In September 1993, I attended a seminar on Tibet that was organized by the United States Institute of Peace. An American professor said he had just been to Tibet and found the streets were filled with Han people, almost finding no sign of Tibetans or traditional Tibetan clothes. He saw Han-style construction everywhere but found no trace of Tibetan construction. He believed this was solid evidence that China is practicing the hanization of Tibet and destroying Tibetan culture. I at once took out an American newspaper, which showed pictures of "Tibet independence" demonstrators in Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region, on May 24 of the same year and told him that those who he believed to be Han people were actually Tibetans in Western suits. In today's China, both Han people and Tibetans, especially the young in urban areas, all like wearing Western suits. Shops in Lhasa are tall concrete buildings with flat roof tops. Concrete buildings are not the invention of Han people but Westerners. So those are not Han-style buildings but Western-style buildings. Today, a lot of people in Asia and Africa wear Western suits and live in concrete buildings, which shows that the West is destroying cultures in Asia and Africa. The professor was rendered speechless.

More ridiculous is U.S. Congressman Frank R. Wolf. On August 9-13, 1997, he made a private visit to Tibet. After returning to the United States, he told his colleagues in the House of Representatives and the media that the Chinese Government was demolishing Tibetan culture by repairing the Potala Palace and providing new houses free of charge to Tibetans who had their dilapidated old Tibetan-style houses pulled down. Does preserving Tibetan culture mean you have to let people continue to live in dangerous houses?

In the March 14 riots this year, "Tibet independence" supporters attacked shops, houses, schools and banks and killed 17 Han people (including an eight-month-old baby) and one Tibetan girl. Despite this, the Dalai Lama still claimed that they were having a "peaceful protest." When the Chinese Government apprehended the mobs so as to protect the personal safety of local people, the Dalai Lama called the action "violently oppressing a peaceful protest" and "seriously violating Tibetans' human rights."

In the eyes of the Dalai Lama and some Western human rights advocates, to kill and burn to death ordinary Han people, including a baby, is not a violation of human rights. I'd like to know whether it is a violation of Tibetans' human rights when the mob burnt a female Tibetan shopkeeper named Cering Zholgar and pushed a female Tibetan shop owner named Ma'ah Yinshe from a building, causing a lumbar fracture (possibly paralysis)?

The Dalai Lama cooked up countless lies, such as "Tibet has always been an independent country from ancient times" and "China killed 1.2 million Tibetans" as the two main typical examples.

In 1950, the Dalai Lama's regional Tibetan Government appealed to the United Nations to "stop China's invasion" and in that letter, he mentioned Tibet had 3 million people. In 1987, he mentioned that Tibetans had increased to 6 million when making a speech in the U.S. Congress. It is also in that speech he said that the Chinese Government had killed 1.2 million Tibetans. Obviously, in the 37 years under the rule of the Government of the People's Republic of China, the population of Tibetans doubled, and at the same time the whole Chinese population doubled. If the Chinese Government did kill 1.2 million Tibetans, then the Tibetan population grew from 1.8 million to 6 million during this period. That is, under the rule of Chinese Government, the growth of the Tibetan population is twice that of Han population. This is really a miracle from the perspective of both fertility science and human development.

The Dalai Lama's mouthpiece, the World Tibet Network News, had to defend his speech by saying that "the so-called 1.2 million Tibetans killed by China is not in terms of flesh but of culture." This is really a weird argument. If it is true, among the 6 million Tibetans only 1.2 million Tibetans had their culture damaged by the Chinese Government and the other 4.8 million did not. In other words, the Chinese Government has preserved the culture of 80 percent of the Tibetan population. Isn't this praise for the Chinese Government?

U.S. accusations

The U.S. Foreign Relations Act for Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989, while admitting that "Tibet's economy and education, health and human services remain far below those of the People's Republic of China as a whole," accused the Chinese Government of having "encouraged a large influx of Han-Chinese into Tibet, thereby undermining the political and cultural traditions of the Tibetan people."