Information operations directed at Hong Kong

I have a question from you. How, as a pro-China person, do you view the Dalai Lama? Because I see a certain inconsistency that nobody can explain to me: the DL insists he doesn't care about the complete autonomy or independence [0] of Tibet, just faving a bit more freedom so that people can practice their religion and cultivate their culture. This, in my opinion, is a moderate view, and in no way a threat to the integrity of China. But somehow the Chinese freak out whenever the DL is mentioned. Why is that? If anything, I'd say the DL could help in keeping peace in Tibet. Seems absurd to me. And I'm wondering what is the official Chinese opinion about this.

[0] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/past-is-past-tibet-not-seeki...

> "The past is past. We now have to look into the future," he said.

> "We are not seeking independence... We want to stay with China. We want more development," the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people said.

I don't care so much about Dalai Lama to be honest. I think religion has its place, but shouldn't be the center of stage. In my view, if you don't allow kids to vote before 18, why pushing religious view to them when they are young? I think that's more important to a person than political views. On personal level, I find religion is fundamentally exclusive (where you believe something is the ultimate truth), I think it shouldn't reform and develop with society and should eventually disappear. New religion should come out and replace old ones. Now religion is just trying to modernize and it shows it doesn't hold the ultimate truth, only want to win as many people as possible, like a pop band

HHDL has a long and complicated life. His idealogy cannot be simplified to "seeking peace and religious freedom".

Tibet was a slavery society under his ruling 70 years ago, unfortunately. People do change, but there are certain historical bagagges cannot be nullified.

I'm just a guy, so it's just one perspective. I'm also not that well read so I'm likely to be mistaken so I apologize ahead of time given the sensitivity of the topic.

First, as much as I think the internet is a great knowledge spreader, it's not an amazing medium for mutual understanding. Me not paying the cost of time and money to get to a cafe to talk with you and the extreme ease of lobbing self-satisfying, snarky sound bites and closing the tab makes it really hard to talk about politics. It's really shaped by the accumulation of everything you experienced and everything you read as a person so not starting from the beginning is a disservice to communication. But alas, we can't.

FWIW, I align more with Buddhism than any other spiritual thought system. I'm sympathetic to his journey and think he and his followers are thrown into, and nominally became figureheads in a bigger clash that he can't control nor (I think) care very much about.

I don't think he himself, for instance, championed or was very fond of the CIA operation to take 2,000 Tibetans to be armed and trained in Colorado and then paradropped back into China for guerrilla warfare [1] (he was also just 20 back then). While I do think theocracy and political control [2] shouldn't mix, I don't think their social structure is anyone's business and I think he would be right to fight for self-determination. So it is unfortunate that he's stuck between having no means of opposing China vs taking US backing [3], which forces China's hands further (when China just very much finished fighting a hot war with the US).

If the world were in a vacuum, I very much believe in self-determination of all groups as Woodrow Wilson would define it. Anyone should be able to split off and do as they'd like. But as optimistic as he was going into the war, Wilson himself ultimately didn't persevere through the old world colonial powers to demonstrate that he believed it himself enough to even back a member of the victor side for self-determination [4]. Given the historical context (and the contemporary US overthrow of Albania 1949 [5], Iran 1953 [6], Guatemala 1954 [7], Greece [8], Indonesia 1958 [9], all of which decidedly did not end up with any 'self-determination' [10]), I wouldn't see China concluding that giving up Tibet in 1960 would somehow translate into Tibetan 'self-determination' rather than colonization [11].

That isn't to say though that China should be accepted for descending into absolute savage levels in the following decades of destruction. I absolutely do wish that the residents at Dharamshala could return to China if they choose so. But unfortunately I don't think the world of geopolitics is sterile enough to let it be a simple 2-party bilateral discussion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/10/tibet-...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/02/world/world-news-briefs-d...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shandong_Problem

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Subversion

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia

[10] https://truthout.org/articles/us-provides-military-assistanc...

[11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/24572145?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...

70 years ago, the Dalai Lama was 14 years old. It's unlikely he ruled much. The Panchen Lama was 11. Unfortunately, he had reincarnated as two different people supported by different factions in Tibet. One of them allied themselves first with the Kuomintang and then with the Communist Party, which eventually helped them have their candidate be recognized officially by the Dalai Lama. When the Dalai Lama (now 23) fled to India in 1959, the Panchen Lama sided with the Chinese government instead and was made chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region.

So on the one hand there was a lot of realpolitik in Tibetan theocracy; on the other hand the Chinese government had no qualms about continuing the system so long as it served their own purposes.

I understand but could you explain why the Chinese government freaks out so much about the DL when in fact he has such moderate views?

I am not the government, and I cannot take their position to explain this. But here is my naive thoughts: Chinese government are engineers. If there is a bug in a feature cannot be fixed, keep the feature out of the delivery until it is fixed. DL is the feature. Also no one is willing to take the risk of working on the bug, because you may fail your KPI. So every time a customer request this feature, we will scare them off, so that no one is requesting this any more. It is kind of coward, but it doesn't know how to deal with it. And politicians in west really like the influence of DL, his popularity can help them in their career, so they want to bring him up again and again. I guess that basically is what's going on. Does it really matter every time Chinese government freaks out?

I am been told by the moderator not to comment on political issues, mainly because although I use Hacker News for tech news, I do mostly comment on China issues (not many though), apparently it is against the community guideline. so I will not comment any more. For me, I have lost wills to read news, and Hacker News is the only thing I read in the morning before work, it is unfortunately there are more and more political topics here.

They both were kept their symbolic status at that time. HHDL was highest ranked in CCP before he fled. I don't know any evidence that sided with Koumintang backfired as you seemingly suggested for him.

Part of the system was kept (namingly the Lama leadership was kept symbolically), but the slavery is a history.

BTW, in the original post, I mentioned "70 years ago" as a way to suggest HHDL has a long and complicated life. His historical baggage by no way limits to Tibet before CCP though. It took him a long time to get his message what is today.

Just to repeat what I tried to express elsewhere: I think your perspective is valuable. I think you should keep sharing it, as long as you do so within HN's guidelines (which you've mostly but not always done). But we do also have a rule asking people not to use HN primarily to argue about politics. The best would be for you to participate in other threads that gratify your curiosity as well—even if only to ask questions and learn. That would be much easier for us, because otherwise people are going to complain about why we enforce that rule in some cases but not others.