Hong Kong based blogger Roland Soong translated an interview the renowned German best-seller author, documentary film producer and Asia specialist Frank Sieren, who’s been living in China for nearly one and a half decades:
[translated by Wild Goose Journal from German into English]
Q: Is Tibet becoming a turning point for Chinas development?
A: It’s not a turning point, but simply a tragedy. It seems that most
of the individuals involved have lost sight of the concerns of the
Tibetan people. We may debate about their degrees of involvement in
this disaster, but we should name them first: The government in
Beijing with its relentless, excessive policy of assimilation; then
the Dalai Lama as the head of an exile government, who time and again
tries to politicize his meetings with Western politicians, thus to
suggest latitude which doesn’t really exist when it comes to the
crunch.Q: But there are also other players…
A: If you are talking about the young rioters – they remind me rather
of their contemporaries in the burning suburbs of Paris than of
the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989. With their senseless
violence against Chinese retailers they have created tailwind for the
hardliners in Beijing and brought the majority of the Chinese totally
against themselves. On the issue of Tibet, the position of the Chinese
leadership coincides with that of the large popular majority. We in
the West tend to sweep this fact under the carpet.
