China equates Tibetan traditions with U.S. slavery

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BEIJING - Was Mao Zedong the Abraham Lincoln of China?

In an attempt to convince President Barack Obama of its claim to Tibet, the Chinese government has likened the 1959 Communist takeover of the area to the American Civil War, inferring that Mao freed Tibetans from slavery much as Lincoln ended slavery in the United States.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang suggested that Obama, who arrives in China this weekend on his first presidential visit, should understand China's controversial Tibet policy better than other world leaders because "he is a black president and he understands the slavery abolition movement." Obama claims Lincoln as a hero who, he says, helped make it possible for someone of part African descent to win the White House.

"In 1959, China abolished the feudal serf system (in Tibet) just as President Lincoln freed the black slaves. So we hope President Obama more than any other foreign state leader can have a better understanding on China's position on opposing the Dalai's (separatist) activities," Qin told a press conference here Thursday. He was answering a question about whether Obama should meet with the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate whom the Chinese leadership calls a violent separatist.

While the U.S. State Department and many human-rights groups have been critical of China's ongoing repression of political and religious freedoms inside Tibet, Beijing says its army liberated Tibetans in 1959 from a system of feudal serfdom that was presided over by a then-teenaged Dalai Lama.

Tibetan groups ridiculed the comparison. "It is an insult for the unelected and authoritarian Chinese government to suggest that an instinctive democrat such as Abraham Lincoln would have sided with China in seeking to deny the Tibetan people their fundamental right to determine their own future," said Matt Whitticase, a spokesman for the Free Tibet campaign.

Obama recently postponed a meeting with the Dalai Lama in Washington until after his Asia tour, a move that many interpreted as an effort to appease his Chinese hosts ahead of thorny talks on issues such as China's undervalued currency, the need for a climate-change agreement and Beijing's rising political and military clout in Asia. Obama's decision was attacked by human-rights advocates, who worry the president is putting human rights on the back burner because Washington needs Beijing's cooperation on other fronts.

"Part of what's happening is that the people within the administration who concern themselves primarily with economic issues are saying to the president 'please don't mention anything sensitive because we need their help,' " said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

However, Tibet --and what Lincoln might have thought of Beijing's heavy-handed rule there -- may now be an unavoidable topic of discussion thanks to Qin's remarks. Obama meets Tuesday with Chinese President Hu Jintao, who established himself as a hard-liner when he imposed martial law in Tibet while serving as the regional Communist Party boss there 20 years ago.

In a sign of how sensitive the China stop will be, the two sides have been wrangling for days over the details of a town-hall style question-and-answer session that Obama is scheduled to hold with Shanghai students on Monday.

Both sides want to screen the 600 or so students who will be in attendance, and Beijing is also thought to be nervous about having the students' discussion with the famously charismatic U.S. president broadcast live on Chinese television. In January, a broadcast of Obama's inaugural address on Central China Television was censored just as he was lauding those who "faced down fascism and communism." Another sentence, warning that, "Those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent know that you are on the wrong side of history," was also excised.

In a rebuff of China's state-run media, the U.S. embassy in Beijing Thursday hosted a "press conference" with 13 independent Chinese bloggers. No official media were invited.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

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