China Abstains on Ukraine's "Tibet"

At yesterday's meeting of the UN Security Council Russia vetoed a draft resolution criticising
today's secession referendum in Ukraine's Crimea region - the only member to vote against the measure.

China, usually a Russian ally on moves to counteract the diplomatic and economic might of the West, abstained from the vote.

Beijing is sensitive about issues of territorial integrity, because of fears it could send a message to its own restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.

Now, the Crimea was "given" to Ukraine On 19 February 1954. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issued a decree transferring the Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The transfer has been described as a "symbolic gesture," marking the 300th anniversary of Ukraine becoming a part of the Russian Empire. The General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union was at the time the Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev.

The Crimea was not invaded by Ukraine, unlike Tibet was by China.

The Ukrainian's didn't try to destroy the religion of Crimea, they're both Eastern Orthodox. Unlike the Chinese in Tibet where before the Chinese occupation, there were 6,000 monasteries, after the Cultural Revolution, there were six.

Hundreds of thousands of Monks, Nuns and civilians were imprisoned or killed for wearing traditional hairstyles and clothing, engaging in traditional song or dance, or voicing their religious beliefs. Rituals such as prostrations, mantras, prayer wheels, circumambulation, throwing tsampa and burning juniper or incense were strictly prohibited. Anything representing the cultural identity of the Tibetan people was eradicated.

And the Ukrainians haven't killed over 250,000 Crimeans in prisons and labour camps.

China does not want to alienate its strategic partner, Russia, which has lobbied heavily for China’s support for its intervention in Ukraine. Yet it cannot be seen as supporting a referendum in Crimea, which Russia backs, on the peninsula’s possible secession from Ukraine. For Beijing, that comes uncomfortably close to approving a vote on independence for Tibet.