Chill guys, I'm not a troll, just a first timer with no ill intentions.

Just a tip, teapot - don't talk about MAJ or post his comments here. He isn't welcome for a reason, so generally it's best not to re-post what he says elsewhere.

...it also of course means that you feel that progress should be defined as material progress, and that the han attitude of "let me help you you poor dumb ignorant tibetan savage", which so beautifully mirrors the racist european imperialist attitude that the ccp is supposed to abhor, is acceptable.

Yes indeed; the CCP have used Tibet as a dress rehearsal for Africa.

http://tinyurl.com/yolj3c

Please type URLs with more care, next time. Raj

Specifically, ths member known as M.A. Jones. I think he/she is the only Westerner who has ever put up such a good arguement from "the other side", defying conventional views. But I must stress the word "only".

Excerpt:

"I have presented no theories whatsoever relating to Tibet, nor have I ever justified the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet.

I did, however, point out that life for the majority of Tibetans has been improving under Chinese governance since the 1980s, and I did so because the weight of empirically verifiable evidence shows this to be the case.

Let us look at the evidence. If Tibetans were so fiercely suppressed, and if Chinese leaders in Beijing were really out to Sinocize Tibet by increasing the ethnic ratio of Han to Tibetan, then why are all Tibetan families permitted to have up to three children, and are only fined small amounts of money if they exceed this number? Tibetan families in Tibet average 3.8 children, larger than Tibetan families in India. In fact, the population of Tibet in 1959 was only about 1.19 million. Today however, the population of Greater Tibet is 7.3 million, of which, according to the 2000 census, 6 million are ethnic Tibetans. If we consider the Tibet Autonomous Region only, then according to the census conducted in 2000, as referred to in Wikipedia, “there were 2,616,300 people in Tibet, with Tibetans totalling 2,411,100 or 92.2% of the current regional population. The census also revealed that the Tibetan's average lifespan has increased to 68 due to the improving standard of living and access to medical services.” In 1950 the average lifespan was only 35, and “infant mortality has dropped from 43% in 1950 to 0.661% in 2000.”

As Barry Sautman, who is Associate Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology points out in his study on Tibet and the (Mis-)Representation of Cultural Genocide, “the state sponsored transfer [of Han Chinese] to Tibet is on a small scale. From 1994 to 2001 the PRC organized only a few thousand people to go to Tibet as cadres. Most serve only 3 years and then return to China. Those who move on their own to the Tibet Autonomous Region usually return to China in a few years. They come for a while, find the cities of Tibet too expensive, and then return to China. Some of the 72,000 Chinese who maintain their hukou [household registration] in Tibet don't really live there. Pensions are higher if your household is registered in Tibet.”

These facts are supported by articles in the Columbia Journal of Asian Law and by an Australian Chinese demographer in Asian Ethnicity in 2000, and show that the claims of ethnic swamping in Tibet are misleading. "What I think these articles show,” says Barry Sautman, “is that there is no evidence of significant population losses over the whole period from the 1950s to the present. There are some losses during he Great Leap Forward but these were less in Tibetan areas than in other parts of China. Where these were serious were in Sichuan and Qinghai, but even there not as serious in the Han areas of China. There are no bases at all for the figures used regularly by the exile groups. They use the figure of 1.2 million Tibetans dying from the 1950s to the 1970s, but no source for this is given. As a lawyer I give no credence to statistics for which there is no data, no visible basis."

Does he seriously want Tibetans to remain herders and farmers (basically, backward yokels) forever?

T-co, take care - your Shanghainese is showing. You do not want to choke on your own affluence (and effluence.)

Explicit gov't policy is against prostitution (which is illegal, technically).

Explicit government policy with regard to those things generally considered socially unacceptable doesn't mean squat in China. Empty words. All for show. Zero substance.

Prostitution is rampant and condoned. I would go as far as to suggest that paying younger women to satisfy sexual needs is both an accepted and expected behaviour among Chinese men, married or otherwise.

So we are told of a drug-free, prostitution-free, SARS-free, AIDS-free, tolerant, harmonious utopia and the Chinese leaders expect everyone to buy it. And millions do just that.

The CCP does a fantastic job of loading up its people with images of grateful Tibetans pulled from clutches of evil serfdom and rescued from a terrible, backward existence. It is profoundly disturbing that all of my students think in the same way as t_co, even though none has ever been anywhere near the Tibetan plateau.

