Muleskinner

Issue date: 4/10/08 Section: Opinion

Commentary: Raghvendra Singh [Click to enlarge]

As the Olympic torch makes its way through the world, the Chinese get closer to fulfilling their dreams: the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Although 2008 is an important election year for Americans, many of the eyes of the world are set on China as it takes center stage with its grand Olympic party.

In 2007, whether it was trade, global warming, Darfur or North Korea, there was hardly an issue where China was not included. From becoming the largest consumer in the world to contributing the most to global growth and warmth through its CO2 emissions, China surely seems to be a superpower in the making.

And though the Red guard has opened China's road of economic reform, democracy and freedom of speech seem to be a distant dream for this capitalist-totalitarian state.

More recently, China has had to deal with its worst nightmare as Tibetan protesters from Lhasa, Tibet took to the streets in demonstrations against the Communist regime for its autonomy over the state of Tibet. Since the beginning of the seventh century, Tibet has been an independent state, as well as a territory, of the ruling Chinese dynasty.

Yet, with the Communist regime, the Red Army has tried to take Tibet from the political authority of its religious head, the fourteenth Dalai Lama. Since 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled to India with thousands of supporters to establish his government in exile, the Tibetan people have time and again revolted in order to keep their freedom.

As China gets ready to show the world the power of its communist might through its celebrations of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, repercussions against the regime, such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, seem to be haunting it once again.

Latest in that record has been the violent demonstrations by the Tibetans in Lhasa, Tibet, which the Chinese communist leaders blame on the Dalai Lama for their prejudice against the Han ethnic majority.

The Dalai Lama, who has been a life-long supporter of non-violence, including during the fight for Tibetan autonomy, seems to be loosing a grip on the several thousand Tibetans who have been waiting for their independence for almost half a century. Unfortunately, many of them are turning to violence to try to change things.

The Dalai Lama has been caught between this struggle of independence. As a recent United States Congressional gold medalist and the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, he has long pleaded to the world community for the autonomy of Tibet.

Though countries like India and the United States have supported the Dalai Lama in his fight for Tibet's autonomy, the world community in general has been quite subdued on the topic, perhaps in fear of repercussions from China.

Be it the Tibetan crisis, the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the approximate 42,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States or the Chinese products that occupy almost 74 percent of the neighborhood Wal-Mart products, China is making its way into the world, and changing it day in and day out. It has its own dark past and its own present controversies.

Yet it is opening its doors for the world to witness a historic Beijing 2008 Olympic season.

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