Recently, the "2023 China Tibet Development Forum", co-sponsored by the Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China and the People's Government of the Tibet Autonomous Region, was held in Beijing, with the theme of "New Era, New Tibet, New Journey - A New Chapter in Tibet's High-quality Development and Human Rights Protection". Li Shulei, the current head of the Central Propaganda Department, attended the forum and read Xi Jinping's congratulatory letter.

According to Xinhua News Agency, Xi Jinping's congratulatory letter closely follows the theme of the forum and gives Chinese answers to "development" and "human rights". Xi Jinping said that people's happiness is the greatest human right, and development is the key to achieving people's happiness. "On the new journey of promoting Chinese-style modernization, I hope that Tibet will implement the new development concept completely, accurately and comprehensively, accelerate high-quality development, and strive to build a united, rich, civilized, harmonious and beautiful socialist modern new Tibet, so that the people can live a happier and better life."

In addition to the highest-level congratulatory letters, the speeches of the scholars participating in the forum also focused on the two dimensions of "breaking" and "standing": breaking the West's long-term demonization of Tibet; What is established is the tangible change that China's promotion of Tibet's development has brought about in the lives of the people in Tibetan areas.

The current director of the Central Propaganda Li Shulei. (Visual China)

For example, Professor Liu Kai, Secretary of the Party Committee and Vice President of Tibet University for Nationalities, mentioned in his speech that in the current complex context of international relations and cross-cultural communication, Tibet's communication faces three difficult problems: unwillingness, unwillingness and unability.

Specifically: First, there is a reluctance to spread the real Tibet. In the face of the extremely complex and ever-changing international relations, some Western political forces are unwilling to give up the "Tibet card" for political purposes, and will tend to choose to spread a one-sided, distorted image of Tibet for their use. Second, I don't want to believe in the real Tibet. At this stage, the stereotypes of the outside world's perception of Tibet still exist, or they remain under the aura of "the last secret of mankind", or the "old appearance" such as the harsh living environment and backward living conditions of the snowy plateau. Due to the existence of stereotypes, the outside public does not want to give up the satisfaction of the so-called "secret place" curiosity, or the satisfaction of the "backward" and "difficult" image to the examiner's superiority, so they often do not want to believe in the real Tibet. Third, it cannot reach the real Tibet. Due to geographical and climatic reasons, the number of people who can travel to Tibet to experience Tibetan culture is still relatively small, especially most of the foreign people know about Tibet from the media, and the Tibet they see is not the real new Tibet, but the perception image formed by the media mirror image and self-selection, and cannot touch the real Tibet.

For example, Lin Guanqun, a professor of history at the Chinese Culture University in Taiwan, highlighted Tibet's "present is not what it used to be" from the aspects of transportation and education, and such changes are based on the central government's commitment to Tibet's construction at all costs, including energy, transportation, economic production, society, education, and so on.

Specifically, in terms of transportation, in the past, Tibet had inconvenient internal transportation, and goods and mail were all transported by manpower and animal lunarment, but by 2021, the Nagqu-Lhasa Expressway, the world's highest highway, has been opened to traffic, and the mileage of first-class and above highways in Tibet has reached 1105,6 kilometers, and the remaining six cities except Ali Prefecture have expressways. After 1959, the central government invested a lot of resources to set up schools at all levels and implemented a series of preferential policies, and by 2018, there were more than 66,24 students of all types in Tibet. At the same time, Lin Cangqun asked: The whole world is pursuing modernization, why do you hope that there will be no changes in Tibet?

In 2006, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was opened. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway is a national railway class I railway connecting Xining City, Qinghai Province to Lhasa City, Tibet Autonomous Region, one of the four major projects of the new century in China, the first railway to the hinterland of Tibet, and the highest altitude and longest plateau railway in the world. (Source: VCG)

In the face of today's Tibet, whether it is to demonize the West or to establish China's concept of development, this depends not only on the actual changes in Tibet itself, but also directly related to the narrative and discourse power held by the two sides around Tibet.

Professor Li Xiguang, director of the Center for International Communication Studies at Tsinghua University, mentioned the Tibetan narrative in his speech entitled "My Himalayan Narrative". In Li Xiguang's view, the Himalayan region is the earliest and deepest region in which Western colonial forces colonized the Asian region. From British imperialism to today's US hegemonism, propaganda and destruction in the Himalayan region have never ceased. In the new environment of global public opinion, what is seen on the surface is the illusion of involving Tibet, and its essence is a severe ideological war between the East and the West. "The purpose of the new Himalayan narrative is to replace the Western binary Himalayan narrative with the grand unity narrative of the people of the Himalayan countries and regions." "At present, the academic circles and media in the Himalayan countries seriously lack independent Himalayan knowledge production, and rely heavily on Himalayan knowledge production in North Atlantic countries. As a result, academics and media in some countries are constrained by Western discourse, fearful and intimidated, and dare not carry out Himalayan narrative writing on their own. As the United States continues to provoke and threaten China from China's periphery, the strategic value of people-to-people communication around the Himalayan Economic Belt and across the Himalayas has become increasingly prominent."

