Qian Si’s article was motivated by the international critique that China faced after its crushing of the uprising which broke out in Tibet in 1959. The background to this uprising is complex. The coexistence between Chinese and Tibetans under the so-called Seventeen-Point Agreement adopted in 1951 when Tibet was incorporated into the PRC was fraught with tension from the start. Mao Zedong’s policy was initially one of moderation. Religious institutions were allowed to exist without interference and landowners continued to exercise hereditary authority over the peasant farmers who tilled their soil, but this policy met with opposition from within the CCP. When the tide of collectivization spread through the Chinese countryside in the mid-1950s, although political Tibet (what is today the Tibetan Autonomous Region) was exempt from this policy, it involved Tibetans living in other neighboring provinces such as Sichuan. As resentment against the policy spread among the Tibetans, uprisings broke out in many areas. Chinese hardliners were also beginning to advocate that “socialist transformation” reforms should be undertaken in political Tibet, while some Tibetans there began to organize an armed rebellion in support of the uprisings elsewhere. And in 1957 the CIA began to train and support Tibetan guerrillas. In March 1959 an uprising broke out in Lhasa which was harshly suppressed by PLA soldiers and led to the Dalai Lama’s flight to India. After 1959, traditional Tibetan society was all but destroyed: monasteries were forced to close, monks and nuns were arrested, and Tibetan farmers and nomads had to give up their traditional way of living and were forced to live in communes. In the article translated here, Qian Si argues that foreign criticism and the UN resolution regarding the situation in Tibet constituted an interference in China’s internal affairs. This line of argument has continued to play an important role in China’s human rights diplomacy. But even despite this criticism of foreign interference, Chinese authorities and scholars have not hesitated to accuse others of violating human rights; we see here that Qian Si criticizes the United States for its treatment of Indians. Criticism of the human rights situation in the United States has likewise often been voiced in the post-1989 period. More surprising, in view of the CCP’s critical view of the concept of human rights at this time, is Qian’s portrayal of the PRC as the true defender of human rights. Qian thus tries to legitimize Chinese actions in 1959 by presenting them as constituting a defense of the human rights of the Tibetan people against local power holders and traditional customs. Qian, like many after him, speaks at length about the cruelty of what he describes as a feudal serf system under which the majority of Tibetans had been suffering until the PLA’s “peaceful liberation” of Tibet in 1951 and its final destruction in 1959. Finally, Qian regards the use of and reference to human rights in the West as a sham, only serving to protect the rights of the bourgeoisie to exploit workers.
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