In recent media coverage on Tibet the western discourse of human rights is pitted against a monstrous Chinese power aiming to exploit Tibet’s economic potential and erase local customs. But this is to forget our own road to modernity.

There is much room for complacency in being a European today. In recent media coverage on Tibet, the Western discourse of human rights, with its calls for equality, justice, and fairness, is pitted against a monstrous Chinese power only interested in exploiting Tibet’s economic potential, erasing local customs, and subduing the region to its draconian control. If our governments, for short-sighted economic interest, fail to take a stand on China, it is up to our own civil society, together with global celebrities and continent-hopping activists, to remind us it is democracy Europe really believes in. But what if China were doing to Tibet what Europe has historically done to the world?

China believes in modernisation. Indeed, it would not be a mistake to say that today China is the modern, understood as radical upturning of established patterns and ways of life, strong development of the productive forces, instalment of the notion of progress as the centrepiece of national consciousness. And Tibet is China’s peasant, refusing the dialectic of modernisation and accumulation.

The discussion here is not the harsh Chinese reaction to the recent Tibetan protests. China reacts harshly to all protests, be them in Guanxi or in Lhasa. This is obviously not a justification of any sorts, but we should understand that the violence of the Chinese regime against its own people is not a problem just about Tibet. The problem specific to Tibet is hidden well under the images of Chinese soldiers chasing after demonstrating monks. And it has to do with the all-encompassing cultural, social, and economic transformation of the region at the hands of Chinese capitalist development.

It is fashionable to call what China is doing to Tibet cultural genocide. So what is China doing to Tibet? China is transforming what was an essentially rural, traditionalist, superstitious, strongly hierarchic society into a fully fledged member of the twenty-first century. This is not a value judgement. Some people will rightly highlight that before 1949 Tibet was an extremely harsh feudal society, run by a conservative and corrupt monastic order that kept most of its population in abject poverty (life expectancy was barely 30), ignorance, and servitude. And China is transforming it into a relatively prosperous modern society. Others will highlight the importance of millenarian customs and beliefs, the values of Buddhism, the peaceful smile of even the poorest of Tibetan peasants. And China is destroying all of this in favour of a bad copy of American suburban culture.

But what we call cultural genocide is none other than the global process known by the name of modernity initiated by our very own continent and imposed, in good or in evil, willingly or unwillingly, on the near totality of the globe. We might recall the opening of Fellini’s Dolce Vita, where a helicopter is carrying a statue of Christ over the new developments of sprawling boom-time Rome, under the amused gaze of a group of fashionable intellectuals on a rooftop terrace. This scene went to the heart of the social transformations of the1960s, morphing a still predominantly agricultural country of traditional beliefs and superstitions into a modern industrial economy.

Let us forget for a moment Tibet’s claims to historical autonomy from China. If Tibet unambiguously were a region of China, would we have any right to protest for its forced modernisation more than we had to defend the inhabitants of Southern Italian villages with their black Madonnas against the industrial boom?

But today it is fashionable to defend queer peasants who still believe in black Madonnas. It is fashionable because Europe has forgotten what it means to die of starvation. China has not, and it has found only one solution to address the chronic death of millions of children due to malnutrition: Western-style industrial modernisation.

Maybe we have better ideas. But that is how we have to present them – as alternatives to modernity, including our very own privileges of taking an overseas weekend city-break. And not call achieved modernity freedom and modernity-in-the-making fascism.

But of course, the problem we avoided is this: assuming China has a right to developing its own land to the detriment of its traditional beliefs, how much right has China over Tibet? This is where European and Chinese responses diverge entirely with few possibilities of reconciliation. China has a strong conception of national sovereignty, unwilling to even consider the possibility of Tibetan autonomy. There are long historical and intellectual reasons for this, but also more pragmatic, immediate concerns: China, with its Muslim and Uighur populations to the North-West, its Mongols to the North, its fifty-two recognised ethnic minorities, is deeply afraid of a domino-effect leading to the Balkanisation of the country. In addition, the country is highly suspicious of trans-national politics, marking Western reactions to internal concerns as an undue intrusion in national affairs. A long history of European colonial attacks and more recent chronicles of American “humanitarian” invasions have served to deeply entrench the equation of global responsibility with imperial self-interest.

But here then is a fundamental role for Europe to play. To inculcate the meaning and desirability of a certain kind of non-aggressive multilateralism, positively engaging China in global political dialogue and avoiding the repetition of nationalist follies this continent knows only too well. To engage the country in a global deal on environment, in arms trade, in halting support to African dictatorships. And to slowly walk it towards democratic responsibility towards its own citizens.

But firstly, and most importantly, Europe must play Europe with China. Recent developments have only confirmed this – one year ago Angela Merkel, against Chinese advice, met with the Dalai Lama triggering Chinese protests and industrial boycott. French industries thanked and took advantage. Today, China protests against France and Sarkozy’s statements regarding the boycott of the Olympic. German industries thank and take advantage. Moved like pawns one against the other, Europeans only stand a chance in having an influence with China if they speak with a single voice. And we should not underestimate that China’s announcement of talks with the Dalai Lama has been made on the even of a high-profile visit of the European Commission to Beijing led by Barroso. The development of a joint European policy on China should be a prerogative. But this must follow a thorough and unbiased engagement with the reality, desires, and future hopes of a country as different and complex as China.

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