March 31, 2008
His Holiness The Dalai Lama - Ann Arbor, Michigan 2008
His Holiness The Dalai Lama
December 3, 2007, Ann Arbor, Michigan — On Saturday and Sunday, April 19 and 20, 2008, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama will visit Ann Arbor where over the course of three sequential sessions in two days he will teach on “Engaging Wisdom and Compassion” at the Crisler Arena of the University of Michigan.
The two-day educational program co-sponsored by Jewel Heart, a Tibetan Buddhist Center headquarted in Ann Arbor, The Tibet Fund, and the Garrison Institute will be held in conjunction with a public talk, the Peter M. Wege Lecture on Sustainability, addressing environmental issues and presented on April 20th by the University of Michigan at the Crisler Arena in celebration of Earth Day.
The Dalai Lama is recognized worldwide for his message of compassion and tolerance, his promotion of human rights and inter-religious understanding, his focus on peace through non-violent conflict resolution and his advocacy for the environment. Winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama was the recent recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal.
Engaging Wisdom and Compassion
His Holiness the Dalai Lama brings us the ancient Indian and Tibetan teachings on wisdom and compassion to inspire and guide our lives.
The teaching will be based on Nagarjuna's Commentary on Ultimate Compassion and Je Tsong Khapa's In Praise of Dependent Origination.
http://www.dalailamaannarbor.com/index2.html
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Dalai Lama pleads for 'world community' to resolve Tibet crisis
Dalai Lama pleads for 'world community' to resolve Tibet crisis by Robert J. Saiget
Sat Mar 29, 7:22 AM ET
Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama urged the "world community" Saturday to help end the turmoil in his homeland, following renewed calls from world leaders for talks with Beijing.
He did so hours after foreign diplomats demanded unfettered access in Lhasa after authorities allowed them to visit the riot-torn city, more than two weeks after anti-Chinese protests there ended in bloodshed.
"We have no power except justice, truth, sincerity... that is why I appeal to the world community to please help," the Dalai Lama told a news conference in New Delhi.
"I am here helpless, I just pray," said the spiritual leader.
The Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 from Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, renewed calls for a dialogue with China's leaders to end the unrest, saying: "My side is open... we are waiting."
His appeal for world help came a day after US President George W. Bush for the first time publicly pressed China to hold talks with representatives of the spiritual leader after raising concerns about the situation in Tibet.
The Nobel Laureate Dalai Lama, who won the Peace Prize in 1989 for leading a non-violent struggle for the liberation of his Himalayan nation, reiterated he was "fully committed" to China hosting the Olympics in August.
But the 72-year-old added it was important "to remind the Chinese that in order to be respected hosts of the Games" human rights in Tibet must improve.
The unrest in Tibet began on March 10 to mark the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, the event that saw the Dalai Lama flee to India where he has since lived in exile.
Unrest erupted into widespread rioting in Lhasa on March 14, and spread to neighbouring Chinese provinces populated by Tibetans.
Beijing says rioters killed 18 innocent civilians and two police officers during the unrest.
Exiled Tibetan leaders have put the death toll from the Chinese crackdown at between 135 and 140, with another 1,000 people injured and many detained.
On Saturday, diplomats from 15 embassies, including those of the United States, Britain, France and Japan, arrived in the Tibetan capital for a hastily arranged one-day tour.
They visited the Jokhang Temple, one of Tibetan Buddhism's most sacred shrines, where monks converged on a tightly government-managed foreign media tour Wednesday and denounced Chinese rule, one Western diplomat in Beijing told AFP after being briefed on the trip.
"The chairman of Tibet reassured them (diplomats) that the monks would not be punished" for their Wednesday protest, the diplomat said.
"This visit is a good first step, but does not go far enough to meet the request for unfettered access," he said.
"Obviously this has been a highly managed visit."
Upon arrival to Lhasa Friday evening, the diplomats met the chairman of Tibet's government Qiangba Puncog, visited wounded paramilitary police in hospital and chatted with ordinary Tibetans, the diplomat added.
China announced the trip late Thursday night -- allowing the diplomats only hours to prepare for the long flight to Lhasa -- as an international uproar over Beijing's crackdown on the Himalayan region raged.
At the start of two days of talks in Slovenia on Friday, EU foreign ministers were split on the idea of boycotting the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony over Tibet, but keen for China to open talks with the Dalai Lama.
President George W. Bush's administration has steadfastly opposed a boycott, instead urging China to act with restraint against protesters in Tibet and to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama.
As China's clampdown escalated, so too has the response of the outside world.
Following a meeting with Bush in Washington late Friday, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd also called on Beijing to enter talks with the Dalai Lama, while hitting out at China's rights abuses in Tibet.
"It's absolutely clear that there are human rights abuses in Tibet. That's clear cut," Rudd said.
"We need to be up front and absolutely straight about what's going on. Shouldn't shilly-shally about it."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also said she opposed boycotting the Beijing Olympics over China's actions in Tibet in order to avoid insulting the Chinese people
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080329/wl_afp/chinaunresttibetrightsdiplomats_080329112255
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Traditional society and democratic framework for future Tibet
Introduction
China has always justified its policy in Tibet by painting the darkest picture of traditional Tibetan society. The military invasion and occupation has been termed a "liberation" by China of Tibetan society from "medieval feudal serfdom" and "slavery". Today, this myth is repeatedly rehashed to justify China's own violations of human and political rights in Tibet, and to counter all international pressure on Beijing to review its repressive policies in occupied Tibet.
Traditional Tibetan society was, by no means, perfect and was in need of changes. The Dalai Lama and other Tibetan leaders have admitted as much. That is the reason why the Dalai Lama initiated far-reaching reforms in Tibet as soon as he assumed temporal authority. The traditional Tibetan society, however, was not nearly as bad as China would have us believe.
Whatever the case may be, for several reasons the Chinese justifications make no sense. First of all, international law does not accept justifications of this type. No country is allowed to invade, occupy, annex and colonize another country just because its social structure does not please it. Secondly, the PRC is responsible for bringing more suffering in the name of liberation. Thirdly, necessary reforms were initiated and Tibetans are quite capable of doing so.
In its 1960 report on Tibet, the International Commission of Jurists stated that:
Chinese allegations that the Tibetans enjoyed no human rights before the entry of the Chinese were found to be based on distorted and exaggerated accounts of life in Tibet. Accusations against the Tibetan "rebels" of rape, plunder and torture were found to have been deliberately fabricated and in other cases unworthy of belief for this and other reasons.
Traditional Society
In terms of social mobility and wealth distribution, independent Tibet compared favourably with most Asian countries. The Dalai Lama, head of both the spiritual and secular administration, was found through a system of reincarnation that ensured that the rule of Tibet did not become hereditary. Most of the Dalai Lamas, including the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth, came from common, peasant families in remote parts of Tibet.
Every administrative post below the Dalai Lama was held by an equal number of monk and lay officials. Although lay officials hereditarily held posts (however, the posts themselves were not hereditary), those of monks were open to all. A large proportion of monk officials came from non-privileged backgrounds. Tibet's monastic system provided unrestrained opportunities for social mobility. Admission to monastic institutions in Tibet was open to all and the large majority of monks, particularly those who rose through its ranks to the highest positions, came from humble backgrounds, often from far-flung villages in Kham and Amdo. This is because the monasteries offered equal opportunities to all to rise to any height through their own scholarship. A popular Tibetan aphorism says: "If the mother's son has the knowledge, the golden throne of Gaden (the highest position in the hierarchy of the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism) has no ownership."
The peasants, whom the Chinese White Paper insists on calling "serfs", had a legal identity, often with documents stating their rights, and also had access to courts of law. Peasants had the right to sue their masters and carry their case in appeal to higher authorities.
Ms Dhondup Chodon comes from a family that was among the poorest social strata in independent Tibet. Reminiscing her life before the Chinese occupation in her book, Life in the Red Flag People's Commune, she said:
I belong to what the Chinese now term as serfs of Tibet. ... There were six of us in the family. ... My home was a double-storeyed building with a walled compound. On the ground floor we used to keep our animals. We had four yaks, 27 sheep and goats, two donkeys and a land-holding of four and a half khel (0.37 hectares). ... We never had any difficulty earning our livelihood. There was not a single beggar in our area.
Throughout Tibetan history, the maltreatment and suppression of peasants by estate-holders was forbidden by law as well as by social convention. From the time of the seventh-century Tibetan Emperor Songtsen Gampo, many Tibetan rulers issued codes based on the Buddhist principle of "Ten Virtues of the Dharma". The essence of this was that the rulers should act as parents to their subjects. In 1909, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama issued a regulation conferring on all peasants the right to appeal directly to him in case of mistreatment by estate holders. As a matter of fact, Tibetan society frowns upon unkind acts. The Tibetan Buddhist belief in compassion acts as a check on uncharitable deeds - not only against fellow human beings, but even against animals.
Capital punishment was banned in Tibet, and physical mutilation was a punishment that could be inflicted by the Central government in Lhasa alone. In 1898, Tibet enacted a law abolishing such forms of punishment, except in cases of high treason or conspiracy against the state.
All land belonged to the state which granted estates, to monasteries and to individuals who had rendered service to the state. The state, in turn, received revenues and service from estate holders. Lay estate holders either paid land revenues or provided one male member in each generation to work as a government official. Monasteries performed religious functions for the state and, most vitally, served as schools, universities and centres for Tibetan art, craft, medicine and culture. The role of monasteries as highly disciplined centres of Tibetan education was the key to the traditional Tibetan way of life. Monasteries bore all expenses for their students and provided them with free board and lodging. Some monasteries had large estates, some had endowments which they invested. But other monasteries had neither of these. They received personal gifts and donations from devotees and patrons. The revenue from these sources were often insufficient to provide the basic needs of large monk populations in some monasteries. To supplement their income, some monasteries engaged in trade and acted as money lenders.
The largest proportion of land in old Tibet was held by peasants who paid their revenue directly to the state, and this became the main source of the government food stocks which were distributed to monasteries, the army, and officials without estates. Some paid in labour, and some were required to provide transport service to government officials, and in some cases to monasteries. Land held by the peasant was heritable. He could lease it to others or mortgage it. He could be dispossessed of his land only if he failed to pay the dues of produce or labour, which were not excessive. In practice, he had the rights of a free-holder, and dues to the state were a form of land tax paid in kind rather than rent.
A small section of the Tibetan population, mostly in U-Tsang province, were tenants. They held their lands on the estates of aristocrats and monasteries, and paid rent to the estate-holders either in kind or they sent one member of the family to work as a domestic servant or an agricultural labourer. Some of these tenant farmers rose to the powerful position of estate secretary. (For this, they were labelled by the Chinese as "agents of feudal lords".) Other members of these families had complete freedom. They were entitled to engage in any business, follow any profession, join any monastery or work on their own lands. Although they were known as tenants, they could not be evicted from their lands at the whim of estate holders. Some of the tenants were quite wealthy.
The present Fourteenth Dalai Lama attempted to introduce far- reaching administrative and land reforms. He proposed that all large estate holdings of monasteries and individuals be acquired by the state for distribution amongst peasants. He created a special reform committee which reduced land tax on peasants. The reform committee was authorised to hear and redress complaints by individuals against the district or local authorities. He approved the proposal for debt exemption submitted by this committee. Peasant debtors were categorised into three groups: those who could not pay either their accumulated interest or repay capital were freed from debt altogether; those who could not pay the interest out of their annual earnings, but had saved up enough to repay the capital, were ordered to make repayments in instalments and those who had become wealthy over the course of years were made to pay both capital and interest in instalments. The Dalai Lama ordered that in future no transport service should be demanded without the special sanction of the government. He also increased the rates to be paid for transport service.
Famine and starvation were unheard of in independent Tibet. There were, of course, years of poor harvest and crop failures. But people could easily borrow from the buffer stock held by the district administrations, monasteries, aristocrats and rich farmers. From 1950 onwards, the Chinese military and civilian personnel were fed on the state buffer stocks and forced the Tibetan populace to sell their personal holding of grains to them for nominal prices. "Liberation" was, in reality, the right to equal poverty for all. Palden Gyatso, a 61-year-old monk who escaped from Tibet in 1992 after serving 33 years in Chinese jails and labour camps, puts it succinctly: "The Chinese definitely succeeded in making the rich poor. But they did not help the poor. The poor became poorer and we were reduced to a nation of tsampa beggars."
In his book, Tibet and its History, Hugh Richardson wrote: "Even communist writers have had to admit there was no great difference between rich and poor in (pre-1949) Tibet." In fact, when Hu Yaobang saw the extent of the poverty in Central Tibet in 1980, he stated that the living standard should be brought up at least to the pre-1959 level.
Democratic reforms
In 1959, the Dalai Lama re-established his Government in India, soon after his flight from Tibet, and a series of democratic changes were initiated. A popularly elected body of people's representatives, parliament-in-exile, was constituted. In 1961 the Dalai Lama prepared a draft constitution for future Tibet and sought the opinion of Tibetans on this matter.
In 1963, a detailed draft constitution for a future Tibet was promulgated. Despite strong opposition, the Dalai Lama insisted on the inclusion of a clause which stated that the executive powers of the Dalai Lama shall be exercised by the Council of Regents when the National Assembly, by majority of two-thirds of its total members in consultation with the Supreme Court, decides that this is in the highest interests of the State.
On 10 March 1969, the Dalai Lama announced that on the day Tibet regained its independence the Tibetan people must decide for themselves as to what kind of system of government they wanted.
In 1990, further changes were introduced by increasing the strength of the Assembly of Tibetan People's Deputies (ATPD) from 12 to 46. It was given more constitutional powers such as the election of the kalons (ministers), who were previously appointed directly by the Dalai Lama. The Supreme Justice Commission was set up to look into people's grievances against the Administration.
In January 1992, the Dalai Lama announced the Guidelines for future Tibet's Polity and the Basic Features of its Constitution, wherein he stated that he would not "play any role in the future government of Tibet, let alone seek the Dalai Lama's traditional political position." The future government of Tibet, the Dalai Lama said, would be elected by the people on the basis of adult franchise. The Dalai Lama also announced that during the transition period, between withdrawal of the repressive Chinese troops from Tibet and the final promulgation of the Constitution, the administrative responsibilities of the state will be entrusted to the Tibetan functionaries presently working in Tibet. During this transitional period, an interim president will be appointed to whom the Dalai Lama will delegate all his political powers and responsibilities. The Tibetan Government-in- Exile will ipso facto cease to exist.
The guidelines for Tibet's future polity also stated:
Future Tibet shall be a peace-loving nation, adhering to the principle of ahimsa (non-violence). It shall have a democratic system of government committed to preserving a clean, healthy and beautiful environment. Tibet shall be a completely demilitarised nation.
The Tibetan struggle is, thus, not for the resurrection of the traditional system as the Chinese claim. The continuous Chinese attempts at personalising the Tibetan issue to hinge upon the Dalai Lama's own status is a subterfuge to mask the main issue of the Tibetan national struggle.
http://www.tibet.com/WhitePaper/white4.html
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China's Growing Influence
NPR.org, March 31, 2008 · In the news, China has gone from being an exotic feature story to daily hard news that has a growing impact on all of us. Every day seems to bring a new statistic: China has become the world's third-largest trading nation, it has the most cell phone subscribers in the world and emits the most carbon gases.
Some media refer to this as the rise of China. Chinese people see this as their country's rightful return to the dominant position it occupied in Asia for much of the past two millennia. That's with the exception of a 150-year slump, when China was ravaged by Western imperial powers and its own civil war.
While China's influence was previously limited mostly to East Asia, this time global trade and communications make its reach and impact worldwide. China has not articulated a clear plan or strategy for the role it wants to play in the world, leading to some misgivings and apprehension.
Much of China's growing reach comes from its economy, which is entering a new "outward bound" phase. After years of functioning as a foreign investment-driven export platform, China is moving up the value chain. Its companies are searching for new markets and technologies. They are using the foreign currency earned from trade to snap up foreign assets, from companies and securities to energy supplies. Many of the resources it is acquiring are in Third World countries, where instability and bad governance have kept Western multinationals from operating.
The increases in international trade, tourism and cultural exchanges have given China a substantial national interest overseas. Under the more orthodox communism of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, national interest was considered a bourgeois concept, inimical to the international solidarity of the proletariat. While China has not clearly defined its national interest, there is no doubt that it has one. Several years ago, China's Foreign Ministry created a department to protect the safety of Chinese nationals living and working overseas, indicating that the government recognizes these interests and must protect them.
Under Mao, China saw the international order as dominated by Western imperialism, and sought to export revolution against that order. Now, China sees itself as a key member of the international order, with an interest in helping to write its rules and maintain its status quo.
Beijing has also come to realize that growing hard power — that is, political, economic and military strength — must be accompanied by soft power. If other countries mistrust its intentions, more power will lead to less security. China's progress in building soft power is visible in the growing numbers of young people studying the Chinese language.
In many media reports, China is portrayed as an economic success story for its rapid development and achievements in pulling millions of people out of poverty. It also represents a somewhat darker success story: the Communist Party's track record of economic reform without loosening its stranglehold on political power.
But China has had difficulty deciding what values it stands for and can promote. To the official Chinese mindset, the way to build soft power is to crank out more and better propaganda. Critics argue that the salient feature of government propaganda is that it tends to fly in the face of reality. With soft power, analysts point out, it's what you do, not what you say.
Carnegie Institute for International Peace scholar Ding Xueliang draws a parallel with China's military. It has formidable military power within its own borders, but it lacks the ability to project that power — for example, through the use of aircraft carriers. Likewise, China is rich in cultural resources, but has had difficulty harnessing these resources to build soft power commensurate with its hard power.
The Summer Olympics in Beijing will be a telling test of how China presents itself to the world. The unrest in Tibet will test its ability to respond with confidence and deftness in the face of protests and public relations blunders that are likely to occur. All that we can be sure of now is that China and the Olympics are sure to leave their marks on each other.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89196830
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Three Main Commitments in Life
Three Main Commitments in Life
Firstly, on the level of a human being, His Holiness’ first commitment is the promotion of human values such as compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment and self-discipline. All human beings are the same. We all want happiness and do not want suffering. Even people who do not believe in religion recognize the importance of these human values in making their life happier. His Holiness refers to these human values as secular ethics. He remains committed to talk about the importance of these human values and share them with everyone he meets.
