The West, that likes so much to speak about and to impose their value system onto other countries, is seriously suffering from duplicity and cowardice when the Dalai Lama enters their country.
China is putting a lot of pressure onto each and every government, threatening and bullying them that they should not meet the Dalai Lama, and almost all those glorious Western democratic countries allow China to be blackmailed and give in to their pressure. It happened just now also with the Norway government, who boycotts the Dalai Lama based on China’s pressure.
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Over the last four years these tactics by China have been successful and the Western governments don’t have the guts to stand up for justice and withstand China’s bullying. They don’t understand that if they give in one time in one case to allow China to bully them that they educate China in misbehavior. China will learn from the giving in of Western countries that the West can be bullied and China is going to apply that strategy in other areas in the future too. Seeing only a short term benefit (some business with China) the Western countries do not understand that they are dealing with a giant that doesn’t accept the rules of others but imposes the own rules wherever China can, and in the long run there won’t be mutual fair relations with China for Western countries but blackmailing in other fields too. It is – as a Italian monk once summed it up so neatly – like if you want to have a good football match but the other team doesn’t accept the rules of the game. Such a game can never function.
By the way did you know about the “Dalai Lama effect”?
In 2010, German researchers found that countries whose authorities had met with Dalai Lama had their exports to China decrease by an average 12.5% over the next two years, dubbed “the Dalai Lama effect”
I remember only one man in all those news reports about Western government cowardice that gave me some hope that at times a politician is strong enough to withstand China’s aggressive pressure, and that was the president of the German Bundestag, Norbert Lammert in 2008:
After three envoy of the Chinese Embassyhad appeared in Lammert’s Berlin office and had tried to intimidate the first bureau chief of the President of the Bundestag, Lammert called the ambassador and forbade this in no uncertain terms. This type of influence is “in the form and cause unacceptable,” Lammert said in the hour-long phone call. The Ambassador was a bit shocked by the violence of his reaction. “We don’t allow anybody to prescribe us contact barriers,” said Lammert. In a letter he had also kept writing against the pressure and expressed his concern over the situation in Tibet as well as in other parts of the country. From the face to face meeting with the Dalai Lama in Bochum, the Bundestag president hoped “authentic information ” about the current situation in Tibet.
Well, I wish more politicians and government officials have the guts like this man!
Tibetan Buddhism – Struggling With Diffi·Cult Issues 