It’s like this.  French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently met with the Dalai Lama in Poland and Beijing threw a predictable temper tantrum.  But rather than trying to then appease the really easily annoyed regime in Beijing, French human rights minister Rama Yade told the regime to chill out.

From the December 8 EU Business news:

France appealed for calm Sunday after China strongly protested President Nicolas Sarkozy’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, with the human rights minister saying there was no need for “psycho-drama.”

China reacted angrily to Sarkozy’s meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader on Saturday, saying it had seriously undermined Bejing’s relations with France and Europe.

“There is no need for psycho-drama,” human rights minister Rama Yade said in an interview to French LCI television.

“The Dalai Lama is not a dangerous man. He is a man of peace, of non-violence, who has been awarded the Nobel prize for peace.”

Yade stressed that China and France must pool their efforts to tackle the global financial crisis instead of feuding over Tibet.

“We need to cooperate, calmly,” she said.

Nicely done, though this still does not entirely excuse President Sarkozy’s blatant pandering to Beijing by refusing to meet with the Dalai Lama during a visit to France earlier this year.

First Taiwan:

Our policy toward Taiwan, a sound democracy and economic model for mainland China, must continue to be based upon the provisions of the Taiwan Relations Act. We oppose any unilateral steps by either side to alter the status quo in the Taiwan straits on the principle that all issues regarding the island’s future must be resolved peacefully, through dialogue, and be agreeable to the people of Taiwan. If China were to violate these principles, the U.S., in accord with the Taiwan Relations Act, will help Taiwan defend itself. As a loyal friend of America, the democracy of Taiwan has merited our strong support, including the timely sale of defensive arms and full participation in the World Health Organization and other multilateral institutions.

A fairly strong statement, but one that seeks to maintain the “status quo” between Taiwan and China…unfortunately, the status quo means Chinese ballistic missiles pointed at Taiwan and threats of violence against the Taiwanese people by Beijing..so more American aquiescence to the archaic “one China” policy.

Now China:

We will welcome the emergence of a peaceful and prosperous China, and we will welcome even more the development of a democratic China. Its rulers have already discovered that economic freedom leads to national wealth; the next lesson is that political and religious freedom leads to national greatness. That is not likely to be learned while the government in Beijing pursues advanced military capabilities without any apparent need, imposes a “one-child” policy on its people, suppresses basic human rights in Tibet and elsewhere, and erodes democracy in Hong Kong. China must honor its obligations regarding free speech and a free press as announced prior to the Olympics.

Our bilateral trade with China has created export opportunities for American farmers and workers, while both the requirements of the World Trade Organization and the realities of the marketplace have increased openness and the rule of law in China. We must yet ensure that China fulfills its WTO obligations, especially those related to protecting intellectual property rights, elimination of subsidies, and repeal of import restrictions. China’s full integration into the global economy requires that it adopt a flexible monetary exchange rate and allow free movement of capital. China’s economic growth brings with it the responsibility for environmental improvement, both for its own people and for the world community.

Nice.

From the Aspen Times:

“I urge the Chinese government to release Tibetan political prisoners, account for Tibetans who have, quote, ‘disappeared’ since protests in March, and engage in meaningful dialogue on genuine autonomy for Tibet,” McCain said.

Nicely put, Senator.

The piece is in english, but a french translation would be very cool…any takers?

More than 700 Chinese tourists arrived in Taiwan while about an equal number of Taiwanese passengers flew to China yesterday in the first wave of regular cross-straits commercial flights in nearly six decades that could transform ties between the old foes.

On the first day of the operation, a total of 753 Chinese people, including 622 tourists, 31 officials and 60 news reporters and photographers, arrived in Taiwan on nine flights from China.

This is pretty significant. Keep in mind that the communist regime in Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan, even though is is plainly obvious that Taiwan functions as an independent state, and that Taiwanese go about their daily lives under threat of annihilation by Chinese ballistic missiles pointed at the island. So what good can possibly come from this? Well, hopefully a great many Chinese tourists will decide that life in a liberal democracy beats life under communism. Or as Michael Turton notes his blog, The View From Taiwan:

No doubt China is pondering the consequences of letting loose thousands of middle and upper class Chinese on a nation where Asians refute every day the lie that Asians are not suited for democracy.

In fact, that refutation may have already begun. From Saturday’s Taipei Times:

Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners and unificationists took the opportunity to highlight their causes yesterday as the first cross-strait charter flights arrived.

