Conservative Principles Now

Tenzin Dorjee, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet, recently sat down with Heritage’s Dr. Lee Edwards, Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought, to offer insight on the ethnic and religious tensions plaguing China.

Click here to view the embedded video.

From Xinjiang to Tibet, tensions continue to cloud the Chinese government’s vision of a harmonious and stable society. Many see the CCP’s policies toward religious freedom and ethnic diversity as more divisive than harmonizing. The Chinese government, on the other hand, blames external agitators in the West for the social unrest in China. The lack of progress toward resolving these tensions raises the question for all sides: Is it time for a new paradigm?

Upon the 60th Anniversary of the PRC, the visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Washington, DC, and coinciding with the opening of the Fifth Interethnic/Interfaith Leadership Conference, The Heritage Foundation presented a unique forum of intellectuals from Mainland China and representatives from the rainbow of ethnic and religious groups that comprise contemporary China who gave a “frontline” perspective on this question.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken) is bashing the owners of the Empire State Building for being lit red and yellow this week to honor the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.  Menendez says China is a communist regime that has been associated with oppression and human rights suppression. "I find it distasteful that one of the foremost symbols of our free nation would be draped in the colors of a government that has systematically restricted freedom for 60 years," said Menendez, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee member.  "Such a display does not deserve to share a skyline with the Statue of Liberty. It is an affront to those who have been killed, those who have been stifled and those who have been driven into exile over the past six decades. It is an affront to the ideals that our great nation was built upon."