Li Xiguang's so-called Himalayan narrative of Western binary opposition has its origins, and the most direct and powerful criticism does not come from China, but from within the West. In 1998, the University of Chicago Press published Shangri-La's Prisoners: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, written by Donald S. Lopez Jr., Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. This work has aroused considerable repercussions not only in the field of Tibetology, but also in the field of world religions and cultural studies as a whole. Using Said's Orientalist theory and Western postcolonial cultural critique, Lopez has painstakingly exposed and reckoned with the historical and current misunderstandings, appropriations, and distortions of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism in the Western world, especially the mythologization and spiritualization of Tibet in the West, and the phenomenon of Tibet and Shangri-La, a utopia created by Western colonial fantasies, so that it has generally become a prisoner of Shangri-La.

The Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. (Profile picture)

The Prisoners of Shangri-La tells people that Tibet has never been a "theme of freedom of thought and action" but an object of Western fantasy, and that this imaginary "virtual Tibet" has a very special and great impact on Western society, culture and politics today. In the West, Tibet is not a real existence with its own history and unique social composition and cultural traditions, but merely a man-made construction, a mythical and surreal existence designed and created by Westerners, for Westerners. Sometimes Tibet is idealized as a pure land, a holy place, a treasure trove of all human wisdom, an idyllic society entirely dedicated to Buddhist practice; Sometimes Tibet is demonized as a place of superstition and witchcraft, a medieval decay and sinful abyss, a repulsive theocracy that exploits and oppresses serfs. Whether idealized or demonized, in short, the prevalence of these two contradictory stereotypes shows that Tibet is definitely not a real and realistic existence, but an object of fantasy.

Based on Lopez's research, Chinese scholars such as Shen Weirong and Wang Hui have been reminding us in the early 21st century of the internal Orientalism that prevails among our people. Shen Weirong wrote in an article on internal Orientalism: It is regrettable that today's efforts to transform this imaginary utopia of Western colonialism into a wonderland that everyone yearns for in the context of globalization are all Chinese, including Han, Tibetans and compatriots of other nationalities, and it turns out that our Chinese are really the creators and builders of contemporary Shangri-La. Or why are we so enthusiastic about Shangri-La today? Could it be that we are all prisoners of Shangri-La?

Wang Hui wrote in his book The "Tibet Question" between East and West, "The phantom of Orientalism does not belong to the West alone, it is now becoming our own creation. Zhongdian in the Tibetan region of Yunnan has now been officially renamed Shangri-La by the local government, a place where people of all ethnic groups, including Tibetans, live in the name imagined by Westerners and designed to attract tourists. When I visited Zhongdian in 2004, I visited a Tibetan cultural 'model village', a small village that contained almost all Tibetan cultural buildings and furnishings. In a rapidly changing world, it is necessary to protect and cherish ethnic culture, but such a Tibetan cultural village does not reflect the daily life of Tibetans. The mystic imagination of Tibet has now become the hallmark of commodity fetishism, and what kind of neo-oriental 'theosophy' and psychics are being created by the tourist armies that rush to Tibetan areas from all over the world and all of China, and the various 'indigenous' and 'national' cultural exhibits created to cater to the Western imagination? And how to turn the living national culture into the 'other' in the eyes of tourists? In criticizing the Western imagination of the East, we need to critically examine the reproduction of Orientalism in Chinese society. After all, Orientalism is not a purely Western issue."

Professor Wang Hui of Tsinghua University. (Profile picture)

From this perspective, when development meets human rights, when China's Himalayan narrative meets a Western binary narrative, it is equally important to be wary of the Orientalism that prevails within China. Writer Wang Lixiong wrote on the cover of his book "Heavenly Burial", "Tibet is like an incapacitated human body, lying on the top of a snowy mountain on the roof of the world, eagles flying from different directions, tearing her according to their own needs, pecking at the parts they need from her - either to seize sovereignty, or to win public opinion, or to express ideology, or to curry favor with the international community, as well as greedy businessmen, gunmen poaching wildlife, thrill-seeking tourists, Westerners tired of modern civilization... They all poured into Tibet to get what they needed." Perhaps returning to the needs of the Tibetan people themselves is the key to constructing a new Himalayan narrative.

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