Chapter 11 Slave Revolt (1)

Xi Jinping’s oppressive rule over Tibet and restrictions on religious freedom have led to widespread resistance from the Tibetan farmers and herdsmen. Many lamas and nuns including farmers and herdsmen being provoked by a wave of bitter protest have expressed their strong protest by setting themselves on fire and have been demanding the return of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to Tibet. As of November 2017, at least 50 Tibetans have set themselves on fire and at least 26 of them have died. Many of the self-immolators were youths which included 18, 19 and 20-year-old herders, high school students and female nuns.

On November 9, 2012, shortly after Xi Jinping took power, the number of Tibetan self-immolations increased dramatically – at least 20 people were killed within a month. They strongly condemned the authorities’ harsh crackdown on Tibet and demanded that Tibetans be given freedom. To prevent the spread of Tibetan demonstrations, the Chinese government sent a large number of military and police officers to the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

The Dalai Lama has repeatedly called on the Xi government to thoroughly investigate the self-immolations of Tibetans. On December 10, 2012, Tibetans and sympathizers who had fled to Belgium staged a massive protest in Brussels which was attended by at least 600 people.

In August 2020, American journalist Barbara Demick published a new book, “Eating the Buddha: A City of Robberies and Survival in Tibet,” in which she has recounted the story of her field interviews of the Aba Tibetan Autonomous Region in Sichuan that had became the capital of self-immolation for the Tibetan Buddhists .

Instead of facing up the causes of the mass self-immolations, the Xi government has been arresting those behind the so-called self-immolations and further persecuting Tibetans in a brutal manner.

The Communist Party’s dictatorship has brutally oppressed the people and provoked countless protests by the people. The number of people involved in each event ranges from dozens to hundreds to thousands. Before Xi Jinping took power, the CCP had already announced the number of mass incidents each year: 8,700 in 1993, 32,000 in 1999, 60,000 in 2003, 74,000 in 2004, 87,000 in 2005, 100,000 in 2007 and no more since 2008. Sun Liping, a sociology professor at the Tsinghua University, has estimated that the number of cases is increasing by more than 20,000 per year.

Since Xi Jinping came to power, social conflicts have intensified and the human rights situation has plummeted. With an annual increase of only 20,000 cases, at least 260,000 mass incidents had occurred by 2020, with an average of 700 cases per day and over ten million participants. Those involved in the protests included groups who suffered forced evictions, groups of victims of ecological damage and environmental pollution, groups of victims of land appropriation, groups of victims of private land sales by officials, groups of migrant workers, groups of laid-off workers, groups of victims of wrongful cases, groups of victims of forced family planning, groups of victims of tofu-dreg projects, groups of victims of fake drugs and toxic food, groups of victims of fraudulent investment, groups of veterans with no livelihood, and groups of veterans with unfair treatment, the group of persecuted Falun Gong practitioners, and the group of families of prisoners of conscience. Among them, the largest was the group who were victims of forced demolition and eviction. The group of ecological damage and environmental pollution-related protests had exceeded 300 per day nationwide. The Chinese Communist Party has absolutely prohibited the reporting of such mass events.

The large number of mass protests that occur in the past each year inevitably stirred up public anger and has increased social unrest. The Xi regime has continued to increase its efforts to maintain. The annual spending on stability maintenance has been increasing to more than the national defense military spending. In 2013, the CPC spent 769 billion yuan on stability maintenance, exceeding the national defense budget of 720.1 billion yuan in that year and the stability maintenance expenses increased by 10% over 2012 expenditure. In 2019 the stability maintenance increased to nearly 1.4 trillion yuan (138.79 billion yuan). It increased one time in five-year, exceeding the national defense budget of 119 billion yuan. The Chinese Communist Party feeds hundreds of thousands of armed police forces dedicated to suppressing mass protests with tear gas, poison gas, water cage heads, and rubber bullets using all kinds of repressive measures.