What Can We Do?

Some of you have expressed frustration about the crisis in Tibet in your comments and emails. Why isn't more being done? you ask.

There's a good background article on China and Tibet in U.S. News and World Report by Thomas Omestad that partly answers this question. "Across the board, U.S. strategists are having to factor in China's growing capacity to project military power, influence energy markets, and use its diplomatic leverage," Omestad writes.

Bernard Kouchner, France's foreign minister, put it more bluntly: "When you conduct foreign relations with countries as important as China, obviously when you take economic decisions, sometimes it's at the expense of human rights."

Politics in Asia have a massive impact on Buddhism in Asia, and the government of China is a critical part of Asian politics. We saw this last September also, when Buddhist monks in Myanmar (Burma) demonstrated against the repressive military regime that is the government of Myanmar.

Myanmar shares a 2,000 kilometer border with China. Myanmar also supplies natural gas and other vital resources to China. In fact, Chinese investment is a major source of income for the Myanmar government. As the monks of Myanmar were rounded up and arrested -- in some cases, "disappeared" -- China was in a unique position to exert a modifying influence on the Myanmar junta.

Lindsey Hilsum wrote in The New Statesman (October 4, 2007) "As Burmese pro-democracy activists are rounded up, the west looks to China to intervene....the consensus in Washington and European capitals was that only China could resolve the crisis."

However, as Hilsum wrote, the Chinese government cares more about stability than democracy. "China is still ruled by the Communist Party that shot and mowed down protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and which suppresses Buddhist monks in Tibet," she said. Last September, China made no visible effort to influence the junta in Myanmar.

Western powers tread carefully around China because China is a great military power -- it has nuclear weapons and the largest standing army in the world -- but also because of China's place in the global economy. Many global corporations are heavily invested in China and must cooperate with the government of China. Those same corporations influence western governments.

The United States in particular is poorly positioned to influence the government of China. As Jeffrey Simpson points out in today's Globe and Mail, China "holds more than $1-trillion in U.S. debt, which itself stands above $9-trillion." Further, "China's trade surplus with the U.S. remains huge."

Buddhism teaches us that all things are interconnected. Although the doctrine of Interdependent Origination speaks to deep questions about existence itself rather than international politics and commerce, the teachings can help us understand why what we do really does matter to Tibet.

What we purchase matters. How we cast our votes in elections matters. Paying attention matters. To many of us Tibet is a "foreign" issue, and "foreign" issues are separate from "domestic" issues. But when you see how "domestic" decisions about taxes and budgets result in, say, the United States being a trillion dollars in debt to China, and how this in turn hampers America's ability to influence China, then you begin to see the interconnections.

What about activism? Harold Parmington writes at The Huffington Post that "western activism won't help Tibet." However, Parmington's analysis reflects the wrong-headed notion that, somehow, Tibet is better off with China in charge. "China has removed 300 million people from poverty in less than 30 years," he writes. People side with Tibet against China only because His Holiness the Dalai Lama is better at PR than the government of China, Parmington continues.

First, Parmington perhaps does not know that part of Tibetans' grievances with China are economic. It's true that China has invested heavily in Tibet, but for the most part the profits from these investments are going to ethnic Chinese who have moved into Tibet rather than ethnic Tibetans. It's true that Tibet was a backward, even feudal, country before the Chinese invasion. But, as I argued in "Behind the Turmoil in Tibet," Tibet could have been modernized without mass slaughter and cultural genocide.

My friend Matt Browner-Hamlin responded to Parmington --

"What is needed is more activism, not less; a greater sense of how to promote human rights, not a diminished drive to improve the world; and a louder call from people like Mr. Parmington III who enjoy the freedoms of thought, press, assembly, and petition that Tibetans lack, for those same rights to be realized inside Tibet and China. Only in this way can we change the world. As Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Surely Mr. Parmington III would recognize that those words are just as true today as they were in 1857."

Matt has long been associated with Students for a Free Tibet, one of many activist groups that are making a difference. See also Tibet Online to find other activist groups near you.

It may be, however, that the most important thing you can do right now is inform yourself and then inform others about the true situation in Tibet. What happens in Tibet is of vital importance to the future of Buddhism and, indeed, to the future of all interconnected beings.

Photo Credit: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images