FORUMA Way out of Tibet’s MorassBy Robert Barnett Wednesday, 22 April 2009

Director of Modern Tibet Studies Robert Barnett, in front of his map marking Tibet-related unrest.

NEW YORK – China has survived
the 50th anniversary of the failed uprising by Tibetans against Chinese
rule in 1959 without major protests. But, to keep Tibetans off the
streets, China’s government had to saturate the entire Tibetan plateau
with troops and secretly detain in unmarked jails hundreds of people
for “legal education.” Those moves suggest that Tibet has become an
increasingly serious concern for China’s rulers, one that they have not
yet found ways to handle without damaging their standing in Tibet and
around the world.A year ago, Chinese and Western intellectuals
competed in dismissing popular interest in Tibet as a childlike
confusion with the imaginary Shangri-la of the 1937 film Lost Horizon .
But after more than 150 protests in Tibet against Chinese rule over the
past 12 months, concerns about the area seem anything but fanciful.
Indeed, Tibet could soon replace Taiwan as a factor in regional
stability and an important issue in international relations. The areas
populated by Tibetans cover a quarter of China; to have such a large
part of the country’s territory under military control and cut off from
the outside world weakens the Communist Party’s claims to legitimacy
and world power status.Last year’s protests were the largest
and most widespread in Tibet for decades. Participants included nomads,
farmers, and students, who in theory should have been the most grateful
to China for modernizing Tibet’s economy. Many carried the forbidden
Tibetan national flag, suggesting that they think of Tibet as a
separate country in the past, and in about 20 incidents government
offices were burned down. In one case, there were even attacks on
Chinese migrants, leading to 18 deaths. It is hard not to see these
events as a challenge to China’s rule.The government’s reaction
was to blame the problem on outside instigation. It sent in more
troops, hid details of protestors’ deaths, gave a life sentence to an
AIDS educator who had copied illegal CDs from India, and for months
banned foreigners and journalists from the Tibetan plateau. In
November, Chinese officials, live on national TV, ridiculed Tibetan
exiles’ proposals for negotiation. They canceled a European summit
because of a meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the
Dalai Lama, and regularly imply that Tibetans are terrorists.On
March 28, Tibetans in Lhasa had to celebrate “Serf Emancipation Day” to
endorse China’s explanation for its take-over 50 years ago. But such
class-struggle terminology reminds people of the Cultural Revolution
and, since such language would be unimaginable in inland China today,
only makes Tibet seem more separate. Although both sides claim to be
ready for dialogue, they are talking at cross-purposes: the exiles say
that talks must be based on their autonomy proposals, while China says
that it will discuss only the Dalai Lama’s “personal status” – where he
would live in Beijing should he return to China. Visceral sparring
matches are continuing, with the Dalai Lama recently describing
Tibetans’ lives under China as a “hell on earth.” He was almost
certainly referring to life during the Maoist years rather than the
present, but his remarks enabled China to issue more media attacks and
raise the political temperature further.Western governments
have been accused of interference, but it is unlikely that any want to
derail their relations with China, especially during an economic
crisis. Last October, British Foreign Minister David Miliband was so
anxious to maintain Chinese good will that he came close to denouncing
his predecessors’ recognition of Tibet’s autonomy 100 years ago. But
foreign concerns about the status of China’s mandate in Tibet are
understandable: Tibet is the strategic high ground between the two most
important nuclear powers in Asia. Good governance on the plateau is
good for everyone.China could help to lessen growing tensions
by recognizing these concerns as reasonable. The Dalai Lama could cut
down on foreign meetings and acknowledge that, despite China’s general
emasculation of intellectual and religious life in Tibet, some aspects
of Tibetan culture (like modern art, film and literature) are
relatively healthy. Western observers could accept the exiles’
assurances that their proposals on autonomy are negotiable and not
bottom-line demands, rather than damning them before talks start. All
sides would gain by paying attention to two Tibetan officials in China
who dared to speak out last month. A retired prefectural governor from
Kardze told the Singapore paper Zaobao that “the government should have
more trust in its people, particularly the Tibetan monks,” and the
current Tibet governor admitted that some protesters last year “weren’t
satisfied with our policies,” rather than calling them enemies of the
state, the first official concession from within China that some of its
policies might be connected to the recent protests.The Party
has so far been following a more conventional strategy: last week it
sent a delegation of officials to the US (the first ever sent, it said,
to have been composed solely of Tibetans – a fact that one might expect
them to have been embarrassed to admit) and had its leader, Shingtsa
Tenzin Choedak, tell journalists that Tibetans enjoy freedom of
religion. As anyone who has worked in Tibet recently knows well, this
was an inexactitude: since at least 1996, all Tibetans who work for the
government and all Tibetan students in Tibet have been forbidden any
Buddhist practice, even though it is illegal under Chinese law to stop
people from practicing an official religion.China’s government
could improve the situation overnight by sacking the officials
responsible for such illegal policies, and by apologizing to Tibetans
for having overlooked such abuses for 15 years. And it could start
reassessing its Tibetan policies instead of increasing controls and
allegations. Until then, China’s quest for international respect is set
to remain elusive and Tibet is likely to stay on the world’s agenda.–Robert
Barnett is Director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program, Columbia
University. The article is reproduced from The Guatemala Times. This
column is an open discussion forum for Tibet related issues and the
views expressed here does not reflect those of the Central Tibetan
Administration.