Chinese Santa Comes Bearing: the business secrets of the JewsI was chatting with a Chinese co-worker last December when she asked why I wasn't going back to America for Christmas like other foreigners she knew in Beijing. I offered what seemed like a simple explanation: "Jews don't celebrate Christmas because we don't believe in Jesus."

She looked puzzled, as though I had just uttered a non sequitur. Most Chinese don't really know what exactly makes someone Jewish; they know only that Jews are some kind of minority group in America who also have their own country, Israel. Some also seem to believe that the two distinct Chinese words for "Jewish" and "Israeli" are, if not exactly synonyms, then at least denotative of the same set of people. To my co-worker, my response was like saying I didn't celebrate Christmas because I was black or French (though she may also have been unaware, as some Chinese are, that Christmas is in fact a religious holiday, rather than a secular gift-giving festival like the lunar new year).

So how exactly do I explain to them who Jews are -- and aren't -- using concepts that are more or less directly translatable into Mandarin?

Calling Judaism a race is obviously wrong, in addition to smacking of Nazi pseudoscience. We're too similar to other races, and too racially diverse within ourselves, to be a distinct race. We're also not an ethnic group inasmuch as that requires a common language. So my first instinct is usually to say something like, "Judaism is a religion, like Christianity or Buddhism."

But this is incomplete at best, and probably misleading. And anyway it won't really end the conversation. After all, Christianity is rapidly spreading in China, so people have a relatively clear notion of what that entails (even if they may not realize that "Christianity" is related to "Christmas," since in Mandarin the two words lack a common root). If Judaism is like Christianity, my acquaintance invariably asks, why don't I go to church or temple or whatever, like the Christians s/he knows?
Again, the first instinct is to try something like, "Well, I'm not a very observant Jew," or "I'm a secular Jew." But "observant" and "secular" are complex notions with no precise Mandarin translations, and anyway these answers just kick the original question down the road. The question remains: What does it mean to be a non-observant Jew? What makes a secular Jew still a Jew?

Of course, the question of "Who is a Jew?" is age old, and it certainly isn't just a problem of translation. But outside Asia, it can seem unimportant, at least as a day-to-day matter. After all, even if most Americans and Europeans (or, for that matter, Arabs) can't offer a clear-cut answer to the question, they still know basically what it means to say that so-and-so is Jewish. In particular, they know that not all Jews go to shul, wear a kipa, or even keep kosher. Like many words in our language, they know what "Jewish" means in context, even if they can't offer a precise definition.

But how do I explain to someone who, though well educated in her own culture, totally lacks the relevant conceptual framework? At this point, the usual approach is to say something like, "Besides the religious aspect, Judiasm is also a cultural tradition. so you can be considered a Jew even if you don't go to temple, or even if you don’t believe in God."

This is better, but even this fails to satisfy the more inquiring of Chinese minds. One reason for this is that Asia is now awash with self-help books purporting to reveal "business secrets of the Jewish" and "how to raise your kids like the Jews." As a result, even though they most likely don't understand what actually defines Jewish identity, educated Chinese may already know that Jews are often skilled businessmen, bankers, and professionals. They may even know that Jews from were among the first wave of foreign businessmen who set up merchant empires in Shanghai following the First Opium War in 1842. What one hears over and over, at any rate, is that Jews are "smart and make a lot of money."

Highly cosmopolitan Chinese, who are aware that Jews have distinct communities with deep roots in countries all around the world, especially in large cities, are the ones who tend to be most unsatisfied with the explanation of Judaism as merely a cultural tradition. That's because the notion of a generations-old diaspora made up largely of merchants, businessmen, and professionals is readily comprehensible to the Chinese. These kinds of tight-knit, assimilation-resistant, financially successful communities would appear to Chinese just like the tight-knit, financially successful overseas Chinese communities that exist today in countries around Asia -- including Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines -- and, of course, Chinatowns all over Europe and the Americas.

Indeed, the similarities between the Chinese and Jewish diasporas are striking. In both cases, the minority diaspora communities have remained, to varying degrees, distinct from majority society, even as they've influenced these societies significantly. Both diasporas have also periodically suffered oppression, partly as a result of resentment in majority society towards their business acumen (by some estimates, ethnic Chinese account for 70% of GDP in Indonesia despite making up less than 10% of the population).

The explanation of Judiasm as primarily a "cultural tradition" doesn't fly with my acquaintances here because Chinese instinctively understand that like their own diaspora communities abroad, Jewish communities don't merely share a distinct culture but also comprise a concrete social formation that explicitly includes some while excluding others. The Chinese are masters of networking and glad-handing, and the concept of guanxi -- which literally means "relationship", but implies the notion of connections, suction, knowing the right people -- is central to the way business and politics is done here. Guanxi is what everyone wants and what people with money and power have. It's also what people born into tight-knit, financially successful diaspora communities automatically have with each other, in part because they tend to suffer from a kind of negative guanxi, i.e., prejudice, at the hands of the majority society. So naturally, they stick together and help each other out.

Familiarity with the concept of guanxi is why Chinese people instinctively recognize that Judaism is not simply a culture, or even a religion in the sense that one may become Christian or Buddhist simply by accepting and practicing certain religious doctrines and rituals. Chinese people can become jazz musicians, rugged individualists, capitalists, or Mormons. Even though these are originally American cultural and ideological traditions, they are fundamentally open to everyone.
By contrast, even were the Chinese government suddenly to lift its current ban on Chinese citizens attending foreign religious services, average Chinese would still not be welcome at the Beijing branch of Chabad house, where I occasionally attended Shabbat services during my first year in Beijing, partly for the free dinner and plentiful vodka, and partly in the hopes of meeting someone who could help me find a job.

I haven't summoned the guts to try it yet, but I suspect Chinese would have no trouble understanding that being Jewish means having a particular sort of guanxi with other Jews. This guanxi manifests itself as social, cultural, and religious affinities, but it is ultimately based on ancestry, just like the 56 ethnic groups that all schoolchildren learn about (always 56, no more, no less), and just like the Indonesian Chinese. To the corpulent, bearded rabbi at Chabad House, I am a Jew, no matter how pathetic my Hebrew or how firmly rooted my atheism.

A Jewish hippie returns to his roots
People get more conservative as they age. With Jews, of course, they get more Jewish, too, and then we can see the conservative notions rooted deep in Jewish identity. In fact, for secular or "cultural" Jews, these notions are central to of what it means to be Jewish.

