Recently in Tibet Category
By Radio FREE Asia
November 04, 2011
Chinese authorities move to restrict expressions of Tibetan national culture.
Chinese authorities in the Tibetan capital Lhasa have closed an exhibition of Tibetan art amid growing efforts by Tibetans to assert their cultural and national identity in a region increasingly dominated by Han Chinese.
The exhibition, which was shut down two hours after it opened, included modern paintings and a display of wooden writing boards called jangshing, traditionally used to teach the written Tibetan language.
"[On Oct. 16] there were many people browsing through the exhibition," said a Lhasa resident, speaking to RFA on condition of anonymity.
"Among them were police and other security officials," the man said.
"Since it was really crowded, I left with the intention to return when fewer people were there. But when I came back on Oct. 17, the exhibition had closed with no word of explanation."
"I heard later that it was ordered to close," the man said.
Authorities may have shut down the exhibition by Tibetan artist Kalnor because of the "sensitivity of Tibetans displaying traditional cultural themes," he said, adding, "There are heavy restrictions on all Tibetans living in the Lhasa area now."
Modern and traditional themes
The exhibition, arranged in three rooms, had included displays of old and modern styles of writing and contemporary paintings done on traditional backgrounds, the man said.
In one painting, a Buddhist Wheel of Life was depicted with a lamp placed at its center, and with moths flying into its flame. In another, monks were shown flying in the sky.
A third picture showed the 21 Taras, popular female divinities, painted on butterfly backgrounds.
The main section of exhibition contained the jangshing, wooden boards used for practicing Tibetan writing, the man said.
"These were arranged as if for a class, with writing boards, bamboo sticks for writing, and bags containing white power used to trace the lines shown on the boards."
"It was an interesting display of Tibetan art," he said.
"I wanted to see more of it in detail, but the crowd was so overwhelming that I couldn't view all of the items."
'A critical role'
Speaking in an interview on the state-controlled Xinhua Television Network, artist Kalnor said that in old Tibet, wooden writing boards had played "a critical role" in teaching the Tibetan language.
"Now we have computers and paper to write with, but for Tibetan writing practice, we have to depend on jangshing," said Kalnor, who learned traditional writing from his father and now teaches art at the Toelung Dechen Middle School outside Lhasa.
"I want to revive the old tradition of practicing writing and initiate further improvements," he said.
The Xinhua interview aired on Oct. 20 and did not mention that the exhibition had been closed.
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama recently called on the Chinese government to change its "repressive" policies in Tibet, citing China's crackdown on monasteries and policies curtailing use of the Tibetan language.
Eleven Tibetans inside Tibet have self-immolated so far this year in protest against Chinese rule.
Tensions in the Tibet Autonomous Region and in Tibetan-populated areas in China's provinces have not subsided since anti-China riots swept through the Tibetan Plateau in March 2008.
Reported by RFA's Tibetan service. Translations by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.
By Sharon LaFraniere, Michael Wines and Edward Wong | The New York Times
October 27, 2011
Political censorship in this authoritarian state has long been heavy-handed. But for years, the Communist Party has tolerated a creeping liberalization in popular culture, tacitly allowing everything from popular knockoffs of "American Idol"-style talent shows to freewheeling microblogs that let media groups prosper and let people blow off steam.
Now, the party appears to be saying "enough."
Whether spooked by popular uprisings worldwide, a coming leadership transition at home or their own citizens' increasingly provocative tastes, Communist leaders are proposing new limits on media and Internet freedoms that include some of the most restrictive measures in years.
The most striking instance occurred Tuesday, when the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television ordered 34 major satellite television stations to limit themselves to no more than two 90-minute entertainment shows each per week, and collectively 10 nationwide. They are also being ordered to broadcast two hours of state-approved news every evening and to disregard audience ratings in their programming decisions. The ministry said the measures, to go into effect on Jan. 1, were aimed at rooting out "excessive entertainment and vulgar tendencies."
The restrictions arrived as party leaders signaled new curbs on China's short-message, Twitter-like microblogs, an Internet sensation that has mushroomed in less than two years into a major -- and difficult to control -- source of whistle-blowing. Microbloggers, some of whom have attracted millions of followers, have been exposing scandals and official malfeasance, including an attempted cover-up of a recent high-speed rail accident, with astonishing speed and popularity.
