My newest column in popmatters.com is now up.
Dear Bono, Björk and the Beasties: Free Tibet is great. But Tibet is only a fraction of the population of people who are also deserving of your celebrity activism.
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Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 
Hi Yan,
I think one of the reasons is that Tibet used to be its own country. It’s a simpler problem, because all that celebrities (or anyone else…) has to say is “China out.” In the case of the Chinese people, it’s more complicated. For one thing, it’s advocating a change in the type of government that China has now. This could be construed as pushing for a Chinese revolution. Furthermore, the question breaks up into several parts. First, what kind of government China should have. That’s obvious, we all want to see China as a democracy. The second is harder–how should Chinese people change their government? At the rate things are going, I doubt the current leadership in Zhongnanhai would go quietly.
Well perhaps I have a better feeling about them now since they released Dr. Jiang. There is some cause for hope–Taiwan and Korea democratized without (major) armed struggle. But, China is very different, because it does not face an imminent foreign threat, and because it is a large, resource rich nation. Both the Taiwanese and Korean governments were to a large degree reliant on US military aid for their continued existence. That tied their fate in a direct way to US public opinion. No such leverage exists with China.
South Africa is another potential model for democratization, and perhaps a more apt comparison. Apartheid South Africa received, sadly, significant support from the U.S. government. But, in the face of widespread and long lasting condemnation from the rest of the world community, eventually the white power structure relented. Still, South Africa was far more susceptible to sanctions than China. Unlike China, South Africa in the 1980s was not the world’s workshop.
Complicating all this is the fact that in the United States, the most strenuous condemnation of the Chinese government often comes from the most reactionary political leaders. From where I sit, that condemnation has more than a whiff of xenophobia and veiled racism. I say that because several people such as Congressman Cox were also instrumental in the railroading of Wen Ho Lee. It makes it difficult, I think for Hollywood celebrities and “leftists” to ally themselves with these political leaders.
Lately though, I’ve been rejecting the very concept of left/right politics. As you mention in another post, it is lately difficult to make sense of politics from a strictly left/right perspective. Things have changed a lot since the time of the French Revolution, and I think it’s about time our view of politics expanded to understand that change.
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Thanks Tim for such a thoughtful comment.
Yan
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Thanks Tim for such a thoughtful comment.
Yan
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