The Chinese victory- II
Fidel Castro Ruz

WHEN the First World War broke out in 1914, China joined the allies. As recompense, China was promised that the German concessions in the province of Shandong would be returned at war’s end. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which President Woodrow Wilson imposed on friends and foes alike, the German colonies were transferred to Japan, a more powerful allied than China. Thousands of students gathered in Tiananmen Square on May 4, 1919 to protest this move. The first triumphant nationalist movement in China was born there. Called the “May 4th Movement”, it brought the petite and national bourgeoisie and the workers and peasants under one coalition.
The founding of the Kuomintang or National People’s Party had consolidated the nationalist currents that emerged at the close of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It was headed by Dr. Sun Yatsen, a progressive intellectual and revolutionary heavily influenced by the October Revolution, with which he strengthened his party’s ties. The Chinese Communist Party was founded at a congress held from July 23 to August 5, 1921. Lenin sent representatives of the International to that Congress. The Communist movement devoted efforts to reunite China. The young Mao Zedong was among its founding members. Between 1923 and 1924, the Chinese Communist Party and Kuomintang joined forces to form the First United Front.
Following Sun Yatsen’s death in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek took command of the Kuomintang. He focused on establishing firm control of southern China, the Shanghai region in particular. Kaishek did not sympathize with the communist doctrine and, in 1927; he undertook a large-scale repression of communists within the National Revolutionary Army, unions and other social institutions in the country, especially in Shanghai. The Left within the Kuomintang was also heavily repressed. In 1932, following the five-month military occupation of Manchuria, Japan established the state of Manchukuo, which posed a great threat to China. Chiang Kaishek launched five campaigns to besiege and eliminate the communists, who had gathered strength in the bases set up in southern China. In 1927, leading those who had managed to evade Chiang Kai-shek’s treacherous move to the mountainous region of Jiangsu and Fujian, Mao Zedong established an encompassing center of armed resistance, primarily made up of devoted and well-organized communists. This center came to be known as the Soviet Republic of China.
In 1934, pitted against Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces, which were vastly superior in number, nearly 100 thousand Chinese combatants under Mao’s command undertook the Great March towards China’s northeast. Skirting China’s central region, the combatants traversed over 3,750 miles and fought almost continually through a year. This unprecedented feat made Mao the undisputed leader of both China’s Communist Party and Revolution. The application of Marx’s and Lenin’s ideas to China’s political, economic, natural, geographic and cultural conditions established him as the brilliant political and military strategist who liberated a country whose significance in today’s world cannot be underestimated. The second Sino-Japanese War broke out on July 7, 1937. The Japanese deliberately brought about the incident that sparked the war. A Japanese soldier disappeared while his troop was in a military parade at the Marco Polo Bridge, over a river located some 10 miles west of Beijing. China’s army, based across the river, was accused of kidnapping the soldier, and an armed conflict which lasted several hours ensued. The soldier reappeared, almost immediately after combat began. The accusation was false, but the Japanese commander had already ordered the attack. With its usual arrogance, Tokyo made unacceptable demands from China and ordered the deployment of three divisions, equipped with the country’s best weapons. In a few weeks’ time, the Japanese army secured control of the East-West corridor between the Gulf of Chihli (today Bo Hai) and Beijing.
From Beijing, the Japanese army headed to Nanjing, where Chiang Kai-shek’s government was headquartered. They carried out one of the most horrendous of terrorist campaigns known to modern warfare. The city was razed to the ground, as were others. Tens of thousands of women were raped and hundreds of thousands of people brutally murdered. China’s Communist Party had prioritized the struggle for national unity and against Japanese designs, aimed at taking control of the enormous country and its natural resources and to condemn over 500 million of its citizens to merciless bondage. Japan was looking for lebensraum. It was guided by a mixture of capitalist and racist values: it was Japan’s version of fascism.
The Anti-Japanese United Front had already been created that same year, in 1937. The nationalists were also aware of the danger. Japan occupied most of the coastal cities. At the end of the Second World War, there were millions of Chinese casualties. During the epic war, the communists stepped up their struggle against the invaders and caused them significant damage. The United States aided the communists and nationalists. Sensing that its entry into the war was imminent, it asked the Chinese government permission to send a volunteer squadron as well. The Flying Tigers were thus created. Roosevelt deployed Captain Lee Chenault, who was retired at the time, whose conduct expressed his admiration towards the discipline, tactics and efficacy shown by the communist combatants.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States entered the war. However, at no point during the war was Japan able to withdraw its best troops, which, near war’s end, numbered a million soldiers. The Truman administration, which, in an act of terror, dropped nuclear weapons over Japan’s civilian population, made Chang Kaishek the United States’ right hand man. He took up the anti-communist struggle again, but his demoralized troops were unable to hold up against the irrepressible advance of the Chinese People’s Army. When the war ended in October 1949, Kuomintang members, backed by the United States, fled to Taiwan, where they set up an anti-communist government fully supported by the United States. Chiang Kai-shek used the U.S. Naval Fleet to travel to Taiwan.