The groups welcomed Chinese tourists with placards proclaiming their views outside Taipei Songshan Airport on Dunhua N Road.

“Human rights for China, independence for Tibet,” Tibetans and their supporters shouted, waving the Tibetan flag as buses carrying Chinese tourists passed by. “We welcome Chinese tourists to breathe the air of freedom in Taiwan!”

Chinese visitors waved at the Tibetan demonstrators and took pictures.

As has been on display to the world recently, under Beijing’s thuggish occupation of Tibet, advocating Tibetan independence (or even going on about human rights) gets you beaten down or killed in the streets by Chinese security forces. In contemporary Taiwan, an Asian nation that only a few decades ago was a one-party dictatorship, Tibetans and advocates for independence can invite Chinese to “breathe the air of freedom.”

That’s great stuff.

As Tanner explains:

This seeming double standard can be explained partly by a sense of guilt. The West has, for the most part, embraced Kosovo’s independence in an effort to assuage its own culpability for not preventing late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of ethnic cleansing there. Similarly, much of the world is protesting on behalf of Tibet because countless millions have witnessed China’s brutal suppression of Tibetan culture.

Taiwan, on the other hand, does not grab our attention, because it is stable and flourishing economically. But it has never been part of the People’s Republic of China. Taiwan is an unrecognized independenct state with a vigorous democracy and high standards of human rights. Because Taiwan has not allowed itself to become a victim, the world simply does not feel guilty about it, and so ignores it.

Tanner may have a point about Western guilt, but could there be a worse reason to protest Beijing’s thuggish occupation of Tibet than to simply try and make one’s self feel better? Even worse is to ignore Taiwan’s international marginalization at the hands of Beijing because it doesn’t make one feel “guilty” enough to care.

Note that Tanner says guilt only partially explains this situation…here he gets to the good stuff:

The campaigns that the West waged throughout the 1980s in solidarity with democratic forces in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe helped bring about the end of communist domination. A similar commitment to the democratic rights of Taiwanese could have salutary effects in China. Moreover, Taiwan is a natural ally of any party that espouses the values of pluralistic politics, free markets and human rights.

It seems particularly shortsighted, indeed hypocritical, for the US and Britain to seek to spread democracy and human rights throughout the world while failing to recognize and reward the Taiwanese, a people who have embraced these concepts wholeheartedly.

Unquestioning recognition of the “one china” policy sends the message that we appreciate more a country that is a big, communist dictatorship rather than a small multiparty democracy.

Indeed, the U.S. does stubbornly cling to the antiquated “one China” policy. The lack of formal recognition of Taiwan by the U.S. actually lends support to Beijing’s remarkably successful efforts at marginalizing Taiwan internationally. This doesn’t mean there isn’t support for Taiwan in the U.S. government. The U.S. Senate has a Taiwan Caucus with twenty five members and the U.S. House of Representatives Taiwan Caucus has 151 members.

Still, at the end of the day, U.S. policy can be boiled down to appeasing the communists in Beijing at the expense of democratic Taiwan.

The first post on regime watch was about my article “Misery: China’s Main Export,” which describes Communist China’s moral illegitimacy to host the 2008 Olympics, and which was first published in the excellent weekly Colorado newspaper, Johnstown Breeze. Here it is, re-printed in its entirety. And again, thanks to everyone who found their way to this blog…hope you come back from time to time.

In 2005, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo introduced a resolution into the House of Representatives calling on the U.S. Olympic Committee to change the venue of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, citing among other things, the “egregious violations of human rights” by China.

And indeed, while Communist China is well qualified to host an international gathering of thugs and tyrants, the regime’s moral legitimacy as host of the Olympics is another matter entirely.

In May 2007, The Hill—a Washington, D.C. newspaper that covers Congress—reported on “a quiet lobbying campaign” in Washington by China in an attempt to “deflect threats that the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing will be boycotted because of what critics say is a Chinese failure to help end genocidal violence in Darfur.”

Actually, far from simply failing to help end the slaughter, China’s outright complicity in the genocide being perpetrated by the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum against non-Arab tribes-people in the Darfur region of Sudan is well established

A March 2007 report from the Washington D.C.-based Heritage Foundation notes that China’s huge investment in Sudan oil in turn helps fund the genocide in Darfur, “Khartoum has doubled its defense budget in recent years, spending 60 percent to 80 percent of its estimated $500 million in annual oil revenue—half from China—on weapons. Some of these weapons find their way to the conflict in Darfur.”