Secondly, on the level of a religious practitioner, His Holiness’ second commitment is the promotion of religious harmony and understanding among the world’s major religious traditions. Despite philosophical differences, all major world religions have the same potential to create good human beings. It is therefore important for all religious traditions to respect one another and recognize the value of each other’s respective traditions. As far as one truth, one religion is concerned, this is relevant on an individual level. However, for the community at large, several truths, several religions are necessary.
Thirdly, His Holiness is a Tibetan and carries the name of the ‘Dalai Lama’. Tibetans place their trust in him. Therefore, his third commitment is to the Tibetan issue. His Holiness has a responsibility to act as the free spokesperson of the Tibetans in their struggle for justice. As far as this third commitment is concerned, it will cease to exist once a mutually beneficial solution is reached between the Tibetans and Chinese.
However, His Holiness will carry on with the first two commitments till his last breath.
http://www.dalailama.com/page.2.htm
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The Dalai Lama at Home
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1723964,00.html
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Dalai Lama sows seeds of selfish plan in Tibet
Yale Daily News
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Published: Thursday, March 27, 2008
Dalai Lama sows seeds of selfish plan in Tibet
By Robert Li
Guest Columnist
Partly because of his own mysteriousness and partly because of the time-honored Western romanticization of Tibet as an unpolluted Shangri-La, the Dalai Lama’s popularity has increased tremendously over the past five decades. He took full advantage of every opportunity to appeal to the media with benevolence, resulting in a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
But despite his popularity, beneath the Dalai Lama’s romantic aura we can only find violence covered by well-calculated political propaganda and maneuvers. Three press releases issued by the Dalai Lama regarding last weeks’ riot in Tibet distinctly reveal his true political cunningness and hypocrisy.
The Dalai Lama always praises compassion as “the core of all the religions, all our humanities and all our existence.” Contrary to his own preaching, however, the Dalai Lama expressed no sympathy to the victims of the Tibet riot, nor to their families; nor to the innocent passersby killed in Lhasa; nor to the foreign service employees attacked in Chinese consulates-general in Munich, Toronto, San Francisco and London; nor even to the 18-year-old Tibetan girl, one of his “fellow countrymen,” who was swallowed in the brutal fire set by the mob in a fashion store on March 14.
Instead, in his press release on the same day, the Dalai Lama called the wild riot in Tibet “peaceful protests” and pressed the Chinese authority to “stop using force” even before any forceful measures had been taken by the local government.
In a subsequent statement made on March 18, the Dalai Lama continued to avoid denouncing the violence by depicting the demonstration “a spontaneous outburst of public resentment built up by years of repression.” Knowing the importance of seizing the moral high ground, the Dalai Lama was smart enough to urge his fellow Tibetans not to “resort to violence” at the very end of the statement; he even threatened to resign as leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile “if the majority of the Tibetans resort to violence.”
This well-dressed political appeal to nonviolent resistance seemed perfect, but its timing and diction leaked the Dalai Lama’s true intention. It’s worth noticing that the gesture only came after his ludicrous insistence that the Chinese authorities sit back, relax and let their police force go on vacation during an impossible situation. In addition, the implausibility of more than four million people (half of Tibet’s population) fighting in the streets at the same time guaranteed the Dalai Lama’s resignation a sheer political play. Had he been sincere and responsible, he would have resigned back in 1987 when much blood was spilled in Lhasa during a riot on Chinese National Day.
The Dalai Lama uses the bulk of his three press releases to condemn the Chinese authority’s “cultural genocide” in Tibet. He said the “distinctive Tibetan cultural heritage” is “fading away” due to the deliberate measures by the Chinese government. While the Dalai Lama and his elite priestly class might think otherwise, those “cultural heritage” points that dictate that serfs can be beaten at their masters’ will, that one-third of one’s personal income must be contributed to the temple and feed the labor-free monks, and that only selected males (and no females) can have access to education, are inconsistent with basic human rights, and thus it is legitimate that they be eliminated.
The rest of Tibetan culture, contrary to the Dalai Lama’s description, is well-preserved under the current authority. His claim that “Tibetan monasteries … have been severely reduced in both in number and population” was based on no evidence. Not only do monasteries in Tibet, including the Zeban Monastery in which the riot originated, receive more than 200 million RMB in funding each year, but the number of Tibetan monks has hovered around 2 percent of the entire Tibetan population through the years. Anyone who has ever traveled to Tibet could tell that the recently renovated Potala Palace, the holy place of Tibet, is a perfect counterexample of the “destruction of Tibetan culture.”
Patrick French, former director of the Free Tibet Campaign in London, published an article in The New York Times yesterday admitting that the Dalai Lama’s long-claimed 1.2 million Tibetan casualties in 1950 were supported by “no evidence.” Moreover, the Dalai Lama deliberately let the Tibetan Youth Congress use his popularity to spread violence and do the dirty work, while keeping his own image as a peaceful, Gandhi-like god of Tibet.
The Dalai Lama has always portrayed himself as a pure religious leader, but in reality he’s never abandoned the dream to seek a combined spiritual and secular power in a so-called “Greater Tibet,” including Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan provinces, which have never even been under the control of the Lhasa authority. In order to achieve that goal, he has become a great actor attracting the spotlight of the international community. As the old Tibetan saying goes, “Watch whether the dog barks, but also whether it bites.”
Robert Li is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/printarticle/24045
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Dalai Lama demonstrates will to end violence
Dalai Lama demonstrates will to end violence
Newsvine Reddit Jeffrey Sun
Guest Columnist
Published Friday, March 28, 2008
I write in response to Robert Li’s editorial (“Dalai Lama sows seeds of selfish plan in Tibet,” 3/27) published on these pages yesterday. His unreasonable attacks on the Dalai Lama completely ignore the fact that the root cause of much of the conflict today is not the Dalai Lama at all, but has been the result of the Chinese government’s occupation of Tibet and its refusal to grant it meaningful autonomy. His article, which lauds China’s “achievements” in Tibet and largely ignores historical truth, rips a page right out of the Chinese Communist Party’s playbook for Tibet.
I had the opportunity to visit Tibet this past summer and the country is anything but a “perfect counterexample of the destruction of Tibetan culture.” Sure, the Chinese government is “preserving” Tibetan culture by renovating the Potala Palace. But let’s not forget that the Potala Palace, the historical seat of the Tibetan government for hundreds of years, only fell into disuse and disrepair because China essentially forced the Dalai Lama to flee.
Sure, the Chinese government subsidizes Tibetan monasteries, but the 200 million RMB (equivalent to approximately $28 million) paid apparently is not enough to wipe away the Communist graffiti still faintly covering that wall of a monastery I visited. These words are a painful memory of the Cultural Revolution, which brought thousands of Chinese youth to Tibet to destroy a culture that the Chinese government is now trying to “preserve.” This money is the least China could do to remedy years of destruction of Tibetan monasteries and religious relics.
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A visit to any number of Tibetan monasteries today would certainly make one think twice about Li’s denial that Tibetan monasteries have been negatively affected since the Chinese arrived. My trip this summer included visits to over 10 monasteries, many of which still contain the footprints of buildings destroyed during the Cultural Revolution as stark reminders of the former grandeur of these monasteries and the large monk populations that once supported them.
Lastly, Li’s reference to Patrick French, the former director of the Free Tibet campaign, and his New York Times article admitting that the 1.2 million Tibetans reportedly killed since 1950 was based on no evidence is a gross misrepresentation of the author’s intent. If one reads his article, it is clear that French is by no means suggesting that the assertion that many Tibetans have died at the hands of the Chinese is completely baseless, as Li’s words would imply. Instead, French, who is still a supporter of Tibet, only cites this number to question the tactics pro-Tibetan groups have used in order to achieve their aims. I’ll concede. Perhaps only 500,000 people have died since 1950 as a result of the Chinese occupation. But is that an acceptable statistic?
I agree with Li that the Dalai Lama is not a flawless individual. But at least his expressed willingness to talk to the Chinese government demonstrates his humility, something the Chinese Communist Party sorely lacks. Only when the Chinese government recognizes that the problems it faces today are largely the result of the many years that they have oppressed the Tibet people, and seeks to open dialogue with representatives of Tibet, will the issues facing both be meaningfully addressed. Perhaps if the Chinese government ever bids again for the Olympics, it won’t need to throw a tantrum over a problem it caused in the past but presently refuses to solve.
Jeffrey Sun is a senior in Silliman College
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24066
Posted by google at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)
Comments on the current crisis
by ShuJen from Ann Arbor Buddhist Society
One friend of mine provides the following feedback.
"In that case, please tell him that I thought his analysis on the current situation for both Dalai Lama side and for Central government side is excellent. That is the exactly the problem for both side.
Other reason that Chinese Central government does not want an independent Tibet is that it will eventually lead the independent of the following regions: Xin Jiang, Inner Mongolian, Portion of the Northeast China that ethnic Korean are majority. I do not think
communist Central government want to be the one that history book will say as the government lost vast territory. Another thing is that
currently the central government is not very strong one (although over all, the status of China is going up in the eyes of the world), each individual province has a lot of more power on their local decision
making. That is has been the problem for the last couple of thousand years for the emperors. It is still the problem for Hu Jing Tao. One can say, he has about at least 10 times more headaches than Ma Yinjue
will every have. So Any sign of weaker central government will make each individual province want more power. There may not be a civil war, but there will be more gap between rich and poor and the over all
society will be much less stable.
Actually, Tibet was not the only ethnic minority in Asia to have slaves. There are other ethnic minority in Southwest portion of China also have slavery systems. One of the famous one is Long Yun's family.
He is YI minority. He was the actual ruler of Yunnan before communist took power (he gave out his army and power to Communist before the communist really got to Kunming and in exchange he got a leader
position in name only in central government and was almost not allow to return to Yunnan after 1949). His relatives were the slave owners back in their home town. (First comment: It is very informative. One
can tell the author has a good understanding on the issues and he/she is some one really thinking a lot from both side of this debate.
However as far as he claim there is no slavery in Tibet, I do not think that is not true. I read a book about Tibet after I come to US by the child of the slave owner. He is in some European country. His
intention is to tell how bad the communist treat his family. He did not shy from mentioned the situation of his family before and after communist came. He said the people who owned by his family actually
took over the place where his family lives and push his family out to live in the slave corners after Da Lai Lama left Tibet. I can not remember the name of the book. I read it back around late 1980. Anyway, there is no right or wrong for a lot of things. We just need all have to try to understand and respect other peoples both on their believe and on their life style.)
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5 girls burned to death in Lhasa riot
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hWYuVmZi0Zc
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March 30, 2008
A week in Tibet
Mar 19th 2008 | LHASA
From The Economist print edition
Our Beijing correspondent happened to be in Lhasa as the riots broke out. Here is what he saw
ETHNIC-Chinese shopkeepers in Lhasa's old Tibetan quarter knew better than the security forces that the city had become a tinder-box. As word spread rapidly through the narrow alleyways on March 14th that a crowd was throwing stones at Chinese businesses, they shuttered up their shops and fled. The authorities, caught by surprise, held back as the city was engulfed by its biggest anti-Chinese protests in decades.
What began, or may have begun (Lhasa feeds on rumour), as the beating of a couple of Buddhist monks by police has turned into a huge political test for the Chinese government. Tibet has cast a pall over preparations to hold the Olympic games in Beijing in August. Protests in Lhasa have triggered copycat demonstrations in several monasteries across a vast swathe of territory in the “Tibet Autonomous Region” of China and in areas around it (see map). Not since the uprising of 1959, during which the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, fled to India, has there been such widespread unrest across this oxygen-starved expanse of mountains and plateaus.
Years of rapid economic growth, which China had hoped would dampen separatist demands, have achieved the opposite. Efforts to integrate the region more closely with the rest of China, by building the world's highest railway connecting Beijing with Lhasa, have only fuelled ethnic tensions in the Tibetan capital. The night before the riots erupted, a Tibetan government official confided to your correspondent that Lhasa was now stable after protests by hundreds of monks at monasteries near the city earlier in the week. He could not have been more wrong.
It was, perhaps, a sign of the authorities' misreading of Lhasa's anger that a foreign correspondent was in the city at all. Foreign journalists are seldom given permission to visit. In January 2007, in preparation for the Olympics, the central government issued new regulations that supposedly make it much easier for them to travel around the country. Travel to Tibet, however, still requires a permit. The Economist's visit was approved before the monks protested on March 10th and 11th, but the authorities apparently felt sufficiently in control to allow the trip to go ahead as planned from March 12th. As it turned out, several of the venues on the pre-arranged itinerary became scenes of unrest.
It was, perhaps, a sign of the authorities' misreading of Lhasa's anger that a foreign correspondent was in the city at all. Foreign journalists are seldom given permission to visit. In January 2007, in preparation for the Olympics, the central government issued new regulations that supposedly make it much easier for them to travel around the country. Travel to Tibet, however, still requires a permit. The Economist's visit was approved before the monks protested on March 10th and 11th, but the authorities apparently felt sufficiently in control to allow the trip to go ahead as planned from March 12th. As it turned out, several of the venues on the pre-arranged itinerary became scenes of unrest.
Rioting began to spread on the main thoroughfare through Lhasa, Beijing Road (a name that suggests colonial domination to many a Tibetan ear), in the early afternoon of March 14th. It had started a short while earlier outside the Ramoche Temple, in a side street close by, after two monks had been beaten by security officials. (Or so Tibetan residents believe; the official version says it began with monks stoning police.) A crowd of several dozen people rampaged along the road, some of them whooping as they threw stones at shops owned by ethnic Han Chinese—a group to which more than 90% of China's population belongs—and at passing taxis, most of which in Lhasa are driven by Hans.
The rioting quickly fanned through the winding alleyways of the city's old Tibetan area south of Beijing Road. Many of these streets are lined with small shops, mostly owned by Hans or Huis, a Muslim ethnic group that controls much of Lhasa's meat trade. Crowds formed, seemingly spontaneously, in numerous parts of the district. They smashed into non-Tibetan shops, pulled merchandise onto the streets, piled it up and set fire to it. Everything from sides of yak meat to items of laundry was thrown onto the pyres. Rioters delighted in tossing in cooking-gas canisters and running for cover as they exploded. A few yelled “Long live the Dalai Lama!” and “Free Tibet!”
For hours the security forces did little. But the many Hans who live above their shops in the Tibetan quarter were quick to flee. Had they not, there might have been more casualties. (The government, plausibly, says 13 people were killed by rioters, mostly in fires.) Some of those who remained, in flats above their shops, kept the lights off to avoid detection and spoke in hushed tones lest their Mandarin dialect be heard on the streets by Tibetans. One Han teenager ran into a monastery for refuge, prostrating himself before a red-robed Tibetan abbot who agreed to give him shelter.
The destruction was systematic. Shops owned by Tibetans were marked as such with traditional white scarves tied through their shutter-handles. They were spared destruction. Almost every other one was wrecked. It soon became difficult to navigate the alleys because of the scattered merchandise. Chilli peppers, sausages, toys (child looters descended on those), flour, cooking oil and even at one spot scores of small-denomination bank notes were ground underfoot by triumphant Tibetan residents into a slippery carpet of filth.
During the night the authorities sent in fire engines, backed by a couple of armoured personnel-carriers laden with riot police, to put out the biggest blazes. By dawn they had also sealed off the Tibetan quarter with a ring of baton-carrying troops and stationed officers with helmets and shields in the square in front of the Jokhang temple, Tibet's most sacred shrine, in the heart of the old district. But they did not move into the alleys, where rioting continued for a second day. Residents within the security cordon attacked the few Han businesses left unscathed and set new fires among the piles of debris.
The risks of crackdown
Han Chinese in Lhasa were baffled and enraged by the slow reaction of the security forces. Thousands of people probably lost most, if not all, of their livelihoods (the majority of Lhasa's small businesses have no insurance, let alone against rioting). But the authorities were clearly hamstrung by the political risks involved. Going in with guns blazing—the tactic used to suppress the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the last serious outbreak of anti-Chinese unrest in Lhasa earlier that year—would risk inciting international calls for a boycott of the Olympic games. Instead they chose to let the rioters vent their anger, then gradually tighten the noose.
On March 15th occasional rounds of tear-gas fired at stone-throwing protesters eventually gave way to a more concerted effort to clear the streets. Paramilitary police began moving into the alleys, firing occasional bullets: not bursts of gunfire, but single deliberate shots, probably more in warning than with intent to kill. They also moved from rooftop to rooftop to deter residents from gathering on terraces overlooking the alleys. Rumours abounded of Tibetans killed by security forces in isolated incidents during the earlier rioting, but not during the final push to reassert control over the city. By Chinese standards (not high when it comes to riot control), that effort appeared relatively measured.
By late on March 15th the alleys were quiet. Patrols firing the odd bullet kept most of them deserted the next day, too. A Western student said she saw six Tibetan boys hauled out of their homes by troops, pushed to the ground, kicked and beaten with batons. The boys were then bundled into a bus and driven away. Troops covered up the bloodstains on the road with a white substance, she said. The Tibetan quarter is now gripped by fears of widespread and indiscriminate arrests as the authorities attempt to find “ringleaders”. China's official news agency says 105 rioters have surrendered to the police.
When residents began venturing out more normally on March 17th, the extent of the rioting became clear. Numerous Han Chinese-owned premises well beyond the Tibetan quarter had been attacked. Several buildings had been gutted by fire. The gate of the city's main mosque was charred, and the windows of the guard-house of the Tibet Daily, the region's Communist Party mouthpiece, had been smashed.
The city was under martial law in all but name. The government said that only police were involved in the security operation, but there were many military-looking vehicles on the streets with their tell-tale licence-plates covered up or removed. Some troops refused to say what force they belonged to. Two armoured personnel-carriers were parked in front of the Potala Palace, Lhasa's most famous tourist attraction on the side of the hill overlooking the city, which is now closed. Troops with bayonets were deployed along roads leading to the city's main monasteries, which have been sealed off by police. The rioting on March 14th and 15th involved mainly ordinary citizens, but monks are often at the forefront of separatist unrest in Tibet.
The approaching flame
The government's decision not to declare martial law, or any emergency restrictions, reflected its concern about the Olympics. In March 1989 the authorities imposed martial law in Lhasa to quell separatist unrest. Its measures were barely distinguishable from those now in force in the city. The old Tibetan area has been sealed off by gun-carrying troops, but officials prefer to refer euphemistically to “special traffic-control measures”. This time foreign tourists in Lhasa have been “advised” rather than ordered to leave. On March 18th police and troops began moving the 100 or so remaining tourists to hotels far from the site of the riots. In 1989 foreign journalists were expelled from Lhasa. This time your correspondent was allowed to stay, but only until his permit expired on March 19th. No others were allowed in.
