At 11:48 AM 4/23/99 -0700, Larry Fontenot wrote:

	That's something I knew of off the top of my head.  When the Chinese
invaded, they systematically suppressed the Tibetan Buddhists.  Why?  I
don't know.  The Buddhist creed is nonviolent.  Maybe they thought they
were eliminating a rallying point of resistance?  Tibet had a large
percentage of its population active in service to the temples, so that was
a lot of suppressing, and it did get very bloody at times because of
Chinese brutality.

	I can answer this question for you, Larry. After the partition
of China between the Great Powers in the 1800's, China as a country 
finally realized that while they might have considered China the source
of all culture (something Japan and China both share, this cultural
arrogance), technologically and militarily they'd fallen behind. 

	Ever since, while China has gone to great efforts to prevent
what they like to term 'cultural pollution', they make _equally_ great
efforts to keep current on new technology, and political-military 
changes.

	One of the changes they noticed immediately was the famous
Bus boycott instituted by Martin Luther King, Junior. This boycott
lasted for nearly 13 months, and impoverished the bus line. Attempts
to _force_ black Americans to take the bus were, of course, both
futile, and caused the segregationists to look REALLY foolish.

	It eventually ended in the federal courts stepping in and
bullying the bus line into ending black/white segregation on their
buses.

	China, having seen this and paid attention to it, realized
that such a non-violent (but _certainly_ not passive!), could easily
cause great difficulty to their self-confessed intention of recreating
a CHINESE Tibet, inhabited by loyal Chinese immigrants, shipped there
by rail from China. (Their own little version of ethnic cleansing.)

	Such non-violent, yet quite aggressive, methods of defiance
would put one hell of a crimp in their plans, so they attempted to
try to prevent them in advance by decapitating the only group of
people who possessed the moral authority to pull it off. Namely, the
Buddhist priests.

	This was later confirmed by a Chinese defector who, while
being debriefed, wondered why America didn't simply deal with the
annoyance Reverend King presented by shooting him.

	"After all," he said, "it's what _we_ would have done if
he'd tried that in China."

	Just a little light shed on the question, which is quite
a legitimate one for this particular fanfic.

	This has been a public political fanfic service announcement.

	*grin*

	Have a nice day.

	Ed Becerra

	"Dreamers may die, but the Dream is eternal.."