Jim Yardley has an article in today’s International Herald Tribune about the relationship between Chinese nationalism and the crackdown in Tibet.

“We couldn’t believe our government was being so weak and cowardly,” said Meng, 52, a mother and office worker, who was appalled that the authorities had initially failed to douse the violence. “The Dalai Lama is trying to separate China, and it is not acceptable at all. We must crack down on the rioters.”

For two weeks, as Chinese security forces have tried to extinguish continuing Tibetan protests, Chinese officials have tried to demonstrate the party’s resolve to people like Meng. They have blasted the foreign media as biased against China, castigated the Dalai Lama as a terrorist “jackal” and called for a “people’s war” to fight separatism in Tibet.

If the tough tactics have startled the outside world, the Communist Party for now seems more concerned with rallying domestic opinion by using and responding to the deep strains of nationalism in Chinese society. Playing to national pride, and national insecurities, the party has used censorship and propaganda to position itself as defender of the motherland – and block any examination of Tibetan grievances or its own performance in the crisis.

I and other people I know working in the Tibetan independence movement, including pretty much all Tibetans, have no grievance with the Chinese people. It is the Chinese government that has created and enforced policies of oppression and cultural genocide in Tibet, not the Chinese people, and as such the proper target of our campaigns for Tibet has been the Chinese government.  Yardley’s piece on Chinese nationalism, though, is deeply troubling as a sign of what obstacles may lie in the way of a policy shift in the Chinese government.

There are two key things to take away from this, though. First, the existence of Chinese nationalism (or Han chauvinism) has been fomented and grown by the Chinese Communist Party. It does not exist like this in a vacuum, but has been amplified be a source of support for the government. Second, the prejudices of a population do not have to veto the right course of action by a government. In America, schools were desegregated despite widespread racism. Women were given the right to vote despite centuries of ingrained misogyny in Western culture. There may be large swaths of rabid nationalists in China, but that should not be what prevents the Chinese government from ceasing their violent crackdown in Tibet, nor should be an obstacle to the CCP Chairman Hu Jintao negotiating directly with the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.