By Sydney Shapiro (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-04-17 07:22

The rallying cry of the international lynch mob out to slander China at any cost has a familiar ring. They claim they are trying to bring "freedom and democracy" to Tibet.

I dug back in my memory and found I had discussed that very thing in a book I wrote in 1997 called My China.

My "quote" was seen early in the West when the Foreign Language Press published the English original of My China in 2000 (starting on page 189) for the Light On China series, and also when I Chose China was published in New York in 2000, starting on page 143. Permit me to quote:

"In March 1959, the ruling nobles and the Buddhist lama hierarchy in Tibet staged a rebellion.

"Tibet had been part of China for centuries. Though it had mineral and metal resources of some potential, it was so high in the Himalayas and so lacking in transport they were never explored. The Indians, across the border, had a few trading posts in Tibet, where they did a bit of business.

"The British had sent a military expedition at the turn of the century, occupied Lhasa and built a sphere of influence which they continued to maintain, via India, until October 1951, when the Chinese People's Liberation Army marched in.

"Everything was owned by the nobles and the high Buddhist lamas. The people were slaves and serfs living in conditions that would make medieval Europe look like the Age of Enlightenment.

"For any infractions of the 'rules' eyes were gouged out and hands or legs cut off. Floggings were an everyday affair. Human skins were used for drums, skulls mounted in silver were popular bowls among the high lamas. Thigh bones of virgin girls were said to make the best flutes for religious services.

"Beijing tried to encourage gradual reform, but did not interfere in local government and left the big land holdings intact. The clergy and the nobles were not content. In collusion with British, American, Indian and Kuomintang agents, they staged an uprising in 1959, nominally headed by the Dalai Lama, which was quickly put down.

"The rebels fled to India. It was only then that land reforms were commenced, starting later and moving through mutual-aid teams and co-op stages more slowly than in the rest of the country. Today Tibet has its own autonomous people's government.

"At the time of the 1959 rebellion crocodile tears gushed copiously in the West over the loss of 'freedom and democracy' by the poor Tibetans. I saw some mementos of what that term actually meant under the Dalai Lama gang at an exhibition in Beijing, including a neatly flayed skin complete to the very fingertips - an offering to the gods in a lama temple. It was sickening."

It is absurd to claim Tibetans would want to return to that kind of society. The Tibetan people are now infinitely better off. Earlier, they were starving, enslaved, brutalized, illiterate.

Today, most children go to school. There were 2,600 children in public primary schools in 1958, for example, when the Dalai Lama and his cohorts still ruled. In 2007 there were 476,542 children in primary and secondary schools, plus 26,767 students in colleges.

The world press knows the facts. They are readily available. Significantly, not one responsible Western journalist has joined in the mad smear campaign against China. Tibet has been open to the foreign press for several years, and it is flooded with tourists from all over. None claimed to see anything but a peaceful and increasingly prosperous society.

But with the dawn of 2008, the year of the Olympics, China is suddenly attacked by heavily-financed, skillfully orchestrated international operations, screaming and raving, and lying left and right.

How come? What has happened to the shrewd noses of the Western media veterans who can smell a rat a mile away? Isn't it time some of them spoke up?

The author is an American-born writer and translator who has lived in China since 1947

(China Daily 04/17/2008 page9)