Recently I've been thinking that whiling away the rest of my 20s in China -- writing, teaching English, and spending long mornings with my local girlfriend -- might be a good decision. But on floating this idea past my father, the notion of such a course-setting on my part seemed to strike a chord.

In a phone conversation from Beijing, I was shocked to hear my dad urging me -- as we talked about how I might proceed with a career in China, having lived here for two years and dabbled in widely contrasting expatriate lifestyles -- to consider seriously that I was well-positioned, living and working in this kind of boomtown environment, to make "serious" money.

It was the exact opposite of the life my dad, now in his 60s, chose for himself when he was my age. In his mid-20s my dad was touring the country in a VW bus, exploring new ways of life (read: drugs, black girlfriend) and sending idealistic letters home to his own dad, a workaday small businessman who owned several shoe stores in metro Cleveland ¬but certainly never made "serious money." Later he straightened out a little and went to law school. But though intelligent, he was an un-ambitious student and lawyer who never made much money and eventually moved into the more idealistic but even less lucrative field of divorce mediation.

The conversation with dad might have ended there, with the grim realization that my father, like other older folks I’ve heard of, is getting more conservative as he ages. But then he added, almost as an after-thought, that he didn't want to see “the earning power gene in our family die out with you.” It was a supremely bizarre statement coming from a man who once quit a promising job covering the "youth movement" for Time, including the raucous Chicago 7 trial, to join a commune in Taos, and later worked for legal aid, rather than a corporate firm, after finishing law school
Challenged on this, dad freely admitted he hadn't taken his own advice. In fact, it became pretty clear that he was urging me to avoid some perceived failures of his for which he felt regret, coupled with a characteristically Jewish kind of guilt. He felt guilty for selling short his talent and potential through lack of ambition, aversion to competition, and a philosophically-justified laziness.

Celebrating Purim: in Shanghai, 1929Were these just my dad's late night ramblings, or does this concern about losing the "earning gene" seem to echo the concerns of our Jewish leaders about intermarriage and assimilation? My dad was 23 when he spent his first summer in San Francisco in 1967, ushering in the "Me" Generation. Forty years later, my own Me-inspired musings about a life of expatriate leisure, subsidized by the People's Bank of China's commitment to an undervalued renminbi, seemed to raise the awful possibility that the consequences of his life decisions might still be rippling down, beyond his own life, to influence my own un-ambitious, half-assed choices these decades later.

And wouldn't the cross-generational trajectory of our family -- assuming I follow through on these choices -- serve to illustrate to a disturbing extent the worst fears these same Jewish leaders have about our children intermarrying, assimilating and (though this is rarely stated explicitly) losing our competitive edge by diluting our culture of high expectations for our children's academic and professional achievement? Koreans, Indians -- these are the "new Jews" at elite universities, children pestered to financial success by relentless immigrant parents. Meanwhile, the great-grandchildren of those who fled the Holocaust fritter away the hard-bought fruits of their ancestors struggle. The trajectory goes something like this:

First generation: scientists, bankers, novelists, Hollywood studio execs, Communists

Second genearation: doctors, lawyers, journalists, liberal political/social activists

Third generation: still plenty of lawyers and i-bankers, but quite a few failed artists and expatriate degenerates,

And isn't this such a Jewish kind of notion -- feeling guilty for one's lack of professional success? Looking back on their lives, wouldn't most gentile men who never made big money say that it was because they were cheated, or because they faced insurmountable external obstacles (e.g., poor family background, racism, sexism), or they had really bad luck, or maybe even just admit that they weren't smart or strong or talented or whatever enough?

But not Jews. We feel guilty, as if we've somehow betrayed our birthright, squandered a place in society that was made available to us only through the struggle of our industrious, long-suffering ancestors. We're ashamed that we could just slap it away, like a toddler petulantly knocking over a glass of warm milk while children in China starve.

My dad's sudden conversion to materialism reminded me of nothing so much as Kevin MacDonald, the presumptively anti-semitic anthropologist and author Culture of Critique, a trilogy on Jewish history and culture. MacDonald argues that Judaism is best understood as a "group evolutionary strategy," a social formation defined by social practices evolved to produce material success in modern, complex, urban societies.

Through social and cultural norms and practices, MacDonald argues, Jewish societies have effectively bred successive generations of offspring to select for traits like intelligence and a certain kind of intellectual aggressiveness. In Jewish societies. intellectual brilliance, rather than athletic talent or physical attractiveness is what earns a male high social status and desirable females. And, of course, intelligence and material success are often closely related.

It's always risky mentioning MacDonald's name in polite Jewish company, but I doubt I'm the only one who's read his monograph "Understanding Jewish Influence" and felt that certain parts of it were weirdly on point. For all its flaws, perhaps even its bigotry, I've never read another writer who seems to put his finger so squarely on that specific kind of guanxi that defines Jewish identity, even -- or rather, especially -- among those who aren't religiously observant.

In a bizarre way, "Understanding Jewish Influence" is reminiscent of those email forwards I've received from certain far-right Zionist great uncles listing the 178 Jewish Nobel Prize winners in one column and the nine Arab winners in the other, followed by the observation that there are twelve million Jews in the world compared to more than 1.4 billion Arabs.

The analysis is the same in both, namely that Jews are superior to some particular group. In MacDonald's case, the group is unsuspecting white European-stock societies subtly undermined by intelligent, highly aggressive Jewish dynamos (think Ari Gold or Joseph Flom). In my uncle's case, the out-group is the Arabs who surround Israel. But the concerns motivating the analysis are quite different. MacDonald apparently wants to jolt gentile whites out of their complacent slumber and into a realization of the threat to their society. My right-wing Zionist great uncles want to justify Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

The "tight-knit" quality of both Chinese and Jewish diaspora communities is what MacDonald calls "ethnocentrism," which suddenly makes it sound sinister. But it's not exactly news that traditional Jewish parents discourage their children from intermarrying.

And what other word could there be for my dad's sudden rediscovery of his long-dormant "earning gene"? It seems to rise directly from a sense of group identity that is perhaps strongest among secular, non-Israeli Jews. As such, my dad's comment seems to illustrate MacDonald's point that Jewish social norms -- such as the sense of material success as a birthrite -- exert a powerful and often unconscious influence even on those, like my dad, who have rejected religious observance and other obvious markers of Jewish identification.

It's not hard to see how materialism could become rooted in the Jewish experience. A history of struggle, persecution, and fighting for security blends seamlessly into materialism. Money and status weren't pursued for their own sakes but because they equate to protection and safety.

