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Chinese are pandering to the masses

4:46pm Thursday 18th March 2010 in


I DO not know how the Dalai Lama was selected for the job at the age of two, nor to what extent the mature man is the product of nature or of nurture, but they could have done a hell of a lot worse, as certain other spiritual movements have, by using Western methods. Anyway, his recent meeting with President Obama did not necessarily constitute a violation of the USA’s pledge to refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of China.

If two Nobel Prize winners cannot get together for the occasional private chinwag about this, that and the other, what is the planet coming to?

Besides, one suspects that China’s indignation is about as sincere as it will be durable; they must pander to the masses, just in case they ever go democratic.

DAVID DIMENT, Riverside Court, Oxford

Comments(1)

J_Gasper says...
3:09pm Mon 22 Mar 10

Whether or not President Obama was interfering with the internal affairs of China" depends on whether we regard Tibet as part of China and therefore included in its internal affairs. Until 2008, Britain maintained support for Tibet's independence or at least kept silent on the subject. We remembered that Tibet had been for centuries an autonomous country until China invaded it and suppressed it by violent and brutal means. Then the snivelling, unprincipled Labour minister David Miliband made an announcement that the UK would recognize China's rights over Tibet just in order to get in line with the rest of the EU. He caved in to EU pressure in a shameful way. If Tibet was not an independent country, why did we have our own embassy there until the Chinese invasion?
Mr Miliband made the feeble excuse that China had long claimed "suzerainty" over Tibet. But suzerainty is NOT sovereignty. Suzerainty merely means that Tibet was pledged never to become an enemy of China, and paid a token tribute of a few silk flags every five years. It never meant that the Chinese emperors could make the law in Tibet, or exercise any power there.
Miliband crawled to the EU probably hoping that he would get the Foreign Minister job. Then he didn't get it. Serves him right for ditching human rights. This is only one of many things Labour has done to make us ashamed.
For more information see http://die-cutting.b
logza.in.th/2010/03/
19/should-david-mili
band-resign-over-tib
et-suzerainty/

and
http://oxfordshire.u
kip.org/articles/745
-julia-gasper-ukip-p
pc-oxford-east

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