Fake Tibetan Monks

... but Christians just don't have the same kind of leverage that Buddhists do. Christian higher powers rarely intervene directly in politics (regardless of what people claim). It makes them somewhat easier targets if they don't have material wealth and power.

Enlightenment is different; the Chinese are trying to carry this fight on the Tibetans' home ground, spiritually speaking. Some of the Tibetans are doing stuff that can reprogram the human brain and aim accurately across death. And enlightenment is triggered by experiences, it doesn't require a miracle. China has ... lots of guns. China can only win on a field of battle, and they can win violent conflicts quite easily in most cases. The moment they engage the spiritual, such as by taking their soldiers' weapons away and making them sneak into monasteries, I suspect they are going to get creamed. They're unarmed against experts, in that context.

>>One of the few things I liked about the newer version of
The Day the Earth Stood Still
was the bit about the advance man who had learned to enjoy being human
after a lifetime of only pretending to be human...<<

That's precisely it. There's a strong tendency to become what one pretends to be.

>>We've had plenty of things like that here, where someone from the opposite side will try to make the Occupiers look bad (and worthy of the best beatdowns first-world tech can provide).<<

I've heard reports of faked-violent-demonstrations from America, Canada, and multiple other countries.

>>I don't think people who would be chosen as infiltrators get much chance to think about what they are damaging, even if they were prone to sympathy with the people they are hoping to harm.<<

I'm sure China is choosing the best infiltrators they can. But you can't stop words or ideas even if you're wearing armor. Buddhism is absolutely famous for split-second conversions, including of warmongers. The legends are full of cases where a warrior came to kill a monk and got blindsided by enlightenment. A few words or a gesture can do it. It seems to be mainly about knocking someone out of his rut. A quick impersonation in a riot, yeah, that's somewhat lower risk of enlightenment. But anyone entering a monastery is just begging to be cracked open, and those sounded like longer-term plantings.

It's going to be like the time the Jehovah's Witnesses kept sending guys to a Pagan friend of mine, and they'd talk, and he'd inadvertently convert them to Paganism. JW office gave up after several rounds of this, presumably because it was costing them too many guys. These were ardent proselytizers. They were just outclassed.

>>But from some Buddhist standpoints, it's all academic, 'cause the infiltrators will become enlightened someday; it just doesn't have to be now.<<

"They'll figure it out some life or other" is wonderful for cultivating patience. And if you say it to their face, it drives them nuts.

A funny thing about nonviolence is that, at low levels, it's nearly useless; and it's a hard skill path to climb. But it goes higher than violence does, and the upper levels are just unbelievably powerful. So if you pit mid-level warriors against high-level pacifists, the pacifists will consistently win and the warriors will be left wondering WTF just happened.

Why only mid-level warriors? The higher ones will usually be things like generals or green berets, not suited to this kind of assignment. And if China manages to send some high-level spooks who specialize in undercover work? Those guys do their best trick by absorbing what is around them so they can blend in. They'll have almost no chance of holding containment if they're not even trying to block out the competing signal. Agent loss is a constant risk in undercover work of any kind, precisely because humans are contextual. Anthropologists even have an equivalent, rudely called "going native."

I remember the Chinese government freaking out over Falun Gong too. Then I saw a demonstration -- the Falun Gong folks were on a float in a parade, and they were moving some serious energy. I can see how the government would be not too keen of that level of expertise.

Thing is, China is paddling upstream against psychobiology and that just never works. All known human cultures have or had religion of some kind. If it's thrown out or taken away, the hole starts refilling in no longer than a generation. You may as well try to sweep back the tide with a broom. People will not only make stuff up from scratch, it will be the same kind of stuff as previous examples even if they haven't seen any of those. So either the Divine is talking to people, it's hardwired in the human species, or both. You can penalize it, you can discourage it in individuals, but you can't get rid of it in a whole population.

That's a different story than the arc I have going. Someone should write it.

It's not published yet, or I would've linked to it. That's part of the history for my main SF universe -- I know a bunch of the colonies and how they started, but they aren't all fleshed out in publication yet.

If you're that keen on it, though, you can always request it in a poetry fishbowl some time with a relevant theme. Shambhala was the planet where the Buddhist and Tibetan folks settled after leaving Earth. The Chinese executed the Dalai Lama shortly before the launch. Which saved him a substantial portion of the trip, he hated flying. Next incarnation, he caught right up to the colonists: "Don't you want to watch the landing?" "Don't be silly, you know how much I hate flying."