John Garnaut
Sydney Morning Herald (SMH)
September 4, 2010

China’s repressive rule

horsethatleaps.com/tibetans

New book chronicles Dalai Lama's epic struggle against Beijing

Working for "the happiness of the people" ... Hu
Yaobang, left, with the future leaders Hu Jintao,
centre, and Wen Jiabao in 1986.

Working for "the happiness of the people" ... Hu
Yaobang, left, with the future leaders Hu Jintao,
centre, and Wen Jiabao in 1986.

The response of Chinese leaders is to tighten
hardline policies further, writes John Garnaut.

Thirty years have passed since the reformist
Communist Party general secretary Hu Yaobang --
the most important mentor of the present party
boss, Hu Jintao -- climbed to the roof of the
Dalai Lama's Potala Palace, looked out at lavish
government buildings in poverty-stricken Lhasa
and resolved to turn his government's hardline policies upside down.

He lambasted the local cadres for perpetuating
ethnic Han chauvinism and continuing the
"ultra-leftist" policies of the Cultural
Revolution, such as demonising the Dalai Lama.

He sacked the local party boss, ordered that
thousands of Han Chinese cadres be replaced by
Tibetans and issued what the Tibet scholar Robbie
Barnett describes as "perhaps the closest thing
in Chinese Communist Party history to a real apology".