Weren't the Jews who got out of Europe the ones who had the money and connections to do so? Of course, many of them fled Europe with only what they could carry. Still, others, like my German-Jewish great-grandmother, shrewdly deployed what money and connections she had to spirit out her family's hard-earned wealth in a room-sized crate that eventually found its way to New York harbor. That crate contained the lovely set of hand-painted china that brightened my childhood Passovers and an arresting German expressionist canvas sold last year to the Neue Galerie, on the upper¬east side, for a tidy sum.

Apart from the impulse to financial success, Jewish identity as defined by MacDonald also explains other aspects of dad's twisty life path. In his twenties, my dad dated a black girl and later a Chinese girl before settling down with my Jewish mom in his early 30s. "I didn't set out to marry a nice Jewish girl from the Midwest," he has told me. "It just happened that way."

MacDonald cites genetic similarity theory, which states that "people are attracted to others who are genetically similar to themselves," as the scientific basis for his claims about Jewish character traits. The theory, he argues, "predicts that Jews would be more likely to make friends and alliances with other Jews, and that there would be high levels of rapport and psychological satisfaction within these relationships." To this theoretical foundation, MacDonald adds anecdotal accounts from Jewish authors remarking on "the incredible sense of oneness … with other Jews and [the] ability to recognize other Jews in public places, a talent some Jews call 'J-dar.'"

Again, calling him an anti-semitic seems beside the point because whatever motivates MacDonald's analysis, the analysis itself resonates. Though I've been with my own Chinese girlfriend for nearly a year now, I realized some time ago that I could never spend my life with her. We lack that "high level of rapport." We both speak each others' native languages, and yet there is too much about me she could never understand, too many of my jokes she could never get.

Self-hating Jews

Are Koreans and Indians: the new Jews?The Zionists who put together those Nobel prize lists will label me a self-hating Jew, and they won't be too far off. But I don't exactly feel guilty for my people's success. My feeling is that we earned it. Things weren't easy for us, to say the least, and no one handed us what we have.

Still, there are certain things I don't readily share with my Chinese acquaintances, when we talk about what it means to be Jewish. On one early trip to Beijing Chabad, I met a man with two kids who, on hearing that I was looking for a job and confirming that I was, in fact, Jewish, immediately offered to send my resume around to guys he knew around town. Isn't this -- like the Bar Mitzvah money that makes your gentile friends jealous -- a characteristically Jewish experience? And yet it's not an aspect we flaunt.

Any complete account of Jewish guanxi must include the fact that having it carries real risks -- anti-semitism is real. But on balance, in most parts of the world in 2008, including China, I have to conclude that it's enormously advantageous to have this sort of guanxi, just as it is advantageous to be born ethnically Chinese in the Philippines.

But unlike these ethnically Chinese communities, I don't share a common language with the Jews I meet at Chabad House in Beijing. So the question for Jews like me, who cannot fully embrace either the religiosity of the Chabad rabbi, nor the militant Zionism of my secular great uncles (or the many secular Jewish professionals who come to Beijing Chabad for Shabbat when they pass through the city on business, but whose Hebrew is evidently no better than mine) is what binds us together?

Of course, there is also a tradition of secular Jewish intellectual and artistic productivity, as well as social, and political involvement. When shopping this essay around, one editor, after expressing some interest, finally rejected the essay on the grounds that "Who is a Jew?" isn't a question that ignores or even undermines this secular tradition. He wrote:

What does it matter *what* the Jews are? Why is this a worthy subject for an essay? Or for a series of new magazines that have appeared in the US in the past five years (Heeb, Zeek, Jewcy.com, Guilty Pleasures, etc. etc. etc.)? As someone committed to the tradition of secular Jewish humanism and leftism, I find all this profoundly disturbing.

What this argument ignores is that "the tradition of secular Jewish humanism and leftism" is precisely what is at stake in the question of what the Jews are. To Jews under about 60, this tradition may feel ubiquitous, like the ground we walk on. But the fact is, it's a very short tradition -- maybe 100 years old -- and very fragile.
Jewish leaders see this clearly, which is why they're so concerned about the secular liberals in their ranks. They don't believe that kind of Judaism can sustain the community against assimilation, intermarriage, and creeping leftism, which calls for applying universal norms of human rights, rather than the appeal to Jewish particularism used, at various levels of explicitness, to justify Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. And neither do I.

Indeed, maybe all these Jewish magazines really are lame. But that's precisely the problem: it's pretty much all you've got left once you've stripped away religious practice and hardcore Zionism. The intangible guanxi, the traditions of "secular Jewish humanism and leftism" -- these currents are parasitic on the traditional religious and Zionist institutions, even as they reject them (define themselves in opposition to an "other," etc). Think of Phillip Roth's iconic short story "The Conversion of the Jews," which seemed to place heretical questioning of Jewish orthodoxy at the very center of Jewish experience.

"The tradition of Jewish secularism" feels secure now, but perhaps this is because it has already reached its zenith. It looks to me increasingly like a temporary, atavistic relic of the trans-generational process of Jewish assimilation. As this process reaches its latter stages, "Jewish liberal secularism" seems likely to fade into the broader tradition of liberal secularism generally.

"Who is a Jew?" matters -- now more than ever -- because after thousands of years of maintaining highly endogamous communities (under 10% intermarriage), rates are up to 50%. The point isn't whether or not we're Jews -- obviously we are -- it's whether our children will be.

While my generation happily partakes of this atavistic tradition of Jewish secular humanism, children of intermarried couples mostly don't self-identify as Jews. So by the time we're grandparents - well, that's all she wrote. It's lights out in the temple.

If Judaism is to survive, we need a modern Jewish identity that can stand up to the pressures of assimilation, while still fostering the values of liberal humanism that make secular Jews proud to identify as such. The "earning gene," the effortless rapport with nice Jewish girls, the online magazines -- these must be the starting points, not the sum total of who are.

The recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life told us what we already knew: America is becoming more and more religious. The draw of a spiritual life is growing in all sectors, and apparently all over the world—even in the officially atheist China. Christians in China: no longer in hiding(I guess this is another case of "atheists" who believe in God). The Chicago Tribune has a fascinating article on the rise of Christianity in China, that mentions some of the reasons that people are coming to church: 

Many of the church's new adherents profess a common belief that 30 years of ungoverned capitalism, amid the fading of communist ideology, has opened a yawning spiritual gap.

