China has “time on its side” to win over Western opinion to its point of view on the restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, a senior official wrote yesterday, vowing with unusually strong language to ignore foreign pressure on human rights.
Zhu Weiqun (朱維群), chairman of the ethnic and religious affairs committee of the top advisory body to the Chinese National People’s Congress, said this would be a difficult task, but that dissenting voices were beginning to be heard in the West.
“As China becomes more involved in international affairs, and as Tibet and Xinjiang further open to the world, more and more Westerners will have an understanding of Tibet and Xinjiang that better accords with reality,” Zhu wrote in a lengthy article on the government-run Web site Tibet.cn.
Zhu said the West would finally “see the real face of the Dalai clique and ‘East Turkestan,’” referring to the Dalai Lama and the militant forces China says operate in Xinjiang.
He said such views in the West was still “weak and isolated,” but they represented “the trend of history.”
Zhu was heavily involved in the past in Beijing’s failed efforts to talk to the Dalai Lama’s representatives.
“Without a doubt this will all need long-term, difficult and careful work, as well as much patience, but time is on China’s side,” he wrote.
China says it has poured money into both the strategically located regions as part of its efforts to bring development to what it says were backward and remote areas and that it respects the rights of people there.
Rights groups and exiles say Beijing tramples on the freedoms of Tibetans, as well as the Muslim Uighur people of Xinjiang, some of whom China says are Islamist extremists who want to set up an independent state called East Turkestan.
Tensions in Tibet and Xinjiang have been running high.
In Tibetan regions of China, including four provinces outside Tibet, more than 120 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009 in protest over Chinese rule. Most have died.
In Xinjiang, more than 100 people have died in violence since April last year, including police, blamed by Beijing on religious extremists and separatists.
Zhu signaled there would be no change in policy.
“What should be developed should be developed, and when stability should be maintained it will be maintained — [we] must totally disregard whatever the West says,” he wrote.
Zhu also criticized foreign leaders who meet the Dalai Lama.
Those who do so should “pay a price,” Zhu said.
“We can only push the West to change its way of thinking if we let them understand that China’s power cannot be avoided ... and that the West’s interests lie in development and maintaining ties with China, not the opposite,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not