＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
Recently, we often hear reports of the Chinese government’s oppression of ethnic minorities such as the Tibetans and Uighurs.
In this article, I would like to look back at history and consider the reasons for the Chinese government’s oppression of the Tibetans, a so-called ethnic minority.
1. Oppression of Tibetans
Specifically, the following oppression has taken place:
(1) Oppression of Tibetan monks
It is said that the number of monks and nuns, which was 150,000, has been reduced to 1,500 due to oppression.
(2) Human rights violations
It has been pointed out that people are being arrested and imprisoned for their “ideology” and that they may not have been given a fair trial.
(3) Vandalism of temples
It seems that almost all of the thousands of Tibetan Buddhist temples have been destroyed.
(4) Restrictions on religious freedom
It seems that posting a photo of the 14th Dalai Lama (1935-), the political and spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, anywhere other than a temple is punishable by law.
The 14th Dalai Lama is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but the Chinese authorities view him as a “terrorist who incites independence.”
(5) Environmental Destruction
There are suspicions that a nuclear testing site has been built in the vast Tibet Autonomous Region and that it is being used as a dumping ground for nuclear and industrial waste.
Next, we will introduce some books and weekly magazine articles about the oppression of Tibetans.
In his book “A Paradoxical View of Japanese History,” Motohiko Izawa introduces it as follows:
Tibet is an ethnic nation with its own language, religion, and customs, completely different from the Han people. However, China unilaterally declared its sovereignty over Tibet in 1949, four years after the end of World War II, and in the following year, 1950, sent in its military and began an invasion, stripping Tibet of its political sovereignty and incorporating it into its own autonomous region. The justification was that “we, China, have liberated Tibet from a feudal society that believed in the superstition of Lamaism.”
Furthermore, Yoshiko Sakurai’s book “Do Not Sell the Country” states the following:
●The brutality of the oppression China has inflicted on Tibet is beyond description. It is not uncommon to have people’s fingernails removed or to be hung upside down and whipped. It is reported that 1.2 million people have been killed so far as a result of the brutal torture and oppression.
In addition, there has been a brutal relocation policy. To date, 7.2 million Han Chinese have entered the country, which has a population of 6 million. This includes at least 500,000 military personnel.
●Even now, there are many labor camps in Tibet called labor camps, where Tibetans who rebel against China are held captive. The actual number of Tibetans who have been arrested, detained, and tortured is unknown. (Mr. Pema Gyalpo)
The 10/11/2006 issue of Weekly Asahi introduced it as follows:
●Between 1949 and 1979, the Chinese authorities’ oppression resulted in the deaths of approximately 1.2 million Tibetans, or one-fifth of the total population, and the destruction of more than 6,000 temples.
● China officially claims that “freedom of religion is guaranteed in Tibet,” but this is also a lie. One of the monks who escaped, Thupten Tsering (23), testified: “I went into exile for the sake of religious freedom. In Tibetan monasteries, the Chinese government is carrying out what they call ‘patriotic education.’ Everyone is forced to insult the Dalai Lama.”
The Dalai Lama is considered an incarnation of the Bodhisattva Kannon, and is at the center of Tibetan Buddhism. Can you really call there freedom of religion when you are forced to insult him?
2. History of the struggle between the Tibetans and China (Han people, etc.)
The Tibet Autonomous Region, which is now considered part of China, was once an independent nation. Tibet was an ethnic nation with its own language (Tibetan), religion (Tibetan Buddhism), and customs, and had many aspects that were incompatible with the Han people.
For this reason, the Tibetan people continue to seek to establish and improve their political status, and are in conflict with the Chinese authorities, who do not allow this.
(1) The struggle between Tibet and China after World War II
Since China’s armed invasion of Tibet in 1950, Tibetans have repeatedly launched anti-China uprisings, then suppressed them, then uprising again, then suppressed them again.
This repression seems to be due to the view that Tibetans are “dangerous elements who threaten the Chinese Communist Party’s one-party dictatorship,” but on the other hand, it can also be seen as “an expression of the Chinese Communist Party’s sense of crisis about its one-party dictatorship.”
(2) The struggle between Tibet and China before World War II
In the mid-7th century, an ancient Tibetan dynasty was born that controlled the entire region of Tibet. This was the de facto founding of Tibet. China (Sui) at the time called this region “barbarians,” “Tuba,” “Great Barbarians,” etc. During the reign of the Manchu Qing Dynasty’s Emperor Yongzheng (1723-1724), they conquered the Tibetan Gushi Khan Dynasty (1642-1724) and came to control Tibet.
However, when the Qing Dynasty fell in 1912, Tibet aligned with Mongolia to seek recognition as an independent nation from the international community, and engaged in armed conflict with the Republic of China led by Sun Yat-sen, in an attempt to unify all of Tibet under the Ganden Phodrang (Tibetan government in exile).
By the way, “Ganden Phodrang” is the Tibetan government headed by the Dalai Lama and based in Lhasa, which was established in 1642. During the “Tibetan Uprising” in 1959, it escaped to India with the Dalai Lama, and is now the “Tibetan government in exile” and is at the top of the Tibetan refugee organization consisting of tens of thousands of people.
3. Chinese History and the Han People
It is said that in China’s long history of 4,000 years (＊), the Han people ruled for about a quarter of the time (Han and Ming), and the rest was dominated by “conquering dynasties” ruled by “foreign ethnic groups” for about three-quarters of the time. However, there are other theories. The emperors of the Sui and Tang dynasties were descended from northern ethnic groups, but they were dynasties that were completely assimilated into Han culture.
(*) About “4,000 years of China”
The phrase “4,000 years of Chinese history” is often heard on television and other media, but this comes from the fact that there was the “Shang Dynasty” (c. 17th century BC – 1046 BC), whose existence has been confirmed archaeologically, and that historical records state that the Shang Dynasty was founded after destroying the “Xia” (c. 1900 BC – 1600 BC).
4. What is the “Han People”?
The origin of the “Han People” dates back to before the “Han Dynasty” (Western Han Dynasty: 206 BC – 8 AD, Eastern Han Dynasty: 25 AD – 220 AD).
The Han People’s roots lie in the “Huaxia People”, a tribe that lived in the “Central Plains” (plains in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, the birthplace of the Yellow River civilization) before the Han Dynasty.
The Han people have had an ethnocentric ideology (Chinese ideology) since ancient times, calling themselves “Xia,” “Hua Xia,” or “China,” and looking down on the other ethnic groups in the surrounding areas not under the protection of the dynasty as barbarians with a low level of culture. “Barbarians” refers to the “Four Barbarians” (Eastern Barbarians, Western Barbarians, Southern Barbarians, and Northern Barbarians), and is a derogatory term for the other ethnic groups living in the four directions of China.
However, the “Han people” are not a purely homogeneous ethnic group; they are a people formed through the mixing and fusion of ethnic groups over many years of rule by other ethnic groups.
In other words, the “Sinocentrism” that says “the Han people built Chinese civilization by influencing, educating, and assimilating other ethnic groups” is a fiction. In reality, the truth seems to be that “the China of today has been plagued by constant invasions, conquests, and rule by other ethnic groups, and has also benefited from the mixing of ethnicities and races and different cultures.”
はじめての支那論 中華思想の正体と日本の覚悟 （幻冬舎新書） [ 小林よしのり ]
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