We associate the prose of John F. Avedon with the recent political history of Tibet, in
particular with the suffering and struggle of the Tibetan people within the polity of China
since 1950. Overall Avedon's account, published in Volume 7, Nos. 2/3 of The Himalayan
Research Bulletin, implies that the position of Tibetans is now extreme, as bad if not worse
than before the recent reforms of 1978 and 1980. In places he actually uses the language
of the holocaust, the words 'final solution,' to refer to current Chinese policies.
As a journalist, Avedon deals with issues and events significant today. His writing is
intended for a general audience, for whom the rhetorical presentation of a case is part of
the power-play and politics of popular debate. This is to a degree justified in order to
alert pressure groups or the public at large to the events or issues at hand. Here a point
is made, not perhaps because it is likely to be judged correct by the canons of science or
scholarship in the fullness of time, but because it represents the best guess, from a
particular standpoint, when a report or commentary was called for. Sometimes, when there
are applied as well as purely academic criteria, there are problems of accuracy. In this
situation a person concerned with facts has to be careful, as it is a short-step from putting
something down because there is reasonable evidence that it is true, to putting it down
because it may be true and because it may be of help to what is seen as the case at hand.
I should be explicit on one point here. The historical record is clear that the Tibetan
people have suffered terribly since 1959, and that the Chinese have no more justification for
their actions there than did the European powers against black Africans or native Americans
in their own colonial actions since the 16th century. However, it is reasonably clear that
the material circumstances of Tibetans have improved quite significantly since the reforms
of 1980, if for no other reason than because they were so bad before. Moreover, I do not
think that the present fluctuations and inconsistencies in their policy to Tibet by China
merit the extreme accusations of Avedon.