For all the government's attempts to appear unruffled, the recent unrest in Tibet exceeds the challenge it faced in 1989. Since March 10th protests have been reported not only in Lhasa's main monasteries (Drepung, Sera and Ganden), but also at Samye Monastery about 60km east of Lhasa, Labrang Monastery in Gansu province, Kirti Monastery in Sichuan province and Rongwo Monastery in Qinghai province. Tibet's traditional boundaries stretch into these provinces. Outside Labrang Monastery Tibetans attacked Han Chinese shops on March 15th. TibetInfoNet, a news service based in Britain, reported several protests in various parts of Gansu on March 16th. Unlike in the ethnic violence in Lhasa, it said, the protesters' main targets were symbols of state power and government-owned properties.
The challenge is partly a security one. The martial-law regulations imposed in Lhasa in March 1989 were not lifted until May the following year. This time China will need to move faster to restore a semblance of normality. On June 20th the Olympic flame, having been carried up the Tibetan side of Mount Everest the previous month, is due to arrive in Lhasa, where a big ceremony is planned. Barring journalists and flooding Lhasa's streets with troops would be embarrassing. More so would be cancelling the event.
But easing the clampdown would be risky. Many Tibetans see the Olympics as a golden opportunity to bring the world's attention to their problems under Chinese rule. Tibetans living outside China, particularly in India, have been taking advantage of the Olympics to step up their publicity efforts. This is an annoyance to India, which does not want to disrupt relations with China by appearing to condone efforts to disrupt the games. Indian police have blocked efforts, launched on March 10th by hundreds of dissident Tibetans, to stage a march across the mountains into their homeland.
China worries too about the possibility that other ethnic minorities in China, particularly Muslim Uighurs in the far western region of Xinjiang, may be emboldened by Tibetan activism if it is left unchecked. The Chinese authorities have played up reports about recent alleged terrorist activities in Xinjiang (as an excuse to suppress peaceful dissent, say sceptics), including what officials say was an attempt by a Uighur woman to start a fire on board a flight bound for Beijing on March 7th.
Richer, but not happier
The longer-term challenge for China is to rethink its Tibet policy. One reason why Chinese officials appeared so surprised by the unrest is that Tibet has not behaved like the rest of China, where rapid economic growth appears to have staved off a repeat of Tiananmen-style protests. A surge of government spending on infrastructure in recent years and strong growth in Tibet's tourism industry (made easier by the new infrastructure, especially the rail link, which was opened in 2006) have helped the region's GDP growth rate stay above 12% for the past seven years. In 2007 it was 14%, more than two points higher than the national rate.
Incomes have been rising fast too. Officials predict a 13% increase this year for rural residents, a sixth straight year of double-digit growth. Urban residents enjoyed a 24.5% increase in disposable income last year. Robbie Barnett of America's Columbia University says a new middle class has emerged in Lhasa in recent years. But, he says, this has made very little difference to what Tibetans think about politics.
AFP
A man not easily angered
In the old Tibetan quarter, many see the Han Chinese as the biggest beneficiaries of economic growth. Hans not only run most of the shops, but are moving into the Tibetan part of the city. Some Tibetans believe Han Chinese now make up around half of the city's population, with the railway bringing in ever more. (An official, however, points out that it is now also easier for Tibetans to reach Lhasa from distant parts of the plateau.)
The economic statistics may be misleading. Incomes may have been growing fast on average, but in the countryside averages have been skewed by soaring demand in the rest of China for a type of traditional medicine known as caterpillar fungus. Tibetans in rural areas where this fungus grows have seen their incomes rocket (and fights have broken out among them over the division of fungus-producing land). In the cities, many complain about fast-rising prices of goods imported from other parts of China. Inflation is a big worry elsewhere in China too, but Tibetan bystanders watching the riots said that Chinese officials had promised the rail link would help bring prices down. The near-empty expanse of the Lhasa Economic and Technological Development Area suggests that officials are having trouble replicating in Tibet the manufacturing boom seen elsewhere in China.
Tibetans also resent the hardline policies of Tibet's party chief, Zhang Qingli. Mr Zhang, who is a Han (China apparently does not yet trust Tibetans to hold this crucial post), was appointed in 2005 after a spell spent crushing separatism in Xinjiang. When he took charge, neglected rules banning students and the families of civil servants from taking part in religious activities began once more to be rigorously enforced. Mr Zhang also stepped up official invective against the Dalai Lama, who is widely revered. (Many Tibetans in Lhasa defiantly hang portraits of him in their homes, or did until the troops moved in.) Mr Zhang urged more “patriotic education” in monasteries, part of which involves denouncing the Dalai Lama. He banned the display of portraits of the Karmapa Lama, who fled to India in 1999 and enjoys a devoted following in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama's role
Chinese officials have been divided over whether greater contact with the Dalai Lama would help to pacify Tibet. Between 2002 and July last year Chinese officials held six rounds of talks with the Dalai Lama's representatives. Laurence Brahm, an American author who has tried to mediate, says the discussions reached a high point in 2005 when the Chinese appeared to recognise that the Dalai Lama was crucial to resolving Tibet's tensions. At one stage the Chinese even considered allowing the Dalai Lama to visit Wutai Mountain in Shanxi province as a confidence-building measure, but they got cold feet. Talks eventually foundered over China's refusal to accept the Dalai Lama's statements that all he wants is Tibet's autonomy within China.
With troops on the streets, dialogue looks unlikely in the near future. China has accused the “Dalai Lama clique” of organising the riots. The Dalai Lama has denied involvement and has accused the Chinese of carrying out “cultural genocide” in his homeland. But he also needs to worry about the future of Han Chinese in Tibet. Many Han business people in Lhasa say they are planning to leave. Tourism from the interior, crucial to Lhasa's economy, is likely to be hard hit too. In the end, China may have a point with its obsession about economics. The recent boom has not won the loyalty or affection of Tibetans, but a slump would make them all the more angry.
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=10875823
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March 29, 2008
Firefox Display Problem
In Firefox, the dislay of the website has some problems. I don't know how to fix them now. The categorie menu at the bottom left corner of the page can help relieve the pain.
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Qinghai–Tibet railway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qinghai-Tibet_Railway
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Tibet's Economy Depends on Beijing
Tibet's Economy Depends on Beijing
by Anthony Kuhn from NPR
Morning Edition, September 20, 2006 · China is one of the world's fastest-growing economies, but Tibet remains one of its poorest spots. Beijing pumps billions of dollars into Tibet each year, an infusion that's partly intended to stabilize the Himalayan region.
Tibetans and ethnic majority Han Chinese are constructing a dam on the Lhasa River, which has nurtured Tibetan civilization for centuries.
Once its turbines start spinning later this year, the dam will provide electricity to much of central Tibet, including the capital Lhasa. It's part of the roughly $2.5 billion that Beijing pumps into Tibet each year, mostly in the form of infrastructure projects.
The dam is supposed to benefit residents downstream, including 60-year-old farmer Gesang Quzhen.
"When I have some time to myself," she says, "I often reflect on how life has changed. In the past, we worked for others without pay. Now we farm our own land and we pay no taxes on our shop. As a young girl. I could see how hard my parents worked."
Quzhen was still young when the Chinese government took control of Tibet in 1951 and ended its feudal system. Quzhen's parents were "chabas," landless serfs who worked on a feudal lord's manor.
Today, Quzhen makes $2,500 a year from her roadside shop, and another $350 from her one-acre plot of barley and potatoes.
She says despite all the government construction over the past decades, most of what she's achieved in life has been by her own hand.
"The government has helped us build houses, and we can seek them out if we need assistance," Quzhen says. "But as for us, we've worked very hard, so we haven't needed much help from the government."
Tibet as a whole is not so self-sufficient. Herdsmen and farmers like Quzhen account for 80 percent of Tibet's 2.7 million inhabitants. Yet they produce less than 20 percent of the region's economic output. Tibet has the lowest economic output of any region in China. And a million residents in Tibet are still below the poverty line of $150 in annual income.
China's critics and Tibetan exiles blame Tibet's poverty on Beijing for stripping Tibet of its resources and neglecting its people's welfare.
Zhang Younian, the deputy director of Tibet's main economic planning agency, rejects such accusations.
He says Beijing exempts Tibet from all taxation and provides 90 percent of Tibet's government expenditures. "So there's no question of Beijing money out of Tibet," Zhang says. "Given our current economic circumstances, there's not much money to take out."
Zhang adds that China strictly controls the extraction of Tibet's rich mineral resources.
It's no secret that Beijing's spending in Tibet is partly intended to stabilize its border regions. Lhasa-based economist Wang Taifu points out that it's been this way for centuries, and remains the case today.
"If the central government did not make huge investments in its border regions, the income gap between these regions and the coastal areas would become too big, and Beijing would have no way to ensure peace and stability," Wang says.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6083766
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Europe and U.S. Press China Over Tibet
Europe and U.S. Press China Over Tibet
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and KATRIN BENNHOLD
WASHINGTON — European leaders sharpened their tone over Tibet on Wednesday, as President Bush telephoned President Hu Jintao of China and urged a resumption of negotiations with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader.
Even as Chinese diplomats sought to defend the crackdown on protesters in Tibet, officials said they were considering sending a fact-finding mission to Beijing, signaling an intensification of international concern over the violent repression in the region.
In London, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France told a joint session of the House of Commons and the House of Lords during a state visit that Britain and France shared a responsibility to urge the Chinese leadership to respect human rights and cultural identity.
That goal could only be achieved if there was “true dialogue” between China and the Dalai Lama, he said, a day after hinting that France might boycott the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing this summer.
French diplomats said they were in talks with other European capitals about dispatching a European Union delegation to China. France, which will take over the European Union’s presidency in July, will seek agreement on the issue during an informal foreign ministers’ meeting at the end of this week, said an official with knowledge of the draft proposal who would only speak on the condition of anonymity before the meeting.
In Washington, the Bush administration made its most extensive remarks on the turmoil after facing criticism that the president’s response had been fairly muted. Mr. Bush has already ruled out an Olympics boycott, which some have called for, indicating that he hoped to maintain a constructive relationship with the Chinese leadership.
In a statement, the White House said that Mr. Bush, in his telephone conversation with Mr. Hu, had urged that diplomats and journalists be allowed access to the region.
The statement noted that the two had discussed Tibet as part of a conversation that included Taiwan’s recent elections, negotiations with North Korea about its nuclear programs and the situation in Myanmar.
Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, later said that the president had “pushed very hard” on Tibet, urging restraint and a renewed effort to address Tibetan grievances. Neither the statement nor Mr. Hadley explicitly criticized China’s government.
“There’s an opportunity here,” Mr. Hadley said, referring to the possibility of renewed talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives, “and China needs to seize it.”
China reacted swiftly to the international criticism, comparing its handling of Tibetan protesters to a recent French police raid after rioting in Villiers-le-Bel, a volatile Paris suburb.
When asked whether China would accept an international fact-finding mission, China’s deputy ambassador in Paris, Qu Xing, told the French radio station Europe 1, “Would you allow a United Nations mission to see what happened in Villiers-le-Bel?”
The prospect of the Olympics being held against a backdrop of Chinese military action in Tibet has forced European leaders to walk a narrow line between maintaining their increasingly important economic and political ties to China while protests among their own people against China’s actions in Tibet intensify and calls from leading figures in Europe’s former communist east grow louder.
The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, acknowledged the importance of those ties in an interview on Wednesday in the newspaper Libération, saying, “We are constrained by a certain number of economic interests in order not to boost unemployment.”
Under pressure from the news media and human rights groups, more leaders are now considering defying China and meeting the Dalai Lama, and while none have supported an outright boycott of the Olympic Games in August, the possibility of not attending the opening ceremony is no longer ruled out.
The president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, on Wednesday invited the Dalai Lama to speak to European Union legislators and questioned whether European leaders should attend the opening.
Following the lead of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who met with the Dalai Lama last fall, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain announced last week that he would meet with the Dalai Lama when the spiritual leader visits London in May.
Mr. Sarkozy hinted Wednesday that he might do the same, saying through a spokesman that he would decide based on how the situation in Tibet evolved.
An appeal signed by former anti-Communist campaigners like Vaclav Havel, who as Czech president also received the Dalai Lama, called for the Chinese leadership to lift restrictions on foreign journalists, release political prisoners and begin a dialogue with Tibet’s exiled leader.
Steven Lee Myers reported from Washington, and Katrin Bennhold from Paris. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/27/europe/27europe.php
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Bush asks Hu Jintao to talks to Dalai Lama
Bush asks Hu Jintao to talks to Dalai Lama
Sridhar Krishnaswami & Raghavendra
Washington/Beijing, Mar 27 Joining others, US President George W Bush has asked his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao to talk to the Dalai Lama's side on the Tibet issue but the latter said they would do so only if the Tibetan spiritual leader "truly" abandoned his quest for 'Tibet independence.' "President Bush telephoned President Hu Jintao of China today.
The President raised his concerns about the situation in Tibet and encouraged the Chinese government to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama's representatives and to allow access for journalists and diplomats," a statement by the White House said.
"...The President pushed very hard on the need to -- concern about violence in Tibet, the need for restraint, the need for consultation with representatives of the Dalai Lama. As you know, there have been consultations between Chinese authorities and representatives of the Dalai Lama in the past," National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said.
"Those have been suspended. The President urged that those be restored as part of a process for Chinese authorities to addressing, reaching out to and addressing the grievance of the people in Tibet" Hadley said in a briefing yesterday.
Hu told Bush that the Dalai Lama should especially stop activities to "fan and mastermind" violent crimes in Tibet as well as in some regions and to sabotage the Beijing Olympics in August and accept Tibet and Taiwan as inseparable parts of China.
The riots in Lhasa were "by no means peaceful demonstrations or activities of non-violence as claimed by the Dalai Lama clique but were undisguised serious and violent crimes", the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Chinese President as telling Bush. (Agencies)
Published: Thursday, March 27, 2008
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Growing Gulf Divides China and Dalai Lama
Growing Gulf Divides China and Dalai Lama
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
SHANGHAI — Across much of the Western world, the Dalai Lama is known as the beatific spiritual leader of a humble community of Buddhists, beloved in Hollywood, Congress and the White House, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Chinese leaders cast him in a different light. They call him a separatist and a terrorist, bent on killing innocent Han Chinese and “splitting the motherland.” That gap in perception, which has grown immeasurably wider in the two weeks since violent unrest rocked Tibet, is breeding pessimism that Chinese leaders are willing — or perhaps even able — to embark on a new approach to Tibet even as it threatens to cast a long shadow over their role as hosts of the Olympic Games this summer.
President Hu Jintao, whose rise to leadership of China’s Communist Party was built partly on his record as party boss in Tibet during a period of unrest in 1989, has shown no signs of making a historic gambit for peace there.
Rather, he seems to be wagering that China can hunker down, keep a tight lid on Tibet through the Olympics and wait for the Dalai Lama, who is 72, to die, analysts say.
“I would obviously like for there to be a policy debate, but I see no suggestion of one,” said Wang Lixiong, a Chinese expert on Tibet and a signer of a recent petition by Chinese lawyers and scholars urging the government to resume discussions with the Dalai Lama. “There has been a big failure, but to see the government change its path or policy right before the Olympics isn’t likely.”
The inflexibility in Beijing’s position leaves Western countries with a problem. President Bush and a roster of European and Asian leaders have called for Mr. Hu to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama as a first step toward reducing tensions in Tibet. If Mr. Hu declines to do so, those leaders seem likely to face pressure from their own constituencies to take stronger diplomatic or political steps against Beijing at the moment it had expected to bask in the international limelight.
Already, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has suggested that he might consider using his presidency of the European Union this summer to organize a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. An embarrassing protest at the lighting ceremony of the Olympic torch in Greece, and the cries of monks in Lhasa who disrupted a scripted tour of the Tibetan capital for foreign reporters on Thursday, portend a steady drum roll of criticism of China.
The call for some kind of Chinese-Tibetan talks continues to mount. On Friday, the Dalai Lama, speaking in India, made his most extended comments on the violence, accusing China’s state-run media of trying to “sow the seeds of racial tension” there but calling for “meaningful dialogue” with Beijing about how to defuse tensions.
President Bush, speaking of the possibility that Mr. Hu might pursue diplomatic talks with Tibetan exiles, said “it’s in his country’s interest.” Standing by Mr. Bush’s side, Kevin Rudd, Australia’s new, Chinese-speaking prime minister, who was visiting Washington, said, “It’s absolutely clear that there are human rights abuses in Tibet.”
Mr. Hu told Mr. Bush during a phone call on Wednesday that he was willing to talk to the Dalai Lama, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency. But what was most striking about the exchange was the consistency of Beijing’s language on Tibet, which analysts say provides little reason to expect new initiatives.
Mr. Hu’s formulation, which has been used almost word for word since the time of Deng Xiaoping, in the 1980s and ’90s, was that China would resume contact with the Dalai Lama as long as he abandoned advocating Tibetan independence, stopped activities aimed at “splitting the motherland” and accepted that Tibet and Taiwan were inalienable parts of China.
The problem with Beijing’s line is that even when the Dalai Lama insists that he does not seek independence, as he and his representatives have repeatedly done, the Chinese government has merely repeated this trope, leaving little room for progress.
As it is, the Tibetan protests of the last two weeks seem to have taken Beijing by surprise, spreading quickly outside of the province officially known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region and into areas of neighboring provinces where Tibetans live in large numbers. The unrest has been the broadest in scale since sustained riots and a bloody crackdown in 1989.
Yet inside China, the protests have been portrayed as little more than thuggish violence against Han Chinese orchestrated by the “Dalai clique” from its base of exile in Dharamsala, India. The ruling party’s relentless anti-Dalai propaganda, reminiscent in some ways of the Cultural Revolution-style vilification of its enemies, has left the leadership in a self-imposed straitjacket.
Even as he seemed to concede that China had made mistakes in handling the protests, Hu Yan, a professor of social sciences at the party’s Central Committee School, expressed confidence in its ability to prevent further trouble before the Olympics.
“I think we can control the situation before it spreads any further,” Mr. Hu said. “We were too soft at the beginning, allowing them to destroy fire engines and rob banks without doing anything. We should have fired more tear gas, at least.”
Robert Barnett, director of modern Tibetan studies at Columbia University, dismissed the Chinese contention that the protests amounted to little more than criminal riots, calling their spread through several provinces significant. “Nothing like this has happened for the last 40 years, and no Chinese leader is going to miss that,” Mr. Barnett said. “They have lost the countryside, and they are going to have to work very hard to win it back.”
