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Pro-Tibet activists wrapped themselves in Tibetan flags and lay down in Tiananmen Square on Saturday, their group said, in a protest that breached heavy security surrounding the heart of Beijing for the Olympic Games.

The five demonstrators were calling for an "end to the Chinese government's occupation in Tibet," said Lhadon Tethong, executive director of the New York-based Students for a Free Tibet.

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The Chinese Internet reaction is puzzlement in several directions. Firstly, who was this action directed towards? At TSQ, most of the Chinese spectators have no idea what these people were up to, because everything is in English. So the whole exercise was a videotape session. But for whom? It is for a western audience, but the comments on the YouTube videos were overwhelmingly negative with nary a discussion about serious issues. Secondly, at the overseas Chinese forums, people wondered why the Chinese citizens did not take the matter into their own hands and beat these people up. In the second video, that almost happened as it was the undercover security officers who had to shepherd the protestors out. Thirdly, what is the news value of this story that results in an Associated Press? That is for the press to explain ...

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Just a few minutes ago, three Tibet activists unfurled a banner on a ledge of Beijing’s main train station. It read: China’s Tibet Railway: Designed to Destroy.” I stood on the other side of the street, snapped a few pictures, and left with conflicting feelings.

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Like several other foreign reporters, I’d been alerted ahead of time to the event.

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While the issues touching on Tibet are of interest, what troubled me is that the activists are generally Westerners rather than Tibetans. Their banner was in English, not Chinese or Tibetan, and few people in front of the train station took notice or were able to read the banner. So without complicit Western media to document the event, it would have gone unnoticed.

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I expect everything to more or less continue in the same asanine way it has for nearly five decades. The photo above, to me, says it all: we don’t care about Chinese people. We don’t care what they think, we don’t care what they’ve suffered, we don’t give a damn about them. Sure, we’ll hastily scribble on some Chinese characters (”Oh shit, you mean in China not everybody reads English signs? Get me a magic marker and a dictionary!”), but the only message we care about is the one we get out to the English speaking world. Never mind the hundreds of millions of reasonably intelligent adult Chinese citizens and their opinion - no, the only opinions that matter about the future of Tibet are those of Westerners.

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The numerous Tibet activist websites, not to mention the government-in-exile, don’t have any Chinese language content on their websites, despite the Dalai Lama’s recent claims that he wants to negotiate anytime, anywhere. Of course they’re all behind the GFW, but should any Chinese netizen be intrepid enough to seek these pages out, they won’t find anything there for them. Apparently engaging the sympathies of the Chinese people just doesn’t matter.

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And so the yelling from both sides continues, and both sides can fire their zingers at one another and pat each other on the back. Powers examines the English literature produced by both sides, I believe, for a clear reason: because the battle is really one fought on Capitol Hill, not in China. Tibetan activists continue portraying the Chinese public as a swarm of indistinguishable drones incapable of independent thought or political power, even depicting them as foot soldiers in a massive campaign to dilute Tibet with faceless hordes, an outdated Cold War notion that suggests that all that CIA funding until the 1970s has left them in a time warp. No, the Free Tibet movement sees only the power of Washington D.C. and American corporations as capable of swaying China, though 50 years of a failed approach apparently isn’t enough to convince them they’re beating a dead yak. Meanwhile, the Chinese government must think of them as an annoying pain in the ass, constantly disrupting their diplomatic visits or causing PR headaches like this most recent stunt. But make no mistake, as long as the exile movement continues to ignore the Chinese people and look abroad for action, the PRC will be overjoyed. Go ahead and unfurl your banners in English at the Olympics, shout your slogans, treat Chinese people as brainwashed morons - they’ll love the Party even more. But hey, at least you can feel good about yourself back in Sausalito.

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