[Observer] How Britain helps China destroy Tibet

[M.G.G. Pillai]

The Observer, London


Comment

How Britain helps China destroy Tibet

Tristram Hunt

Sunday September 11, 2005
The Observer

As well as ending the great Sino-Euro bra war, the Prime Minister's
diplomatic triumphs in Beijing last week included a series of
cultural exchanges. The Victoria and Albert Museum has agreed a major
Chinese design exhibition to coincide with the 2008 Olympics. Darcey
Bussell will give tutorials to China's best ballerinas. And the
British Museum has secured a ground-breaking deal with the National
Museum of China to share collections.

All of which is highly regrettable. Governments have to involve
themselves in mucky compromises with distasteful regimes, but world-
class cultural institutions do not. By lending their prestigious
names to the Chinese government, the British Museum and others
implicitly sanction Beijing's cultural policy and, with it, the
ongoing artistic, linguistic and religious genocide in Tibet.

Over the past 10 years, mainland China has rediscovered its pre-
communist past. The iconoclastic modernism of the Great Leap Forward
has been replaced by official respect for China's ancient
civilisation. But this admiration for heritage has come too late for
the people of Tibet.

The terrible truth of Mao's Cultural Revolution bears repeating.
Between 1966-1977, an entire civilisation was gutted as 2,000 years
of Tibetan history was razed. Prior to China's invasion, there had
been 6,259 Buddhist monasteries and nunneries; by 1976, eight
remained. In the name of socialist purity, untold numbers of statues,
artefacts, ancient manuscripts and paintings vanished.
A few high-profile palaces and temples were restored in the 1980s.
But since 1994, the Chinese government has opted for an active
programme of destroying the nation's sense of its autonomous history.
The British Museum and V&A are lending their names to this cultural
suppression.

In human terms, it has meant savage treatment of the monks and nuns
who embody centuries of Buddhist teaching. The arbitrary arrest of
religious leaders Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche and Ngawang Phulchung is just
the tip of an iceberg of human-rights abuse. Currently, hundreds
languish in jail without trial for 'crimes' including raising a
Tibetan flag, while others suffer the hideous inventiveness of the
People's Liberation Army's torture tactics.

With the people has gone the historic fabric. China is currently
engaged in a wholesale demolition of the ancient neighbourhoods of
the holy city of Lhasa. Despite its unique world heritage status and
any number of objections from Unesco, the ancient architecture is
being ruthlessly replaced with communist concrete.

Lhasa, a site of supreme significance for Tibetan Buddhists, is awash
with brothels and barracks. The meditative rhythms of a monastic city
have been replaced by the sonic blare of go-go bars and neon glare of
tacky commerce. An aggressive, militaristic capitalism overwhelms the
pacifist tradition of centuries. Meanwhile, in the schools, the
Tibetan language is under sustained assault.
Perhaps the final indignity is that, under Chinese beneficence, some
gutted monasteries are being restored, not as functioning religious
sites, but as heritage attractions. An authentic culture is being
transformed into faux 'living history'. Tibet is being turned into a
theme park.

Sometimes, the remit of our national museums and galleries fruitfully
coincides with official policy. In the wake of the war in Iraq, the
British Museum worked tirelessly with diplomatic staff to save
Mesopotamia's endangered treasures. But in this case, the
geopolitical needs of the British government and the proper calling
of the V&A and British Museum are not the same. What their directors
must realise is that when modern China hears the word culture, it all
too often reaches for its revolver.

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