By Kalyani
NEW DELHI, October 8 – A new report by a Tibetan group says the Chinese government has built up a network of portals portraying Tibet as a backward but integral part of China : sparking a counter-offensive by independent Tibetan groups for whom the Internet is the only battleground.
The report – “China’s Tibet Online: Tibet and Tibetans in People’s Republic China (PRC) Government Websites” – has been released at a time when global human rights groups have accused China of imposing restrictions on the use of the Internet in the Asian nation.
But, points out the London-based Tibetan Information Network, the authors of the report, little is known about the kind of information that people in China and Tibet have access to.
“If information produced outside PRC is blocked, what information is made available in Chinese, within the PRC,” it asks.
It was with this in mind that the group – a Tibet news and research body – conducted a detailed survey of the portrayal of Tibet in Websites run by the Chinese government. Among the Websites it examined are Tibetinfor (www.tibetinfor.com.cn), Tibetinfo (www.tibetinfo.com.cn), TibetOnline (www.tibetonline.net), TibetGuide (www.tibetguide.com.cn) and China Tibetology Research Centre (www.tibetology.com.cn).
The sites state they aim at providing “authoritative information” about Tibetan culture, society and economy.
But, says the special report released last month, “overt control of the structure of information delivery is buttressed by implicit controls: even as they purport to represent a Tibetan autonomous area, or the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), most of the sites reviewed here present Tibet and Tibetan culture from a Chinese perspective.”
Tsering Jigme, the manager of the Tibetan Computing Resource Center, a Tibetan body based in the sprawling north Indian Tibetan refugee settlement in Dharamsala, stresses that Websites have been actively propagating the Chinese perspective for a while now.
“This attack from the Web on Tibetan culture and identity is indeed very dangerous,” says Jigme. “The Chinese have taken all the domains related to Tibet for this purpose,” he protests.
The websites, sponsored by Chinese Federal or provincial-level government bodies, are mostly in Chinese. “They build on existing, and not unambiguous, Chinese cultural perceptions of Tibet as a wilderness and a backward place, but also as a colourful, exotic one, and they emphasize Tibetans’ cultural difference,” it says.
The sites give information on culture, investment and tourism and are published primarily in Chinese. “(They give) encyclopaedia-style overviews of aspects of Tibetan culture, society and economy, as well as special reports on topics that coincide with particular government policy goals (such as the Qinghai-Tibet railway, Tibetan language: conservation and progress, and Lhasa old city rebuilding and renovation).”
The study points out that there is a “consistent emphasis” on the official Chinese line on Tibet: (that) “its culture is an important part of China’s heritage, its territory has been part of or associated with China for thousands of years and its people have been one of China’s nationalities since ancient times.”
The Website, Tibetinfor, for instance, emphasizes a shared history of Tibet and China. “Tibetan areas have been under the jurisdiction of the central Chinese government for more than 700 years, and this historical relationship has a basis of more than 1300 years of positive political, economic, and cultural contacts between Han (Chinese) and Tibetans,” the Website states.
On the whole, says the report, “the viewpoint presented strengthens further the government’s explicit control of information, bringing even seemingly objective facts about Tibetan culture and history in line with the Chinese official portrayal of Tibet as an inseparable part of the Chinese nation.”
It highlights the fact that the Websites tend to minimize the importance of Buddhism – the predominant Tibetan religion – in Tibetan culture and emphasize those aspects of the Tibetan culture that are perceived as pre-Buddhist.
“Most striking is the nearly omnipresent use of the Chinese perspective when presenting Tibet and Tibet-related topics,” says the report. Most Websites are being used to “rewrite and replace” indigenous Tibetan history with a Chinese perspective.
This, it says, is done mostly through comments glorifying changes that Chinese governments have brought about in Tibet.
Jigme stresses that independent Tibetan groups are trying to counter the Chinese government’s propaganda. There are several Websites that portray the history and culture of Tibet with a Tibetan perspective, he says.
“Ours is a non-violent struggle, and the Internet is the only tool we have,” he remarks. “We’ll continue to tell everybody all they want to know about Tibet,” he says.