When confronted with evidence that contradicts their force-fed propaganda, the power of denial is tangible. Denial not just in a subconscious ego-defensive way, but in a conscious 'we must perpetuate the lie in front of the foreigner' way. The concept of face is how China justifies lying to the world.

i would argue it is due to explicit govt policy - the effects of mass han migration as encouraged by the govt are blindingly obvious. the whole point is it is not for the han chinese to decide what is best for tibetans, but for tibetans to decide.

If the government was SOOO against prostitution like you say, then what explains the huge number of prostitutes around the industrial districts like the shadier places in Guangzhou?

Ok, fine, the government doesn't give a damn about prostitution. Then the Dalai Lama is still incorrect because he claims the central government deliberately encourages prostitution. That's going from negligence to encouragement, which is a very big logical jump.

Prostitution is flourishing in Lhasa. By one estimate there are 10,000 sex workers in the Tibetan capital, which has a population of less than 500,000. The day after visiting the yurt camp, I wander to the core of the city. By four in the afternoon, hookers are pouring into the streets. Along a narrow lane near the holiest temples in Tibetan Buddhism, young women wear knee-high boots, push-up bras and so much eye shadow that they resemble the evil offspring of Courtney Love and Katherine Harris. The girls, many of them no more than adolescents, press themselves against the glass windows of their brothels. As Chinese and Tibetan men stroll by, the hookers run outside, trying to drag them through their doorway.

Inside one brothel, a concrete and metal shack with large windows exposing the front room like a fishbowl, a fourteen-year-old girl takes my hand, leading me into the back. Welts cover her stomach, which is exposed by her tube top. There is nothing on the concrete walls, and the concrete floor is bare save for a small square of moldering linoleum. The girl points to the bed and offers sexual intercourse for ten dollars. When I pull away, she cups her breasts in her hands and halves the price to five dollars.

On a larger boulevard near the brothels, Chinese and Tibetan men saunter through a maze of sex shops that sell dildos, inflatable breasts and other sex toys. Some pick out herbal remedies from the shelves, Viagra-like potions designed to keep you hard all night. Others wander next door to small convenience stores selling massive containers of beer. Behind the convenience shops, the heaviest drinkers have collapsed on the ground, their faces red, their clothes stained with food and feces. Laughing Tibetan children kick a soccer ball around the drunks' prostrate bodies.

In a back alley behind the convenience stores, other prostitutes negotiate with customers. A girl shaped like a child's top offers me oral sex for five bucks. When I turn away she, too, lowers the price -- to three dollars, pleading for me to stay. As I walk away, she shrieks, a pained scream.

Deliberate economic displacement =/= deliberate encouragement of prostitution. Nowhere in this article does it say that the Chinese government has said "we want prostitution to flourish in Tibet."

And furthermore, the economic displacement of ethnic Tibetans is not due to explicit government policy; the vast majority of indigenous displacement happens simply because Han society is mercantile and industrial whereas Tibetan society is communal and nomadic. It's impossible for even democratic governments to reconcile these differences (look at the native americans)--Tibetans simply don't have the skill set to compete in a modern society. So it is inevitable that they will suffer. But efforts to prevent such suffering inevitably turn into patronizing attempts to protect the purity and innocence of Tibet (and if I was Tibetan, I would take each such outburst of sympathy to be another reminder of my humiliating national weakness, and not something to want from other people.)

Oh yeah and read this:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/13247913/the_end_of_tibet/5
http://www.aegis.org/news/re/2005/RE050820.html
http://www.tchrd.org/publications/annual_reports/1999/09_subsistence.htm...

Just to clarify, it is retarded to say that the government has a problem with prostition. I don't think the government has any problem with prostitution... certainly not compared to the problems it has with Tibetan autonomy or civil rights. I saw many whorehouses all across China, never once saw an open protest or even billboard advocating Tibetan rights or independence.

Yeah, but did you see any billboard advertising prostitution? No. Explicit gov't policy is against prostitution (which is illegal, technically).

Also, I think you're overestimating the CCP if you think it would send prostitutes to Tibet to undermine Tibetan culture. That is a ridiculous claim and one that you should provide proof of.