Might China be yet another dark corner of the world? Before Troy was built and the Greek city-states knew the Iliad and Odyssey, unquestionably marvelous fruits of human intelligence, a civilization that encompassed millions of people were already taking shape on the long shores of the Yellow River. Chinese culture finds its roots in the Zhou Dynasty, which existed 2,000 years before Christ was born. Its peculiar writing system comprises several thousand graphic signs, which generally represent the language’s words or morphemes, a term coined by modern linguistics which is little known to the lay public. The mysterious magic of this language, which the natural intelligence of Chinese children assimilates in the learning process, is beyond our grasp.
Many of the products which first emerged in China, such as gunpowder, the compass and other inventions, were totally unknown in the Old Continent. Had the winds blown in a direction opposite the route followed by Columbus, perhaps the Chinese would have discovered Europe. Since 2000, the Taiwanese government had been controlled by a party whose neo-liberal and pro-imperialistic policies were even worse than the Kuomintang’s stances, a staunch opponent of the principle of a unified China, the Chinese Communist Party’s historical proclamation. This thorny issue threatened to unleash a war of unforeseeable consequences, a new sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of over 1,300 million Chinese people.
The election, this past March 23, of a candidate from the party that provided Chiang Kaishek with his political foundations, was undoubtedly a political and moral victory for China. It removes from the Taiwanese government a party which, in office for nearly 8 years, was about to take new, nefarious steps. According to press agencies, the party lost by a landslide, securing a mere 4.4 million votes, from a population of 17.3 million people entitled to vote. The new President will be sworn in on May 20. “We will sign a peace treaty with China,” he declared. The cables report that Ma Ying-Jeou supports the creation of a Common Market with China, the island’s main trade partner.
The People’s Republic of China maintains a dignified and cautious attitude towards the thorny issue. At Beijing’s State Council, Taiwan’s official spokesperson declared that Ma Ying-Jeou’s victory proves that “independence is not a popular issue among the Taiwanese.” This short statement speaks volumes. The works of prestigious U.S. historical researchers divulge what took place in the Chinese territory of Tibet. Kenneth Conboy’s The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet (University Press, Kansas) describes the sordid details of the conspiracy. William Leary calls it “an excellent and impressive study of a major CIA covert operation during the Cold War”.
For over two centuries, no country in the world had recognized Tibet as an independent nation. It was considered to be an integral part of China. In 1950, India conceived it as such, following the triumph of the communist revolution. England assumed the same stance. Until the Second World War, the United States considered it a part of China and even brought pressures to bear on England in this connection. Following the war, however, they saw it as a religious stronghold that could be used against communism. When the People’s Republic of China implemented the agrarian reform on Tibetan soil, the elite saw its properties and interests undermined and opposed the measures. This led to an armed uprising in 1959. Tibet’s armed rebellion —as opposed to those in Guatemala, Cuba and other nations, where fighting took place under truly harsh conditions— was prepared for years by US secret services, as these studies reveal.

Tibetans & Hans: Stand together through thick & thin
Wu Qi

I WILL never forget their kindness. Without their help, I might have lain dead in the street,” said Tan Yan, a middle-aged Han doctor from Lhasa, the capital city of southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region after hiding in a Tibetan’s home for four days. Tan Yan’s clinic was in East Beijing Road, downtown Tibet, a badly-hit area during the riots in the city. About two o’clock in the afternoon of March 14, Tan Yan took a phone call from a friend. His friend had just been attacked near the Jokhang Temple by a gang of Tibetans, and had had a lock of his hair ripped out. He warned Tan that “the city might be in chaos” and told him to close up the clinic and go home to seek safety.
Putting down the telephone, Tan Yan only half believed what his pal had told him. Suddenly there was the sound of commotion from all around. Tan ran out, and what he saw petrified him. Clouds of black smoke puffed into the sky in Barkhor Street to the west of the clinic. Some cars were burning furiously not far away. Some men in Tibetan clothes were willfully beating and stabbing passersby with sticks and knives. Others flung stones and homemade petrol bombs at shops along the street. And they were heading for Tan’s clinic. “How I regretted having turned a deaf ear to my friend’s warnings,” said Tan Yan. In a blue funk, Tan shouted at his three Tibetan nurses at the clinic to “shut the door.” No sooner than the four had slammed down the iron roller door of the clinic than a sound as if from the depths of hell rang out. Bricks and stones had smashed against the door like snowdrops. “Bang, bang, bang” — the sound shook Tan Yan’s heart with fear.