A public debate in China over ethics in business has bloomed in recent years from an unlikely source: the same unsafe products that have bedeviled U.S. consumers. In the most infamous case, 13 Chinese babies died and 200 were sickened in 2004 when a manufacturer skimped on the ingredients in infant milk. The case became a symbol of an economy so out of control that people could no longer trust their countrymen to adhere to the most basic ethical standards.

Later in the article, a Chinese professor is quoted saying that he thinks Christianity may be what helps Communism to survive in China.

And in the States, though evangelical Christianity continues to attract hordes of worshippers to mega-churches every week, the quest for spirituality leads in all directions. The Atlanta Journal Constitution covers the trend of black Americans converting into Judaism. Many of these converts feel they are “coming home”: 

That's how Sivan Ariel sees her experience. Born to a Catholic family in the Virgin Islands, Ariel now believes her biracial grandmother practiced Jewish customs she learned from her mother.
"She would always talk about the laws of God" and the Exodus story, Ariel said. Her grandmother would light white candles, which now remind Ariel of those lit on the Sabbath.
"She was the only person I knew that actually did that, so I wondered if it was actually witchcraft," Ariel said with a chuckle.

Ariel left Catholicism when she moved to Atlanta for college and joined a Pentecostal church for a while. But she never felt comfortable there, and she began a spiritual search that led her to convert to Judaism.
…
Ariel, referring to her experience and those of other black Jews, said, "Some of us know beyond a shadow of a doubt we're here because we're home."

Rabbi Norry called this an "unprecedented time" of interest in Judaism.

"Business is booming," he said. "On any given Shabbos, there's 10 non-Jews at our service, visiting or studying to be Jewish."

Still, he asks every convert: "Why would you ever want to be Jewish? Don't you know how many people hate us?"

The black converts respond differently, he said. They look at him as if to say: "Welcome to my world."

People seek religion for a variety of diverse reasons.  How the spread of Christianity might influence the nation of China, and how the growing number of black Jews might ultimately influence Judaism remains to be seen.

Jews are used to a flood story with a happy ending: The animals march onto the ark two by two, and after forty days and forty nights of rain, things begin to ease up. The dove brings back an olive branch. There is a rainbow, and a pledge never to destroy humanity by flood again. Sweet on the page, but gruesome if you think about it for too long. The world slowly drowned. God erased history.
Flooding in Iowa City: water water everywhere
The flooding in Iowa is not quite cataclysmic, but it is horrifying and dangerous and sad. Aside from the four Eagle Scouts who were killed in a storm last week, thousands have been evacuated from their homes. Businesses and agriculture have been submerged in water that is noxious and full of sewage, farm chemicals, and fuel. As an alumna of the University of Iowa, I was personally horrified to hear that sixteen university buildings have taken in water, including the main library, the brand new journalism building, and a small non-denominational church.

• The Red Cross announced yesterday that its disaster relief fund has been completely spent, so the agency is borrowing money to help victims. Donate to the Red Cross here.

• Right now, Iowa’s Jewish communities are holding up well, but they anticipate needing help in the near future. Synagogues in Mason City and Dubuque have taken on water, and will likely need money and supplies once the waters have receded and they can clean up. The Jewish Federation in Des Moines is accepting contributions to be distributed for general flood relief, wherever it may do the most good. You may send a check, earmarked "Flood Relief" to the Jewish Federation, 910 Polk Boulevard, Des Moines, IA, 50312.

• Hillel is talking about organizing a volunteer rebuilding trip in late summer when the waters have receded and damage has been assessed. If you’re interested in such a trip, contact the University of Iowa Hillel.

• And the Midwest isn’t the only area being hit by record-breaking floods this year. In China, dozens have been killed and more than a million people have been forced from their homes as waters rise in the Guangdong Province. The Red Cross Society of China is on the ground in Guangdong distributing supplies to people whose homes are submerged. Donate to the RCSC here.

In the glutted landscape of Jewish communal life, no institution blusters with greater pomposity than the Organization That Claims To Speak On Behalf Of The Jews (OTCSBJ). What’s most frustrating about the OTCSBJ is that it often speaks not on behalf of “the Jewish People” but of the tiny percentage of Jews who sign up for its email lists. Most notorious in this category is the Conference of Presidents (“American Jewry’s recognized address for consensus policy”), which clamored vociferously for an invasion of Iraq (see its "Daily Alerts" of cherry-picked panic from 2002 and 2003) despite the fact that a majority of American Jews opposed the invasion.

A relatively new OTCSBJ has entered the scene: The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. Chaired by Dennis Ross, the JPPPI seeks to formulate an overarching “Jewish policy” with an eye towards strengthening the status of Israel as the “center of Jewish life.” As a sign of how it views the vitality of Diaspora Jewish life, the JPPPI has on its team the famed Israeli demographer Sergio DellaPergola, who clings to the widely-discredited National Jewish Population Survey of 2001, with its bleak outlook for Jewish life in America. After all, it's easier to promote Israel as the "center of Jewish life" if Jewish life everywhere else is falling apart.
Yehezkel Dror: Modern Day Jewish Prophet suspiciously resembles Larry "Bud" Mellman
Now the Founding President of the JPPPI, Yehezkel Dror, has written a stunning op-ed in The Forward about where he feels “the Jewish People” should head. Essentially, he argues, the "requirements of existence" must trump everything else. In light of Israel's (or "the Jewish People's") interests, Dror characterizes moral considerations as "political correctness and other thinking-repressing fashions." He singles out Jewish activism on China and on Turkey's genocide of Armenians, arguing that Jews must be supportive of China and Turkey, "or at least remain neutral," in light of Israel's strategic interests. Bewilderingly, he then takes the "end to morality" argument to the nuclear level:

Similarly, Jewish leaders should support harsh measures against terrorists who potentially endanger Jews, even at the cost of human rights and humanitarian law. And if the threat is sufficiently grave, the use of weapons of mass destruction by Israel would be justified if likely to be necessary for assuring the state’s survival, the bitter price of large number of killed innocent civilians notwithstanding.

Thankfully, Dror concedes that it's hard to define what constitutes "survival" ("there is much room for debate," he assures us. Gosh, thanks, Yehezkel!). But, he insists:

When important for existence, violating the rights of others should be accepted, with regret but with determination. Support or condemnation of various countries and their policies should be decided upon primarily in light of probable consequences for the existence of the Jewish people.

In short, the imperatives of existence should be given priority over other concerns — however important they may be — including liberal and humanitarian values, support for human rights and democratization.

