Tibet and Tibetan Exiles

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by Tsering Shakya
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Thursday, 19 June 2008, 12:04 p.m.

*Two recent articles*
concerning the unrest in Tibet purport to prove that the March unrest
in Tibet was the result of foreign instigation. As a result, they have
since been heavily featured in official Chinese news media, including
CCTV, as well as on the Internet. This episode tells us much about the
government’s efforts to influence domestic and international perception
of the conflict in Tibet, as well as Chinese misconceptions about the
nature of the linkage between Tibetans at home and in exile.

The first article was published on a Canadian Web site called
Global Research and was written by U.S.-based writer William Engdahl,
known for his views that both the Sept. 11 attacks and the theory of
global warming are conspiracies. He cited publicly available
information about funding of some Tibetan exile groups by the U.S.
National Endowment for Democracy in order to argue that the recent
events in Tibet were engineered by U.S. government-backed
organizations. The same argument has now been repeated verbatim and
published throughout the Chinese speaking world by the well-known
journalist Ching Cheong, without any additional evidence or research.

Both authors discern a shadowy plot by the U.S. government to
destabilize China by “fanning the flames of violence in Tibet.” They
both implicate a number of Tibet-related NGOs that have received
funding from the NED in this effort. Neither article says what these
plots were or offers any evidence of their existence, nor do they
provide any evidence connecting the NGOs to the unstated plots apart
from their funding source. As anyone who is familiar with these
organizations and with contemporary Tibet can confirm, the accusations
are simplistic arguments based on “guilt by association.”

A further problem is that the authors neither explain nor
demonstrate any knowledge of what these NGOs do or how they work. For
example, the main organization fingered by the authors is the New
York-based Trace Foundation, which supports education, development and
health projects in Tibet. It is one of many NGOs that operate in China
with the formal approval of the Chinese government, and there is no
record of it ever having engaged in any activities that could be
misconstrued as anti-China. China regularly conducts lengthy security
assessments of such NGOs, and would have certainly made it known if
there had been any evidence found. In fact, Trace, even more than other
NGOs operating in China, is scrupulous in dissociating itself from any
political groups or activities, which is one of the reasons why they
have been able to operate in China for decades.

Trace Foundation is so rigorous in this respect that
pro-Tibetan lobbyists and some exiles have accused it in the past of
being too supportive of China because of its refusal to engage with
exile politics or even exile symbols, and because it explicitly accepts
and works within the Chinese system. If there was even the slightest
indication of any involvement by Trace in Tibetan politics or unrest,
these authors would certainly have told us. As it is, their only
attempt at evidence is to tell us that the founder of Trace is related
to the financier philanthropist George Soros, who openly supports
democratization projects in various countries.

The arguments made by Mr. Engdahl and repeated by Mr. Ching are
just insinuations; the only linkage is that established in their minds.
Behind their thinking, and that of the Chinese authorities (who claim
that all unrest in Tibet has been instigated by outsiders ranging from
the CIA to the Dalai Lama), is a larger set of presumptions that exile
Tibetan groups are involved in political activities within Tibet.

This presupposes that there is a more or less free flow of
information between India and Tibet. This, however, is true in only a
limited way. To fully establish any kind of link between either the
exile groups, events inside Tibet or Western interests, one needs to
have some understanding of the culture and social milieu in which these
groups operate. Also, there has to be some understanding of the nature
and composition of Tibetans in India and abroad.

The refugees in India have developed an ideology and forged a
nationalistic sentiment such that they have come to see themselves as
defenders of Tibet and the Tibetan people. On some occasions this has
verged on a view where they see themselves as the “true”
representatives of the Tibetans and view the Tibetans inside Tibet as
merely passive, oppressed victims. This has often led to a patronizing
attitude towards the Tibetans in Tibet. As a result, the cultural and
social gap between the Tibetans inside and those outside Tibet is huge.

The differences in situation are somewhat similar to those
between Chinese from the mainland and those from, say, Taiwan or Hong
Kong. For example, Tibetans inside Tibet are comfortable with Chinese
pop music, while Tibetans in India prefer Bollywood. Even when the two
groups meet in neutral places in the West, there is often little
interaction between them. I frequently have to attend two parties in
one evening, one organized by long-term diaspora groups, another by
those coming from Tibet, since they cannot even agree on what music to
play. For instance, in the early 1990s when Dadon, Tibet’s biggest pop
star at the time, defected from Lhasa to India, she found to her dismay
that there was no audience for her music. She was virtually unknown,
and the exiles accused her of singing Chinese-style songs. The gulf
between the two groups of Tibetans may be merely cultural, but it is a
significant barrier to substantive political exchange.