“They yelled outside and we hid in the clinic daring not to breathe,” said Tan Yan,. “At the time, we thought we might be finished.” Then, Tan heard urgent knocks on the back door of the clinic. A man shouted from outside “Open the door. Come and hide in my home.” It was Langge Doje, a Tibetan neighbor. Tan saw a ray of hope. Tan quickly opened the back door of the clinic. The 43-year-old well-off Tibetan businessman patted Tan on the shoulder, and reassured him “Don’t be afraid.” Langge Doje led Tan Yan and the three nurses through a narrow corridor to get into his home. The mob hammered on the door of the clinic for another 10 minutes before they gave up and left. It was Tan’s good luck that they had failed to set fire to the clinic.
Inside Langge Doje’s home were his family members and some relatives, preparing to have dinner. They came over and offered steaming hot buttered tea to the horror-struck Tan and the nurses to help them get over the shock. “It is too dangerous to go out. Don’t go home, stay here. You will have food so long as we have anything to eat,” ordered Langge Doje, looking across the window at the crazy scene in the street. “I live in the eastern suburb of Lhasa. I have to go along Jiangsu Road and Stone Lion Road, where the mobs staged the riot. It was really dangerous to go back home,” said Tan Yan.
In the next four days, Tan Yan and the nurses stayed with the Langge Doje family, eating Zangba which is made of highland barley flour, Tibet ghee and sugar, and drinking Tibetan butter tea. On March 18, Langge Doje went out to see what was happening in downtown Lhasa. Feeling that it was now safe, Langge Doje put his heart at rest. He could let Tan and his nurses go home. “Without their help I do not know where we would have hidden. Even if I had any place to hide, I might have starved to death,” said Tan Yan, full of gratitude. Tan was not the only Han helped by Langge Doje. Langge Doje runs two hotels in the Duodi Road and Zangre Road in Lhasa, respectively. When the riot broke out on March 14, he called up staff at the two hotels, asking them to try their best to help the Hans. Seven Hans took shelter in the hotels in the afternoon, all either workers from neighboring building sites or tourists.
Finding the Hans hiding in Langge Doje’s hotels, the mobs tried to force an entrance. Langge Doje heard of it and ordered his staff to stand in their way. The seven Hans were able to stay safe in the hotels. “It is wrong to beat up people and set fire to things,” said Langge Doje, although the mobs were his Tibetan brothers. “They did things offensive to god and reason. I feel I have a duty to save the victims. I just had to do that.” In the unrest in Lhasa, which China claims was masterminded by the Dalai group, at least 18 civilians and one police officer have been confirmed killed and 382 injured. Rioters set fire to seven schools, five hospitals and 120 residences. A total of 84 vehicles were burnt and 908 shops were looted. Damage is estimated at more than 244 million yuan (about 34.59 million U.S. dollars).
In face of the beating, smashing, looting and arson in the riots, people of different ethnic groups and religions chose to stand side by side without regard to their own personal safety. On March 14, Losang Cering, a Tibetan doctor of the regional People’s Hospital, rescued a six-year-old Han boy Wu Cheng’an, who was trampled by rioters and suffocated. His ambulance was intercepted by a mob of a dozen wielding knives and clubs. Rebuffing the demand of the mob to hand over the Hans, Losang Cering clutched the boy to his chest and was hurt, needing seven stitches on the left of his face, and suffering a broken cheekbone and cerebral concussion. On the same afternoon, Feng Bixia, a Han businesswoman from Shaanxi Province who came to Tibet 10 years ago, was hacked in the chest and had her left ear pierced in the street when escorting a seven-year-old Tibetan boy and his elder sister back home.
“It is no accident that the Tibetans and Hans threw themselves into the breach to help each other. It proves once again the solidarity of the ethnic groups cultivated over thousands of years. We have weathered the test of violence,” said Gesang Yexe, president of Lhasa-based Ancient Tibetan Books Publishing Company. “I am saddened to see so many buildings burnt, so many innocent people hurt and so many people injured to protect us from the rioters,” said Yexe Luozhui, a resident of Shasa Resident Committee, in downtown Lhasa. “I am 74 years old now. I experienced the cruel oppression of serf owners and led a dog’s life in old Tibet before 1951. Only in socialist new Tibet after the peaceful liberation in 1951 do I enjoy a happy life. We will never tolerate any attempt to separate Tibet from the motherland and breach the harmony and stability in Tibet,” he trotted out.