If nothing else, Dror's outlook -- shared, presumably, by the JPPPI -- represents a remarkable devolution. Yesterday's popular Jewish cant about Israel ran along the lines of "Israel, and everything it does, is by definition moral." How far have we progressed if we no longer even pretend it's moral, instead insisting that morality itself must be relinquished as a vestige of an earlier age? What's more, we must weigh Israel's interests not only in discussions of the Middle East, but in ethical issues that come up anywhere in the world. Whatever the situation, says Dror, we risk imperiling the Jewish People's existence by aligning ourselves purely with morality.

One wonders how the term "survival" will be defined. With the proper argument, it can include not only nuking Iran, but rounding up all non-Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank (and hell, pre-Green Line Israel too) and shipping them off to the other side of the Jordan River. Slobodan Milosevic was interested in his people's survival too. Was he the intellectual and moral forefather of the JPPPI?

It seems almost providential that just last week, Albert Einstein rose from the grave to give us a warning about Jews and power. “As far as my experience goes," he wrote about Jews, "they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power.” Dror offers evidence that sixty years into what some people call "the Jewish return to sovereignty," it might be time for some chemotherapy.

Just Say "Sleaze": The JPPPI's Foxman and Kissinger -- Judaism's Moral Compass Just as importantly, with this op-ed, the JPPPI has shown that it has scant knowledge of "the Jewish People," most of whom do not base decisions, moral or otherwise, on the exclusive basis of what David Ben Gurion would wish for. But that won't stop the JPPPI from insisting it speaks on our behalf. In his description of the mission of the organization, Dror has written that "most Israeli policy-makers and also intellectuals and opinion-shapers, suffer from a lack of understanding, as well as ignorance about and misperception of, Diaspora realities, especially concerning the mindset and feelings of the majority of the younger generation." Let's see, how can we bridge this gap in understanding, especially with the "younger generation"? Hey, how about we propose an abandonment of morality whenever Israel is in the picture? That should work beautifully!

At least the JPPPI is consistent with other Organizations That Claim To Speak On Behalf Of The Jews. It's currently enjoying Stage Two of Jewish organizational process:

Stage One: Establish an organization that claims to represent "the Jewish People."

Stage Two: Espouse ideology that the vast majority of Jews would consider to be out-of-touch or morally execrable.

Stage Three: Lament, in limitless policy papers, the fact that so few Jews choose to "affiliate" with the organized community.

Stage Four: Go to Stage One.

There is an undeniable visceral pleasure to discussing a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. So much so that all three presidential candidates have signed on to the idea that the president skip the opening ceremonies. After all, the PRC government is behaving bestially towards the people of Tibet --- as it has done consistently for the better part of sixty years. If the democracies of the world participate in the Olympics, are they not conferring legitimacy on the PRC regime? And do they not risk, as Thomas Laird worries, handing the Communist Party a propaganda victory akin to the one the Nazis enjoyed in the Berlin Olympics of 1936?

If only taking a morally proper stand by boycotting theChina Hosts The Olympics: Will you not watch because of Tibet? Or because the Olympics are dull and unwatchable? Olympics could deliver anything to the people of Tibet. Or to the people of China, for that matter. But it cannot. The Olympics simply are not that important. What made the Nazi regime a threat to the world and its own people was not Leni Riefenstahl's work, but that of party's war machine and the SS. Suppose the 1936 Olympics had gone disastrously for Germany. Or that Germany had not hosted the Olympics at all. What have would followed? The Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the Holocaust would have followed. Sports boycotts are, in general, ineffectual wastes of energy and outrage. Worse than that, they underscore the notion that diplomacy is not a matter of picking the right policy to achieve a desired set of outcomes, but simply adopting the appropriate posture for every moral context. The people of Tibet will continue to suffer whether American politicians and journalists are in high dudgeon about the Olympics or not.

There is one exception to the overall fecklessness of sports boycotts, but it makes the case against boycotting the Beijing Olympics, not the case for it. The ban on South Africa from international sporting competitions succeeded for three reasons: (1) South Africa's idiosyncratic attachments to cricket and rugby meant that the Republic's exclusion from, e.g., the quadrennial Rugby World Cup which began in 1987, depressed national morale in a way that is unthinkable with respect to China. (2) Unlike the silly, pointless mutual boycotts of Soviet and American Olympic games, the South African ban was not a unilateral, one-off decision by a particular state with a grudge against another, but a decades-long, internationally enforced ostracism. (3) The ban on South Africa was coupled with divestment and isolation from international markets.

None of the conditions that made the boycott of South Africa successful have even a remote chance of coming into play in the case of China. The People's Republic gained legitimacy when, despite its catastrophic human rights record, it was seated at the UN. The PRC is a major international creditor, and its economy is inextricably tied to most of the world's advanced and developing economies. For both good (as with North Korea) and ill (as with Darfur), China is too large and too important to be denied influence in international diplomacy. The PRC cares about neither sports nor public relations enough to give up its claims on Tibet.

A threat against a meaningless asset like the Olympics might salve the consciences of guilt-ridden western liberals and satisfy the emotional needs of neoconservatives to feel that, they, too, are courageous warriors. But in no case will threatening China with a bad Olympic experience actually improve the lot of the Tibetan people. That would require a long, sustained, multilateral campaign that a faddish cause like boycotting the Olympics will more likely hinder than help.

Protesters in London: express their feelings for the Party As the Chinese Communist Party attempts to shove its Olympic Flame down the world’s throat, it is encountering something it finds shocking: Resistance it cannot shoot. Protesters against the Party’s recent massacres in Tibet have hindered the Olympic Flame in London and Paris. Today the “Grab the Torch” game moves to San Francisco. Party hacks are responding to protesters with outrage and hubris. They have branded those who freely express their opinions through protest as “vile.”

“No force can stop the torch relay of the Olympic Games,” Sun Weide, spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee, said in Beijing on April 9. Oh, really? No force? Rather confident, are we? No surprise here: The Party does not respect the power of democracy; it does not recognize its legitimacy, thus it does not exist.

In fact, citizens of France and England did stop the torch relay in their countries through massive public protests. These protests are expressions of a growing tide of outrage that the Chinese Communist Party was invited to host the 2008 Olympics in the first place. There is a growing sense that if the Beijing Olympics must go forward at all, they should be used to expose the nature of the dictators in Beijing. The major issue for anyone who believes in democracy is simple: This is not about the games, it’s about democracy; the protests are not against the great nation of China, they are against the Chinese Communist Party. Now, in light of recent and continuing massacres in Tibet, the goals and methods of the Party have been exposed yet again.

