Wen Jiabao and the shoe

Now I really wish I had got a ticket to see the actual moment. The clip (and the report) by BBC didn't give a very detailed account on the "incident". Hope someone got it with a phone and uploaded it to Youtube...

As a Chinese, I am quite unease to see my country's official got humiliated in a way that was meant to treat monkeys/apes. I couldn't quite see what ethnic group the attacker belongs to, but here are two guesses:

A Chinese, probably Falun Gong related. Then, I've nothing to say because some form of anti-China organization will always exist and this is indeed a great chance for them to get noticed. I am not sure, though, except for bringing some joy to people, they have achieved anything tangible.

A British? The thing is many people who is "concerned" about the "human right problems" in Tibet cannot even define where is Tibet and many of them know very little about Tibet.
Some interesting "facts" from entry Tibet in Wikepedia:

• In 1904, a British expedition to Tibet, ..., invaded Tibet and reached Lhasa. But on his way to Lhasa, Younghusband slaughtered many Tibetan troops in Gyangzê who tried to stop the British advance. When the mission reached Lhasa, the Dalai Lama had already fled to Urga in Mongolia. (I didn't even know about this until now. It's not in our history book probably because at that time everywhere in China is invaded by the British and Lhasa is comparingly less important. And this Dalai Lama is obviously the current one who loves" his people so much.)
  
• There's probably an invasion of Tibet that resulted in a Seventeen Point Agreement being signed and Tibet officially become a part of PRC.
• According to Chinese sources, Tibet's GDP in 2001 was 13.9 billion yuan (USD1.8billion)^[73] The Central government exempts Tibet from all taxation and provides 90% of Tibet's government expenditures.^{[74][75][76][77]}.

And about human rights. I have to admitt there are many democracy and human right problems even in the most open and developed part of China, let along Tibet. But there's certainly no guarentee that things would get any better if Tibet becomes independent. Who else would be willing to pay the money to modernize the region? Without the support from and trade freedom with the rest of China, it hard to image what kind life the Tibetan people would have.

If you're a support of the current Dalai Lama, you should know, the name means he is a dictator. And if he were to rule, things are only going to get much worse. What about the current system? Well the title "autonmous region" should be self-explainary. Tibet may not have much say over the policy of the whole country (proportionally, though, Tibet has higher delegates to population ratio at the national congress than other provinces), but it certainly has high level of freedom in deciding what will happen inside the region.

One last point, no matter what happens to Tibet. I hope it hope it happens peacefully and I hope Tibetan people will not suffer.

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It just occured to me that I've actually met some Tibetan teachers from my high school's exchange program with Lhasa Foreign Language School.