Tibet

Remember “Free Tibet?” The Tibetan Freedom Concert, a series of music festivals that began in 1996, featured such impressive acts as the Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, U2 and A Tribe Called Quest. An entire generation of young Americans — enchanted with “the other” of Tibetan Buddhism — had no qualms condemning what they believed to be an authoritarian Chinese regime. And why not? The People’s Republic of China, however much they fumed over international denunciations of the Tibetans, seemed weak, and incapable of silencing the Western entertainment industry’s indignation. These days, not so much. The NBA apologizes for players or coaches who criticize Beijing’s actions in Hong Kong.

Should we blame China for the spread of coronavirus? And how should the West respond if the communist regime did cause the pandemic by lying about the virus as it emerged? I spoke about these questions to the dissident author Ma Jian, who has been described — by another dissident — as ‘one of the most important and courageous voices in Chinese literature’. His novels have been called — by a critic — ‘a powerful corrective to the self-interested Western view of China’. Ma believes that the economic miracle in China that has given us cheap goods in the West is also bribing the Chinese to forget their past and infantilizing them in their relationship with their rulers.