Over the past five decades since the liberation of Tibet, the central government has given priority to developing the local economy and improve people’s life. The population increased from 1.14 million in 1951 to the present 2.8 million in the plateau autonomous region. Tibetans account for 92 percent of total number of people among 40 ethnic groups living in Tibet. The average life expectancy was lifted from 35.5 to 67 years. In the past 18 years, Tibet has maintained a 12 percent annual growth rate in the local economy. The living and production conditions have improved markedly. The compulsory education, medical insurance and minimal living allowance systems have covered the region. “During the violence, we had our hearts in the mouth, and could not eat or sleep well. We dared not go into the street. Children could not go to school. I am simply wondering what these lawless people want to do. Why they would not allow us to live a good life?” said Longahoi, a retired staff worker of the People’s Hospital of Tibet.
“Harmony and stability are the top priorities,” said Qiangba, director of the Qichi Street Resident Committee of Changdu County, Lhasa. “Thanks to long-term social stability and preferential policies of the central government to boost agriculture, we have been busy producing more grain and getting rich. Now we live in larger houses and have bought trucks. Our wallets have swollen up. Who would dislike such a life? Without stability, we will have nothing like this at all,” said Nornai, deputy director of the Lan Nyiba Resident Committee of Changdu County, Lhasa. A man surnamed Peng, who has done business at Barkhor Street for nearly 10 years, said that businessmen of all ethnic groups have always smoked the calumet together in the place.
“We are living under the same sky. Everyone with a conscience knows we cannot hurt the innocent for no reason,” said Peng. “All I expect is to resume normal conditions as soon as possible and do business in a stable and harmonious surrounding.” Zhoigar a granny in her 60s in Lhasa, showed up each morning as she used to do with her beloved doggie to pray around the Potala Palace with her hand prayer wheel. After lurching around the palace three times, Zhoigar would go to the teahouse to the west of the palace to have a rest and chat with friends. Half an hour later, she fished out a mobile phone from her bag asking her family what vegetables they’d like for dinner. After that, she would hurry to the nearby farm produce fairs at the foot of Yaowang Mountain. “It is so painful that I could not come out to pray at the palace in the riot days, as the lawless people threw our life into confusion,” said Zhoigar. “My wish is that each day, I might come round as the sun rises to go and pray in the fresh air of Lhasa”.





Indian Embassy involved in smuggling of secret nuclear weapons technology
Amjed Jaaved

A REPORT published in the Washington Post, dated March 14, 2008 has confirmed that Indian embassy in Washington D.C., and some Indian- government agencies had conspired with the international electronics executive Parthasarthy Sudarshan, aged 48, to obtain secret weapons technology from U.S. companies. The involvement of the Indian embassy came to light when Suderhsan pleaded guilty before a federal judge in Washington D.C. on March 13, 2008. He was executive of a Singapore-based firm Cirrus Electronics with subsidiaries in South Carolina (United States) and Bangalore (India). His accomplice Gopal posed as ‘international-sales manager’ of the company. The duo coordinated illegal smuggling of the sensitive equipment to India via other countries. At least two Indian Embassy (Washington) officials played a pivotal role in smuggling of the sensitive contraband. One of them was Manik Mukherjee, Counselor (Defence Technology). He officially visited Rochester Electronics Inc. Newbury Port, Massachusetts to witness testing of microprocessors. Mukherjee signed the ‘Inspection and Acceptance Certificate’ on behalf of the Indian government for 377 selected micro-processors. The other person was S. Janarthanan’ Mukherjee of Aeronautical Development Establishment;
The FBI holds evidence of tri-Iateral e-mails between Janarthanan and Cirrus Electronics (Sudershan and Gopal). The embassy officials remain to be charged before US District Judge Ricardo Urabina, for abetment in illegal export of missile and navigational technology to India. To US authorities, Gopal secretly shipped sensitive material, via Singapore, to prohibited Indian entities. He did so without obtaining an export licence from the US Department of Commerce under US Arms Export Control Act and International Emergencies’ Economic Powers Act. It is believed that the equipment was used in the nuclear capable Agni-III missile. This inference is based on the fact that the consignment of the equipment was sent directly to India’s Vikram-Sarabhai Space Centre, Bharat Dynamics Private Limited, and Bharat Heavy Electronics Limited. In another case, a Minnesota company, MTS Systems Corporation, confessed that it used forged documents to export equipment needed for India’s nuclear programme. The company was sentenced to two years’ probation and a fine of 400,000 dollars. The Washington Post report has sparked concerns about military use of the civil nuclear cooperation envisioned under the 123-agreement. Democratic Congressman Edward Markey has urged the US Congress to “re-assess the nuclear deal in the light of the FBI indictment’.