Beijing has also helped subvert international arm embargoes against Khartoum. As the Heritage report continues, “Moreover, with Chinese assistance, the Sudanese government recently built three weapons factories.”

So with China’s help, the Janjaweed militias carrying out the genocide in Darfur are not only well-armed, but have also received military transportation and helicopter gunship support from Khartoum, making the slaughter all the more efficient.

In 2006, China not only abstained from a United Nations Security Council Resolution authorizing the deployment of troops and civilian police into Darfur to provide security against the genocide, but also used its veto power to force language into the resolution requiring the consent of the same Khartoum regime whose mass-murder in Darfur created the need for an international security force in the first place.

But the lobbying campaign didn’t work out as Beijing may have hoped. In May 2007, Congressman Tom Lantos (D-Ca.) released a letter to the Chinese President signed by over 100 members of Congress, including Colorado’s Tancredo stating, among other things, “…unless China does its part to ensure that the government of Sudan accepts the best and most reasonable path to peace, history will judge your government as having bank-rolled a genocide.”

The letter continues, “If China fails to do its part, it risks being forever known as the host of the ‘Genocide Olympics.’ ”

Besides enabling genocide in Darfur, China is also well into its fiftieth year of a military occupation of Tibet. Many thousands of Tibetans—including Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama—are forced to live in exile around the world

Last year, Beijing showed its hyper-sensitivity to having its thuggish occupation of Tibet tied to the Olympics by detaining and then deporting Colorado resident Kirsten Westby and four other Americans for peacefully displaying a banner saying “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008” on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest.

The slogan was a clever play on Beijing’s own cynical slogan for the 2008 Olympics, “One World, One Dream.”

In addition, Beijing is again threatening violence against the peaceful and democratic island nation of Taiwan, over which China claims sovereignty—even though it is plainly obvious that Taiwan function as an independent state—and that only Beijing may represent Taiwan’s 23 million citizens in international organizations.

In 2005, Beijing enacted an “Anti-Secession Law” which codified China’s already long-standing threats against Taiwan. Article eight of the law mandates the use of “Non-peaceful” means against Taiwan if, among other things, “a major event occurs which would lead to Taiwan’s separation from China.”

After more than a decade of being turned down for United Nations membership under its traditional name “Republic of China,” Taiwan is planning a national referendum this year over whether to formally apply for UN membership under the name “Taiwan.”

Beijing recently stated that Taiwan’s referendum represents the kind of “major event” that would allow the regime to invoke article eight against Taiwan.

So Communist China is desperately trying to put on a friendly face for the Olympics while at the same time threatening one of Asia’s most dynamic representative democracies.

The eyes of the world will be on Beijing for the summer games, making the 2008 Olympics a unique opportunity to shine an international spotlight on the misery China exports around the globe.

Chinese Communist Party officials in charge of restive Tibet used the passing of the Olympic torch relay through the capital Lhasa on Saturday to defend their control and denounce the exiled Dalai Lama.

The torch procession ended under tight security below the towering Potala palace after having been run for just over two hours before a carefully-selected crowd, some three months after the region was convulsed by bloody anti-Chinese protests.

“Tibet’s sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it,” Tibet’s hardline Communist Party boss Zhang Qingli said at a ceremony marking the end of the two-hour relay through strictly guarded streets.

“We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique,” he added, in front of the Potala, traditional seat of the Dalai Lama, the most powerful figure in Tibetan Buddhism.

The Associated Press covered the torch passing through Lhasa, Tibet’s capital city. Here’s a part of the AP’s description of how an authoritarian communist regime celebrates the Olympic spirit:

Officers lined the route through the historic city at intervals of as little as 10 feet, while badge wearing onlookers, who had been carefully screened and individually approved beforehand, waved flags and chanted “Go China.”

A few dozen foreign reporters given special permission to cover the Lhasa leg were required to travel in a closely guarded convoy. They were only allowed to cover the opening and closing portions, isolating them from contact with ordinary residents.

Almost all foreign visitors have been banned from the region since the protests, hamstringing the local tourism industry.

These guys actaully get to host the Olympics?

A big thank you to the following, and apologies to any sites left off the list.

