a good, smooth, learned, article - walking the issue to Tibet.

Why would pushing China's future leader be in our national interest?

So he knows what a bunch of prissy look at me, finger wagging types we are, desperate for attention on the world stage, I'm sure he already knows very well.

Of course you're a salesman with a message to sell, and I'm sure you're paid well for it, either cash or ego inflation, like most do gooder Tibet is so cool wannabees.

China liberated a subjugated people who had a life expectancy for a man of 29 years, and brought modern medicine and education to them - they used to get medieval indoctrination and get to pay tithes to the local monasteries who had literally tens of thousands of monks, who bled the land and community.

The Tibetans outside Tibet have a good life and want it for their countrymen, but they need to accept that it is China and China alone who calls the tune and they are not going to give up all the mineral wealth or defensive buffer that is Tibet.

Honestly who would believe anything Rudd says anyway, his time has gone, another PM who had no plan, and did nothing but fiddle, a BS artist of awesome proportions and Australians continue to listen to his ilk in the states.

Mind you I love the line in the article "sign an agreement between the Australia National University and the Communist Party’s Central Party School" that fits in so well with our dear lefties and their cries for human rights, right up to the point of grovelling to the Chinese.

So hey what happened to the 2008 Olympics being given to the Chinese so they would improve human rights, what .. didn't work? Or is it working so well no one bother to comment it is so self evident .. what a farce that was, and is.

Before anyone bother castigating me for not knowing what it's like, I've been to Tibet, traveled extensively there as well as to India to Dharamsala and McLeod Gang .. so know every well what a duplicitous lot they are.

Well said Amicus.
One need only familiarise one's self with the cultural history of Tibet to appreciate its adherence to primitive social norms and the suffocating feudalism of the great Buddhist monasteries. China, as much as any nation, can appreciate how great estates vested in religious organisations, were inimical to the development of an egalitarian society. The Catholic Church in south central China was as tyranical a master ruling vast estates as any war lord from the mid 19th century to the revolution.

As Bradshaw expands significantly on the Tibet issue, it's pertinant that a few remarks be addressed to his observations. A passing familiarity with the history of central Asia and the territorial ambitions of the British, the Russians and China, particularly during and following the 19th century is a great help in understanding the issues of today.

It was called The Great Game. The interests of these great powers was fixed on central Asia as perhaps the remaining "power vacuum" on the entire continent.

China is asserting an ancient and pervasive influence in Tibet that preceeds the other two powers and is herself continuinhg the machinations Great Britain began in creating buffer regions against Russia's desire to expand to the Indian Ocean. While such expansion is hardly likely now, I think it is still Russia that China is more concerned about

Although I don't believe any nation has the right to occupy another, no matter how much they have to offer them, us whinging about it to China's future leader will achieve nothing but make us look like bad (or worse, toeing the line of a US excuse to badmouth them).

All in all, won't make a difference except be not good for relations.
Kevin Rudd's speech was about as far as I'd go with the matter.

We would achieve more success if we stop chanting free Tibet and focus on the poor human rights situation in Tibet. There is no solid argument that can come from Australia. The Chinese can always say that Australia is China's Tibet, Australia's indigenous population are Tibetans and that the English occupied Australia unlawfully. Sorry to burst the bubble but this is quite true.

So we should instead tell China, well their government, that we would like to see improvements in their abysmal human rights record.

Well said LErnest. We too are conquerors and occupiers, as are most nations. The focus does indeed need to be on human rights rather than nationhood.
If Tibet is to move on it needs to focus on being a responsible part of China...it has always been impossible to opt out of the Great Game and China is probably a better occupier than England or Russia.
Gets back to the old culture vs economy vs national interests.

Who is Xi Jinping? Simon, you began your post with something about googling "Obama" and "Australia". Xi Jinping will be China's Obama.

Dig a little deeper. To the people worried about human rights, Xi Jinping’s father was a victim of human rights abuses, purged several times. Xi Jingping himself was a "sent-down youth", sent to the countryside for re-education by peasants during the Cultural Revolution. An experience that broke many lives, by all accounts, was the making of Xi Jinping. The farmers given the task of re-educating the young Xi Jinping ended up electing him as their local party chairman. Even China doesn't know what it's in for yet because not everything about this man's biography is released to the public.

The tide has obviously turned in the Communist Party, Li Keqiang was originally the handpicked successor but he doesn't have the numbers - yes, you do need the numbers. The ground has shifted and the moderates who usually get the post of Prime Minister (Wen Jiabao and before him and Zhu Rongji) are now actually going to be controlling China's destiny. I think we will see an openness and honesty from this man that will take people's breath away.

