Chinese bloggers react to Tibet unrest

Local Chinese blogosphere reactions to the Tibet situation compiled and translated by Bob Chen at Global Voices:

• "Recently Tibet has been in insurgence. Wonderful state clashes with the insurgence, thus one of them must be an illusion."


• "The incident in Tibet is well-organized and planned. The western media see nothing about those thugs with knives in hand who killed innocent people, but tried to confused people by saying that our government is cracking down “peace demonstration”."


• "Why do those rebels rise up at this point? It happened because Taiwan is going to make referendum in March, and if it was passed, Taiwan would then be independent. Tibetans are answering the call of Taiwan! What would it be if Taiwan was independent? It would give U.S another military base in Asia, a base on which they can reach us."


• "We are trapped by the western countries. U.S firstly put us out of the list of human right violators and praised our progress, and then in 48 hours they reported the unrest in Tibet! It’s a mean plot to first drive the attention upon China and then threw us into a gaffe."

Note the paranoia and outlandish conspiracy theories concerning the United States. It's unfortunate that such sentiments characterize the reactions of these Chinese people to the unrest in Tibet. Rebecca McKinnon, discussing the divergent interpretations of the events in Tibet writes: "Dave* makes an astute observation that the East-West miscommunication madness is here to stay - and likely to get worse - between now and the Olympics."
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* Dave of Davesgonechina who has translated more Chinese netizen commentary.