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March 17, 2008
China's image in the media is not just that of the booming capitalist economy needing lots of resources from Australia to fuel its expansion. This image is Australia's economic saviour. Nor is it the China dragon face, that appears with the Australian Government helping BHP-Billiton, which is playing the economic nationalist card, to prevent an "aggressive China" from gaining control of some of Australia's most valuable and strategic natural resources through the state owned Chinalco acquiring a 9% stake in Rio Tinto.
China's other media face is the totalitarian face of repression exemplified in the current cackdown on dissidence in Tibet. China's 57-year rule of Tibet has been marked by a heavy hand ever since China sent troops into Tibet in 1950 to "liberate" the region and officially annexed it a year later.
Moir
The anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising sparked an outpouring of frustration at decades of brutal Chinese rule that refuses to allow peaceful resistance to Chinese rule in favour of greater cultural autonomy and an end to repression in Tibet. This is China's human rights face.
Foreign journalists are being restricted from traveling to Lhasa, and the precise death toll remains unknown.But we do know that protests have spread into different Tibetan regions of China, and they have been with heavy violent hand, and that the Chinese government has attempted to manage the news flow out of Tibet, releasing extensive footage of the violent protests on official television, but none of the authorities’ brutal response.
Far from being grateful to Beijing for the benefits of modernisation and economic development, many Tibetans bitterly resent the government and the Han Chinese migrants who have flooded into Tibet and who dominate commerce. China has imposed its rule harshly and refused to yield to Tibetans the autonomy, especially in matters of religion, that they theoretically now enjoy.
Few Tibetans or their allies – are calling for full independence from China. Like the Dalai Lama, all the important foreign powers acknowledge Chinese sovereignty over Tibet but want China to respect the human rights and the unique culture of its Tibetan population.
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Odd that a global firm such as BHP-Billiton would play the economic nationalist/protectionist card in its attempted takeover of Rio Tinto.