today

On China's claims to Arunachal Pradesh "the majority of the people residing along the border with China are Buddhists and everybody here rejects Beijing's claims," Rinpoche said.

This has a lot to do with China's long term attempt to steal part of Kashmir from India. Today we have to take stock. As I pointed out in an earlier blog entry, industrial growth in China has been led by its client status with the USA. In effect by the apparent increase in wealth in China, the country has yet again given in to imperialism, in this case US imperialism. But China actually still has as at least as many poor people as India, probably more. And India has a true democracy, whilst China is excoriated all over the world by knowledgeable people because, for example, of its lack of internet freedom, worse in some ways than that of Saudi Arabia. The effect of 2000 years of suppression of the Chinese people cannot be easily removed in 20 or 30 years, and I am deeply sympathetic of this. But China can, and must, try harder to remove the internal tyranny and suppression, for a start, and only a start, by removing the Great Internet Firewall of China. There are many other things necessary to free the Chinese people. For example the cessation of execution of Chinese on demand for body parts. Another thing is the long wait at Chinese airports for internal flights. This would not be tolerated in a free society like India. These are just sample cases and one is aware with the problems even in these cases. As for religion, it is obvious that the Chinese still use intolerant methods with Buddhists. On could go on and on, but why reason.