural Revolution. We confess that one of the main reasons why we have recently allowed some of these to be rebuilt is our desire to encourage dollar tourism.

We wish to withdraw our entirely fallacious argument that Tibet is an
inalienable part of the Motherland. We recognise that the Tibetan people are a completely separate race from the Han Chinese, with their own history, language and culture, and have a right to autonomy. We acknowledge the leadership of the Tibetan people of the Dalai Lama, and offer him our warmest congratulations on the important reforms he has made in modernising and democratising Tibet's government in exile.

Above all, we recognise the most important contribution His Holiness has made to help us move away from our regrettable past. We now much appreciate the way he has insisted that his people deal with us only in a peaceful manner rather than follow the usual course of the oppressed with bombs and bullets. How much better it would be if all governments of the world actually practised what they preached in this regard and actively negotiated with the men of peace and stood up to the men of violence - rather than vice versa.

Moreover, we have taken to heart His Holiness's wise and generous advice on the serious problems we face reassuring the rest of the world that we are a peaceful, responsible, constructive and forward-looking modern country. We accept that our hosting of the Olympic Games in 2008 and the International World's Fair and Exposition in 2010 will not help dispel the concerns, suspicions and fears that the world feels as we emerge as a regional and global power. We now fully understand the need urgently to address the lack of basic civil and political rights and freedoms of our citizens, especially with regard to minorities.

We recognise that there are many other distinct peoples and religious groups we have abused in recent years, but our treatment of Tibet is a particular sorrow to us. We understand that the Dalai Lama has given us an opportunity to put right the wrongs of the past, an opportunity that might never come again.

We are, therefore, now committed to withdraw the ridiculous preconditions for the negotiations we have been holding with his representatives and move forward. We understand that it is ludicrous for us to insist that the Tibetans first agree to our desired conclusions of the talks before they even begin.

We have told many lies about Tibet. These lies have covered the revolting use of coercive power that we have deployed in your country for more than half a century. We now want to be open and honest about the past, recognising that violence and lying are inextricably tied together. We apologise; we will stop the violence and the lying; we will set the record straight.

Yours etc,

The People's Republic of China

John,

If only it were true. In your dreams, my friend! We are talking about two cultures that are totally alien to us, in spite of their increasing western ways and lip service leanings towards democracy. I don't think we shall ever understand each other.

Incidentally, have you ever read the book "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang? It gives a very interesting insight in to China's past and recent history, and the conflict with the Japanese.

I still find it very odd that so many countries can still exist almost in another century, in spite of all the communication and contact we have now, and the intermingling of races.

To be honest, I am not at all sure that any apology for past atrocities, whether it be Japan, Germany, Britain or any other country, really has any value. And can an apology EVER put things right between nations. I doubt it. At least not until all those involved, or affected by the wrongs, are long gone from this world.

However in the case of Tibet and one or two other instances I should think we would want very much more than an apology, wouldn't you, as it is ongoing?

Websailor

I couldn't resist posting the story because it's just the sort of thing I wish I'd written. It's not likely an apology will be forthcoming any time soon though, not when even mentioning Tibet makes Chinese diplomats writhe and complain about hurt feelings. The Chinese embassy here almost went into convulsions when our prime minister met the Dalai Lama a year ago.

I agree with you about all this apologising. There's a lot of that going on here in Canada about the shoddy way indigenous people have been treated, the way we robbed the Japanese and locked them up during WWII, and so on. I'm all in favour of compensating people for past injustices if things can be put right in any meaningful way.

I think the fact that the injustice (for want of a stronger term) in Tibet is ongoing is what makes the present farce so hard to stomach. I think I'll write to the Chinese embassy here to remind them that the tenth anniversary of the abduction of the 6-year-old Panchen Lama is coming up on the 17 May. They might want to apologise - Not likely.

I haven't read "Wild Swans"; I'll have to look that up.

Cheers,

JTG