Monks Up in Arms

Recently Tibetan monks and their supporters in Nepal and western parts of China have participated in protests against the Chinese government. These protests have turned violent, especially in the Tibetan town of Lhasa, where tourists have had to flee and pillaging and deaths have occurred. Details have been shady -- as we all know, the Chinese government tends to keep a few details to itself -- however, it is widely known that there has been a fairly large number of casualties in this "crusade" to rid Tibet of its Chinese imposers. These protests are an effort to disrupt Beijing's preparation for the August Olympics, and protesters have effectively wakened the world to the Tibetan plight, as all eyes have recently been on China in light of the upcoming Games. China has been criticized for its perhaps overly forceful police response, which some have witnessed beating monks unnecessarily and even killing them. Insights by Chinese citizens have revealed the general Chinese consensus that the Chinese government has responded appropriately to the situation, and some are indignant at the US's recent claims of Chinese human rights violations. 

This relates to the recent development of the BBC.com website suddenly being unblocked on the Chinese internet, where most websites have been censored by the Chinese government. Now Chinese citizens are able to view uncensored news, which is drastically different from the Chinese government's account of events. Some Chinese citizens are once more offended by the Western view of the Communist party's doings, while others are simply too stunned by the overload of new information. 

All this doesn't directly connect to anything that we've been learning in lecture or discussion; however, it does call to mind general peacekeeping within a country. With all of these violent protests and "uncensoring" of information previously banned by the Chinese government, I'm curious to see what the consequences will be -- it's difficult to think that there won't be some kind of backlash by the Chinese people or more Tibet protests. It also draws from our pre-Midterm lectures on norms and just general collectivism. The Chinese government may gradually succumb to the global expectations of human rights and may began to crumble ever so slowly over its cracking foundation, due to the unexpected surge in uncensored news. Or, the opposite could happen -- Beijing may just clamp down even tighter, and Chinese collectivism may kick in among the Chinese public. The latter seems more probable -- the Communist Party has done a fairly good job of getting people to subscribe to its tenets, and the Chinese public is less likely to let go of these ideas that, quite frankly, seems to work for them...or so they say.

Source: BBC.com