But If You Go Carrying Pictures of Chairman Mao: you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow. Why are citizens of democracies allowing the largest mass murderer in human history to wrap itself in the Olympic Flag? You cannot blame the Party. The Party is simply doing what it has always done. It is currently mounting its largest propaganda effort ever. In the past, the Party mounted such campaigns only in China: Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, The Great Leap Forward, and so on. For those of us outside of China, there are two essential aspects to these campaigns:

1. They resulted in the death of at least 30 million Chinese, making the Party the largest mass murderer in history.
2. Their primary purpose was to strengthen the Party’s grip on power.

So, what's the Party’s Olympic propaganda campaign all about? The Party wants to convince its own people that it is the legitimate ruler of China. It wants them to forget Tiananmen. It wants to make them ignore what the Party is doing now (and has done for 50 years) in Tibet. It is using propaganda in China to convince Chinese that Tibetan thugs were murdering poor Chinese in Lhasa, and the party had to crack down on them. The Party wants Chinese—and supporters of democracy around the world—to recognize that it is the legitimate ruler of China, even though it has acquired its power by mass murder, and has never been freely supported by those whom it rules.

The Party's Answer to Student Protest: tiananmen square, 1989 Modern nations—a status to which China aspires—recognize that legitimacy cannot be conferred by force of arms. The founding principle of modern democracy is that a government acquires legitimacy from the will of the people, as expressed through free elections. There is no substitute for a popular mandate. It is the only currency of political legitimacy. Any régime that acquires and maintains political power through the barrel of a gun—as Chairman Mao so famously expressed it—is ipso facto illegitimate.

The sad fact that all athletes preparing to compete in Beijing must recognize is this: When you hold up your medal, you are pinning it onto the chest of the Chinese Communist Party. You are helping the Party convince its own people that it's rule has legitimacy. You are helping the Party hide the facts of history from its own people, and the people of the world.

The facts of history are plain to see. The Party executed up to 3 million small landlords in 1953. The rational was simple: You cannot make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. They could not establish communism in China, and they could not create economic equality amongst all classes, until the petty bourgeois were murdered. That was just one of many such propaganda campaigns, which went on for decades. At least 30 million (and perhaps as many as 70 million) people died to establish the ideals of communism in China. How has that worked out? Well, today the Communist Party has dropped Communism as a realistic ideal. State-managed capitalism and crony capitalism are now the driving engine of China’s march to super-power status. The Party serves as the slave master for foreign corporations: Our shoes are cheap in America because the Party forces Chinese to work without free unions.

Hitler at the Olympics: Berlin, 1936 Hosting the Olympics is the Chinese Communist Party’s conscious attempt to confer legitimacy to its rule, methods, and goals. It seeks legitimacy in China and around the world. Sound familiar? The Nazi Party tried this in 1936. Western athletes who claim we must not taint the Olympics with politics are speaking from ignorance or self-interest. Is that what they would have said to homosexuals and Gypsies who were already being rounded up by the Nazis, even as the world gathered to celebrate the 1936 Olympics in Berlin? Is that what they would have said to German Jews, in 1936, who though not yet being arrested, were already forbidden to enter stores or restaurants?

Just what part of “Never Again” do those in Europe and America, who accept the Party’s Olympic propaganda campaign, not understand? Samantha Power has quoted author David Rieff's suggestion that, "'Never again' might best be defined as 'Never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940's.'” I suggest that “never again” means we cannot allow the Party—already guilty of mass murder in Tibet and China—to host the Olympics even as it supports genocide in Sudan and Burma.

That’s the Party that is just dying to meet you in Beijing: A Party that is even now massacring Tibetans, once again, while our governments do nothing. The Party is doing the same thing it has been doing for the last 50 years, and with the Olympics on the horizon, the situation bears an increasingly eerie resemblance to Berlin in 1936.

Time to stand up and be counted.

What You Can Do
Start A Conversation: When you buy a pair of shoes, explain to the clerk that you need them to help you find a pair that were not made in China. They will ask why, and you can explain that the Chinese shoes are cheap because the Chinese Communist Party:

• Prevents its laborers from forming unions
  
• Does not enforce China’s EPA regulations (which American manufacturers are required to do)

If You Had to Walk a Mile in Tibetan Shoes: you'd definitely boycott the Party This education process can work in any store. Educate yourself about why Chinese goods are so cheap. When you go to Whole Foods, and cannot find frozen edamame except from China, ask to see the Manager. Explain to them why you will not buy the edamame from China, and ask why Whole Foods is not supporting American farmers.

Whenever you have time, every purchase, in every store, can be a moment to spread the facts about the Party. The real strength of a democracy is educated citizens.

Protest: If you're in San Francisco, you can protest against the Olympic Torch.

Get involved with Students for a Free Tibet and join in some of their actions.

The Story of Tibet: the first-ever history of Tibet written with a Dalai Lama Educate Yourself: Thomas Laird worked with the Dalai Lama over the past ten years to write a popular history of Tibet. The Story of Tibet: Conversations with The Dalai Lama is the first-ever history of Tibet written with a Dalai Lama. This is required reading if you want to know what’s happening in Tibet and China during this Olympic year. You can read reviews of the book and a sample chapter here.

Laird contributed interviews to this interesting Australian radio piece on Chinese and Tibetan History.

You can also hear him n the Paula Gordon show, and on WHYY, Philly.

Watch this chilling, detailed, covertly-made documentary about what the Party is doing in Tibet.

One of the most amazing video reports about the recent protests in Tibet is here.

China Tibet War on Youtube:
See The Party version of history and recent events here.
Watch a rebuttal here.

Keep abreast of Tibetan news here.

Here is a story to start with: The Party thugs who are providing security to the running of the Olympic Flame through the streets of San Francisco were selected from a special unit of the People’s Liberation Army. This same unit is used to suppress Tibetans in Tibet. Imagine that Nazi Party Brown Shirts were running an Olympic Flame through a US City in 1936. That’s what’s happening as we sit and watch. See the facts, here.

Ask yourself: Who made the decision that it was okay for these thugs be on the ground in a US city? Find out, and protest directly to them. What message does that send to the Party? That their actions in Tibet are legitimate?

