China equates Tibetan traditions with U.S. slavery

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Was Mao Zedong the Abraham Lincoln of China?

In an attempt to convince U.S. President Barack Obama of its claim to Tibet, the Chinese government has likened the 1959 Communist takeover of the area to the American Civil War, inferring that Mao freed Tibetans from slavery much as Lincoln ended slavery in the United States.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang suggested that Mr. Obama - who arrives in China this weekend on his first presidential visit - should understand China's controversial Tibet policy better than other world leaders because "he is a black president and he understands the slavery abolition movement." Mr. Obama claims Mr. Lincoln as a hero who, he says, helped make it possible for someone of part African descent to win the White House.

"In 1959, China abolished the feudal serf system [in Tibet]just as President Lincoln freed the black slaves. So we hope President Obama more than any other foreign state leader can have a better understanding on China's position on opposing the Dalai's [separatist]activities," Mr. Qin told a press conference here Thursday. He was answering a question about whether Mr. Obama should meet with the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate whom the Chinese leadership calls a violent separatist.

While the U.S. State Department and many human-rights groups have been critical of China's ongoing repression of political and religious freedoms inside Tibet, Beijing says its army liberated Tibetans in 1959 from a system of feudal serfdom that was presided over by a then-teenaged Dalai Lama.

Tibetan groups ridiculed the comparison. "It is an insult for the unelected and authoritarian Chinese government to suggest that an instinctive democrat such as Abraham Lincoln would have sided with China in seeking to deny the Tibetan people their fundamental right to determine their own future," said Matt Whitticase, a spokesman for the Free Tibet campaign.

Mr. Obama recently postponed a meeting with the Dalai Lama in Washington until after his Asia tour, a move that many interpreted as an effort to appease his Chinese hosts ahead of thorny talks on issues such as China's undervalued currency, the need for a climate-change agreement and Beijing's rising political and military clout in Asia. Mr. Obama's decision was attacked by human-rights advocates, who worry the President is putting human rights on the back burner because Washington needs Beijing's co-operation on other fronts.

"Part of what's happening is that the people within the administration who concern themselves primarily with economic issues are saying to the President 'please don't mention anything sensitive because we need their help,'" said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

However, Tibet - and what Mr. Obama's hero Mr. Lincoln might have thought of Beijing's heavy-handed rule there - may now be an unavoidable topic of discussion thanks to Mr. Qin's remarks. Mr. Obama meets Tuesday with Chinese President Hu Jintao, who established himself as a hard-liner when he imposed martial law in Tibet while serving as the regional Communist Party boss there 20 years ago.

Ahead of his arrival in China, Mr. Obama will give a major speech in Japan Friday in which he is expected to lay out his vision of the U.S. role in Asia, a region many say Washington has neglected since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afterward, he will travel to attend the weekend Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Singapore.

In a sign of how sensitive the China stop will be, the two sides have been wrangling for days over the details of a town-hall style question-and-answer session that Mr. Obama is scheduled to hold with Shanghai students on Monday.

Both sides want to screen the 600 or so students who will be in attendance, and Beijing is also thought to be nervous about having the students' discussion with the famously charismatic U.S. President broadcast live on Chinese television. In January, a broadcast of Mr. Obama's inaugural address on Central China Television was censored just as he was lauding those who "faced down fascism and communism." Another sentence, warning that "those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent know that you are on the wrong side of history," was also excised.

In a rebuff of China's state-run media, the U.S. embassy in Beijing Thursday hosted a "press conference" with 13 independent Chinese bloggers. No official media were invited.

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THE TIBET PUZZLE

China says that 95 per cent of Tibetans lived in "feudal serfdom" prior to Chinese rule in the 1950s, prohibited from owning land and forced to work at the will of the land-owning class under threat of punishment.

Tibet's side: Tibetan independence supporters say that harsher conditions of ancient Tibet had largely eased by the mid 20th century and that China has treated Tibetans cruelly, including forced labour camps and even genocide.

Academic opinion: Independent scholars disagree about conditions for Tibetans before and after the Chinese government took over the region, or whether the term "serfdom" was ever applicable to the region.

The truth: It is clear that Chinese authorities have come down strongly on anyone voicing an opinion on Tibet that strays from their official version, and has actively discouraged independent research and debate on the matter.

-- Globe Staff