For as long as anyone can remember, the U.S.–Canada relationship has been one of the friendliest in the world. But now the two countries are at odds. Bitterness and hostility are in the air. That shows you the power of what one man can do: the president of the United States. You may say it should not be this way. There are 340 million of us Americans, and the president is only one guy who heads one branch of the federal government! But it is that way. Manifestly (as WFB would say).
I lead my Impromptus today with this subject. I go on to stock-market politics, nuclear proliferation, a scandal in Norway, ballerinas and food, a poem by William Butler Yeats, etc. To try it, go here.
Two days ago, I devoted much of my column to Tibet, that captive, brutalized nation. March 10 is “Tibetan Uprising Day” (marking the Tibetans’ rebellion in 1959). There was an event in New York. In that column, I compared the Tibetans’ plight to the Uyghurs’. This is natural to do.
Chen Quanguo was the party secretary of Tibet from 2011 to 2016. He was, effectively, Beijing’s Gauleiter. He did such a good job of subduing the Tibetans, Beijing sent him to Xinjiang, to do the same to the Uyghurs.
Tibetans speak of, and decry, “Chinese colonial boarding schools.” In these schools, Tibetan children are made into “proper” Han Chinese, cleansed of all things Tibetan. Uyghur children, in Xinjiang, are subjected to exactly the same.
A reader sends me this article from UN News, which relates the testimony of experts on Xinjiang. Here are some key paragraphs:
The experts said they have received information about large-scale removal of youngsters from their families, including very young children whose parents are in exile or “interned”/detained.
The children are treated as “orphans” by State authorities and placed in full-time boarding schools, pre-schools, or orphanages where Mandarin is almost exclusively used.
“Uyghur and other minority children in highly regulated and controlled boarding institutions may have little interaction with their parents, extended family or communities for much of their youth,” the experts said.
“This will inevitably lead to a loss of connection with their families and communities and undermine their ties to their cultural, religious and linguistic identities,” they added.
When people speak of “cultural genocide,” this is what they mean.
Another reader sends me this article from Politico Europe. The headline: “DOGE targets Radio Free Asia.” Chances are, our “radios” will not survive the Trump administration. Elon Musk has tweeted, “It’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.”
Some of us regard the radios as jewels in our national crown. In 2018, I wrote a piece about RFE/RL (which combines Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty): “Still Broadcasting Freedom.”
One of our readers, who works on Xinjiang in particular, describes Radio Free Asia as “a lifeline for Tibetans and Uyghurs.”
That article from Politico Europe reports, “DOGE personnel have taken steps to starve RFA — a key tool for the U.S. government to counter Beijing’s censorship and influence abroad — of its congressional funding.” Not all Republicans are happy with this development. Congresswoman Young Kim of California said, “Gutting Radio Free Asia and other U.S. Agency for Global Media platforms counters the principles of freedom our nation was founded on and cedes leverage to the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea, and other regimes.”
Congressman Michael McCaul of Texas — formerly the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — issued this statement:
RFA emits the only transparent reporting from most countries in Southeast Asia, where the CCP’s disinformation campaigns are the strongest. When I released my report on the origins of Covid and the CCP’s culpability, RFA played a critical role in translating it into Mandarin, penetrating the CCP’s firewall, and disseminating it throughout mainland China. That’s why I strongly support programs like RFA, which provide day-to-day updates on far-off regions, uphold a free press even in authoritarian countries, and ensure Americans — and people everywhere — are not subject to our adversaries’ propaganda.
The National Endowment for Democracy was founded at the instigation of President Reagan. It, too, will probably not survive the current administration. My question: Can these institutions — NED, RFA, RFE/RL, etc. — be reconstituted in a future administration? I suppose we will see.