Links to Follow:

Tibet Justice Center
Students for a Free Tibet
International Campaign for Tibet
International Tibet Support Network
Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy
Human Rights in China

Confucius Say: Shalom!You may be used to seeing Jews of all different ethnicities—black Jews, Arab Jews, Eastern European Jews, Latin American Jews—but East Asian Jews, especially Chinese Jews, don’t seem to pop up very often. There are Jews in China, though, and more than a few ethnically Chinese Jews. Here’s the scoop:

Jews have been in China since the 8th century, when they came in from Persia on the Silk Road. In 1163 the Jews were ordered to live in Kiafeng by the Emperor, and a Jewish community remained there for over seven hundred years. Some descendants of that community still live in Kiafeng and around China, but they don’t identify as Jews.

In the late 19th century, Jews began entering China from Russia, and during the 20th century, thousands of Jews sought safety in China as they fled from persecution and pogroms in Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe. Much of that community left during the Japanese annexation in 1931.

During World War II more than 18,000 Jews came to Shanghai seeking shelter from the Nazis. Eventually, the Japanese, who controlled Shanghai at the time, relocated the Jewish community to a ¾ square mile area (“the Shanghai Ghetto”) where they were kept until the end of the war. Still, Jews in China enjoyed a relatively high level of safety and security.

When World War II ended, many Jews left China for Israel, America, or Eastern Europe. Most of the remaining Jews left when the Communist regime began in 1949.

For just over fifty years there was no significant Jewish life in China, but in 2000, Rosh HaShana services were held at the Ohel Rachel Synagogue in Shanghai. Believe it or not, the Chinese government now recognizes Jews as an official Chinese ethnic group. You can go to shul in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong today, and daven with both native and international Jews. And in China, Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism play nice.

On the downside, China is rife with books that promise to help the reader make money “the Jewish way.” Contemporary Chinese anti-Semitism is a real concern for Jews there.

Learn more about Jews in China at the Shanghai Jewish Center website.

Related: On Being Black, White, and Jewish

Never has there been a sweeter love affair than the one between Jews and Chinese food. In honor of that enduring affection, and also because Chinese New Year is this week, we asked a couple of food bloggers to share their favorite Chinese recipes.

Dylan over at Eat, Drink & Be Merry served up his beloved formula for Beef Noodle Soup. "Since there are hundreds of variations in China and Taiwan," he explained, "I picked two of my favorites and mixed them together: Szechuan and Taiwan style." Ever the embodiment of good taste and consideration, he specifically selected a dish that he felt would be appropriate for Jewcy Jews: "It's easy to make, and beef shank, as I have seen, is readily available in most Kosher markets."

Food-obsessed, Vietnamese-Chinese American blogger "Wandering Chopsticks" weighed in with her recipe for Shanghai-style Sticky Rice Siu Mai Dumplings. "Many Chinese are superstitious and want to start off the year with lots of luck," she explains. "Everything takes on symbolic meaning, including food. So, eat dumplings for wealth (because they resemble little money bags), and noodles for health (because they'll give you long life). One of my favorite recipes is for these Shanghai-style sticky rice siu mai dumplings. You may be more familiar with the pork versions often seen at dim sum restaurants. This version includes sticky rice, vegetables for color, dried shrimp, and Chinese sausage." The talented and generous gourmet hopes that these dumplings, which resemble little money bags, will bring lots of wealth to you in the coming Year of the Rat.

Whether you're Chinese, Jewish, both, or neither, feel free to share your own favorite Chinese dishes and recipes in the comments section.

Continue reading...

Die Laughing: the Suharto wayFormer Indonesian dictator Suharto is finally dead, leaving behind a legacy of ethnic and political persecution and genocide. Estimates on the number of Communists, activists, political opponents, and ethnic Chinese killed under his rule range from hundreds of thousands to millions, and Suharto died accused of embezzling more than any other world leader in history: An estimated $15-$35 billion over three decades. The Economist says that in death, Suharto cheated justice.

Coincidentally, Suharto died on the UK's Holocaust Memorial Day, which marks the anniversary of the liberation in 1945 of Auschwitz-Birkenau and aims to prompt British action on behalf of all persecuted peoples.

One Briton who has been prompted into action is Prince Charles himself. More news out of England has the press throwing a royal fit over Prince Charles' decision not to attend the Beijing Olympics. Though no reason was officially cited, it's safe to assume that the Prince's longstanding support of Tibet and the Dalai Lama has something to do with it.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Kenya is soaring as the country's ethnic and political crisis continues to worsen. Atrocities being perpetrated in the mob violence include forced circumcisions on Luos by Kikuyus. A New York Times article quoted one Kenyan woman as saying, "God made all of us. We need his help."

Finally, a Sikh couple in France are founding their own school to skirt the pesky turban ban, which went into effect in French state schools in 2004. Gurdial Singh says, "It would be a huge campus with schools, colleges and a university, imparting both professional and general education without any ban on anybody's religious dress or something that exhibits one's religious affiliation." Sounds idyllic to me.

Previous: Germany supports Chinese oppression of Tibet

Tibet and Germany: so close, yet so very far awayDashing hopes that were raised by German Chancellor Angela Merkel's controversial visit with the Dalai Lama last year, Germany seems to have decided that trade relations trump human rights.

Germany has now agreed "not to support or encourage any attempt to seek Tibet's independence," despite Merkel's assurance to the Dalai Lama that she supported "his efforts to maintain the cultural identity of Tibet" and "his policy of non-violent striving toward religious and cultural autonomy." Oh, and also despite all that talk that's been going on about China's occupation and oppression of Tibet since, oh, about 1951.

This news is a bit of a letdown for those who were hopeful about Merkel's influence.

Previous: Bad News For Christians

Chinese exporters are turning to rabbis to quell consumers' uneasiness about the country's food products. After last year's uproar over contaminated seafood, toothpaste, and pet food, the Chinese food industry is trying to clean up its act--or at least have rabbis convince people that they are.

According to the Orthodox Union, a New York-based organization that does kosher inspections, kosher certifications by rabbis have doubled to more than 300 in China in the past two years, and the number is expected to go up dramatically.

And China's not just doing this to ease the minds of consumers who still may not be over Fluffy's untimely death. Kosher is the new black, and China wants a piece.  

But while rabbis make sure that pork products aren't used in food production and that meat and milk stay far, far away from one another, they don't perform scientific food-safety tests. Still, at a time of intense international scrutiny, an extra seal of approval may boost consumers' confidence in products from China. If contaminated food does get through, blame the rabbis!

The Sierra Leone political activist Zainab Bangura recently said, “People say China is a sleeping giant, but it’s wide awake. It’s the elephant creeping up behind us. Only, it’s so big we can scarcely see it moving.”