Everyone should be taking a closer look at this man. He was a transforming figure in his stints as governor in two provinces and in stepping in to clean up after a major corruption scandal in Shanghai.

As for the people chanting "Free Tibet", they are actually acting against the Dalai Lama's wishes. The Dalai Lama has said for years that he wishes for more autonomy for Tibet while remaining inside China's borders. There is an extremely nationalistic mood in China at the moment, waving around Tibetan flags only exacerbates this, it enrages ordinary Chinese citizens and makes them block their ears to any discussion of the legitimate grievances of ethnic minorities within China.

In 2012 the Earth may shift on its axis, but not in the way the movie predicts. A first term Xi Jinping Presidency with a second term Obama Presidency is a tantalizing prospect.

Hi matteo

Xi Jinping is no man of mystery. Chinese sources have been remarkably open about him:

"Xi Jinping was born in June 1953...He is the youngest son of Xi Zhongxun, one of the founders of the Communist guerrilla movement in Shaanxi Province in northern China and former Vice-Premier. At the time his father served as the head of the Communist Party's propaganda department, and later Vice-Chairman of the National People's Congress.

[When Xi was] 10, - during the Cultural Revolution, Xi's father was purged and was sent to work in a factory in Luoyang, and jailed in 1968. Without the protection of his father, Xi went to work in Yanchuan County, Shanxi, in 1969 in Mao Zedong's Socialist Re-education movement....

{Xi] later became the Party branch Secretary of the production team. When he left in 1975, he was only 22 years old. When asked about this experience later by state television, Xi recalled it saying, "...it was emotional. It was a mood. And when the ideals of the Cultural Revolution could not be realised, it proved an illusion...".[3]

[THE FOLLOWNG BIT IS OF MOST CONCERN. THAT IS EXTRORDINARY LEAPFROGS IN XI'S ACADEMIC CAREER POSSIBLY BASED ON HIS FATHER'S SENIOR PARTY STATUS AND TO LI'S OWN PARTY STATUS. OTHERWISE KNOWN AS POSSIBLE NEPOTISM AND CORRUPTION.]

From 1975 to 1979, Xi studied Chemical Engineering at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. There have, however, been some questions about his educational background as it is believed he entered university without studying or completing high school and went to gain a doctorate [IN A TOTALLY DIFFERENT AREA - IE "DOCTOR OF LAW AND IDEOLOGICAL EDUCATION"] without previously holding a masters degree." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/oct/26/china.uknews4 "Despite his pedigree as the son of a high official of the revolutionary era, Mr Xi's elevation was a surprise to many politburo watchers, but it signals the growing strength of party "princelings" and the diffusion of power inside the world's biggest political party."
[26 October 2007]

Pete
(critic of all political shades http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/search/label/Cheney )

MORE TO FOLLOW

Hi matteo - PART TWO

So perhaps there are no dramas about Xi Jinping. Maybe the usual Party nepotism producing continuity, particularly as Xi Jinping appears to be a machine/consensus man (so far).

Xi's odd academic record may indicate a systemic/trend that Li has been promoted beyond his own efforts and ability (much as Bush Jr (Republican front puppet) was promoted due to his father's Republican Party and Presidential status.)

Pete

Plantagenet: Yes, he is a Prineceling but more in the Aung San Su Kyi or Benigno Aquino Jr. mould. George W. Bush was never forcibly sent to the countryside for re-education, his father was never purged and silenced by his party and the whole country's media. Xi Jinping's father was a supporter of Hu Yaobang and an opponent of the Tiananmen crackdown (www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1490336/Xi-Jinping). There is silence about this in the Chinese media, just as there is silence about the fact that the current Premier, Wen Jia Bao worked as the private secretary of former Premier Zhao Ziyang and was by his side in Tiananmen Square when he tearfully pleaded with students to go home because he had been out-manouvered and the decision to use force to clear the square by force had been made.

Li Keqiang had been the leadership's consensus figure but Xi Jinping is more popular within the broader party. This indicates a shift away from business as usual. The supporters of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang remained within the party, unable to say what was on their hearts for 20 year. There time is coming. George W. Bush's father backed dictators and oil companies not pro-democracy student protesters.

The murkiness about his major may have something to do with the dominance of engineers within the party's leadership. There is a misleading comment in Wikipedia about him going to university without going to high school. There was a whole generation of mature aged students in China in the late 70s and early 80s because they had been taken out of high schools and sent to the countryside to be re-educated by farmers. Deng Xiaoping gave them a chance to go to university when the Cultural Revolution ended.

As for his ability, there is a lot of praise for his term as Party Secretary in Fujian and Shanghai and his work in Jiangsu. He also seems to be popular with academics in China, another difference with George W.

* Apologies for my previous post, he was Party Secretary in Fujian not Governor