But Mr. Hu, the professor at the Central Committee School, hinted at what many believe is China’s bottom-line thinking on Tibet. “This issue can only be resolved in the long term,” he said. “It’s a long-term campaign, and we probably have to wait for the Dalai Lama to reincarnate.”
China’s long-term strategy, which the violence may have only reinforced, has been to wait for the Dalai Lama to die on the theory that it can control his successor as Tibet’s spiritual leader. A new Dalai Lama would likely have little of the same prestige, inside China or abroad.
In 1995, China arrested the Panchen Lama, the No. 2 in Tibetan Buddhism, a 6-year-old at the time. He has not been seen since. China then anointed another Tibetan youth as a replacement, and it has tightly controlled his education and public duties since. Under Tibetan Buddhism, traditionally the Panchen Lama names a new Dalai Lama, theoretically giving the Chinese government control over the present Dalai Lama’s succession.
To counter this approach, Tibetans have floated ideas about changing the rules of succession, allowing the Dalai Lama to anoint a Tibetan child who lives in exile, or an even more radical change, allowing Tibetans to select a new Dalai Lama by voting. Either measure would be certain to infuriate the Chinese government, which reserves the right to control all organized religion.
The current Dalai Lama has repeatedly promised that he has no desire to see Tibet break free of Chinese sovereignty. He has, though, pressed for what he calls “genuine autonomy” under Chinese rule. He refers to China’s Constitution, which invokes the right of autonomy and self-government “in areas where people of minority nationalities live in compact communities.”
“The task at hand is to develop a system that would grant the kind of autonomy required for the Tibetans to be able to survive as a distinct and prosperous people within the People’s Republic of China,” said Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, a special envoy of the Dalai Lama, in a speech given in Washington in 2006.
Party leaders have resisted even that modest vision of enhanced self-government. Officials seem to fear that enhanced political autonomy could overload the circuits of the Chinese state, inciting demands from other ethnic or religious groups and unleashing centrifugal forces that could break up the country as surely as Tibetan demand for independence.
“If you look carefully at what the Dalai Lama says, the giving up independence part is really empty, while the demands for a greater Tibet and a high degree of autonomy are real,” said Zhang Yun, a scholar at the China Tibetology Research Center. “What kind of government could allow that? That’s impossible.
“A high degree of autonomy means giving up everything: our administrative system, our cadre system, and even party-led socialism.”
David Barboza contributed reporting.
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Because of Tibet, China Blocks YouTube
March 17, 2008, 10:55 am
By Mike Nizza
China’s efforts to tame protests in Tibet and possibly others in its own provinces has spread to the Web, following a familiar pattern that has once again raised a question posed by Seth Mydans of The New York Times during the crackdown in Myanmar:
[Can] the much-vaunted role of the Internet in undermining repression can stand up to a determined and ruthless government?
In both cases and others, an uprising began largely out of sight before spilling onto the Web in videos and images. Officials in Myanmar and China bother claimed that they were showing restraint while unconfirmed reports hinted at grim tolls.
In Myanmar’s case, a fleeing general’s claim of thousands of dead was never proven. The junta’s toll in October was 10, though no one’s been allowed to confirm that either.
Beijing said today that 16 have died in the protests so far, but a figure cited by exiles is five times that, according to the Times.
For those outside “Great Firewall of China” (who were unaffected by the blockade, unlike Pakistan’s recent gaffe that affected Web users worldwide), the Committee to Protect Bloggers has gathered many first-person videos from Tibet in a playlist on YouTube.
Aside from videos, a wealth of first-hand reports may be available inside China, though tracking them down may be difficult without Web sites like Agam’s Gecko and Global Voices, two critical hubs of information during the Myanmar protests that are likely on Beijing’s radar.
John Kennedy, the Chinese language editor at Voices, has posted frequent updates based on translated blog posts from inside Tibet and also a guide for others to evade China’s internet controls. His latest post is mostly urgent — the headline is “Fire on the streets of Lhasa, Tibet” — but one account that he cites hits an innocent note:
Lhasa is rioting…school was closed…spoiled my birthday…fighting in the city is brutal!
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/because-of-tibet-china-blocks-youtube/
Posted by google at 03:08 AM | Comments (0)
REFLECTIONS ON TIBET
by Wang, Lixiong
In the current debate on Tibet the two opposing sides see almost everything in black and white—differing only as to which is which. But there is one issue that both Chinese authorities and Tibetan nationalists consistently strive to blur or, better still, avoid altogether. At the height of the Cultural Revolution hundreds of thousands of Tibetans turned upon the temples they had treasured for centuries and tore them to pieces, rejected their religion and became zealous followers of the Great Han occupier, Mao Zedong. To the Chinese Communist Party, the episode is part of a social catastrophe—one that it initiated but has long since disowned and which, it hopes, the rest of the world will soon forget. For the Tibetan participants, the memory of that onslaught is a bitter humiliation, one they would rather not talk about, or which they try to exorcise with the excuse that they only did it ‘under pressure from the Han’. Foreign critics simply refuse to accept that the episode ever took place, unable to imagine that the Tibetans could willingly and consciously have done such a thing. But careful analysis and a deeper reflection on what was involved in that trauma may shed light on some of the cultural questions at stake on the troubled High Plateau.
First, however, a survey of the broader historical background is required. For many centuries Tibet was an integral political entity, governed by the local religious leaders and feudal lords. Under the Qing dynasty, China exercised its jurisdiction over the region through the submission of this elite and did not interfere directly in local affairs. Between 1727 and 1911, the principal symbol of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet was the office of the Residential Commissioner, known as the amban. The imperial presence in Lhasa, however, consisted ‘solely of the commissioner himself and a few logistical and military personnel.’ [1] These, together with a handful of civilian staff members, were responsible for carrying out all the daily administrative routines. Speaking no Tibetan they had to rely on interpreters and spent most of their time in Lhasa, making only a few inspection tours a year outside the city. [2] It is inconceivable that such a tiny apparatus would be able to exercise effective control over Tibet, an area of more than a million square kilometres. By and large, the Residential Commissioner could only serve as what I shall call a ‘connector’, mediating between the Qing authorities and the local rulers, the Dalai Lama and the Kashag. [3] Under this system, Tibetan peasants submitted solely to Tibetan masters—they ‘only knew the Dalai, not the Court’. On certain occasions—when the Qing army had helped repel aggressors, for instance—the Tibetan elite would be full of praise for the Commissioner’s advice. For the rest of the time, it would be unrealistic to expect that a few alien officials—linguistically handicapped, militarily weak, socially and politically isolated—would be obeyed by the local rulers, who held all the region’s power and resources in their hands.
First, however, a survey of the broader historical background is required. For many centuries Tibet was an integral political entity, governed by the local religious leaders and feudal lords. Under the Qing dynasty, China exercised its jurisdiction over the region through the submission of this elite and did not interfere directly in local affairs. Between 1727 and 1911, the principal symbol of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet was the office of the Residential Commissioner, known as the amban. The imperial presence in Lhasa, however, consisted ‘solely of the commissioner himself and a few logistical and military personnel.’ [1] These, together with a handful of civilian staff members, were responsible for carrying out all the daily administrative routines. Speaking no Tibetan they had to rely on interpreters and spent most of their time in Lhasa, making only a few inspection tours a year outside the city. [2] It is inconceivable that such a tiny apparatus would be able to exercise effective control over Tibet, an area of more than a million square kilometres. By and large, the Residential Commissioner could only serve as what I shall call a ‘connector’, mediating between the Qing authorities and the local rulers, the Dalai Lama and the Kashag. [3] Under this system, Tibetan peasants submitted solely to Tibetan masters—they ‘only knew the Dalai, not the Court’. On certain occasions—when the Qing army had helped repel aggressors, for instance—the Tibetan elite would be full of praise for the Commissioner’s advice. For the rest of the time, it would be unrealistic to expect that a few alien officials—linguistically handicapped, militarily weak, socially and politically isolated—would be obeyed by the local rulers, who held all the region’s power and resources in their hands.
Consequently, as the Qianlong Emperor admitted, ‘Tibetan local affairs were left to the wilful actions of the Dalai Lama and the shapes [Kashagofficials]. The Commissioners were not only unable to take charge, they were also kept uninformed. This reduced the post of the Residential Commissioner in Tibet to name only.’ [4] In response, the Qing court issued in 1793 an imperial decree, the Twenty-Nine Articles on the Reconstruction of Tibetan Domestic Affairs, which consolidated the Commissioner’s authority over administrative, military and religious appointments, foreign affairs, finance, taxation and the criminal justice system. [5] These measures have given rise to the claim that the power of the Residential Commissioners subsequently ‘exceeded that of the governors in other provinces’. [6] Nevertheless, when the Imperial Commissioner Zhang Yintang visited Tibet a century later, he was greatly distressed to hear the Dalai Lama ridiculing the Qing representatives as ‘tea-brewing commissioners’. (Tea-brewing is a kind of Tibetan Buddhist alms-giving ceremony—one of the Commissioner’s duties was to distribute this largesse to the monasteries on the Emperor’s behalf; the insinuation was that he did nothing else.) [7] The Commissioner of the late Qing period, Lian Yu, also complained that ‘the Dalai Lama arrogated undue importance to himself and wanted to manipulate everything.’ If Tibetan officials appeared to be respectful and deferential, with an ‘outward display of honesty and simple-mindedness’, he found their actual behaviour was nothing less than ‘secret resistance’, and ‘very often they left orders unattended to for months on the pretext of waiting for the Dalai Lama’s return or for decisions yet to be made, simply ignoring urgent requests for answers.’ [8]
To some extent, however, this state of affairs was acceptable to both sides. In terms of state power, the Qing court retained the ability to occupy Tibet, but did not need to do so; and the connector system had the merit of being extremely cheap. The crux of the framework of ancient oriental diplomacy lay in the order of ‘rites’: as long as the lamas were submissive and posed no threat, they would be tolerated. Despite the Commissioners’ complaints and the Emperor’s occasional displeasure, it was only the threat that Tibet might break away from its orbit that caused serious concern at Court, and entailed some form of ‘rectification’. This occurred only a few times during the entire 185 years of Qing rule; for the most part, Residential Commissioners were stationed in Tibet to maintain the Emperor’s symbolic mandate rather than to govern in fact.
Shadows of modernization
The overthrow of the Qing Empire by the Chinese revolution of 1911 created a quite new situation. Just before, in one of its last acts of authority, the dynasty had dispatched an army to occupy Lhasa. But with the collapse of the imperial order, followed by four decades of turmoil in China itself, Tibet for the first time in centuries enjoyed virtually complete de facto independence. The Residential Commissioner and his entourage were expelled in 1912 and the thirteenth Dalai Lama consolidated his position as a national leader, expanding and modernizing the Tibetan Army along British or Japanese lines and setting up banks, mines and a postal service. Trade was promoted and students sent to study in the West. Young officers began to imitate the fashions of their polo-playing counterparts under the British Raj and the military band was taught to play God Save the King. But the price of the reforms was deemed too high by the monastic elite. The new officers saw the religious orders as the cause of Tibetan backwardness: not prayers but guns would make the country strong. While the Dalai Lama understood the importance of the Army in securing his secular power and resisting the potential Chinese threat, he could not tolerate any direct challenge to his authority; when the military leadership began to target his own position for reform, instigating a series of private meetings designed to pressure him to relinquish political power, he moved against them, putting a halt to Tibet’s modernization. The Army went into decline after the officers were purged, meeting defeat at the hands of a regional warlord in Kham—the section of Eastern Tibet that extends into Sichuan province—in 1931. After this, the Dalai Lama tilted back towards Beijing.
China, meanwhile, had been waging a ceaseless propaganda campaign within the international arena for its right to sovereignty over Tibet. This was tacitly granted by the West—the country would be a large and populous ally during World War II—which nevertheless continued to treat Tibet as, in practical terms, an independent state. The Tibetan elite, meanwhile, continued to vacillate: since they already had de facto self-rule, it was simpler to blockade themselves on their plateau, ringed with snowy mountains, than to get into arguments with China. As the thirteenth Dalai Lama told Charles Bell:
Some countries may wish to send representatives to Tibet; the travellers of other nations may wish to penetrate our country. These representatives and travellers may press inconvenient questions on myself and the Tibetan government. Our customs are often different from those of Europe and America, and we do not wish to change them. Perhaps Christian missionaries may come to Tibet, and in trying to spread Christianity may speak against our religion. We could not tolerate that.’ [9]
Arguably, if the forms of oriental diplomacy could have been maintained, some new system of connectors might have been an acceptable solution to the problem of mediating between China and Tibet. Once the Western concept of state sovereignty had been extended to the East, however, every Chinese regime was compelled to adapt to it; any attempt to prolong a more ambiguous approach could only encourage local rulers to move towards independent sovereignty, sooner or later.
‘One country, two systems’
Such was the situation when the Communist Party triumphed over the KMT in China, and founded the People’s Republic in 1949. Mao made no move towards Tibet till the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Then a 40,000-strong contingent of the PLA crossed into territory under the control of the Kashag, with a show of force that quickly routed the Tibetan army ranged against it in Chamdo. But Mao was in no hurry to bring the revolution to Tibet. The intention of the CCP, on the contrary, was to ‘manage’ the country from afar through something very like the Qing model. Despite its revolutionary commitments, the CCP did not at first attempt any social reforms in Tibet. Sovereignty took precedence. As long as Tibet ‘returned to the arms of the motherland’s big family’, Beijing was quite willing to tolerate the preservation of the ‘feudal serf system’ there. Although the number of Chinese military and civilian personnel stationed in Tibet after 1951 was vastly increased from the Qing era, political and social relationships were still mediated through de facto ‘connectors’. Local affairs continued to be administered by the Tibetan authorities, and a ‘one country, two systems’ mechanism was set in place. The name given to this tactic was the United Front. What it meant in practice was an alliance between the Communists and the Tibetan ruling class, who would cooperate in the consolidation of Chinese sovereignty. The basis for this was the Seventeen-Point Agreement signed by Li Weihan and Ngawang Jigme Ngapo in May 1951, in which the Dalai Lama’s government acknowledged that Tibet was part of China, gave post facto consent to the PLA’s entry and to the eventual integration of the Tibetan Army into its ranks, and accepted the central government’s authority to conduct its external affairs. In return, Beijing promised ‘autonomy’ for Tibet, leaving the social and religious system, the Dalai Lama’s status and the local officials’ positions unchanged, while restoring the Panchen Lama, driven into exile by the thirteenth Dalai.
The United Front line was followed not only in the areas under the administration of the Kashag government but also in Chamdo, where the PLA had established control. A People’s Liberation Committee of the Chamdo Area was set up, with seven Tibetans among its nine vice-chairmen. Apart from one CCP member, all of these were from local ruling families, as were the majority of the 35-member Committee. In the twelve subordinate zong or county-level Liberation Committees, there were 14 Han officials and 154 Tibetans, all from the elite. Chen Jingbo, director of the United Front Department of the CCP’s Tibetan Working Committee at the time, reported:
After the establishment of the Preparatory Committee for the Tibetan Autonomous Region in 1956, a large number of individuals from the local upper classes were appointed to various posts under the Committee. At the time, there were about 6,000 people that belonged to middle and upper classes (including major clan chiefs) in the whole region (among them, 205 were fourth-rank officials, 2,300 below fifth rank and 2,500 from religious circles). 2,163 of these were already assigned to posts and the remaining 3,400 are scheduled to receive various appointments by 1960. [10]
The Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama were the paramount focus of the United Front. When in 1954 they were invited to attend the Assembly of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, Zhang Jingwu, secretary of the CCP’s Tibetan Working Committee and the central government’s highest representative in Lhasa, was specifically instructed by the Central Committee to look after them on the trip, which he took the utmost pains to do. [11] On their arrival at Beijing railway station they were met by Zhou Enlai and Zhu De, while Deng Xiaoping personally checked their living quarters and Mao Zedong received and hosted several dinner parties for them. [12] The Dalai Lama, just nineteen, was made a Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and the Panchen Lama, even younger, nominated a Standing Committee member.
Beijing was, at this stage, perfectly willing to tolerate the Tibetan authorities’ stalling tactics on the Seventeen-Point Agreement. As Mao explained in 1952:
Although the establishment of the military and administrative committee and the reorganization of the Tibetan troops were stipulated in the Agreement, you had fears, and so I instructed the comrades working in Tibet to slow down their implementation. The Agreement must be carried out but, because of your fears, it has to be postponed. If you are scared this year, it can wait until next year. If you still have fears next year, it can wait until the year after that. [13]
Indeed, the reorganization of the Tibetan Army had not gone beyond the issue of new uniforms and conferring of PLA ranks by the time of the 1959 Rebellion, in which a considerable number of its troops and officers would play an active part.
Ethnography and culture
Historically, ‘Greater Tibet’ had rarely been under the control of the Kashag government, whose effective rule for the most part never extended beyond the current boundaries of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The situation has persisted under the PRC. The latest available census figures, for 1990, show a majority of ethnic Tibetans (54.4 per cent) living in neighbouring provinces (see Table 1 below).
These administrative divisions do not correspond to the actual social landscape. Lhasa is the indubitable political and religious centre of the whole Tibetan ecumene, but the region of Ü Tsang (‘Central Tibet’) in which it is situated—often mistaken for the ethnographic land as a whole—is certainly not on a higher cultural level than the regions outlying it. Amdo (covering much of Qinghai and Gansu) contains two out of the six most important Yellow Hat monasteries. Kham (covering western Sichuan and the north-west corner of Yunnan) contains a variety of religious schools, and its cultural riches are far beyond those of Ü Tsang, as can easily be seen by the traveller today. Traditionally, a greater number of high-rank lamas have come from Amdo and Kham than from Ü Tsang. If the people of Ü Tsang look down on the Khampas, the prejudices are mutual. The former regard the latter as ‘uncivilized’, the latter view the former as ‘hypocritical’—similar stereotypes to those that divide southerners and northerners in other nations. Socially speaking, the people of Amdo are mainly nomads, those in Kham farmers. Authority in Amdo is tribal, but is more chiefly in Kham, where the local chabu—the Tibetan name means ‘king’—customarily enjoyed quasi-regal powers. Such social structures were to facilitate collective resistance to the Chinese authorities; but even without this, the religious factor alone was tinder capable of arousing the whole population against Han domination.