That the editorial staff of the International Herald Tribune failed to see the elephant squat across the cover of their print publication this morning is an inexcusable disgrace. The paper ran this morbid headline “Hunger outpaces UN efforts in Darfur” right next to this cheery one “Chinese products change lives for neighbors” without the slightest hint of connection, let alone irony. Anyone who pays attention to world affairs for a living should know that the why? raised by the first headline is directly answered by the second one.

The five-years-and-counting genocide in Darfur owes its longevity (and apparently recent up-tick in child malnutrition) to the protective interest of Chinese capitalism. Every UN effort at intervention has faced either a de-clawing at Chinese insistence or the threat of a Chinese veto. This covers five Security Council resolutions aimed at disarming the Khartoum regime, imposing sanctions on them, or sending forces into the region to protect civilians. Consider Resolution 1706, for example, which:

authorized more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers and civilian police to protect civilians and humanitarian workers in Darfur. China abstained, and would have vetoed the measure had language not been inserted that “invited” the consent of the Khartoum regime. The National Islamic Front declined the “invitation” and refused to accept the U.N. peacekeeping force.

China’s motivation in all this can’t get any more basic: they have astronomically lucrative oil deals with the Sudanese government. These asymmetrical contracts permit China to suck the country dry of reserves claimed as their exclusive property in exchange for their promised veto. What’s more is that the oil relationship has fostered a secondary arrangement whereby the Sudanese government has contracted Chinese companies (many state-subsidized) to build bridges, roads and other infrastructure that facilitate the extraction and export of their purchased oil. Most sickening is that China’s not merely content to protect their death squad business partners in the UN; they also sell them the very weapons used in the ongoing slaughter. (At one time I could have sworn there was an army of Americans for whom “No Blood For Oil” seemed a mission statement. I’ve yet to see them or their placards swarm Union Square for an anti-China rally.)

That’s China, but what about the rest of the UN? From the first Tribune story: “For the first time since 2004, the malnutrition rate, a gauge of the population's overall distress, has crossed what UN officials consider to be the emergency threshold.” A non-stop massacre has been running longer than the television series Lost and the UN just decided that it’s an emergency. The story goes on, “As a result, people in Darfur are beginning to lose hope, and that may be another factor taking a toll on their health, several aid officials said.” That reminds me of a line from Jimmy Breslin’s comic mobster novel, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight: "He died of natural causes as his heart stopped suddenly when six men stuck knives into it."

What does this have to do with China’s “life-changing” products? The knives that China’s stuck into Darfur contribute to what’s known as the “China Price.” This is the low, low manufacturing cost China’s able to maintain and use to lure foreign investment. According to Business Week, “In general, it means 30% to 50% less than what you can possibly make something for in the U.S.” Obtaining their natural resources from countries that others refuse to patronize is one of the many unscrupulous ways that China keeps costs down. This contributes to their ability to sell cheap goods to their neighbors. From the second Tribune story:

Cheap Chinese products are flooding China's southern neighbors and consumers in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are laying out the welcome mat.

The products are transforming the lives of some of the poorest people in Asia, whose worldly possessions only a few years ago typically consisted of not much more than a set or two of clothes, cooking utensils and a thatch-roofed house built by hand.

The article is positively celebratory. It does allow this: “The enthusiasm for Chinese goods here is tempered by one commonly heard complaint: maintenance problems.” Well, there are a few more complaints. Aside from the Darfur genocide, here’s what else goes into the production of cheap Chinese goods: industrial slavery, intellectual piracy, environmental catastrophe, and an absolute disregard for health and safety standards.

China is indeed awake. As for the staff of The International Herald Tribune –it’s hard to say. The paper is a hodgepodge of international stories, and is presented as a resource for the global community. In that way it’s sort of the United Nations of newspapers. Which explains everything.

Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that the Chinese have once again moved to crush any hint of dissent or independent-minded political activity in Tibet. The good news is that it’s now politically correct to support beauty pageants. Who knew?

Miss Tibet 2006, Tsering Chungtak, has been forced to withdraw from the Miss Tourism Pageant in Malaysia after the Chinese authorities put pressure on the pageant organizers to bar Tibet from the event. China demanded that Chungtak, an ethnic Tibetan who lives in exile in India, wear a sash labeled “Miss Tibet-China” or pull out. To her eternal credit, Miss Tibet told the authorities to go and fuck themselves, but pressure from the Chinese consulate in Sarawak, where the pageant is being held this Friday, has seen her pulled from competition.

Tsering Chungtak is a million miles away from the archetypal beauty pageant airheads of YouTube legend. On her return to Delhi yesterday, she gave a press conference in which she expressed her disgust with the politicking that led to her expulsion from the competition:

"I felt that this was not acceptable to me at all. The Tibetan issue is still the same as ever. China is in control of Tibet, and there is no freedom in Tibet. China constantly violates human rights, and threatens the environment in Tibet, causing concern about the very survival of the Tibetan people," Chungtak said after returning from Malaysia.

Miss Chungtak went on to say:

"They gave me just two options and it was a nightmare," Chungtak said, adding the organisers told her they were under Chinese pressure to force her to take off her "Miss Tibet" sash while participating. "I did not go to Malaysia with a political agenda. I was there to spread friendship"

She’s being a wee bit disingenuous here, mind you. Your correspondent spent a couple of arduous hours on the Miss Tibet website this afternoon in the interests of nailing down the facts, and it’s pretty clear that this is not your usual talent show. The Miss Tibet organisation was set up in 2002 with the specific aim of drawing attention to the plight of occupied Tibet and providing educational chances for exiled Tibetans, of whom there are well over 120,000. Many of these live in India, where opportunities for young Tibetan women are often fairly bleak. When the new Miss Tibet was crowned in October her first order of business was to renew calls for freedom for the occupied nation.

Clearly, therefore, this is a beauty contest that every liberal should get behind. Put aside any thought that these pageants are demeaning to women; that’s just your cultural imperialism talking. By watching these girls parade around in swimsuits you are, in effect, getting into the trenches alongside them, and striking a blow for self-determination, women’s rights, and the aspirations of an embattled people in exile – and all without having to put down your beer, too.

I’m really struck by this idea that if something miraculous, really kind of movielike, could happen here, where we could all kind of send love and truth and a kind of sanity to Hu Jintao right now in Beijing, that he will take his troops and take the Chinese away from Tibet and allow people to live as free independent people again. So, thought… We send this thought - we send this thought out. Send this thought.

Alternatively, if the Richard Gere route doesn't appeal, there’s a contact page right there on the website.