Mass Media and Tiannanmen Square

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Book Reviews : Zhou HE, Mass Media and Tiananmen Square. New York: Nova Science 1996. 245 pp., with appendices, bibliogr. and index. ISBN: 1-56072-355-6 (hc). Price: US$69.00

Stefan R. Landsberger China Information 1997 12: 259 DOI: 10.1177/0920203X9701200117 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cin.sagepub.com/content/12/1-2/259.citation

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use of the term &dquo;Dalai&dquo; for the Dalai Lama and reference to the Dalai Lama’s &dquo;court&dquo; (p. 222), one sees how programmatic Grunfeld’s history is in fact. He discounts and attempts to discredit the exile community’s historical claims to an independent state, reducing them to the desires of the Lhasa elites who were trying to &dquo;protect their positions in society to maintain the status quo&dquo; (p. 106). While Grunfeld’s running criticism of Tibet’s ruling aristocracy might suggest a concommitant sympathy for the masses, in fact he is dismissive and disdainful of them. The Tibetans who fled their homeland, most of whom were not aristocrats, are attributed with no agency and no will of their own. As Grunfeld would have it, they are mere sheep, blinded by false consciousness brought about by their religious belief: &dquo;Nothing testifies to the strength of the religious ties among Tibetans more than the hold the Dalai Lama continues to maintain over his people&dquo; (p. 201). In other words, the Dalai Lama manipulates the beliefs and sentiments of...