On Wednesday, the Communist Party's Central Committee called in a report on its annual meeting for an "Internet management system" that would strictly regulate social network and instant-message systems, and punish those who spread "harmful information." The focus of the meeting, held this month, was on culture and ideology.
Analysts and employees inside the private companies that manage the microblogs say party officials are pressing for increasingly strict and swift censorship of unapproved opinions. Perhaps most telling, the authorities are discussing requiring microbloggers to register accounts with their real names and identification numbers instead of the anonymous handles now in wide use.
Although China's most famous bloggers tend to use their own names, requiring everyone to do so would make online whistle-blowing and criticism of officialdom -- two public services not easily duplicated elsewhere -- considerably riskier.
It would "definitely be harmful to free speech," said one microblog editor who refused to be named for fear of reprisal.
This newly buttoned-down approach coincides with a planned shift in the top leadership of the ruling party and government, an intricate process that will last for the next year. During such a period, tolerance for outspokenness outside official channels tends to shrink, and bureaucrats eager for promotion show their conservative stripes.
The crackdown also follows popular uprisings across the Middle East that appear to have given China's leaders pause regarding their own hold on absolute power. In the view of some, it also tracks the influence in China's ruling hierarchy of hard-liners like Zhou Yongkang, the public security chief who helped preside over the suppression of riots by ethnic Uighurs in western China's Xinjiang region.
On Tuesday, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that Mr. Zhou was urging authorities "to solve problems regarding social integrity, morality and Internet management" and that he had called for "the early introduction of laws and regulations on the management of the Internet," among other things.
Nobody outside China's closeted leadership knows the true reason for the maneuvers, beyond a general and intangible sense of uneasiness over the degree to which freer speech is taking root here.
The microblogs, or weibos, are perhaps the prime example. In the last year, weibos have become the forum of choice for Chinese to pass on news and gossip about scandals involving government and the elite. The two largest, run by the privately held Sina Corporation and Tencent Holdings, each count more than 200 million registered users.
In the face of official censorship, their weibos are filled with salacious tales of official malfeasance, such as a July frenzy -- photographs included -- over a Yunnan Province city official's sex orgy. Industry insiders say the principal weibo (pronounced way-bwah) regulators, based in Beijing and the Shenzhen Communist Party Internet offices, have been assailed by government leaders elsewhere for allowing the scandals to spread online unchecked.
In fact, the government could easily shut down microblogs. Officials disconnected the entire Internet in Xinjiang for 10 months after the ethnic riots there in 2009. But their growing popularity makes that highly unlikely. The number of users has quadrupled in a single year.
Song Jianwu, dean of the school of journalism and communication at China University of Political Science and Law, said Chinese leaders accepted the need for such outlets for expression. But in the case of weibos, he added, "they are also concerned that this safety valve could turn into an explosive device."
He said the government might gradually require more and more users to register under their real names, while demanding that operators monitor posts more closely. "I think they will do it in a step-by-step fashion," he said. "We hope and we have suggested that they will do it in manner that is not antagonistic."
Some changes are already evident. Besides the in-house monitors who already scan posts for forbidden topics, operators in recent months have bolstered "rumor refutal" departments, staffed by editors, to investigate and knock down information deemed false.
Top officials, including Liu Qi, the party secretary of Beijing, have held publicized visits to microblog companies, sometimes accompanied by popular microbloggers, in which he urged people to uphold social order and the proper ideology -- and implying that their own status in official eyes would depend on their cooperation.
State restrictions on television are murkier. The rules ostensibly apply to CCTV-1, the general programming channel of Central China Television, but not to CCTV-3, which specializes in arts and entertainment, according to a report in the English-language edition of Global Times, an official newspaper.
Many people in the industry have interpreted the decree and earlier measures by central officials as attempts to bolster the ratings of CCTV against the onslaught of entertainment shows produced by satellite stations, which have been wildly successful. Last year, officials told producers of "If You Are the One," a popular dating show on Jiangsu Satellite Television, to tone down the program. Last month, the authorities suspended a talent show on Hunan Satellite Television, "Super Girl," for exceeding a broadcast time limit.
