China crackdown has public approval

In the West, the name Tibet has long evoked unspoiled Himalayan landscapes, cinnamon-robed monks spinning prayer wheels and a peace-loving Dalai Lama...

In the West, the name Tibet has long evoked unspoiled Himalayan landscapes, cinnamon-robed monks spinning prayer wheels and a peace-loving Dalai Lama seeking freedom for his repressed Buddhist followers.

Here in China, people have embraced a different view: they regard Tibet as a historical part of the nation and see its sympathisers in the West as easily fooled romantics. Thanks to government propaganda, but also to ethnic pride, most Chinese see the Dalai Lama and his monks as obscurantist reactionaries trying to split the country and reverse the economic and social progress that China has brought to a backward and isolated land over the past 58 years.

The violent protests by Buddhist monks and other Tibetans that exploded in Lhasa on Friday, therefore, have generated widespread condemnation among the country8217;s majority Han Chinese. In street conversations, Internet discussions and academic forums, most Chinese have readily embraced the government8217;s contention that the violence resulted from a plot mounted by the Dalai Lama from his exile headquarters in India.

Against that background, the Communist Party has met with broad popular approval in vowing to crack down on the rioters 8212; most of whose victims were Han Chinese 8212; and in qualifying the 8220;impudent8221; Dalai Lama as a 8220;master terror maker8221; who has hoodwinked the West with his appeals for peace. While the rest of the world invokes the Beijing Olympics and advises restraint, Chinese specialists and the public have urged the government to move decisively and gamble that the Olympics will not be spoiled.

8220;The riot in Lhasa was caused by the Dalai Lama,8221; said Zhang Yun, a professor at the government-sponsored Chinese Center for Tibetan Studies in Beijing.

Jorge Chiang, a stylishly dressed Hong Kong businessman on a trip to Beijing, said he, too, believed the bloody rioting was set off on orders from the Dalai Lama. Now, he predicted, the Chinese government will use the violence as a reason to round up the most prominent activist monks and 8220;tighten its control over Tibet.8221;

8220;I believe the government is capable of resolving this situation,8221; said a young woman walking in central Beijing on a brilliant spring afternoon. 8220;It8217;s not the first time this has happened.8221;

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The Tibet Autonomous Region8217;s local government issued an announcement after the riots saying the Dalai Lama and his followers instigated the violence 8220;intending to break Tibet away from the motherland.8221; Their allegation reflected China8217;s long-standing complaint that the Dalai Lama, though he preaches limited autonomy, in fact has not abandoned his campaign to make Tibet and its 2.8 million residents fully independent from China.

For those with long memories in Beijing, that has always been the situation. The Dalai Lama, now 72, led a violent uprising with help from the Central Intelligence Agency after Chinese troops reimposed rule from Beijing in 1950.

The subversion campaign failed, and he was forced in 1959 to flee on horseback to India, where he has lived in exile for half a century. It was to mark the anniversary of his dramatic flight over the Himalayas that anti-China demonstrations in Lhasa got started last Monday.