Vijay Kranti for Sunday Guardian Live.
Xi’s visit exposed the hollowness of China’s claim about Tibet being an ‘integral and inseparable part of China’ or that the Tibetans are ‘happy’ and ‘thankful’ to China for ‘liberation’ from the Dalai Lama’s ‘feudal’ rule.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s sudden and dramatic visit to Tibet holds more than one meaning. And no one meaning carries less weight than the other. This is first time that Xi, the super boss of China’s most celebrated colony Tibet, since he took over the reins of China as its President, party General Secretary and the supreme military commander, visited Tibet.
The extraordinary secrecy that shrouded Xi’s sudden arrival and short stay in Tibet have, once again, exposed the Chinese establishment’s lack of faith in its Tibetan subjects and the anxiety and fears about the personal safety of its visiting supreme leader. His keen personal interest in the new railhead at Nyingchi and the progress of the ambitious Chengdu-Lhasa railway projects underlined Xi’s determination to convert Tibet into a perfectly tamed colony and his plans about increasing military pressure against India. This first-ever visit of a supreme Chinese leader to demonstrate his interest in the proposed mega hydro project on the Brahmaputra is also no less an expression of his frustration at and arrogance against India. Later his dramatic appearance in Lhasa reflected his ambition of becoming China’s supreme leader for a lifetime.
Read the full news here.