Many industry observers said the show may have been offensive for other reasons, including prompting home viewers to show support for their favorite contestants through cellphone texting, an action akin to voting. The shutdown of "Super Girl" was taken as a warning throughout the television industry and presaged the new rules.
Bill Bishop, a business consultant and media industry analyst in Beijing, wrote on his blog, DigiCha, that the new limits could drive television viewers to look for entertainment on the Internet. On the other hand, he added, officials might be preparing restrictions for online video content. "The trend in China appears to be towards more, not less, regulation," he wrote. "Investors may want to consider factoring in greater regulatory risk."
By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
August 07, 2011
His name is on the lips of the ruddy-cheeked monks, the anxious hotel owners and the intrepid tourists who make their way to this isolated and starkly beautiful town in the mountains of Gansu Province: will he come to Xiahe, as unverified reports suggest, and how long will he stay?
"He" is China's handpicked Panchen Lama, the second-most important religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism, and despite his formidable rank, his presence is not universally welcomed by the faithful in and around the white-wall Labrang Monastery that sprawls into a cavernous valley here.
In recent weeks, as word has spread that he might be coming to study at the monastery, emotions have spiked, as have the numbers of police officers, both uniformed and in plain clothes, hoping to head off trouble in a place where ethnic Tibetans have been unafraid to express their enmity toward Chinese rule.
"Nobody wants him to come, and yet still he will come," said one 26-year-old monk. "We feel powerless."
The main problem is that this Panchen Lama, 21, is one of two young men with claims to the title. The one chosen by Communist Party officials in 1995, named Gyaltsen Norbu at birth, is often referred to by local residents as the "Chinese Panchen Lama." The other is Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who would now be 22, a herder's son who was anointed that same year by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.
Most Tibetans are still loyal to the memory of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, even if he has been missing since Chinese authorities swept him and his family into "protective custody" more than 16 years ago.
"We just hope he is still alive," said Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan essayist and blogger who noted that Gedhun Choekyi Nyima's visage, frozen as a 5-year-old, hangs in many homes and temples. "We are waiting for him."
As Gyaltsen Norbu moves from adolescence to adulthood, Chinese authorities are facing a quandary over how to burnish his bona fides: his standing will continue to suffer if he remains apart from Tibetan monks and the faithful, but officials risk inflaming passions by foisting him on a community that remains deeply suspicious.
In recent years, the Communist Party has tried other means to raise his profile. They named him vice president of the state-run Buddhist association and appointed him to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body that meets annually in Beijing.
But so far most of his public statements have left Tibetans unimpressed. In one typically stolid remark last March, he said, "We live in a society governed by law, while the religious practices fall into the category of social activity; therefore, only by administration according to law can we ensure a stable and harmonious development of religious affairs."
The government bureaucrats who oversee Tibetan affairs have come to the conclusion, one rooted in history, that only a significant stint in a prominent monastery can bolster the Panchen Lama's religious credentials, according to scholars and local religious figures.
"The Tibetans respect good Buddhist practice and accomplishment," Hu Shisheng, a researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said in a telephone interview from Lhasa, Tibet's capital.
The government's struggle to legitimize the Panchen Lama among Tibetans foreshadows the deeper struggle Beijing will face upon the death of the Dalai Lama, when it has said it will name a successor. The Dalai Lama, 76, is still revered on the Tibetan plateau despite years of fierce propaganda that brands him as a troublemaking separatist, even as he insists that he is interested only in genuine autonomy for Tibetans.
Although officially atheist, the Communist Party asserts that only it has the authority to pick top spiritual leaders, who, according to Tibetan theology, are reincarnated from deceased religious figures.
A previous attempt to improve the Panchen Lama's religious standing in 1998 did not end well. After officials sought to pair the boy with the abbot of Kumbum, a revered monastery in Qinghai Province, the abbot, Arjia Rinpoche, fled China and sought asylum in the United States. "It was a very difficult decision, but I did not want to be seen as a collaborator with the Chinese government," Arjia Rinpoche said by telephone from Indiana, where he now lives.
By Radio FREE Asia
July 29, 2011
Beijing fails again to force acceptance of their choice of a senior Tibetan Buddhist figure.
