Our lives depending on unpacking, decoding CCP’s slogans: Tibetan researchers

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 2

A team of Tibetan researchers has created a “Decoding Chinese Communist Party” database to tell the wider world what the Communist leaders actually mean when they utter certain phrases.

“We Tibetans have unique insights into our powerful neighbour. Often our lives depend upon close and critical readings of China’s official jargon. This website delves into implicit assumptions, unconscious biases, fear and projections of the official Chinese mind and offers keys to deeper understanding,” said Tsering Tomo, director of the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.

“China takes itself so seriously, which is a bit comical,” noted Tsering Dorje, the principal researcher and writer of “Decoding CPP”.

“There is a deep history implanted in China’s claim to be an exemplary civilisation. We know the backstory well and navigate our place in the world by unpacking these slogans,” she added.

For instance, take the phrase “untrustworthy persons”. There are at least ten phrases that hide behind this seemingly benign term and many of them lead to compulsory incarceration in a re-education centre to instill a change of identity.

One description of an “untrustworthy person” is “persons with no official religious duties who possess religious knowledge”. In Xinjiang especially, such people require compulsory re-education.

At the launch of the “a sure guide to the indeterminate vagueness of key phrases in constant official use” were Tibetologist Vijay Kranti and former diplomat Deepak Vohra.

“If you find yourself dealing with representatives of China’s party-state, you will find in this handbook the fine print that frames Chinese meanings and images,” pointed out Dorje.

Vohra expressed satisfaction that the country’s thinkers, diplomats and academics had come out of the “Mira Sinha Bhattacharjee syndrome”, referring to the former diplomat who quit IFS because of a then rule that required women officers to quit on marriage. She then set up the Department of Chinese Studies in Delhi University as well as the China Study Group.

Nevertheless, Vohra said she “poisoned the minds of two generations of Indian policy makers, thinkers, diplomats and journalists”.

Kranti felt satisfaction that the Indian government had got out of the phobia of not annoying China. He regretted that in the past, the animus displayed towards Pakistan was not there in the Indian approach to China.