Nevertheless, when it came to implement the United Front, the CCP in the fifties took a purely bureaucratic approach, as if provincial borders mattered more than the cultural integrity of the Tibetan population as a whole. While those living inside the Autonomous Region—essentially Ü Tsang—were to be exempted from PRC reforms, Tibetans in Han-majority provinces were not. Nationwide collectivization was launched in 1955, and by 1956 the ‘high tide of socialist construction’—land redistribution, the creation of local CCP units, class-struggle organization and the battle against elites—was sweeping the Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan. Work teams mobilized the masses, creating peasant unions; title deeds were burnt. With their traditional entitlements under threat, Tibetan landowners took the risk of initiating active revolts against the CCP. There was fierce fighting in Kham as the PLA stepped in to put down the rebellion. Refugees from the four provinces—some 60,000, between 1956 and 1958—fled to Ü Tsang. Epidemics spread a sense of panic among the uprooted population there.
Nevertheless, the initial reaction in Beijing was still to continue the United Front tactic within the TAR. When the Tibetan Working Committee, in 1956, made a move to step up social and economic reforms in the region, dispatching more than 2,000 Han cadres to Tibet for the purpose, Beijing swiftly reversed the decision and sent Zhang Jingwu—by then Director of the PRC President’s General Office—to stabilize the situation, announcing that there would be no reforms for the next six years. In March 1957 the Central Committee’s Secretariat decided to cut back significantly on the Party’s work in the TAR, reducing local administrative personnel from 45,000 to 3,700, with Han streamlined by 92 per cent, while troop levels were brought down from 50,000 to 18,000, and the number of military bases reduced; all facts testifying to the central government’s willingness to continue the connector-model United Front. [14] Zhou Enlai went so far as to assure the Dalai Lama that, if the region was still not ready for reform, the waiting period could be extended for another fifty years. [15]
Tibetan Rebellion and the Dalai’s flight
The situation in Tibet, however, was growing increasingly turbulent, and the contradictions of the ‘one country, two systems’ approach ever more stark. Even the most trivial changes constituted a threat to the Tibetan upper classes and could cause major disturbance within such a highly traditional society. Wage payments to Tibetans working on road-construction schemes were seen as an assault on the centuries-old ulag service system. Free schools impinged on the monastic monopoly of education. Training of cadres with serf backgrounds upset the existing social hierarchy. In 1957, a serf in Shannan was beaten up by his lord for failing to perform his ulag service—an unconditional duty, whose dereliction customarily received brutal punishment. In this instance, the victim was a CCP activist who had been assigned a cadre position at grass-roots level. The case became a touchstone for Party policy in Tibet. United Front tactics demanded non-interference, but this would both dishearten peasant activists and encourage elite attempts to prevent the masses cooperating with the CCP. On the other hand, to discipline the assailant would cause trouble with the authorities’ feudal partners. Nevertheless, the CCP gave the instruction to relieve all Tibetan cadres of their ulag duties. [16]
Ultimately the United Front tactic could be no more than an expedient measure. Support for the Communists would always come from the poorest layers, but the United Front was unable to provide these with any clear prospect. As one commentator put it:
The mass of Tibetans was steadfastly tied to the status quo without the slightest knowledge of, or experience of, any other way of life. Confused by the new ways offered by the Han, fearful of the Han who simultaneously urged ‘liberation’ of the serfs from the feudal masters while creating alliances with these masters, they did not join their ‘liberators’ in large numbers. [17]
At the same time, despite all the compromises and conciliatory gestures, the United Front would never win the good faith of the Tibetan elite, who saw it rather as a game of cat and mouse in which, sooner or later, the mouse would inevitably be killed. Gradually, Beijing realized that the United Front—one of its three ‘big magic weapons’—not only failed to guarantee the lamas’ loyalty but would not garner the support of the masses, either—the biggest magic weapon of all. If Tibetan peasants could not be won away from their traditional deference, they would inevitably side with their local rulers in any uprising against the CCP, and Beijing would never be able to ensure lasting sovereignty over the region.
There was ample evidence for this in the 1959 Tibetan Rebellion. The PLA initially demanded that the Kashag government punish the Khampa ‘bandits’ who had fled to Ü Tsang in 1956 and 57; in 1958 its own troops entered the TAR, travelling in 60-truck convoys through the hostile countryside. Lhasa itself, surrounded by refugee tents, provided no sanctuary: the tension in the city had grown explosive. The detonating spark was a rumour that the PLA was planning to abduct the Dalai Lama. Kashag officials and Khampa rebels united in the call for an uprising. For days on end, thousands of demonstrators surrounded the Dalai’s Summer Palace, throwing up barricades against the troops and shouting ‘Kick out the Han’. Fierce fighting ensued before the Red Flag was hoisted over the Potala. The Dalai fled to India. Beijing assumed direct control.
‘Turn the Body Over’
The vast mass of lower-class Tibetans would have been genuine beneficiaries of Beijing’s initial reforms, yet they rose against them. Why? Many perceived only one distinction: between themselves and the Han. The long history of deference to monastic authority and tribal leaders ensured that, when their masters raised the twin banners of religion and nationality, Tibetan workers and peasants would rally to them. The conclusion drawn in Beijing was that ‘the fundamental improvement of national relations, in the final analysis, depends on the complete emancipation of the working classes within each nationality.’ [18] Translated into plain language, this meant the abandonment of the United Front and a turn to class struggle, aimed directly at the overthrow of the local elite. Within every nationality, it was now argued, there would invariably be rich and poor, oppression and exploitation. The poor everywhere belonged to one family; the rich were all the same, as black as crows. Hoisting the class-struggle flag, the CCP proclaimed itself no longer a party of the Han but a leader and spokesman of poor people everywhere. It now set out to win over the poverty-stricken Tibetans from their national and religious allegiance to the elite.
As soon as the fighting in Lhasa came to an end, work teams composed of tens of thousands of military personnel and civilian cadres were sent to every village and rural area to launch ‘democratic reforms’ and to determine ‘class status’ among Tibetans as a whole. The first step was to induce the Tibetan masses to ‘vent their grievances’ and ‘find the roots of their misery’, asking questions such as, ‘Who is feeding whom?’. The work teams guided the discussions: ‘Why did generations of peasants suffer, while the owners of serfs lived in luxury from birth, with the best food and clothes?’; ‘Who was the Tibetan government protecting and serving?’; ‘Suffering was not predestined’. The goal was to convince the fatalistic Tibetans of the existence—and the injustice—of class exploitation. The new concept of classes was vividly depicted as fan shen, ‘flip the body over’: it turned previous criteria upside down. Now the poorer one was, the higher one’s social status. Work teams recruited a layer of activists from amongst the peasantry in order to expand their operations. This group became the backbone of the political regime at grass-roots level. The majority of them had never received any education, so there was much controversy when they were installed in leading positions. The work teams countered this with discussions around the questions of ‘Who were the most educated in the old society?’, ‘Who understood the poor best?’, and ‘Would somebody help the poor in their fan shen if he had administrative experience but harboured evil intentions?’. Step by step, a loyal contingent of Party supporters was trained. [19]
Winning over the poor required tangible benefits, which could only come from a redistribution of wealth. This would have a double effect: not only earning the CCP the gratitude of the impoverished masses, but destroying the elite’s capacity to initiate revolt. Monasteries had been used as military bases during the Rebellion—the monks taking up arms—and the PLA had bombed them as it re-established control. [20] Mao now raised the slogan, ‘Lamas must go back home’. Monks and nuns were forcibly married, 97 per cent of monasteries were closed down, 93 per cent of their inmates—104,000 out of 110,000—dispersed, and monastic land was confiscated and redistributed among the poor. The property of all ruling-class participants in the Rebellion—some 73 per cent, or 462 out of the 634 noble households, according to the statistics of the time—was also seized and redistributed (those who had not rebelled being compensated when their land was nationalized). [21] The CCP found it harder, however, to win allies among the peasantry in Tibet than in China proper—work teams often found the level of class consciousness regrettably low. Many of the poorest herdsmen, for example, were apparently hired hands, but were reluctant to admit it, pretending instead to be the sons or daughters of the herd owners. Their response when the work teams tried to classify them as hired herdsmen—the highest rank in the new hierarchy—was resentful: ‘Why are you trying to force me to admit I’m a hired hand?’ [22]
A fear above all others
One of the unique characteristics of traditional Tibetan society was that, despite a considerable degree of social and economic polarization, there was hardly any history of actual class confrontation. Conflict was generally between upper-class factions, or between Tibetans and other ethnic groups. What explains such an unusual degree of deference and obedience? The answer surely lies in the deeply rooted religious traditions of Tibet. Even if aware of their suppressed and exploited status, the poor would resign themselves to their fate, seeing it as retribution for their previous lives. According to Buddhist doctrine, their hope of freedom from suffering lay entirely in the hereafter: only by resigning themselves to their present condition and enduring its misery might they hope to win the favours of the deities, and the chance of being born into a better afterlife. Any resistance was disobedience to the divine will and would be met with suitable punishment. This staunch belief moulded the Tibetans’ attitude of passive submission. The benefits of reform in this world could never match the happiness of the afterlife; if they committed the crime of ‘defying their superiors’ or ‘enriching themselves with dubious wealth’, the dreadful punishment that awaited them would far outweigh any earthly gains. This was why so many felt uncertain about class struggle, and why they not only joined their masters in the Rebellion but also followed them into exile and continued to serve them there. It was thus impossible for the CCP to win over the peasantry without tackling the problem of religion.
This was no easy matter. It would have been quite unfeasible simply to convert the Tibetans into atheists. If the highly evolved doctrines of the lamaist tradition are almost impossibly abstruse, the faith of the masses is far more comprehensible. The roots of their intense religiosity lie in the terrors of their natural environment—the explanation, surely, for the extraordinary proliferation of deities and monsters within Tibetan Buddhism, differentiating it from Indian and Chinese variants. Fear is the key factor. To find oneself in the harsh surroundings of the Tibetan plateau is to experience the mercilessness of nature, the arduous task of survival, the loneliness of the heart. Settlements on any scale could not subsist in most of the region, resulting in tiny human colonies that have clung on in the face of the vast, raging forces of nature. Encountering, alone, this savage expanse of earth and sky inevitably produced a feeling of being overwhelmed by such preponderance, a terrifying sense of isolation and helplessness, repeated down the generations. Fear provoked awe, and awe gave rise to the totem of deities and monsters:
The Tibetans were living in a state of apprehension and anxiety. Every perturbation, either physical or spiritual, every illness, every susceptible or dangerous situation, would drive them to search feverishly for its causes, and for preventative measures. [23]
But the search for solutions only reinforced the anxiety: the more thought and explanation was lavished upon it, the deeper it grew. Faced with a fear that they could neither escape nor conquer, Tibetans were in need of a larger fear, clearly defined and structured, one that exceeded all others and which, so long as one obeyed it totally, would keep at bay all the lesser fears, lifting the intolerable psychological burden.
Fear formed the core of the Tibetans’ spiritual world. Only by propitiating their terror, by offering sacrifices to it in complicated ceremonies, by worshipping and obeying it, could one feel safe and free, reassured by its vast dominion and tremendous power. Such a fear already possessed, at a certain level, the nature of divinity; the origins of the vast number of ferocious and terrifying objects worshipped in Tibetan religion—including those of the Bon shamanism that predated the eighth-century introduction of Buddhism from India—can surely be traced back here. [24] In that frightful environment, humankind can scarcely persevere without some sense of divine guidance and support. From this perspective it might be argued that, even if all other religions were on their way to extinction, the Tibetan creed would probably be preserved to the very last day.
Tibetan Buddhism exacts an exorbitant price from its followers. The hope of a better life hereafter demands a punishing regime of forbearance, asceticism and sacrifice in the present. Tibetans also have to contribute a considerable part of their personal wealth to religious activity—building monasteries, providing for monks and nuns, performing ceremonies, making pilgrimages and so forth. Under the Dalai Lama’s government, 92 per cent of the budget was devoted to religious expenditure. [25] Even today, according to some estimates, the Tibetans pay about a third of their annual income to the monasteries. This was money that would not be transformed into productive investment nor used to improve the people’s lives. For over a thousand years, the sweat and toil of the Tibetans had gone to encrust the monasteries, while the governing monks formed an enormous parasitic social stratum. In the eighteenth century, according to Melvyn Goldstein’s estimate, about 13 per cent of the population were monks—in other words, around 26 per cent of Tibetan males. [26] The Chinese scholar Li Anzhai, in his 1947 sample survey of the Gede area of Xikang, found that the proportion of monks reached as high as 33.25 per cent—the highest in the world. [27] This unproductive layer was a heavy burden on Tibetan society, intensifying the existing shortage of labour. In addition, the celibacy lamaism enjoined contributed to the depletion of the population, one of the major problems in the region. Tibetan scholars themselves have attributed the decline of the Tufan dynasty to the effects of the religious system. [28] In the ninth century Langdarma, last of the Tufan kings, tried to force the monks to resume the tasks of secular life in an effort to reverse the decline.
Rotation of the gods
The Tibetans’ submission to a religion that apparently runs contrary to their material interests becomes prefectly comprehensible in the context of their worship of fear. Faced with a choice between a short spell of suffering in this world followed by a blissful hereafter, or an eternity of torture, the peasants inevitably remained in thrall to the monks who held the keys to heaven. But if it is impossible for Tibetans to live without a god, nevertheless their religion allowed for a reincarnation of the deity. What if a new god appeared who was not only more powerful and awe-inspiring than the old, but who also told Tibetans that this life was everything, that their suffering was injustice, and that they should seek happiness in the here and now? Would they still be willing to deny their own human needs?
As to who had more actual power between the Dalai Lama and Mao Zedong, there could scarcely be any doubt. At the Battle of Chamdo in 1950 the crack troops of the Tibetan Army were totally overwhelmed by the PLA; the Dalai Lama had to take refuge in Yatung. In 1959, with tens of thousands of rebels demonstrating in the streets of Lhasa, it took the PLA only 20 hours or so to prevail, and the Dalai fled into exile. The Tibetans were inevitably disturbed by the disparity. The divinity before whom they had prostrated themselves turned out to be less invincible than they thought. A god for them was, by definition, capable of defeating all with his overwhelming strength, of making clear demands and using stern, indisputable measures to reward and punish. This mentality permeated other aspects of Tibetan life, as evidenced in their submission to autocracy, their tolerance of suffering, their respect for winners and cruelty to enemies. In a thousand subtle ways the power of Mao Zedong corresponded to these needs; the same forms of worship could be extended towards him.
It is unlikely that Beijing understood the issue in terms of religion. The support of the ‘emancipated serfs’ was perceived rather as evidence of Marxism’s universal validity. In reality, however, it was impossible to overthrow centuries of worship without playing the role of a new god who came trampling on the old one, proclaiming the dawn of a new era and instituting a new system of punishment and rewards. Mao Zedong fitted the part perfectly. His rule could satisfy both the religious and the human needs of the Tibetans peasants—for, however deeply the concept of the afterlife had been instilled in their minds, the natural instinct to ‘seek gains and avoid losses’ still remained. Once ‘converted’, they took Maoism to extremes, smashing the old world and declaring their loyalty to the new with all the zeal of their traditional faith. The period of 1960 to 1966—from the final suppression of the Rebellion to the start of the Cultural Revolution—saw a movement from ‘awakening’ to overall mobilization in the region. The predominant image of the time was of Mao waving his red-starred military cap from a distant, temple-like building; Tibetans were only too familiar with the strong religious flavour of such a sight, which had always evoked in them a powerful emotional response. They plunged into the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution fired up both by fideistic fervour and material interest. Yet even as they shouted ‘atheist’ slogans against the monasteries, the underlying pulse was still there; it was simply that Mao had replaced the Dalai Lama as the god in their minds.
In this psychology, the rotation of deities meant the recreation of the universe: the dominion of this more powerful ruler would endure forever, the old one would be eternally damned. It was entirely rational, then, from the viewpoint of traditional Tibetan culture, to switch sides, submit to the new order and tear down the remnants of the old. Looking back at this process of ‘god creation’ during the Mao era, one notices religious echoes almost everywhere: supreme ideology corresponding to faith; the ultimate goal of communism, to heaven; unconditional obedience to the teacher and leader, to worship of God; political studies, to preaching, reforming one’s world outlook, to purifying one’s consciousness; self-criticism, to confession; strict Party discipline and sacrifice for the cause, to asceticism. If the actual ceremonies of Mao worship were slightly different, their spiritual essence was close enough to lamaism to make it an easy switch. To hang Mao’s picture in a cottage and bow to it daily, to recite his ‘highest instructions’ while clasping the Little Red Book, was not so far removed from the accustomed daily prayers and prostrations before the household image of the Dalai Lama.
As long as the need for a powerful deterrent force and for the corresponding placatory rituals was met, the actual religious content was far less important. The prayer-stone piles by the roadsides and on mountain passes were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and stone or cement billboards with Mao’s quotations erected in their place: the peasants circled them when they passed by, just as they had with the prayer piles. In the traditional Ongkor festival at the start of the harvest season, they used to carry Buddhist images, chant scripts and sing Buddhist songs. During the Cultural Revolution, they carried Mao’s picture, recited his quotations and sang ‘The East is Red’. Historically, Chinese emperors had been seen in Tibet as the embodiment of the Bodhisattva Buddha, with a higher status than the Goddess of Mercy, incarnated in the Dalai Lama; many Tibetans now accorded Mao the same honour.
Clearly, Mao might be a better choice for the peasantry, the Communist heaven preferable to the ‘paradise in the west’ and revolutionary organizations a substitute for monasteries—as long as the new rituals satisfied the ceremonial demands of their religion. Beijing’s harsh leftist policies were now principally targeted at the aristocracy; in a reversal of the previous relationship, in which the minority’s privileges had been maintained by the majority’s misery, it was the top 10 per cent that henceforward suffered most from the repression. The powerful new god was not only capable of inflicting the most brutal punishment on its enemies, it also took care of the impoverished masses, bestowing extraordinary favours on them: the abolition of the ulag and of taxation, airborne disaster relief, mobile medical treatment, the enrolment of peasant children at the universities. At the same time, the rules for differentiation were clear cut: everything depended on class. This philosophy of a fate predetermined by one’s birthright was almost identical to Tibetan Buddhism’s traditional account.
