Perspectives
Playing up the Tibet card
IT is not for nothing that Nancy Pelosi, the third most important person in US power structure, traversed halfway around the world to fly into Delhi in the third week of March on an undisclosed mission. Ms. Pelosi, the first woman speaker of the US House of Representatives, dashed to the Indian capital -- it was later known -- to meet Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet now ensconced in India, to boost his morale. Anything that affects the US's imperial hubris immediately sparks reactions, and the feathers are ruffled also in the Democratic camp to which Pelosi belongs.
With regards to the question of the US's global agenda, Americans usually transcend party lines, close their ranks, and are on same wavelength, whether it pertains to their standing in the Middle East -- the world's strategic hub -- or to Asia's emerging power equations. The idea is to be able to circumscribe the rise of any rival to US power. Pelosi not only snubbed China, an emerging economic power, she excelled in displaying a measure of finesse in her self-righteous sermon on Tibet, China's Achille's heel.
"If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out," she said, "we have lost moral authority to speak on human rights anywhere in the world." This, coming from the dignitary of a country that stands culpable for the deaths of many Iraqis during five years of its occupation, and many similar crimes elsewhere, is indeed astonishing. Also, John MacCain was quick to say in Paris that to bear with the "mistreatment" in Tibet could be unacceptable for a world power. What compassion for the monks.
The US finds in the situation obtaining in Tibet an opportunity to open up a new front to strike at China's economic might. As a proof that the current charade against China is malicious, Steven Spielberg, hired by China as a creative consultant for the opening ceremony of 2008 Olympics to be held in Beijing, resigned from the assignment to protest China's huge investments in Sudanese oil fields. Mr. Spielberg's excuse is that Sudan is embroiled in Darfur -- the oil rich part of Sudan that Washington wants to see separated -- of course, on the plea of human rights.
While the rioters in Tibet have been planning to use the forthcoming Olympics as a platform to promote their cause and, if necessary, to boycott it, the resignation of Spielberg on a bizarre excuse which is political in nature -- the West led by the Americans is building up a situation reminiscent of a similar politicisation of the German Olympics in 1936. The Western rhetoric over Tibet is just a smokescreen that hides the larger agenda that goes as far as stopping Chinese investments in African oil fields.
The hypocritical posturing by bigwigs like Ms Pelosi, Mr Spielberg and McCain also obfuscate the reality of what Dalai Lama and his US-sponsored separatists have done, and are still doing, in the name of human rights. Ms Pelosi's special emissary will surely miss from Delhi the havoc the rioters wreaked in Lhasa. Yet, the Tibetan capital is farther ahead in modernisation than India's biggest northern cities.
China spent a staggering $4.1billion here just to build the world's highest rail track, a luxury service stretching 1142 km from Beijing to Lhasa. It is part of a Chinese vision to open up the country's sparsely populated western regions and make them key to China's growth in the 21st century.
There seems to be calculated and well-orchestrated Western hostility on the pretence of human rights violation by Beijing in Tibet. Look at how Mr Spielberg's snub to China was calculated to coincide with the Tibet riots. He could have taken a principled stand, if any, before getting his advance payment from the Chinese government. The blackmailing of China is widespread, now that "report cards" are being issued in the US giving failing grades to company's that are sponsoring the Beijing Olympics and don't take a stand over Darfur.
The Western forces are now poised to push the Chinese government to make one wrong move so that Washington and allied governments could drag Beijing into a costly confrontation. Here comes the proverbial Chinese wisdom. The good news is that no Chinese citizen in America -- even those third or fourth generation Americans -- joined the anti-China campaign. Tibet is clearly a classic example of the oldest trick in modern espionage, in which the United States wants to use Indian soil to create and sustain ethnic unrest in Tibet.
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