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Archive for the ‘China’ Category

Dalai Lama Visit to White House Sparks Chinese Protest

16 Jul
The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama

Tibet is a nation that was invaded and occupied by the (then) new Chinese  Communist regime of Mao Zedong in 1950.  It would seem that this is a simple and incontrovertible fact.  Not according to the Chinese government however.  To the Communist dictatorship in Beijing, Tibet is a piece of China that occasionally wandered off, and had to be brought back into the fold by successive Chinese regimes. 

History proves this assertion is false.  The long  history of wars and conflicts between China and Tibet show several wars between two distinct nations and societies.  The Dalai Lama, who is visiting the White House this week, was literally forced to leave his capital city disguised as a soldier in 1959 to escape a siege and assault by the Communist Chinese forces upon his palace.  Ever since, the Dalai Lama has lived outside his homeland, leading the Tibetan exile government from India, and serving as an advocate for Tibetan freedom from foreign occupation.

The Chinese government’s constant campaign to isolate and discredit the Dalai Lama continues.  On July 15, 2011, the Beijing regime called on President Obama to withdraw his the invitation to have the Dalai Lama visit the White House.  The Chinese threated that if the visit goes on, it will harm relations between the two nations.  China says that by inviting the exiled Tibetan leader to Washington D.C., the Obama Administration is meddling in China’s “internal affairs.”  Since Tibet is clearly an occupied nation, and not an integral part of China, this claim of interference in Chinese internal affairs is patently false.  China continues in a systematic attempt to degrade Tibetan culture and society.  Tibetan Buddhist monks and temples continue to be persecuted, while Beijing continues it’s soft invasion of Tibet by bringing in ethnic Han Chinese migrants in order to alter the ethnic balance in disfavor to the native Tibetans. 

President Obama needs to ignore the demands of the Communist occupiers of Tibet and welcome the Dalai Lama with open arms.  The Dalai Lama represents freedom for his people.  Beijing represents tyranny and ethnic oppression.  It is clear which of these two disparate ideals the United States should welcome.

 
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Posted in China, Current Affairs, History, Tibet

 

When Was World War Two?

28 Jun

http://www.historyguy.com/worldwartwo/when_was_world_war_2.htm

 Marco Polo Bridge

Japanese soldiers at Marco Polo Bridge.

When Was World War Two?

When was World War Two? This seems like an easy question, but it can be an elusive answer. There are several answers to that question, as many historians debate when World War Two began. The end of World War Two is fairly simple to answer, as the Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945 in Tokyo Bay.So, when did World War Two begin? Depends on which part of the war you look at.

There are several competing dates for the starting point. If we look at World War Two as a truly global war (which of course it was), and not looking at it from the European or Western point of view, we can pin the answer down to only two dates:

September 18, 1931–The Mukden Incident (also known as the Manchurian Incident) was a pretext for the Japanese invasion and occupation of the region of China known as Manchuria.

July 7, 1937–the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. This is when Japan (one of the Axis powers of World War Two) began its massive invasion of China. 

Many historians prefer the 1937 date over the 1931 incident as the Marco Polo Bridge incident led to a major war between China (which became one of the Allies of World War Two), and Japan and Germany had already, in November of 1936, signed an Anti-Comintern Pact that made them allies against the democracies and against the Soviet Union.

The start of the European part of World War Two is a bit clearer, as most historians put the start date with the German Invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

 
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Posted in China, Europe, German History, germany, History, japan, War and Conflict, Wars, world war two

 

Wars and Conflicts Between Tibet and China

17 Apr

With the recent publicity surrounding the ongoing repression in Tibet by the Chinese Communist Party, and the public protests around the world as the Olympic torch makes its way to Beijing, I have received several queries from readers about the history of conflicts between Tibet and China. 

There is a new web page on the historyguy.com site detailing some of these Sino-Tibetan Wars and Conflicts.  It is at: http://www.historyguy.com/tibet_china_wars_conflicts.html

While normally I take as neutral a position as possible while explaining world conflicts on the main historyguy.com website, and leaving my more opinionated commentary for this blog, I come down against the continued repression by the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet.  I see a distinction in identifying the brutality and evil of the occupation as sourced in the Communist ideology than in any innately Chinese cultural aspects.  When an authoritarian, dictatorial regime conquers a smaller, basically defenseless nation, it can never be justified.  I liken the Chinese occupation of Tibet with the other evil occupations of history, such as the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, or the Soviet conquest of the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia).

Those once-captive nations eventually regained their freedom, and one day too, Tibet may once again see the back-end of the Communist occupying forces, just as, after the 1911 Revolution, Tibet saw the last of the Manchu Imperial occupation army.   

 
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Posted in China, Current Affairs, History, Tibet, War and Conflict, Wars