CHINA AND UNITED NATIONS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1052, 23 October 1959, Page 11

CHINA AND UNITED NATIONS

Sir -In common with Mr Youren in the Point of View discussion I incline to the belief that the Peking Government regime would be better inside the United Nations than outside it. It is also true that there is a strong tendency to use a double standard of political

morality with reference to China and Russia and that dictatorship and aggression are to be found in the so-called Western camp as well as in the Eastern camp. But I cannot leave unchallenged the bald statement by Mr Youren that China has exercised suzerainty over Tibet for many centuries, In the major part of the last 1200 years, the claims of Peking to suzerainty over Tibet have been as unsubstantial as the claims of the English kings to suzerainty of Scotland in the time between William the Conqueror and the accession of James the First of England and the Sixth of Scotland. Once or twice alien invaders such as the Mongols succeeded in forcibly unifying both China and Tibet for short periods but these conquests never lasted. In the 18th century, at about the time that Britain was establishing itself in India, Chinese armies managed to enforce a species of sovereignty over the Tibetan people. One thing is undeniable, and that is that from the time of the Chinese revolution in 1912 onwards, until Communist armies invaded their country, in 1950-51, the Tibetans were completely independent of Chinese authority. This is a longer period than the years of nationhood enjoyed by Ireland, Poland, Czechoslovakia and other resuscitated nations. And at no time, even in the 19th century, was Tibet governed from Peking as were Ireland and Poland or India by Britain or Russia. Surely the only test of a nation’s right to self-de-termination is whether it regards itself as a nation with its own culture and territory. Are we to have one standard of nationhood for Ireland and Czechoslovakia, Poland and India, and another for Tibet? Was it right for the Chinese people to fight foreign imperialists and yet wrong for Tibetans to struggle national independence? No! What ‘is sauce for the Chinese and Russian goose is sauce for the Tibetan gander. By all means let China have her rights and let Tibet and every nation, big or small, in East or in West, have them also.

S. W.

SCOTT

(Waiheke).