There's a long, long history of China controlling Tibet, back at least to the Tang dynasty. The ChiComs are nastier about it than most of the previous Chinese governments, but that's what you get when you refute the old mandate of heaven/chakravartin mashup of political legitimacy espoused by the old empire for ... what justification do the ChiComs give for their political legitimacy? Having the biggest boot and the willingness to murder millions and imprison more, I suppose.

Well, it's right there in art. I of their own Constitution, I think: "The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants."

It might have its problems (will the country forever have "workers" and "peasants"? Does the working class include peasants? Who does a democratic dictatorship actually dictate to? etc etc) but it's still better than divine mandate, tbh, which might explain why it's not been toppled yet.

Or the Pacific islands or South China Sea (where things are going bad fast). Even calling Tibet part of China is interesting. Ukraine is Russian now by that logic.

On the ground, for the people, the real justification are different. It used to be the liberation of common Tibetan people from a regressive serfdom and a brutal theocracy, not unlike the communists' justification for themselves elsewhere in China. Similarly, after Deng, the justification is more about improving people's economic status and living conditions.

I hope this is supposed to be a joke. There is the small difference that citizens of Nevada, California and Colorado elect their representatives in the Congress and other institutions where the decisions on how to share the resources are made.

While Israel just takes what it wants by force, and the West Bank Palestinians have no say in it.

> Isn't that the nature of almost every conflict with an ethnic context? If there's no clear weaker and stronger you usually end up with two independent states.

Your statement is sort of weird in the above. It presupposes that subjugation of a weaker ethnic group by a more powerful ethnic group is acceptable -- that is how these conflicts are resolved. It is counter to the idea of universal human rights that arose because of the the atrocities that arose because of the ethnic issues in WW2. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_human_rights#After_...

Your point of view, the powerful ethnic groups win and the weak lose and that is how the world works, justifies slavery, South African apartheid, and many other situations where one ethnic group is more powerful and wishes to impose its wishes on the less powerful. That is an allowable perspective, but that is antithesis to universal human rights.

  1. Stronger vs Weaker is a common pattern in such conflicts.
  2. Tibet vs China :: Palestine/Arab states vs Israel differ in almost every other feature.
  3. There's places in the world that better mimic the Tibetan situation.
  4. Hence the analogy isn't very good.

Or a legal system, where blacks are hugely over-represented, the takeover of native american land, Puerto Rico, etc.

"Universal human rights" take usually less precedence to "my country, right or wrong".

Except there was no ethnic cleansing by the Tibetans like in Kashmir.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Kashmiri_H...

All of it doesn't matter. Nobody's willing to fight for Tibet, or for Atheists, or ... Fight, as in "fight, kill and die", credibly, against the dictatorship that rules China, against, well let's be honest here : against most Muslims, and I'm sure there will be occasionally some slight effort required against a Christian too.

Looking at a map of 1950's, finding China, and looking at China now will make anyone scared.

Can someone point me to a good Mandarin course ?

J&K is a territorial flashpoint - with ethnic unrest that is funded.