Nationalism of the lost nations

Abstract

I wonder how readers will react to the following sentence of the late Panchen Lama Cheokyi Gyaltsen: “In 1959, Chairman Mao gave us a directive: because the population of Tibet is small, we should adopt a policy of not killing people or killing very few people” (A Poisoned Arrow, p. 37). My own first reaction had to do with the implications of such a policy for the Hans (ethnic Chinese), who presumably were seen as more dispensable! My next thought was that if China's leaders thought this way, why have so many Tibetans been killed? At any rate, we see here an acceptance of the fact that non-ethnic-Chinese are different from ethnic Chinese, that special policies have been called for; the policies have been inherently erratic, and very erratically implemented.