Mick Hartley

Tristram Hunt in the Observer:

As well as ending the great Sino-Euro bra war, the Prime Minister’s diplomatic triumphs in Beijing last week included a series of cultural exchanges. The Victoria and Albert Museum has agreed a major Chinese design exhibition to coincide with the 2008 Olympics. Darcey Bussell will give tutorials to China’s best ballerinas. And the British Museum has secured a ground-breaking deal with the National Museum of China to share collections.

All of which is highly regrettable. Governments have to involve themselves in mucky compromises with distasteful regimes, but world-class cultural institutions do not. By lending their prestigious names to the Chinese government, the British Museum and others implicitly sanction Beijing’s cultural policy and, with it, the ongoing artistic, linguistic and religious genocide in Tibet.

Over the past 10 years, mainland China has rediscovered its pre-communist past. The iconoclastic modernism of the Great Leap Forward has been replaced by official respect for China’s ancient civilisation. But this admiration for heritage has come too late for the people of Tibet.

The terrible truth of Mao’s Cultural Revolution bears repeating. Between 1966-1977, an entire civilisation was gutted as 2,000 years of Tibetan history was razed. Prior to China’s invasion, there had been 6,259 Buddhist monasteries and nunneries; by 1976, eight remained. In the name of socialist purity, untold numbers of statues, artefacts, ancient manuscripts and paintings vanished.

A few high-profile palaces and temples were restored in the 1980s. But since 1994, the Chinese government has opted for an active programme of destroying the nation’s sense of its autonomous history. The British Museum and V&A are lending their names to this cultural suppression.

So will we be seeing demonstrations outside the British Museum and the V&A? – as we almost certainly would should either of them choose to celebrate, say, Israeli achievements (chants of “Israeli Culture Paid For in Palestinian Blood“, perhaps). Not likely. Strange how easily people accept Tibet’s fate. Certainly on the left there’s been little outrage. More like a shrug: well, yeah, shame, but, you know…that’s the way it goes.

Is it because of a reluctance to criticise China? Hardly: all but the most entrenched Stalinists are willing to condemn much of Mao’s legacy. Is it because Tibet’s seen as some kind of feudal relic which isn’t worth defending? Perhaps. But there are two main problems as I see it: firstly, they picked the wrong religion. All this hippyish Buddhism, with the Dalai Lama eschewing violence and smiling at everyone: it just doesn’t grab the headlines the way that Palestinians suicide bombers do. If these people were really desperate, wouldn’t they be blowing themselves up all over the place? And it’s all so middle class. Celebs like Richard Gere support Tibet, for God’s sake – how uncool is that? You could imagine the Women’s Institute organising a Bring-and-Buy sale in support of Tibet. This is no cause for a serious dialectically-minded image-conscious young rebel to espouse.

The second mistake: they picked the wrong enemy. If they’d chosen a country like Israel, democratic, with a free press and accountable politicians, they’d be so much better placed. All they’d need to do – and all their supporters in the West would need to do – is switch on the TV, or read the papers: “Monastery Burnt by Chinese Troops, Priceless Manuscripts Destroyed – Chinese troops burnt down yet another monastery today, 50 miles west of Llasa, killing 20 monks in the process, and imprisoning a further 300…..” But the Chinese don’t bother with all that. Any idea how many hundreds of thousands have been killed by the Chinese in Tibet over the past 50-odd years? No? Nor me. Or how many have been tortured to death, or imprisoned for years for “anti-Chinese” crimes? They don’t give the figures out. And it works. It’s a shame, but no one really cares that much, and so we’ll all (me included) be heading down to the British Museum and the V&A to check out these wonderful exhibitions.