The Chinese government attempted to parade its handpicked Panchen Lama this month in a key Tibetan-majority area but shelved the controversial move following widespread resentment from the people, sources said this week.
Extraordinary security measures were taken in recent weeks for the 21-year-old Gyaincain (in Tibetan, Gyaltsen) Norbu to visit the Labrang monastery in Sangchu county in the Kanlho (in Chinese, Gannan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China's Gansu province.
A Tibetan man living in the Labrang area said Tibetan laypeople and monks at the monastery were unhappy when they heard about the proposed visit.
The Labrang monastery, a key institution in Tibetan Buddhism, was the scene of widely publicized demonstrations against Chinese rule during regionwide protests in 2008.
"He was supposed to come sometime from July 20-30, but now people say he may come sometime in August or September," the man told RFA on Friday.
"For now, because of widespread discontent among the local Tibetans--both laypeople and the monks at Labrang--preparations appear to have been suspended," he said.
According to him, Tibetan staff at government offices displayed reluctance to support the visit even after Chinese authorities warned that they could be dismissed or have their salaries slashed for refusing to welcome him.
"Chinese authorities ordered Tibetan staff at the Sangchu (in Chinese, Xiahe) county offices to be ready to welcome him joyously, and offer scarves and prostrations," he said.
"Many were unwilling to do this, and authorities threatened to cut their salaries or even fire them if they refused to attend."
Difficulty persuading
Chinese authorities have had difficulty persuading Tibetans to accept Gyaincain Norbu as the official face of Tibetan Buddhism in China.
Beijing named him to be the Panchen Lama in 1995 in a retaliatory action after the exiled Dalai Lama identified six-year-old Gendun Choekyi Nyima as the reincarnation of the second-highest monk in Tibetan Buddhism.
The boy selected by the Dalai Lama disappeared together with his family soon after and has not been heard from since. Most Tibetans believe Chinese authorities are keeping him in detention.
"The Chinese authorities [have been] telling the local Tibetans that they have to come out to welcome the Panchen Lama when he arrives," a Tibetan woman living near Labrang said on Wednesday.
"A few years ago, the Chinese government brought the Panchen Lama to Labrang, but the local people refused to attend. This year, too, many Tibetans are saying that they won't come out to show respect," she said.
More than 1,000 Chinese police and security forces, including plainclothes police, were stationed around the monastery to prepare for the visit, she said.
Two Dalai Lamas?
Beijing has announced that upon the eventual death of the present fourteenth Dalai Lama, they will appoint his successor, raising the possibility of there being two Dalai Lamas--one recognized by China and the other chosen by exiles.
Gyaincain Norbu made his political debut in May last year at the annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing, appearing as a national committee member of the top political advisory body.
He has also been made the vice president of China's state-run Buddhist Association.
The Tibetan government-in-exile and exiled Tibetans insist that Gyaincain Norbu is not the legitimate 11th Panchen Lama, since he was appointed by the Chinese government and is not acknowledged by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama.
Reported by Sonam Wangdu and Chakmo Tso for RFA's Tibetan service. Translations by Tsewang Norbu and Tamdin Wangchuk. Written in English by Richard Finney and Parameswaran Ponnudurai.
By Radio Free Asia
June 30, 2011
Chinese authorities want key cities free of petitioners on the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party.
China has stepped up security in Beijing and Tibet ahead of a key political anniversary on Friday, when carefully organized groups will sing revolutionary songs in praise of the ruling Communist Party.
An employee who answered the phone at a guesthouse in the Tibetan capital Lhasa said police had stepped up checks on the entire industry in recent days.
"They come in the middle of the night and in the early morning," the employee said.
"Tomorrow is July 1," the employee said, referring to the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. "Here, if they don't have an ID card, we can't let them stay."
As the nation's capital tightened security ahead of the anniversary events, Wang Kouma, a petitioner from Shanghai, said he was currently being held in a Beijing hotel room by police after being detained by officials from the Shanghai municipal representative office in the capital.
"They put me in this hotel, where there are a lot of people watching me," Wang said. "They are just outside the door of my room, and they won't give me my freedom."
"My mother was persecuted to death and I am seeking redress on her behalf, but I'm not even free to pursue a complaint".
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