China invaded Tibet. It invaded it. So all this nonsense about them being the same country is absurd. It's called Tibet. If it was part of China, it would be called China, wouldn't it?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.
China is a civilization pretending to be a nation.
In 1949, Mao Tse-tung's Communists established the People's Republic of China, and the following year, his People's Liberation Army invaded central Tibet.
So if you look back over the long history of China, they've never tried to take over the world, but they've been quite aggressive in their own neighborhood... in carrying out their own purposes and interests in their sphere of the world.
One of the happier ironies of recent history is that even as Tibet is being wiped off the map in Tibet itself, here it is in California, in Switzerland, in Japan. All over the world, Tibetan Buddhism is now part of the neighborhood. In 1968, there were two Tibetan Buddhist centers in the West. By 2000, there were 40 in New York alone.
People are not trying to get into China, they're trying to get out of China. The United States is the only great country where people are trying to get into to this country for obvious reasons.
The Chinese culture belongs not only to the Chinese but also to the whole world.
And look at the mess that Russia is; most Chinese don't want to follow that.
China is not a country, it's a continent. India is not a country, it's a continent.
China is one of those vast, continental conglomerates that... I mean, if they were to start a tourist trade in China, they'd just bus people in from another province, you know what I mean? They're very self-contained.