   China's Tibet
  Seems that China is eager to exploit Tibet for its natural resources."With seven of China's 15 key minerals due to run out within this decade and major non-ferrous minerals virtually exhausted, the rate of mineral extraction from Tibet is rapidly increasing."Tibet is rich in natural resources. "Tibet is rich in natural resources, such as gold, iron, lead, uranium and huge reserves of forest. ... The Tibetan plateau is extremely fertile..." "According to official Chinese sources, Tibet has proven deposits of 126 minerals, with a significant share of the world's reserves in lithium, chromite, copper, borax, and iron." "According to a report published by the Tibetan Government in Exile, the Chinese have discovered some 200 uranium deposits by 1990."To gain access to these recources, China claims that Tibet is part of China. The Chinese government ecourages the Chinese people to settle in tibet. The Qingzang railway will connect China proper with Tibet "Autonomous" Region within a few weeks.“Tibet has an estimated population of about 6 million Tibetans and 7.5 million Chinese settlers.”This way China can gain control of Tibet. The Tibetan people don't get a proper chance for education. The education is given in Chinese and is more expensive for the Tibetans. They emigrate to India. One third of the refugees is jounger than 18.And here is a great way to reduce the critisism: don't inform the people honestly, or just don't inform them.(Just like the war in Iraq, what comes on the news is filtered and adjusted. Iraq: Reporters/soldiers got a list of subjects they shouldn't talk about. On the iraqee channels you could see the victems of splinterbombs, on bbc the strategical methods to attack "the bad guys", and soldiers making some jokes. And friendly fire isn't always friendly for independent reporters... I know there is no connection with iraq, what i'm trying to say is that control of information (media) is a great weapon. You can use it to justify all practices.)There is a massive censorship on the internet (so probably also on television, newspapers,...). "China has banned access to Wikipedia for the third time, outraging students and intellectuals." "China has taken another step in its crackdown on popular search engine Google. Instead of merely blocking the website, public security authorities are now redirecting requests for Google to other approved Internet search engines, a move which began over the weekend. The servers handling the redirection are located at China Telecom, one of the country's largest phone companies." (this is old news)Tibetans risk prison if they give critic, monks are required to be "patriotic", ... "Hong Kong (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Lobsang Khedrup and Gyalpo, two Tibetan monks from Kardze (Sichuan province), were sentenced to 11 years of prison for hoisting the national flag of Tibet, this according to the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD)."I feel especially bad about the censorship. Good debates start with good information. Human rights can only be defended, if it is known where they are violated. Tibetans should get the chance to defend their country (I'm not talking about military defence here).[Edited by - Kwak on June 8, 2006 4:32:21 PM]
  That's terrible. Is Tibet acknowledged as a country? If so, I don't see how China can get away with this.   ;  Wikipedia: While Tibet was once an independent kingdom, the government of the People's Republic of China and the Government of Tibet in Exile disagree over when Tibet became a part of China, and whether this incorporation into China is legitimate.While China claims that Tibet has always been a part of China, Tibet has a history of at least 1300 years of independence from China.In 1959 there was a Tibetan uprising against China. The Dalai Lama and 100,000 Tibetans escaped into exile. From that day onwards Tibet affectively became an occupied country.   ;Quote:Original post by bytecoderThat's terrible. Is Tibet acknowledged as a country? If so, I don't see how China can get away with this.China gets away with it because Capitalism likes having all of that cheap labor at it's temporary disposal. China has also massively censored the history of the 1989 Tienamen Square protests and resulting massacre. Check out this recent documentary: The Tank Man.   ;Quote:Original post by LessBreadQuote:Original post by bytecoderThat's terrible. Is Tibet acknowledged as a country? If so, I don't see how China can get away with this.China gets away with it because Capitalism likes having all of that cheap labor at it's temporary disposal. China has also massively censored the history of the 1989 Tienamen Square protests and resulting massacre. Check out this recent documentary: The Tank Man.These days, they get away with it because it's more profitable not to antagonize China, in the old days, because of military and demographic power.   ;Quote:Original post by alexmouraQuote:Original post by LessBreadQuote:Original post by bytecoderThat's terrible. Is Tibet acknowledged as a country? If so, I don't see how China can get away with this.China gets away with it because Capitalism likes having all of that cheap labor at it's temporary disposal. China has also massively censored the history of the 1989 Tienamen Square protests and resulting massacre. Check out this recent documentary: The Tank Man.These days, they get away with it because it's more profitable not to antagonize China, in the old days, because of military and demographic power.Those old days were quite a long time ago. In the last 200 years lost China wars to England (twice), France and Japan (twice) [1] [2].   ;  Everyone else did it so why not China?oh I forgot.. they are 'bad' guys.. or wait, they are of value to us so they are ok.No matter what kind of goverment they have or who they oppress and kill.Wait until they move from asset to liability and then listen to the same damn hypocrits whine about how evil the chinese are.We are so full of sh1t it is amazing we can still think.   ;Quote:Original post by LessBreadQuote:Original post by alexmouraQuote:Original post by LessBreadQuote:Original post by bytecoderThat's terrible. Is Tibet acknowledged as a country? If so, I don't see how China can get away with this.China gets away with it because Capitalism likes having all of that cheap labor at it's temporary disposal. China has also massively censored the history of the 1989 Tienamen Square protests and resulting massacre. Check out this recent documentary: The Tank Man.These days, they get away with it because it's more profitable not to antagonize China, in the old days, because of military and demographic power.Those old days were quite a long time ago. In the last 200 years lost China wars to England (twice), France and Japan (twice) [1] [2].England is not the United Kingdom.  England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are part of the United Kingdom.  It pisses us off when people refer to our countries as England (although in this case that might be a good thing).According to my girlfriend (who is Chinese and whose grandfather was in the military at the time), students only started getting killed after they began to attack law enforcement, the military and even civilians.  If that is true then some of them deserve what they got, how else would you expect the government to deal with the situation?Also, most people in China are happy with their government, they have gone from one of the poorest nations to one of the most prospering over the past fifty years.  Their government isn't perfect, but which government is?Furthermore, the Chinese government isn't as oppressive as the BBC etc. would have you believe, websites like BBC News and Wikipedia are not banned in mainland China and searches on things like Tiananmen Square (on both Chinese and foreign search engines) come up with a lot of results related to the massacre.  That's not to say that they don't censor results, just that western news agencies with a hidden agenda are stretching the facts.   ;Quote:Original post by templatesearches on things like Tiananmen Square (on both Chinese and foreign search engines) come up with a lot of results related to the massacre.Search results for "Tiananmen Square" in google.cn.Granted I don't read chinese and I only looked in the first four pages, but I didn't see anything about the massacre. I do know where to find a good hotel near the square though.shmoove   ;  The censorship of China doen't affect us. We can still find all the articles on wikipedia, google (i hope).www.google.cn is the version of google were the results are manually altered. www.google.com can't be accessed (or at least with fustratingly long delay times) from chine. At least this is how i have understood things(But i don't get why they make www.google.cn to give other results. if they were smart, google would give reults based on the ip-address. So it would be harder for us to find which sites are censored.)Search pictures: "Tiananmen Square"Results:google.com. google.cn.The results for the images are just totally different.And the number of results = less than 40 pictures vs +-640.[Edited by - Kwak on June 8, 2006 9:53:18 AM]