China blind to the hostility
An excellent opinion piece by Richard Spencer in the Daily Telegraph tells a side of the Tibet unrest that we haven't heard:
Those dependent on what the government has to say saw only soft-focus pictures of smiling folk dancers and peasants improving their lives through money funnelled from Beijing. That many Tibetans resented the Chinese would have seemed at best incomprehensible and at worst racist to an audience brought up on an ideologically correct vision of China's ethnic minorities living in harmony.
He looks at a friendship between a Han Chinese and an ethnic Tibetan that has fallen apart since the protests (or riots -- take your pick) in Lhasa.
UPDATE:
Not that we want to promote Richard Spencer too much, but he has just posted his latest blog entry. It's his persperspective on the accusations of western media bias, and it's a fascinating read:
Sure, it is easy to jump from these errors to "the western media is biased and hates China so why don't you just go and leave us alone". But that, as far as I can see, is pretty much it. Why are we biased? How are we biased? What, specifically, are we saying or not saying about China and Tibet that so offends? What, apart from these pictures, have we got wrong?
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Aside from the fact that I find Richard Spencer's writings a painful reading experience (not the content, I might add), I feel I must make a comment about one quote that he got:
"people were doused with gasoline and burnt to death, Hui [Chinese Muslim] children coming out of school had their ears cut off and were set on fire"
If we're (humans) still doing that kind of sh-t, there is something very, very wrong with our race. And the Olympics don't stand a snowball's chance of fixing us.