Taiwan Church News

3301 Edition

June 1 - 7, 2015

Church Ministry

On Sufferings Of The Diaspora: A Dialogue Between Yu Jie And Tashi Tsering

Reported by Simon Lin

On May 29, at the Thinkers' Corner in Taichung City, a itinerary book-promotion series lectures entitled as "The Soul Burnt Yet Not Destroyed - Taiwan and Tibet in the perspective of China's unification thought" was held, inviting Yu Jie, the renown Chinese Christian dissident writer of the book "From The Silent Mob To The Protesting Citizens", and Tashi Tsering, President of Taiwan Tibetan Welfare Association, to engage in a dialogue.

Tashi Tsering said, after the Chinese troops invaded into Tibet on March 10 1959, about 80,000 Tibetans led by Dalai Lama launched their first-ever diaspora into India due to China's cruel oppression. Tashi Tsering said he is the second generation of the diaspora Tibetans in India. He desperately wants to go home like his parents, though he has never stayed there. About 17 years ago, after he learned Taiwan had also suffered under the Chinese dictatorship yet finally transformed into a democratic state, he decided to come to Taiwan and stayed here since then.

Yu Jie responded that the Strasbourg Proposal, the so-called "Middle Way" concept, proposed by Dalai Lama's during his visit of the European Parliament in 1988 was an alternative not least advantageous to democracy and freedom. Because it was an intermediary political compromise with China's communist party, allowing Tibet to become a self-ruled democratic autonomy with her own administrating governor, a dual-parliaments congress and an independent judicial system.

Tashi Tsering said, when Dalai Lama exiled into India in early beginnings, the Tibetans in diaspora were indeed enlightened with a very good democratic education. Therefore, the concept of "Middle Way" was a joint determination by the people and the exiled Tibetan government. But, there were still many diaspora non-governmental organizations, like the ones participated by Tashi Tsering, proposing an independent Tibet. But, now the problem is that the communist would not even accept the concept of the "Middle Way".

Yu Jie remarked many politics commentators did not notice the background detail of the famous Chu-Xi meeting: why Xi Jing-ping(CCP Chairman) particularly received Eric Chu(KMT Chairman) at the "Fu-jien Hall" in Beijing's Great Hall of the People? Yu commented that it was due to Xi's special intention to humiliate Chu, in the same vein of past Chinese emperors denigrated Taiwan authority as local government.

Yu emphasized the sacred cow of the communist regime were their firm belief in real power and military force. It was witnessed from the more and more stringent political control and police clamp down on Hong Kong's democratic movements, since Xi had grabbed the power three years ago.

Yu critically pointed out that from Han dynasty the Confucianism has been transformed into a semi-religion for the ruling class, as the emperor-like one-party dictatorship and the thought of grand-unification-of-China had been rationalized and elevated into a brain-wash ideology.

If any progress wished to be kicked off from DPP's "Maintenance of Status Quo" or Tibet's "Middle Way", the first step has to take away the dark elements hidden inside the Confucianism and induce the advanced values of western liberalism and thoughts of human rights, said Yu.

Translated by Peter Wolfe