Xi Jinping in Lhasa: Spectacular Delusions
Gabriel Lafitte
The spectacular party-state has a frontier construction theory that classifies Tibet as a national security risk, because Tibet is full of Tibetans, for whom the Party’s interest do not come first. Partly this is because party-speak makes no sense. Then you discover “promote the construction of the Chinese nation’s community” means abandoning one’s mother tongue, opting instead to believe not only are you really racially Chinese, so too were all your deluded ancestors. Xi Jinping flies to Lhasa to inspect his campaign to rectify the minds of the Tibetans. On cue the assembled Tibetans duly perform in song and dance their enthusiasm for discovering they are actually Chinese, embracing Chinese characteristics smothered on everything Tibetan, declaiming their love for the core leader because the Party’s interests always come first. Can we believe what we see? Does Xi Jinping believe his own propaganda? Can performative declamation of slogans actually change minds?
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