Destruction of the temples
The clearest manifestation of this rotation-of-the-gods in the minds of the Tibetan peasants was their active participation in levelling the very temples and monasteries they had once held most sacred. The Dalai camp and Western public opinion have always attributed this to Han Red Guards coming in from China proper, after the Cultural Revolution was launched in 1966. They have seen it as part of the CCP’s ‘systematic, methodical, calculated, planned and comprehensive destruction’ of Tibetan religion. [29] The truth is that, because of poor transportation and the huge distances involved, only a limited number of Han Red Guards actually reached Tibet. Even if some of them did participate in pulling down the temples, their action could only have been symbolic. Hundreds of shrines were scattered in villages, pastures and on rugged mountainsides: no one would have been capable of destroying them without the participation of the local people. Furthermore, most of the Red Guards who did reach the TAR were Tibetan students, returning from universities elsewhere. The fact that they often retained their organizations’ original names—Capital Red Guards, for instance—is one reason for the confusion over this. With the gradual return of these Tibetan Red Guards—who often combined their revolutionary work with visits to their families—the sparks of the Cultural Revolution spread across villages and pastures over the entire Tibetan plateau; followed by the rampage of destruction.
It is true that tension at the time was so high that no one dared voice any dissent; nevertheless, the rulers alone could not have created the sort of social atmosphere that then prevailed without the participation of the masses, who sometimes played a leading role. The authorities in Tibet often tried to restrain radical actions, with the PLA, for example, consistently supporting the more conservative factions against the rebels. Temples and monasteries survived best in the central cities and areas where the authorities could still exercise some control. In contrast, the Gandan Monastery, some 60 kilometres outside Lhasa and one of the three major centres of the Yellow Hat sect, was reduced to ruins.
To point out that it was largely the Tibetans themselves who destroyed the monasteries and temples is not to exonerate the Han; but it does raise broader questions, beyond the issue of responsibility. Why did the Tibetans, who for centuries had regarded religion as the centre of their lives, smash the Buddhist statues with their own hands? How did they dare pull down the temples and use the timbers for their own homes? Why did they ravage the religious artefacts so recklessly, and why were they not afraid of retribution when they denounced the deities at the tops of their voices and abused the lamas they had so long obeyed? Surely these actions are evidence that, once they realized they could control their own fate, the Tibetan peasantry, in an unequivocally liberating gesture, cast off the spectre of the afterlife that had hung over them for so long and forcefully asserted that they would rather be men in this life than souls in the next.
In 1969 an armed ‘revolt’ broke out against the introduction of People’s Communes into Tibet, which had been spared them in the period of the Great Leap Forward; this eventually spread to over forty counties. The Dalai’s camp saw this ‘Second Tibetan Rebellion’ as a continuation of the resistance of the fifties. In reality, the two were very different. During the earlier uprising, the peasants were fighting, in a sense, for the interests of the aristocracy. In 1969, they fought for their own. They did not want the pastures and livestock that had been redistributed among them from the old landowners to be appropriated by the People’s Communes. At the time a few of these protests, provoked by the Cultural Revolution, were actually intensified into genuine ‘revolts’ by the authorities’ repression. [30] The turbulence was quickly quelled once they realized their mistake. In comparison with the factional rivalries and armed conflicts in other parts of China, Tibet at the time remained relatively stable. In short, Maoism appeared to have achieved an overall victory in the sixties and seventies: China’s sovereignty over Tibet looked unprecedentedly effective and secure. The ‘nationality question’, later the cause of so much trouble, seemed scarcely worth consideration. Tibetans seemed on generally calm terms with the Han and the Dalai Lama almost forgotten, both in Tibet and in the West.
Costs of the Cultural Revolution
The reality was otherwise. The ideological success of Maoism in overturning lamaism was not matched by any comparable achievement in improving the material conditions of ordinary Tibetans. The ultra-leftist policies of the Cultural Revolution inflicted tremendous human and economic damage on Tibet, as everywhere in the PRC. Excesses on a massive scale had already been committed during the earlier campaigns for ‘democratic reform’ and the suppression of the 1959 Rebellion, many of which were discussed in the Panchen Lama’s Seventy-Thousand Character Petition of 1962. The prevailing situation was, indeed, clearly mirrored in the Panchen Lama’s fate. If any sense of the United Front approach had persisted within the CCP, he would not have been so mercilessly punished just for an internal petition. As it was, in 1964 he was classified as an enemy and removed from his posts, subjected to mass-struggle sessions and jailed for nearly ten years. Another important Tibetan religious figure, Geshe Sherab Gyatso, was sent back to his home town in Dunhua county, Qinghai province, where he was tortured to death. Political movements were launched across Tibet, one after another: the Three Educations, the Four Clean-ups, One Strike and Three Antis, Cleaning Ranks, Socialist Reforms, Double Strikes, Basic Lines Education, Purging Capitalist Factions, Criticizing Smaller Panchens. The 1980 Rehabilitation Conference held in the TAR after the Cultural Revolution revealed that, ‘According to a rough estimate, more than one hundred thousand people in the region were either implicated or affected by unjust and wrong cases, which accounted for more than 10 per cent of the entire population.’ [31]
During the entire period from the Tenth Plenary Session of the Central Committee in 1962, which reintroduced the class-struggle theme, to Hu Yaobang’s inspection tour of Tibet in 1980, CCP policy had been based on the thesis that ‘the nationality question is in essence a class question’. Anyone unfamiliar with the political jargon of the time would have a hard time understanding this. The nation itself was of no significance—‘the workers have no motherland’; the essential distinction was that of class. There was thus no need to select leading cadres on a national or ethnic basis: as long as they were revolutionaries, they could lead the masses anywhere. To request leaders from one’s own community would be to commit the error of ‘narrow-minded nationalism’—tantamount to sabotaging the class camp. During the Cultural Revolution, the Revolutionary Committee—the highest political organ in Tibet—had a Han chairman and only four Tibetans among its thirteen vice chairmen. In 1973, Tibetans made up only 35.2 per cent of Party Committee members; in 1975, they accounted for a mere 23 per cent of leading cadres at district level. [32]
For the peasantry, the introduction of the People’s Communes—initiated in 1964, and covering 99 per cent of villages by 1975—meant an unprecedented degree of centralized control. If a Commune member wanted to get half a kilo of butter he had to report to his production team in advance and then work his way through a series of procedures involving team leaders, accountants and warehouse keepers. The remaining private elements of the economy were almost totally wiped out. Before 1966 there had been over 1,200 small retailers in Lhasa. By 1975, only 67 remained. In Jalung county 3,000 privately owned wool-looms and spinning-wheels were done away with in the name of ‘cutting off the capitalist tails’. [33] The organization of the People’s Communes killed off any enthusiasm for production; in conjunction with the political assaults of the Cultural Revolution this led to a stagnation of living standards, especially among the farmers and herdsmen. Although the suffering could be temporarily concealed by the high revolutionary energy of the time and by the introduction of other benefits, such as medical care and social promotion, according to the 1980 figures half a million of the already impoverished Tibetans—over a quarter of the population—were worse off after the mutual-aid groups were communized, and about 200,000 were rendered destitute. [34]
‘Redressing the wrongs’
The Great Helmsman responsible for these disasters passed away in 1976. It was another two years before Deng Xiaoping became supreme leader. The process of ‘redressing the wrongs’ in Tibet began right from the start of the new Reform Era. On December 28, 1978, less than a week after taking power, Deng gave an interview to the Associated Press in which he indicated his willingness to start a dialogue with the Dalai Lama; he received the Dalai’s representative in Beijing the following March. The 376 participants in the 1959 Rebellion still serving prison sentences were freed. Over 6,000 others who had been released after completing their sentences but were still branded as ‘rebels’ and kept under ‘supervised reform’ had these labels removed. Party management of Tibet made an about-turn once more.
On March 14, 1980, Hu Yaobang presided over the first Tibetan Work Forum of the Central Committee Secretariat; its proposals were released to the whole Party under the title Central Committee Document Number Thirty One. Two months later, Hu made an inspection tour of Tibet, accompanied by leading officials including then Vice Premier Wan Li, Ngawang Jigme Ngapo and Yang Jingren. Hu stayed in Lhasa for nine days, meeting people from various circles. The day before his departure, he called an extraordinary TAR Party Committee meeting of more than 4,500 cadres, including all those above county and regiment level from the CCP, government and PLA. Hu’s speech to the meeting was considered a turning point in Tibetan history, its significance comparable to the extrusion of the Residential Commissioner in 1912, the PLA’s entry in 1951 or the post-1959 reforms. It has determined the approach to Tibet ever since. Hu made six major proposals:
Tibet should enjoy autonomous rule, and Tibetan cadres should have the courage to protect their own national interests;
Tibetan farmers and herdsmen should be exempt from taxation and purchase quotas;
Ideologically oriented economic policies should be changed to practical ones, geared to local circumstances;
Central government’s financial allocations to Tibet should be greatly increased;
Tibetan culture should be strengthened;
Han cadres should step aside in favour of Tibetan ones. [35]
This was a striking departure from both the Qing court’s Twenty-Nine Articles and the CCP’s Seventeen-Point Agreement concluded in 1954, both of which had been intended to strengthen Beijing’s position of control over Tibet. The Twenty-Nine Articles had been imposed by imperial decree and, while the Seventeen-Point Agreement made various promises, the Tibetans had been forced to sign it after their military defeat, which it sealed. By contrast, Hu’s initiative proposed to restore Tibetan rights and pledged substantial aid.
The Six Proposals were unquestionably of benefit to Tibet. The tax and purchase exemptions initiated in 1980 were naturally welcome, as were the pro-privatization policies and the abolition of the People’s Communes. Beijing’s financial allocations to Tibet soared from 500 million RMB in 1979 to close on 2.9 billion RMB in 1994, while investment in Tibet’s infrastructure increased from around 100 million RMB in 1979 to over 900 million RMB in 1993. [36] The real turning-points for the Tibetans, however, were the proposals to strengthen autonomous rule, indigenous culture and Tibetanization—points one, five and six. Even before Hu’s visit to Tibet, Document Number Thirty One had already made the dramatic announcement that:
Among all the general and specific policies drawn up by the Central Committee and its various departments as well as all the documents, instructions and regulations issued nationwide, those that do not fit Tibet’s circumstances may not be carried out or may be implemented after modification by the leading organs of Tibetan party, administrative and mass organizations. [37]
Historically, the central government had always sought the passive submission of the minority peoples of the borderlands. Now for the first time the authorities were, on their own initiative, urging the minorities to question their orders or even to resist them. In the past it would have been simply unimaginable that such a document could be issued to the whole Party. Hu made a further call at the mass Party Committee meeting:
Are all the secretaries at the level of county and above present here today? You should, according to the characteristics of your own areas, draft concrete laws, decrees and regulations to protect the special interests of your nationality. You really should do this. In the future we would criticize you if you still just copy indiscriminately the stuff from the Central Committee. Do not copy indiscriminately the experience of other places nor that of the Central Committee. Copying indiscriminately is only fit for lazybones. [38]
While Hu’s speech did not touch directly on lifting the ban on religion, it put great stress on strengthening Tibetan culture, of which Buddhism was the core. Document Thirty One demanded ‘respect for people’s normal religious practices’. Following Hu’s speech, the TAR Party Committee and the regional government also issued decrees requiring the use of the Tibetan language in official documents and public speeches, and applying ‘competence in the Tibetan language as one of the major criteria for admission to school, employment and transferring one’s status to that of cadre, as well as for using, promoting and selecting cadres.’ [39] Historically, dominant ethnic groups had always tried to force minorities to give up their own languages—Nationalist officials had even attempted to impose a Chinese-language exam on Tibetan ‘incarnates’ before they could accede to living Buddha status. [40] It was commendable that the central government now took measures to strengthen an indigenous tongue.
Tibetanization and instability
But the most significant of the Six Proposals was the insistence that Han cadres should step aside in favour of Tibetans. Hu argued that:
As the result of our discussion yesterday, in the next two or three years (in my opinion, two years is better), among state non-production cadres—here I am not talking about production cadres, who should be entirely Tibetans, but about non-production cadres, including teachers—Tibetan cadres should make up more than two thirds of the total. [Wan Li adds: I proposed an eight-to-two ratio the other day.] He was even more radical than I am and I also agree. He wants 80 per cent for Tibetan cadres and 20 per cent for Han cadres. [Wan Li: What I meant was an eight-to-two ratio for the county cadres. As for the prefecture cadres, it should be 100 per cent.] [41]
This last proposal encountered great resistance from Han officials in the TAR but Hu’s instructions were: ‘Carry out the policy even if you do not understand; make decisions first and straighten out later’. Fifteen days later, the transfer plan was announced. The total Han population of the TAR stood at 122,400 at the time, of which 92,000—75 per cent—were scheduled to depart within the next two to three years. Among these were 21,000 Han cadres (of a total 55,000 TAR cadres, of whom 31,000 were Han) and 25,000 Han workers (of a total 80,000 TAR workers, of whom 40,000 were Han). [42] The plan was later modified because the departure of so many trained Han workers brought many organizations in Tibet almost to a standstill. Nevertheless, between 1980 and 1985 the Han population was reduced by 42 per cent.
The transfers vacated more than ten thousand cadre quotas and a similar number of ‘iron rice-bowls’ in the state-owned enterprises; Tibetans were the beneficiaries of this. The implementation of new legislation on ‘Autonomous Rule in the Nationality Regions’ subsequently ensured that all key positions in the governing bodies were held by officials from the local region; Han officials could only hold deputy positions. Tibetan cadres thus not only comprised the statistical majority but also controlled most of the leading government positions, including the crucial departments of finance, public security and justice. By 1989, Tibetans accounted for 66.6 per cent of total cadres in the TAR, 72 per cent at provincial level and 68.4 per cent at prefectural level. All ‘number one’ administrative leaders at provincial and prefectural levels were Tibetans, as were the Party Secretaries in 63 out of the 75 counties. [43] ‘Redressing the wrongs’ also brought tremendous improvements in living standards. In 1979 the average income of Tibetan farmers and herdsmen was 147 RMB; in 1990 it was 484 RMB and in 1994, 903.29 RMB. In 1992, the TAR’s total agriculture output was up 69.8 per cent from 1978—and 460 per cent up from its 1952 level. In the cities the improvement was even greater. [44]
Under the new policy, religious practices in both the TAR and the Tibetan areas of the neighbouring provinces were revived to a level comparable to pre-1959—barring only the restoration of the old monastic economy and ‘unity of monastery and state’. The clergy were once again given special ‘United Front’ treatment; the number of monks and nuns increased to 46,000—2 per cent of the Tibetan population—by 1994. Temples were under construction everywhere. The decision of the Second Tibetan Work Forum of 1984 to ‘gradually restore about 200 temples by the end of the eighties’ was vastly exceeded, with 1,480 temples and monasteries reopened by 1992, and over 300 more by 1994. [45] A considerable part of the capital involved came from local government, while the TAR authorities allocated 260 million RMB for rebuilding between 1980 and 1992. The provincial governments in Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai also contributed a sizeable amount of money to religious projects in their Tibetan areas. The central government disbursed over 53 million RMB for the renovation of the Potala Palace, as well as 64 million RMB and 614 kilos of gold to construct a tomb pagoda for the Tenth Panchen Lama. [46] In the spirit of promoting the religious revival, Wu Jinghua, the first secretary of the TAR Party Committee, participated—in full Tibetan costume—in a Great Prayer Festival in Lhasa which was broadcast to the entire region on TV. The few remaining restrictions were mainly applied to clerical organizations, and even they were largely lip-service; there was hardly any interference in the religious practices of the laity.
Deng Xiaoping’s policy in the region was, in all these respects, an essentially open and enlightened one. For most Tibetans, it might have been thought, the situation should have appeared the best in their history. These apparently optimal conditions, however, saw an unprecedented outbreak of discord and social instability. On September 21, 1987 the Dalai Lama appeared before the US Congress. Six days later Lhasa saw its first street demonstration since 1959. Big rallies demanded independence and raised the banned national flag. Arrests immediately followed, and when people heard the screams of monks being beaten in the central police station, crowds besieged the building and started throwing stones. The authorities were caught by surprise and the situation quickly deteriorated as buildings and vehicles were torched and Han were lynched. Troops opened fire as the confrontations escalated. The next seventeen months saw an increasingly bloody pattern of disturbances, leading ultimately to the imposition of martial law in March 1989, which remained in effect for 419 days. At the same time, the Tibetan question came under more intense international scrutiny, with Beijing’s policies eliciting an increasingly wide range of criticism in the West—as if the eighties’ turn had been retrogressive. Tibet became a bargaining chip with which to put pressure on China, and the Dalai Lama acquired unprecedented influence.
Getting down from the shrine
In secular terms, the Tibetans’ reaction to the liberalization of the eighties is hard to understand. Another form of analysis is required. Within the terms of Tibetan Buddhism, ‘redressing the wrongs’ destroyed the divine status Mao had been accorded. God did not make mistakes. Even if they could not understand his cruelty and his punishments, he would have his own reasons and did not need to explain—if he did, it would be incomprehensible anyway, like a book from heaven. God did not need to curry favour; he could order people to do whatever he desired. More importantly, he would never admit to any errors. That would reduce him to the status of human. Once that happened, people could settle accounts over all the past cruelties, and demand even more admissions and compensation.
The Tibetans did not necessarily feel grateful, therefore, when they got government money for restoring the temples. On the contrary, they saw it as an admission that the holy buildings had been destroyed by the Han authorities—the standard account now among Tibetan exiles as well as in the West. If the money was to be a compensation for these crimes, no sum could be large enough to earn their praise. In the past, when a new god appeared and demanded they destroy the old religion, they had obeyed. Now, all of a sudden, after they had smashed the monasteries and temples to pieces, they were told that the new god did not exist. It was all an unfortunate mistake and the previous religion needed to be restored. It is not hard to imagine how they felt; and such a feeling could hardly be commuted into gratitude by government grants.
This was also one of the crucial factors in the strong rebound of traditional religion. To all who had once sided with the Great Han atheist and taken part in the destruction of the monasteries, the resurrection of the old religion connoted that they had betrayed their god and would face the most horrifying punishments. Terrified by what awaited them they tried, on the one hand, to explain that they had had no choice and, on the other, to ‘atone for their crimes’ through redoubled, fanatical devotion to the traditional religious regime. It was common to find that those working hardest to rebuild the temples were the very ones who had led the way in tearing them down. Some officials also tried to ‘wash off’ their guilt by playing up ethno-national sentiments, resisting instructions from their superiors, and discriminating against the Han.
