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The Earnshaw Vault
Tibet 27 years ago, plus ça changePosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, April 21, 2008 9:35 AM
Graham Earnshaw was the Daily Telegraph correspondent in Beijing from 1980 to 1984, and he's been looking through his clippings, which seem to prove both that China has changed completely and also that China has stayed exactly the same. This spring and summer, Danwei will be publishing a series of these reports from the past. This is today's resurrected item: Tibet’s exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, has sent congratulations to the new chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Daily said in Peking yesterday. He urged Chairman Hu Yaobang “to continue with your courage and efforts in recognizing realities and respecting people’s aspirations”. Publication of the double-edged message by the Chinese media has significance. Diplomats suggested that the Peking authorities calculated the message might convince some of the Dalai Lama’s followers in Tibet that he was coming round to accepting Chinese control there.—END
I visited Lhasa in 1982, on one of the first foreign journalist group visits, and as I always did in those days, had my Martin guitar with me. I lugged it up all the steps in the Potala right to the roof, and played some songs sitting up there. I did not, as I often claimed, play a version of Louis Armstrong’s hit, Hello Dalai. But I did play Chuck Berry’s Maybelline. The KGB agent on the tour – the Tass correspondent - then played a Russian tune called “Tibet”. And the valley gleamed beneath us. |
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Comments on Tibet 27 years ago, plus ça change
Mr. Goldkorn, I believe you have made a factual error that compounds the disinformation surrounding the Tibetan issue..
You wrote, "Hu took the view that Tibetan culture had been damaged by the huge officially-organized Han migration to Tibet in the 1960s and 1970s and withdrew large numbers back into the heartland."
This is incorrect, at the time there was no huge officially sanctioned Han migration. What Hu Yaobang was referring to were not migrants, but the preponderance of Han ethnicity Communist party cadres that had been sent to the TAR as officials within the state apparatus in order to build socialism.
Mr or Ms Jing,
Thanks for the information.
Please note: the author of the piece is Graham Earnshaw.