Statements of solidarity in the name of friendship with “the Chinese people” just send the wrong message.
by Marco Respinti
On January 7, 2025, a serious earthquake, of 7.1 magnitude, according to data from the US Geological Survey, hit the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), causing more than 120 victims and injuring at least 188. It was also felt in Nepal and parts of India. The number of casualties could have been higher, if it were not for the fact that the region is scarcely populated.
As it is customary and proper, heads of states and governments all over the world sent prompt messages of sympathy, mourning, and solidarity to the devastated people. As it is usual, these messages were addressed to the head of the state where TAR lies, that is, the People’s Republic of China (PRC). What is inappropriate, though, was to address President Xi Jinping expressing condolences in name of the friendship with “the Chinese people” as it has been done right after the catastrophe, for example by the President of the Republic of Italy, who recently was at the center of another capitulation to the PRC.
In fact, doing it takes for granted the official but fake idea nurtured by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that regions occupied, militarily and politically, by the Chinese government to be components of the PRC are natural geographical geo-cultural, and geo-anthropological parts of the Chinese state since time immemorial and their inhabitants are basically “Chinese.” Of course, Tibetans are not.
Renamed “Xizang” in the CCP’s ideological attempt to rewrite history and geography to serve its propaganda purposes, Tibet is a cultural and anthropological subject that differs from China. It was incorporated into the PRC by way of a bloody occupation, which used corruption and force since the CCP took power in 1949, culminating in 1959.
“Bitter Winter” always carefully and intentionally avoids all direct political topics that may discuss territorial integrity of states (rogue states included), partitions, separations, and revolts. It does it because its only focuses are religious liberty and human rights—and also to avoid the easy trap that rogue states (the PRC included) set to delegitimize the causes we culturally and even legally fight for by cunningly rebranding them as just another attempt to ignite, fuel, or support separatist and even terrorist aims.
But, in this regard, no one can deny at least two basic truths on Tibet. First, that before the invasion by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the PRC, Tibet was a distinctive country, even politically, whatever that could mean. Second, that this is all the more demonstrated by the fact that, by way of intrigue and assault, Tibet was annexed by the PRC.
All this makes Tibet and Tibetans a distinctive region and a people who suffers military and political occupation up to this day. The attempts by the CCP to Sinicize Tibet to annihilate Tibetan peculiar identity use different tools, among which the infiltration and/or denial of Tibetan Buddhist religion, the effort to cancel Tibetan language, the ideological re-education of Tibetan children though state boarding schools, the parcelization of historic Tibet into new “Chinese” regions and provinces, the change of Tibetan names, the sterilization of Tibetan women, and the crude practice of organ harvesting that strikes also Tibetans. They all demonstrate the supreme strive of Beijing to make Tibet “China.”
Not acknowledging all this, including in diplomatic messages about the earthquake, and implying even indirectly that Tibetans are part of “the Chinese people,” sadly amounts to pardon the CCP’s inhuman policy in Tibet even in the dire occasion of a natural catastrophe. It adds one more sorrow to Tibetans already suffering under the Communist regime’s rule.
Marco Respinti is an Italian professional journalist, member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), author, translator, and lecturer. He has contributed and contributes to several journals and magazines both in print and online, both in Italy and abroad. Author of books and chapter in books, he has translated and/or edited works by, among others, Edmund Burke, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Russell Kirk, J.R.R. Tolkien, Régine Pernoud and Gustave Thibon. A Senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (a non-partisan, non-profit U.S. educational organization based in Mecosta, Michigan), he is also a founding member as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for European Renewal (a non-profit, non-partisan pan-European educational organization based in The Hague, The Netherlands). A member of the Advisory Council of the European Federation for Freedom of Belief, in December 2022, the Universal Peace Federation bestowed on him, among others, the title of Ambassador of Peace. From February 2018 to December 2022, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of International Family News. He serves as Director-in-Charge of the academic publication The Journal of CESNUR and Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights.