Maoism had fractured the Tibetan national entity through class polarization. Freed from the control of their old masters, the peasants had been the foundation of the communist regime. Under Deng, the class-struggle line was abandoned, and the old aristocrats, clan chiefs and lamas once again were invited to the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Lhalu Tsewang Dorje, commander of the Tibetan forces in the 1959 Rebellion, was released from prison in 1979 and is currently a Vice Chairman of the regional Political Consultative Conference; his wife is a member of its standing committee and his son is Deputy Director of the regional Nationality and Religions Bureau. Meanwhile, Tibetan ‘activists’ who were once in the vanguard of the ‘Rebellion suppression’, the ‘democratic reforms,’ the struggle against the landowners and the destruction of the monasteries have now been cast aside. [47] The majority of such militants had been production-brigade cadres in People’s Communes. With the Communes gone, they have lost their previous status and are reduced to ordinary farmers and herdsmen. Many of them languish in poverty, with no help for their old age. According to the Organization Department of the Tibetan Party Committee, the majority of previous ‘activists’ have sunk into this poverty-stricken stratum. Based on his survey on pastures in Western Tibet, Melvyn Goldstein also points out that:
all the former wealthy households are among those with the largest herds and most secure income. On the other hand, all of today’s poor are from households that were very poor in the old society . . . The former commune cadres fall between these poles . . . In 1987, ten households (18 per cent) received welfare from the county . . . It is interesting to note that all ten households who received welfare in 1987 were poor in the old society. [48]
On top of everything else, these ‘activists’ now also have to carry the burden of being seen as traitors to their nation, while their misfortune is perceived by others as well-deserved retribution.
The old rich have become rich again, and the poor have become poor. To the fatalistic Tibetans, this is an omen of God’s will. Consciously or unconsciously, many have already started to adjust their behaviour. A cadre with more than 20 years’ experience at grass-roots level in the Dingqing County of northern Tibet to
To some extent, however, this state of affairs was acceptable to both sides. In terms of state power, the Qing court retained the ability to occupy Tibet, but did not need to do so; and the connector system had the merit of being extremely cheap. The crux of the framework of ancient oriental diplomacy lay in the order of ‘rites’: as long as the lamas were submissive and posed no threat, they would be tolerated. Despite the Commissioners’ complaints and the Emperor’s occasional displeasure, it was only the threat that Tibet might break away from its orbit that caused serious concern at Court, and entailed some form of ‘rectification’. This occurred only a few times during the entire 185 years of Qing rule; for the most part, Residential Commissioners were stationed in Tibet to maintain the Emperor’s symbolic mandate rather than to govern in fact.
Shadows of modernization
The overthrow of the Qing Empire by the Chinese revolution of 1911 created a quite new situation. Just before, in one of its last acts of authority, the dynasty had dispatched an army to occupy Lhasa. But with the collapse of the imperial order, followed by four decades of turmoil in China itself, Tibet for the first time in centuries enjoyed virtually complete de facto independence. The Residential Com
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The Lhasa Riots Documentary
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Tibet Riot Documentary
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-03/21/content_6556267.htm
18-year-old Chen Jia was the youngest among the five victims.
The riots in Lhasa last Friday are the most serious incident in the region for decades. Local residents are still reeling from the aftershock, even as they try to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. In the following documentary, we look back at the events to see how they've impacted the people in Tibet.
March 14: The Lhasa Riots
This is Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. On March 14th, rioters began a rampage, beating people, smashing businesses, looting and burning. Their actions jeopardized people's lives and property.
11 a.m., March 14
(Ramoche Temple, Lhasa)
Violence scars Lhasa.
At eleven o'clock on the morning of March 14th, rioters gathered at the Ramoche Temple. On the temple roof, about a dozen monks stood and threw stones at police.
2 p.m., March 14
The situation escalated in the afternoon as more rioters gathered at the Ramoche Temple. Others, some armed with knives, began to arrive from the streets in downtown Lhasa.
As the riot intensified, a group of people tipped over a police wagon, and then flipped a nearby car.
An amateur cameraman recorded the scene as members of the mob stopped a motorcycle on the road and bludgeoned the rider's head with rocks. As the violence intensified, some people caught up in the riot suffered severe injuries. This innocent man was blinded in the right eye, and his left ear was cut off.
3 p.m., March 14
From three o'clock in the afternoon onward, the mob moved along Yutuo Road, Beijing East Road, and Duosenge Road, smashing businesses and setting fires.
They stormed into shops, hospitals and news agencies. Nearby public facilities, transportation and electric power lines were damaged.
Seven banks operating within the area failed to escape the mob. Rioters smashed ten ATM machines to pieces leaving those branches in a complete mess.
Rioters set fires in the areas around the Jokhong Temple, Ramoche Temple and the Chomsigkang Market. In the city centre, fires started in the Si Fang supermarket, Lan Dun Plaza and Wen Zhou Plaza.
Rioters even attacked schools, setting Lhasa's Number 2 Middle School on fire. The smoke from these fires covered the city.
When firefighters arrived, two of their fire trucks were torched and four firefighters were injured
13 innocent civilians were burned or stabbed to death in the riots. 56 cars were damaged or burned. Dozens of public security officers and scores of armed police were injured, 10 in serious condition. Rioters have set fire to over 300 sites, and burned down over 200 residential houses and shops.
After the riots began, Party and government officials of the Tibet Autonomous Region reacted quickly. They deployed the police to disperse the violence, and firefighters to put out the fire and evacuate those trapped inside burning buildings. The wounded were rushed to hospital for treatment.
Local authorities say more than 580 people have been rescued by the armed police, including three Japanese tourists, as well as teachers and students in a primary school and a middle school. There were no foreigners among the casualties.
In their handling of the incident, China's public security and armed police have exerted the highest restraint. They did not use any deadly weapons, not even when their own lives were threatened. Some riot police were cornered and beaten. Others were stoned. Armed police on duty outside the gate of the Romache Temple were surrounded and attacked by rioters. None of them fired on their attackers.
One day after the riots, vehicles were restricted from entering the city's main roads. But the streets were still littered with roll-over cars, burned motorbikes and bicycles, and smoldering reminder of from violence from the day before.
Local officials in Tibet say there is plenty of evidence to prove that the incident was masterminded by the Dalai clique.
Baema Chilain, vice chairman of government of Tibet autonomous region, said "The Dalai clique used various means to contact and issue orders to their co-conspirators in Tibet. They also resorted to all sorts of tricks to stir up trouble among the people, hiding the truth from them. All this shows that the Dalai clique has never stopped its efforts to disrupt national unity and seek Tibet independence."
"I am outraged!" a Lhasa resident said.
"My heart is very heavy. A small group of secessionists has unleased great violence on Lhasa. They've destroyed our happy life. We can't go to work. Our children can't go to school." another resident said.
"If there should be similar incidents in the future, we will definitely be against them. It's absolutely necessary to punish the culprits in accordance with the law. This is for the interests of the people, for social stability, and for national unity."
Many places were attacked and burned down to the ground. The Youth Road in the downtown area suffered the most.
Businessman Peng Xiaobo said "After an explosion, heavy smoke was everywhere. My uncle was over there with the woolen blanket -- he jumped down from the second floor. Then he urged us to jump, too. He said, 'Don't worry about the money. Life is more important.' The explosion shattered all the glasses, and heavy smoke covered up everything."
Peng Xiaobo's four shops were all set on fire. His family had to jump down from the second floor in order to escape. His wife hurt her back during the jump. But the worst was yet to come.
Peng said "I had a younger sister. She just had her 18th birthday in December. She didn't dare to jump from such a height. She tried to find another way to escape, but the stairs under her collapsed. She fell through to the first floor and was burned to death."
18-year-old Chen Jia came from the southwestern province of Sichuan. Last Friday, the clothing store in Lhasa, where she and five other girls worked, was targeted by rioters. The door of the store was destroyed. Trapped inside, the six girls were forced to flee to the second floor.
In shock, Chen Jia sent a text message to her father, saying, 'Father, the rioters here are very brutal. We're hiding in the store and don't dare to leave. Don't worry about me. You tell Mother and Sister not to go out.' Several minutes later, the store was set on fire. Five of the girls were burned to death. The tragedy broke Chen Jia's father's heart. He said "My daughter was so girlish. We all loved her."
Chen Jia, Cering Zhuoga from Xigaze, Yang Dongmei and Liu Yan from Sichuan, and Han Xinxin from Henan were also burn to death. Zhuoma was left shocked at being the only survivor. Days after the violence, Zhuoma still can't accept that her friends are no longer here.
She said "I never thought about that. We were happy together that morning, but it suddenly changed hours later. I can't believe it, I can't accept the truth that they have left me. I want to ask the rioters why they did it. I really can't understand why the rioters killed innocent civilians...why they killed our sisters. We're just employees, we don't have much money. If they wanted money, why did they rob us of our lives?"
Violence in Lhasa broke out on March 14th, and took a heavy toll in innocent lives and property. Businessman, Wu Guanglin, can't forget what he and his son suffered that day. Rioters targeted him and his six-year-old son. They stamped on the little boy's chest, sending him into shock.
Businessman Wu Guanglin said "I searched all over for him, at last I saw my son was lying on the ground without clothes and shoes."
Wu Guanglin stopped an ambulance, and doctors gave his son first aid. But the ambulance was targeted shortly after driving off. He said "My son's only six years old. I really feel sad. The rioters even beat the doctors with stone and sticks. The doctors directed me to cover my son with my body, the rioters even destroyed the face guard. I was really sad. My son was in serious condition for two days after the incident. I went to hospital twice to thank doctor Lobsang, but he told me that was his duty."
Wu Guanglin says he will always remember the Tibetan doctor, Cering Lobsang, who risked his life to rescue the boy. Lobsang is still recovering from his wounds at Lhasa People's Hospital.
Tibetan doctor Cering Lobsang said "We picked up the Wus on our way back. The boy wasn't breathing, and had no heart beat. The rioters stopped us. We told them we are medical workers, but they didn't care. They targeted the ambulance, and beat us."
Local authorities took control of the situation shortly after the violence broke out. They also took effective measures to restore peace and order. Local residents also volunteered clear away debris and clean up the streets.
Vice chairman of Tibet autonomous region Dorje Cering said "We are working to gather enough materials for people's basic needs. Tibet is at such a special moment. We have to guarantee that every citizen lives a stable life here in Lhasa. At the same time, we're working hard to arrest those behind the violence as soon as possible."
By Wednesday, more than 150 rioters had turned themselves in to police, and handed over what they had looted.
In downtown Lhasa, the shells of stores and homes can be seen everywhere. But as people start putting things back together, the city is on the way back to normal.
Posted by google at 02:28 AM | Comments (0)
Chinese Take Aim At News Media On Tibet
2008/03/26/10:15 by Geoffrey A. Fowler from Wall Street Journal
The Chinese government bans CNN in most homes. The talk of China in recent days? The news coverage on CNN.
Since March 21, Beijing Internet entrepreneur Rao Jin has been operating the Web site anti-cnn.com to document what he sees as inaccurate foreign coverage of the recent unrest in Tibet. Earlier this month, Tibetan protests against Chinese rule turned violent in Lhasa, and have spread elsewhere in China.
'Most news coverage on the Tibetan uprising is biased or exaggerated,' says Mr. Rao, pointing the finger at the Time Warner Inc. cable news channel, as well as the Washington Post Co.'s flagship newspaper.
In China, many citizens see no conflict in making searing critiques of inaccuracies in the Western media, even as the Chinese government actively censors the news out of Tibet. The backlash highlights the depth of animosity widely felt in China toward Western attitudes about what many Chinese feel is a domestic issue.
On Tuesday, China continued to grapple with protests among its Tibetan population. State-controlled news media said one policeman was killed and several others were injured after a group attacked them Monday in Garze, an ethnically Tibetan area of Sichuan province. Police fired warning shots to disperse the crowd, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported. The India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy said its sources claimed that protesters clashed with armed police, who subsequently fired into the crowd, killing one monk and leaving another in critical condition, the Associated Press reported.
Police in Garze didn't respond to a request for comment. The Chinese government on Tuesday said 22 people have died so far in the unrest in Lhasa, while the exiled Tibetan government puts the number closer to 140 in a broader region.
As it is taught in Chinese schools, Tibet has been a part of the Chinese nation for hundreds of years, and the Dalai Lama's appointment has always been subject to Beijing's approval. This coincides with the modern idea of China as a country that harmoniously incorporates 56 distinct ethnic groups -- the majority Han (around 92% of the population) along with 55 minorities, including Tibetans. At the same time, experts say, China's experience of being partly colonized by foreign powers in the 19th and 20th centuries makes many people deeply suspicious of foreign involvement in Chinese affairs.
Not all Chinese have defended the government's position. On Saturday, more than two dozen Chinese intellectuals signed an open petition laying out a 12-point plan for dealing with the Tibetan situation. Their points included ending the government-run media's 'one-sided propaganda campaign,' allowing foreign media to report in Tibet and negotiating directly with the Dalai Lama.
For nearly two weeks, information about Tibet has been extremely hard to come by. Government-controlled media have kept their coverage sparse, while foreign journalists have been ejected from Tibet.
Broadcasts of foreign channels such as CNN, which are ordinarily allowed only in select hotels and special compounds, now face blackouts even there when Tibet news comes on. Many Web sites offering news, video or comment about the situation have been blocked, including Google Inc.'s YouTube, which was inaccessible inside China for nearly a week after the uprising began. Access to YouTube was restored Sunday, but portions of the site remained blocked, including most news clips about Tibet by Western media outlets. A search for 'CNN' on YouTube in China generated an error message.
Amid the confusion, the Internet is serving as a propaganda battleground in shaping Chinese opinions.
In particular, some Chinese are using the Web to attack the accuracy of Western reporting about the Tibet situation. Their argument: foreign news media frequently write about censorship in the Chinese press, so they should be forced to see their own bias.
Mr. Rao's anti-cnn.com site has been visited by more than 100,000 people so far, he says. The 23-year-old entrepreneur, who runs an Internet-services company, says he came up with the idea for the site after chatting with friends outside China who felt that much of the Tibet coverage was biased or exaggerated.
So far, Mr. Rao says his site has collected more than a dozen inaccuracies or exaggerations in the Western press, he says. One example: He says CNN's Web site ran a photo from news agency Agence France-Presse that was cropped to show a police van, but not people nearby attacking the vehicle with stones. On some occasions, he says, a CNN anchor has also referred to Tibet as a 'country.'
A CNN spokeswoman says the image in question had to be cropped to fit the standard story size of the site. 'It was impossible to include both the drama of the crashed vehicle on the left and the protesters on the right in the same crop,' she says, noting that the image's caption said that Tibetans were throwing stones.
'CNN not only stands by its decision to publish the image in question, but also refutes all allegations by bloggers that CNN distorts its coverage of the events in Tibet to portray either side in a more favorable light,' she says. CNN calls the 'country' reference a 'spoken error' which wasn't repeated by the on-air graphic.
Mr. Rao says his site isn't targeting CNN in particular, but picked it for the name because it 'stands for the voice of the mainstream Western media.' He hopes that 'running the Web site will help supervise the media at home and abroad and help uphold journalism ethics.'
Many of the complaints made by Mr. Rao and other bloggers are about photos with inaccurate captions, depicting violent police crackdowns on Tibetan protestors in Nepal and India but labeling them as taking place in Tibet. The errors, say bloggers, create the misimpression that the violence has been one way, from Chinese police toward Tibetans.
The Washington Post Web site has amended a caption on a photo to correct the location and published an editor's note saying, 'The caption for an earlier version of this slideshow was incorrectly associated with a photo from Nepal.'
German TV station n-tv Nachrichtenfernsehen GmbH admitted in a statement that it had heard from some Web sites and newspapers that it had used pictures in the wrong context, and has corrected them. 'We sincerely regret this mistake while, at the same time, assert that n-tv reports independently,' said company spokesman Christoph Hammerschmidt.
The domestic Chinese press has picked up on the efforts of Mr. Rao and other bloggers. Sunday's Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper in Guangzhou ran a full-page story documenting the 'unbelievable variety of errors.'
Mr. Rao says he is aware that the Chinese government itself works to censor the information available about Tibet, which makes it difficult for journalists to do their jobs. Yet he supports the restrictions because, 'if [foreign reporters] are biased before getting into Tibet, they are very likely to work out one-sided stories about the incident,' he says.
So where does he turn for the accurate information?
'I read books and search for information online,' he says. 'Netizens here are able to make their own judgments on things. They do not rely only on the government or Western media for information. They apply their tech prowess in searching for information and verifying things they've been told.'
YouTube now hosts a video, watched more than 1.7 million times as of Tuesday night China time, titled 'Tibet was, is and always will be a part of China.' There are responses on YouTube from the other side, too -- including one titled 'Tibet is not, should not and will never be a part of China' -- but they are far outnumbered so far.
If anything, Mr. Rao says, the Chinese government would do itself a service by reducing the censorship it applies to foreign sites such as YouTube, 'to allow a larger stage for Chinese Netizens to fight back.'
http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/20080326/chw103417.asp?source=article
Posted by google at 02:21 AM | Comments (0)
Tour Of Lhasa Shows Wide Scope Of Unrest
2008/03/28/09:10 by Shai Oster from Wall Street Journal
A government-led tour of Lhasa nearly two weeks after antigovernment riots by Tibetans sparked a continuing wave of unrest showed that authorities were ill-prepared for the violence and that it spread far beyond the religious core of the ancient city.
Even as officials insisted calm had returned to the ancient city, Lhasa's three main Tibetan Buddhist monasteries remain locked down, surrounded by armed police. Monks aren't allowed out and journalists aren't allowed in while police continued their investigations into the March 14 incident.
Pelma Trilek, executive deputy chairman of the regional government said 414 people, mostly Tibetan and including monks, had been detained, with 314 still held pending police investigations. Other groups allege many more have been detained. Mr. Pelma said that they are being supplied food, water and electricity. 'We have exercised great restraint. The situation is getting stable. Law and order are basically restored,' he said.
He repeated government claims that the unrest, which broke out four days after monks in Lhasa marked the March 10 anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, was planned and premeditated by the Dalai Lama ahead of the Beijing Olympics. But he declined to offer any proof. 'We have ample evidence which are still collecting and will release in due time,' he told a group of foreign journalists who are the first allowed back into Lhasa since the violence.
Yet even as the government insisted the violence had been instigated by a small group of monks, it was apparent from interviews that a vast number of people had joined in and that other factors were at play. One government official said that many of the people joining in the looting were unemployed youth. An injured Chinese policeman who has lived in Lhasa for 20 years said that the unrest had spread far beyond the several blocks of the city's core and that many police were injured because they tried to show restraint when responding to the unrest. He said said police were unarmed and didn't carry batons or shields when he was attacked.