Phayul.com:  News, opinion and other information (including travel information) concerning Tibet

Canada Tibet Committee: Website of a pro-Tibet organizatzion in Canada

Uyghur American Association: An Uygher organization in Washington, D.C., USA

China Aid Association: An organization that monitors the persecution of Christians in China

Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center:  An Inner Mongolia human rights organization located in the U.S.

My piece is on the other (other than Tibet) captive nations in Beijing’s imperialist empire. Here is the article re-printed in its entirety:

The international attention being focused on China’s thuggish military occupation of Tibet in the run up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing is well-deserved, but it should be remembered that Tibetans are by no means the only group in western China living under the heel of the Beijing imperialists.

The Mongol people of Inner Mongolia and the Uighers (pronounced “wee-gurs”) of China’s Xinjiang region are also oppressed by Beijing. But unlike the Tibetans, they have neither a Dalai Lama nor sympathetic celebrities to present their problems on a world stage.

In 1949, the newly formed People’s Republic of China “peacefully liberated” by force the Uigher nation of East Turkestan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was formed.

Like many Tibetans, many Uighers are seeking independence from their oppressors, but their efforts are under-reported. For instance, while world press attention focused recent Tibetan protests, few papers reported on a pro-independence demonstration by the Uighers. Similarly, most of the world failed to notice when expatriate Uighers held anti-China protests during an Olympic torch ceremony in Turkey in early April.

Like the Tibetans, the Uighers have a large diaspora, which has been forced to flee Chinese rule. Yet escaping China does not necessarily mean escaping China’s censorship power. The Associated Press reports: “In the late 1990s, the Chinese leadership exerted strong pressure on Turkey to silence and withdraw any government support for these advocates in an effort that was said to be largely successful.”

Speaking off the record, one American expert described China’s policy as “The only good Uigher is a dead Uigher.” Testifying before the U.S. House Committee on International Relations in 2001, Yemlibike Fatkulin, a Uigher asylum seeker, described Beijing’s population control tactics against ethnic Uighers including forced abortions, forced sterilization and heavy fines for “unauthorized” children.

Islam is the dominant Uigher religion. A 2005 Human Rights Watch report on Beijing’s religious repression of Uighers describes clerics being forced to listen to speeches by Communist Party and government officials. The reports notes the oppressive government regulations “pertaining to religious activities, Party doctrine, and positions on separatism.”

Inner Mongolia’s subjugation by Chinese communists began in 1947. While the Mongolians of Inner Mongolia are forced to live under rigid communist rule, the rest of Mongolia (sometimes called “Outer Mongolia”) is an independent nation that has moved from communist rule as a Soviet satellite to a sovereign parliamentary democracy.

During Mao Zedong’s genocidal “Cultural Revolution” in the 1960s and early 1970s, many thousands of Mongolians of Inner Mongolia were tortured, maimed and killed in a vicious campaign by Chinese communists against an alleged Inner Mongolia independence movement.

Today the Inner Mongolia People’s Party (so named in remembrance of the slaughter of the Cultural Revolution) actually exists as an organization of Mongolian expatriates based in New Jersey. Well outside the reach of Beijing, they affirm their goal of “establishing an independent state of Inner Mongolia.”

One of the historical affinities between Tibet and Mongolia has been Buddhism. Like Tibetans, the captive people of Inner Mongolia saw many of their temples destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Today, as in Tibet, the practice of Buddhism in Inner Mongolia is strictly “regulated” by the state.

Due to a massive re-settlement campaign by Beijing, Han Chinese now make up nearly eighty percent of the population of Inner Mongolia. Chinese imperialism has made Mongolians a minority in their own land.

Westerners eager to appease China tend to dismiss the rights of the captive nations in the Chinese empire. In an April 26 interview with the Financial Times, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge called on the west to be patient with China. Noting that the People’s Republic of China has only been around since 1949, Rogge compared contemporary China to past colonial powers such as Belgium, France and Portugal, “with all the abuse attached to colonial powers. It was only 40 years ago that we gave liberty to the colonies. Rogge admitted that China may not be a “role model” in the west, but “we owe China to give them time.”

Actually, if anyone is “owed” anything, it is the Tibetans, the Uighers and the Mongolians. They are all owed their inherent human right of self-determination. After more than half-century under the jackboot of the regime in Beijing, they have been patient long enough.