Crap and uninteresting: Tibet protesters in The Australian

APRIL 28, 2008: To my loyal readership: you might have noticed i appear to have abandoned my previous efforts at making this blog interesting for you, its audience far from China.

The posts below were originally written a few days ago, but i pulled them down after deciding they were both crap and uninteresting.

However, i came round to thinking, a blog with so few readers has every right to be crap and uninteresting.

So it continues, for nobody in particular.

On Friday i sent a letter to The Australian attacking the torch protests as counterproductive and wrong. I also claimed that the protests had "destroyed any chance of rational dialogue on the subject of Tibet for some time".

With all the timeliness of a large shipment of large Chinese flags and 80 buses to Canberra, the front page of the edition with my letter reported the earth-shattering news that China had agreed to talk with the Dalai Lama's emissaries.

Of course, as the really, really bright ones on the Australian's website pointed out, this meant that the protests had OBVIOUSLY worked.

Unfortunately the comments section is closed now so i can only correct this childish assumption here.

These torch relay protests have been a PR coup for the extremist Tibetan Independence movement in the West and a PR coup for the Chinese government in China. That is, they have driven public opinion in China and the West further apart than ever.

Sure, the talks are a good thing. The Australian's opinion leader says "Tibetans have an opening to secure concessions". But they don't. Just watch. Why? The fact is, on issues that the majority of the Chinese population feels strongly about, the unelected Communist Party government certainly is answerable to its people. By riling the Chinese people by attacking - so it appeared from here - their hard-earned right to host the olympics, the protesters have left them in no mood to accept concessions in Tibet. That is, the protesters' actions have left the Chinese government with no room to make concessions. The population won't have it - not for a long, long time and not before a lot of rational discussion.

And people chanting "free tibet" and "liar" over the top of each other doesn't constitute rational dialogue.

A couple of points to consider in a "rational discussion".

- Tibetan independence is not going to happen. The Dalai Lama realises this and is not pushing for it. Shouting for it is irrational, inflammatory extremism.

- Chinese people were most grievously offended by the lack of acknowledgement that the March 14 violence was committed by Tibetans. Innocent people were attacked, some killed, in the most brutal manner. The state wemt in to restore order - please, name a state that wouldn't - and foreigners start disrupting the olympic torch celebration in protest.

It's pretty basic: consider the way the other side sees it. It's actually quite important when the other side happens to be hundreds of millions of people strong.