It is no secret that the Tibetan organizations in India and
elsewhere have received funding from NED and other Western sources; Mr.
Engdahl’s information is simply lifted from NED’s Web site. This is
hardly smoking-gun evidence. Neither does it show that any funding sent
to exiles in India was used inside Tibet. The exile organizations that
have received funding from the West operate only in India; their
ability to project inside is zero.

The conspiracy theorists assume a free flow and exchange of
ideas and people between the Tibetans in India and Tibet, but there is
no such traffic. It is virtually impossible for the Tibetans in India
to travel to Tibet because the Chinese government insists on those
wishing to travel to their homeland to obtain Chinese travel documents.
Even those of us who have foreign passports find it difficult to obtain
a visa for China, particularly if wishing to travel to the central
Tibetan areas, now the Tibet Autonomous Region.

The Tibetan Youth Congress, which has been labeled by the
Chinese as a terrorist organization, is the largest social and
political organization for Tibetans in India. The membership is almost
entirely made up of Tibetans born in India, and their political
strategies are influenced by Indian political culture. This is not in
itself a bad thing-whatever one may think of the Indian system, it has
a long tradition of protest and the people march for the slightest
infringement of liberty. The TYC sees protest as the bread and butter
of politics. Since they cannot protest in Tibet, they march on the
streets of Delhi, New York and Paris. This is as far as they can go-the
leaders of the TYC deliver bravura speeches and make polemical claims,
but there is no way they can project their words into action inside
Tibet.

The only group that could be said to have some degree of
contact inside Tibet is Guchusum. The name of the group is made up of
the Tibetan words for the dates of major demonstrations that took place
in Lhasa in the late 1980s, and it was founded by people who had
participated and then been imprisoned for their role in those events.
Since they are relative newcomers from Tibet, they still have families
and social networks inside Tibet. However, the group is small and
functions mostly as a welfare and support network for ex-political
prisoners and those newly fled from Tibet. Apart from this, there are
few organizations with any internal links.

This is not to say that those inside Tibet are unaware of exile
or foreign views and activities. One initiative taken by the U.S. that
has had a major impact in Tibet and amongst the Tibetans was the
decision to establish Tibetan language broadcasting services within
Voice of America in 1991 and within Radio Free Asia in 1996. Here
again, it is not a question of clandestine activities or of the secret
coordination of unrest; these services simply provide a source of news
and ideas in a society where people are starved of alternative sources.

But apart from radio broadcasts, if one wants to look for
connections between outside groups and events inside Tibet, one should
not look at Western style NGOs, whether Tibetan or not. There are
linkages, but not where outsiders expect. This is a problem produced by
ethnocentrism: Politics is seen as occurring only in organizations that
resemble one’s own. Tibetan political articulation is mainly situated
in the traditional cultural space of monasteries and religion. This is
not to suggest some kind of religious fundamentalism or Taliban-style
movement; what is traditional about it is not its content but the
channels through which it flows.

The most significant among the factors that ignited the recent
riots and demonstrations in Tibet is the blunder the Chinese P.R.C.
made in 1995 regarding the selection of the 10th Panchen Lama. The
Party, disregarding popular Tibetan wishes and conventions, imposed and
orchestrated its own selection. It thus found itself in opposition with
the majority of the Tibetans and followers of Tibetan Buddhism in
China. The Party also managed to turn all the monasteries against it,
even those which had previously supported the government. Tashilhunpo,
the traditional seat of the Panchen Lamas in Shigatse, Tibet’s second
town, refused to accept the boy as a permanent resident, and not a
single lama or monastery is known to have agreed to take the boy into
their monastery. The poor boy is left homeless, stuck in a palace in
Beijing!

Whatever the feelings and arguments may have been about human
rights and independence, there was a near universal agreement among the
Tibetan population on the issue of the Panchen Lama: The Party was
wrong. The Party’s response was to declare a patriotic education and
anti-Dalai Lama campaign in the monasteries. This required monasteries
and monks to denounce the Dalai Lama and created an entrenched no-win
situation for the Party. Here was a point no monk or lama – a lama is a
senior teacher or spiritual figure-was going to compromise on.

By the late 1990s the monasteries found themselves in crisis-on
one hand, the Party had begun to intrude into monastic space and on the
other hand, many senior lamas had begin to pass away because of old
age. The most senior lamas such as the Karmapa and Argya Rinpoche from
Kumbum (Ta’er) Monastery fled abroad, and the absence of senior lamas
left a leadership vacuum in Tibet. In the past, these senior lamas
often acted as the moderate voice and as a calming influence on the
monks and community, being used often by the Party as mediators.

The Party’s initial reaction to the flight of senior lamas was
embarrassment. But in the long term it saw their departures as a good
thing, an opportunity to destroy traditional authority inside the
country. It will be easier to control Tibet, officials reasoned, once
these lamas are outside-as in the case of Chinese dissidents exiled in
New York or Paris, once they leave their significance will be
diminished and they cannot cause much trouble in the homeland. What the
Party did not realize is that lamas are very different from dissident
intellectuals. No matter where a lama resides, his monastery and the
faithful continue to listen to him and look to him as their leader.

Moreover, the Tibetan people in Tibet are scathing about
Tibetan Communist Party officials. The people do not view the present
Tibetan cadres as leaders, particularly in the TAR. They cannot offer a
calming influence or serve as mediators between the people and the
government. At best, they are seen as opportunists and at worst as
collaborators. Even Party officials see themselves as inhabiting a very
uncomfortable space. A Tibetan official once told me a story about a
group of Tibetan Party officials who watched a dramatic film about
Kuomintang collaborators with the Japanese during World War II. There
was a very uncomfortable feeling in the room, apparently because they
saw themselves being portrayed in the movie.

The flight of lamas to exile had unexpected consequences. The
pro-independence demonstrations within Tibet in the 1980s and early
1990s did not spread much beyond Lhasa because most lamas were
ambivalent and used their influence to calm their followers. This year,
almost all areas where protests occurred were in places where the
senior lamas had left Tibet and gone to live in India.

It is the recent arrival of senior lamas from Tibet that has
created some lines of linkage between those inside Tibet and those in
India. By early 2000, more and more people from Tibetan areas in
Qinghai and Sichuan began to travel to India. If you look at the number
of Tibetans coming to India and where they come from, you see that in
the 1980s and 1990s they were mostly from the TAR, while in the last
decade almost all those arriving in India are from Eastern Tibet, where
most of the latest protests have taken place. This is partly explained
by differences in policies and restrictive measures between the TAR and
the eastern provinces, but this is only a partial explanation.

Most came because their local lamas were in India and they
needed to go there to obtain religious education and initiation.
Tibetan Buddhism is complex, so that the practice of religion and the
transmission of religious knowledge is not a simple matter of delving
into a book. The transmission of knowledge is embedded in the notion of
unbroken transmission of teaching from the first disciple who heard the
words from Buddha through present teachers, and if such linkage cannot
be shown the teaching has no legitimacy.

The lamas who left Tibet have established monasteries in India
and, wherever they are, that place is seen as the legitimate seat of
the lama. Therefore, all the monasteries in Tibet look to the outside
for leadership and as the source of religious teaching. The flow of
people between historic monasteries in Tibet and newly established ones
in India has been constant since the 1980s. There is daily
communication via phone and it is not uncommon for monks to spend a few
years in India and then return to Tibet. Similarly, monks from Tibet
have to come to India for their education, because there are only a
tiny number of lamas in Tibet who can transmit knowledge and provide
ordination.

It is here in this traditional setting that you will find the
connections between the Tibetans in India and the Tibetan people inside
China. There is a much stronger affinity within the monastic community
between those in India and Tibet; the two groups have much more in
common and feel at home wherever they go. Whereas secular youth argue
and dislike each other for their differing tastes in politics, music
and everything else, there is no such divide in the monastic community.

This interchange of people and ideas is cultural rather than
political. In any case, the mother monasteries and lamas in India
cannot impel the monks in Tibet to stage demonstrations, even if they
wished to-such decisions can be made only at ground level. The monks in
Tibet may look to lamas in India as their leaders, but they are no
fools and know fully the situation on ground, and take their own
decision on such matters.

The monasteries do not receive a single cent of funding from
NED or other Western government agencies. In fact, the most significant
and generous supporters of Tibetan Buddhism in recent years are members
of the Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and
Singapore. The Chinese donors do not ask for budgets and accounts; they
simply hand over thousands of dollars, in the usual manner of devotees.
The supposed lines of transnational political and economic influence
within Tibet do not point to exiles, or even to Westerners, let alone
to development NGOs; they point to Chinese devotees.

If conspiracy theorists want to follow the money and look for a
plot, they would have to see it as a Kuomintang conspiracy rather than
a Western one. They would however learn much more if they studied the
history of policy and its failures in Tibet or talked with actual
Tibetans in Tibet instead of painting lurid fantasies of foreign power
projection.

(This article appeared in Far Eastern Economic Review in May 2008. www.feer.com.
Tsering Shakya, the author of Dragon in the Land of the Snows (Columbia
University Press, 1999), holds the Canadian research chair in religion
and contemporary society in Asia at the University of British Columbia.
The views expressed in this column are those of the writer, not
necessarily those of the Central