Government officials took the journalists on a tour of Lhasa, in which they tried to underscore the brutality of the violence during the incident, in which, they said, Tibetans rioted for a day and half, burning and looting mostly businesses owned by ethnic Han Chinese, and Muslim Hui, but also symbols of authority in an outburst of anger against the government.
The veneer of calm and sense of return to normalcy were briefly shattered during the tour when a group of about 30 monks surrounded reporters visiting the Jokang, the center of Tibetan spirituality, and said they were being held without being allowed to leave.
They said worshipers in the temple and the square -- which lies at the heart of narrow stone alleyways of the old Tibetan quarter and which had been hardest hit by the violence -- were government sympathizers brought in for journalists to view. Officials denied that the government had vetted that day's worshippers. They also said the monks who had spoken out wouldn't be punished. The previous evening, the square and the temple had been sealed off by police, who closed them down again soon after the incident. Mr. Pelma said the 117 monks inside the temple wouldn't be allowed out until after police wrap up their inquiry.
The journalists also visited damaged buildings -- hospitals, the offices of the official Xinhua News agency, a government-run welfare hotel and a middle school. They were also shown injured medical personnel and police and displaced merchants who lost their livelihoods when their shops were burned.
At the Yishion clothing shop where five women had been burned to death, fresh flowers and a banner graced a shrine with their photos. The incident was given broad coverage in state-controlled media to underscore the violence. Tang Qinyan, the brother of the shop's owner, had emigrated six years ago from neighboring Sichuan province, as have thousands of others in recent years, to seek his fortune in Lhasa, contributing to Tibetans fears that they are losing out on economic growth. But he said he won't leave Lhasa. 'We are all unified; there is no ethnic strife,' he said.
The manager of a burned-out Bank of China building said the bank had been targeted because of its affiliation with the Beijing Olympics. 'They did this because they want to protest the games,' said Yang Zhen.
Ma Chuanming, a Hui immigrant from neighboring Gansu province had his whitegoods store destroyed during the violence. He was waiting for a train ticket back to his hometown at a refugee center where about a hundred others were seeking refuge after their homes and business had been destroyed. The crowd were mostly Hui, reflecting their recent influx into the city. 'Back home I was just a farmer, but here I'm a shopkeeper. Of course I'll come back once I rebuild,' Mr. Ma said.
Posted by google at 02:18 AM | Comments (0)
Han Chinese Say They Are Victims
2008/03/25 11:07 by Gordon Fairclough from Wall Street Journal
Peng Jianwei moved from his hometown in central China to Tibet as a teenager seven years ago, hoping to strike it rich on the country's Western frontier. Now, his dreams are in ashes. His girlfriend was killed, her parents badly injured and the shop where he worked burned to the ground during riots in Lhasa 10 days ago.
In the early afternoon of March 14, the day that the capital of China's Tibet Autonomous Region erupted in violence, a crowd of Tibetans, including some crimson-robed Buddhist monks, broke into the clothing store owned by Mr. Peng's girlfriend's family, doused stacks of shirts and jackets with gasoline and set the piles on fire, says Mr. Peng. The details of his story couldn't be independently corroborated.
Mr. Peng's girlfriend, Liu Juan, and her parents, Liu Guobing and Wang Xinping, were hiding upstairs. As the fire spread, Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang jumped from a second-story window. Ms. Liu, who was 20 years old and the mother of their 9-month-old son, apparently was overcome by the smoke. Her body was found inside the burned-out shop the next day, says Mr. Peng, who wasn't in Lhasa at the time of the attack.
Mr. Peng, 24, says he related events as described to him by Mr. Liu. Mr. Peng spoke in a telephone interview Monday from Mr. Liu's bedside in the First People's Hospital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in Lhasa. Mr. Liu, who is being treated for spinal injuries, was unable to speak on the phone.
'We lost everything in the blink of an eye,' says Mr. Peng, who is now facing raising their son as a single parent.
Cases such as the Liu family's are fueling ethnic Han Chinese anger with Tibetans, as well as with foreign media, which they feel are ignoring their suffering and instead focusing on Tibetans' grievances with the Chinese government. For most of China's Han majority, the anti-Han violence is the central story of the past 10 days of unrest in China.
China's government has been highlighting the ethnic violence, in part to justify using force to restore order. Demonstrations began in Lhasa on March 10, the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising by Tibetans against Chinese rule. After marchers were arrested, more protests ensued and demonstrations turned violent on March 14.
Witnesses said Tibetans -- many of whom are angry with government restrictions on civil rights and religious freedoms and feel economically disadvantaged -- set fire to large numbers of Han-owned businesses as well as a mosque. Chinese authorities have denied journalists access to the restive regions, and almost every day there are conflicting accounts of deaths and injuries by the Chinese government and the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Tales of the suffering of Han Chinese and Muslims at the hands of Tibetans have become a staple of China's government-controlled press. But first-hand accounts of their stories have been relatively rare in Western news reports, in part because of the difficulty of reaching people by phone in Lhasa.
'Numerous Western newspapers, broadcasts and Web sites were full of reporting on the Chinese government's 'crackdown' and 'tyranny' against the Tibetan people,' while largely ignoring the damage caused by rioters, Xinhua news agency said in a commentary published Monday.
Many of the stories of Han Chinese targeted in the violence are harrowing. And many echo with the disillusionment of people who feel that their pioneering spirit and desire to help develop China's West have been betrayed.
Fan Yunhua, 35, left his hometown in Sichuan province and moved to Tibet last November. He opened a small store selling cigarettes, alcohol and drinks using nearly $30,000 he had scraped together from friends and relatives. The shop was on East Beijing Road, not far from Jokhang Temple at the center of Lhasa's old quarter, and served tourists and local Tibetans.
'Folks at home all said it's easy to do business in Tibet,' says Mr. Fan. 'I also heard a lot from the media that the government is opening up Tibet.'
On March 14, Mr. Fan and his wife locked themselves inside their shop as crowds gathered on the streets around them. At around noon, a group of Tibetans broke the door open, Mr. Fan says. Some began knocking bottles from the shelves. Mr. Fan says he and his wife were dragged outside. The details of his story couldn't be independently corroborated.
Seven or eight people began to beat his wife, and as he tried to make his way to help her, he was hit in the head with 'a cellphone-sized rock,' he says. A Tibetan woman rescued his wife and dragged her to shelter by a fire truck. His wife and some other Han shopkeepers hid for two days before being escorted from the neighborhood by paramilitary police, Mr. Fan says.
Mr. Fan says he fled and made his way to a hospital where the wound in his scalp was closed with 20 stitches. The couple is now staying in a government-run shelter for victims of the violence. 'I still want to do business here. I still like the city. But it depends on whether the government will be able to guarantee our safety,' he says.
China's government is acting to reassure the Han population, deploying large numbers of police in Lhasa and elsewhere. Heavily armed police even patrolled the southwestern city of Chengdu over the weekend. Chengdu, more than 1,600 kilometers east of Lhasa, has a sizable Tibetan enclave. The authorities also are highlighting their efforts to bring rioters to justice.
At a news conference in Beijing on Monday, the Public Security Ministry said it had detained five Tibetan men and women in their early twenties on Sunday and Monday. The authorities said the five had confessed to two separate crimes of setting fire to a boutique and a car-repair shop in Lhasa, killing at least seven people -- both Han Chinese and Tibetans -- including an 8-month-old boy.
When Mr. Liu hit the ground after jumping from his burning store, he couldn't move, and was slapped in the face by a Tibetan man, Mr. Peng says. His girlfriend's mother broke an arm in the fall. The two were pulled from the scene by other Han Chinese civilians and policemen and taken to a hospital, Mr. Peng says.
Mr. Peng says he and the Lius could understand some of the Tibetan language but couldn't speak it and had 'very good relations' with their Tibetan customers. But, he says, he had witnessed previous altercations between Tibetans and Hans that had turned into ethnic standoffs. He says he believes the riots were masterminded by the Dalai Lama and were aimed at disrupting the Beijing Olympics in August -- an assertion repeatedly made by the Beijing government and denied by the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, who is in exile in India. Since the unrest started, the Dalai Lama has said violence isn't the way to advance the Tibetan cause.
Now, Mr. Peng says, he hopes the government will offer compensation for his and the Lius' losses. Mr. Peng says he and Mr. Liu are still too shaken to discuss their plans for the future. 'This is a sad place. We don't want to stay here. But we may have no choice, Mr. Peng says. 'We don't know if we can start it over.' The main concern now, he says: how to care for his son, who is now staying with relatives in his hometown in Hunan.
http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/20080325/chw112805.asp?source=email
Posted by google at 02:14 AM | Comments (0)
The limits of idealism
The limits of idealism
By Ashlea Surles on 3/28/08
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Five hundred kids were lined up at 9 a.m. and the 8,000 free tickets to see the Dalai Lama were gone within three hours. I'm not exactly surprised by the popularity of the event - after all, he is the world's most famous monk - but I'm curious to know what exactly it was that motivated thousands of college students to crawl out of bed on a freezing morning to get tickets to hear an old man speak.
Was it the mere prospect of being in the presence of greatness? Were students anxious to check off "see the Dalai Lama live and in person" from their life to-do list, or waxing obedient and fronting for their parents? Or were young intellectuals simply compelled by the promise of words of epic wisdom and unparalleled inspiration? After all, this is the Dalai Lama we're talking about.
He's probably the strongest voice for peace in our time, the most prominent proponent of harmony and the most legitimate hippie to date. He's a Nobel laureate, an honorary Canadian citizen and recipient of America's prestigious Congressional Gold Medal. Now, he's advocating a movement towards "post-identity thinking." As he proposed in a TIME magazine interview, we should "look past divisions of nation, race and religion and try to address our shared problems at the source," rather than taking them out on one another.
The magazine called this a "new global vision" and described it as "one of the brightest hopes for our new world order." But I don't quite understand why. Hasn't the bulk of society been striving to achieve this apparently "revolutionary" ideal of ethnic, religious and racial equality for quite some time now? All things considered, history suggests that this goal of utopian coexistence is more than a tad too ambitious for humanity to handle. I can't help but write off the Dalai Lama's suspiciously peaceful idea as nothing less than a fantastically far-fetched daydream - let's be serious, this is the 21st century, we don't really do that whole peace thing anymore.
In many respects, our troposphere is just as heavy with hatred as ever. A declining global economy, stacked on top of heightened immigration and intensifying globalization, has pitted natives of all countries against immigrants of all heritages. And rising inflation in many nations seems to be levering the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor even further open. In many cases, prejudice is being crystallized, if not created, everywhere everyday. And his 68-year reign - which has earned him the status of the most seasoned leader on the planet - has ensured that the current Dalai Lama has not missed any of this.
So, considering all he has seen, how can the Dalai Lama still fervently expend his energy and Tibet's resources, advocating what seems by all accounts to be nothing more substantial than a happy daydream? It could be his religiosity (after all, he is the world's foremost Buddhist monk) that ties him to this outlandish ideal. But he actually claims to value the scientific over the spiritual; he aptly advises people "not to get needlessly distracted by religion," and has taken heat for endorsing secular ethics more so than any of his predecessor. So, essentially, the Dalai Lama appears to be a level-headed and world-renowned advocate of a mentality that I, for some reason, consider to be about as realistic as magic wands.
And so, ironically, that makes me, the fresh-faced (but apparently not so much) representative of youthful optimism, absolutely skeptical about the value of the Dalai Lama's "new" campaign. But isn't youth supposed to be synonymous with optimism? Upon consideration, I wonder if I am a product of a generation that has entirely skipped the rose-colored glasses phase of young adult life and made my way through college to promptly settle right into the mindset of a weary, late-life cynic? It seems so, by all accounts. I don't know if that's because the world we live in has been much less idyllic than it was for our parents, but I am a 21-year old with the cynicism of Diogenes. I cannot even fathom a world of post-identity, non-prejudice, all-embracing, completely equitable proportions.
And I don't believe that I am alone in my unlit tunnel. When the Dalai Lama takes the podium in a few weeks and turns his wide-eyed gaze out into the sold-out audience, perhaps he will be looking out into a sea of my counterparts - young people seeking a reason, or a way, to be inspired about the prospect of a better world.
Ashlea Surles can be reached at ajsurles@umich.edu.
http://media.www.michigandaily.com/media/storage/paper851/news/2008/03/28/Columns/The-Limits.Of.Idealism-3289504.shtml
Posted by google at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)
I strongly support Beijing Olympics: Dalai Lama
Updated: 03-24-2008 Email this Page
New Delhi, March 23 (IANS) The Dalai Lama Sunday strongly supported the staging of the Olympic Games in Beijing later this year, saying the show must go on despite the present confrontation between Tibetans and Chinese authorities in Tibet.
'I support the Olympics being held in Beijing,' the Dalai Lama told reporters here on the sidelines of a five-day meditation camp he is leading here.
'I have always supported (the games). They should take place in China,' he added.
'They are the hosts. The Olympics should take place in Beijing,' the Tibetan spiritual leader maintained.
His statement came on the day Beijing accused the Dalai Lama of plotting 'terror' in Tibet and colluding with Uighur separatists in Xinjiang as it attempts to stamp out anti-Chinese unrest ahead of the Olympics.
The People's Daily, the ruling Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper, said Sunday that the Dalai Lama had never abandoned violence after fleeing to India in 1959.
'The so-called 'peaceful non-violence' of the Dalai clique is an outright lie from start to end,' the paper maintained.
'In 2008, the Beijing Olympic Games, eagerly awaited by the people of the whole world, will arrive. But the Dalai Lama is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese government to make concessions to Tibet independence,' the newspaper added.
Also on Sunday, European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering said a boycott of the Beijing Olympics should be considered if China does not re-evaluate its actions in Tibet.
'Beijing must decide. It must negotiate with the Dalai Lama immediately,' he told the mass circulation Bild newspaper.
Boycott measures were justified if there was no attempt at reconciling the differences, Poettering said.
'We should not exclude the possibility of a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. We want a successful Games, but not at the price of the cultural genocide of the Tibetans,' he said.
The European Parliament is to discuss the situation in Tibet Wednesday.
New Delhi has been witnessing violent protests against the alleged Chinese repression in Tibet.
On Friday, a group of Tibetan activists broke into the Chinese embassy here after scaling its boundary wall.
The police later detained an unspecified number of Tibetans outside the embassy in the capital's diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri.
http://www.andhracafe.com/index.php?m=show&id=32619
Posted by google at 02:07 AM | Comments (0)
Dalai Lama against Olympic boycott
Dalai Lama against Olympic boycott
Posted Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:03pm AEDT
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, has reiterated he is against any boycott of the Beijing Olympics, saying Chinese people should not be blamed for the situation in his homeland.
"The Olympic Games do not take place in Lhasa. The Olympic Games take place in Beijing," he said.
"It is illogical to blame millions of Chinese."
Some Tibetan exile organisations have been calling for a boycott of the August games after an eruption of protests and rioting in Tibet and a tough Chinese crackdown.
The Tibetan government-in-exile says its confirmed death toll from clashes between Chinese authorities and Tibetan protesters has now risen to 99.
"Confirmed, we have cross-checked the various reports," government-in-exile spokesman Thubten Samphel said.
He says 19 Tibetans were killed in fresh protests on Tuesday.
Torch relay
Activists have sent a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) demanding the Himalayan region and three neighbouring provinces be withdrawn from the Olympic torch relay.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says the riots in the Himalayan region were incited with the aim of sabotaging the Games.
The torch relay, which starts next Monday when the Olympic flame is lit in Ancient Olympia, Greece, is scheduled to go to Tibet twice.
The International Tibet Support Network says it has sent a letter to the IOC demanding that the torch relay not go through Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu provinces, all home to ethnic Tibetans.
"Unless the IOC wants the Olympic Torch to become a symbol of bloodshed and oppression, they must immediately withdraw all Tibetan provinces from the Olympic Torch relay route," a spokesperson said.
The torch relay schedule was drawn up by the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) before being given rubber-stamp approval by the IOC last year.
Resignation
The Dalai Lama has also offered to resign if the violence in Tibet spins out of control.
He has denied Chinese claims that he incited the riots, saying he only wants to see peaceful protests.
He says he is not pushing for Tibetan independence, insisting the people of China and Tibet can live side by side as citizens of the same country.
The Tibetan spiritual leader has challenged the Chinese government to produce evidence to support its claims.
"So this is, I think, your responsibility. Investigate," he said.
"Chinese telling me, Liar, Liar. So please, you investigate, who is liar?"
Posted by google at 02:04 AM | Comments (0)
The Politics of the Dalai Lama’s New Initiative for Autonomy
The Politics of the Dalai Lama’s New Initiative for Autonomy
Phayul[Sunday, October 09, 2005 00:32]
Baogang He & Barry Sautman
(Draft of 15 June 2005)
In recent years, the Dalai Lama has pursued a dialogic approach to the Tibet Question. He has significantly modified his views of autonomy and made a number of fundamental concessions. His present position should now clearly be distinguished from the stance he had from the late 1980s until recently. The Dalai Lama’s views from that time are still fixed in the minds of many people, but in the main they no longer constitute his approach.
From the late 1980s until recently for example, the Dalai Lama had refused to even imply Tibet is part of China. He stated in 2000 that “The Beijing government often puts pressure on me and wants me to declare that Tibet is a part of the Chinese territory. However, this is not a fact. I will not make such an erroneous statement.” He also maintained until recently that Tibetans and (Han) Chinese have no common bonds. In 1987, the Dalai Lama said that “Tibetans and Chinese are distinct peoples each with their own country, history, culture, language and way of life” and in 1995, he put it that “the Chinese and Tibetans are very fundamentally different peoples . . . We speak different languages; are of different civilizations, have different customs; our religion and culture, and even our written languages are completely different.” The Dalai Lama, as we will show, now no longer excludes Tibet from the Chinese state or the possibility Tibetans can be part of the supra-ethnic Chinese nation; at least he has indicated a willingness to confirm these views if negotiations with the Chinese government go forward.
From the late 1980s until a few years ago, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (TGIE) maintained that for an accommodation to be reached, China would have to renounce all control over affairs in Tibet except those involving foreign affairs and defense. We will also show that the Dalai Lama has altered the focus of the autonomy he seeks for Tibet by downplaying enhanced political and economic power and pursuing greater power as to religion and culture. Even in those spheres, he no longer claims an exclusive domain, but acknowledges a willingness to have the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “govern and guarantee to preserve our Tibetan culture, spirituality and our environment.”
The change in the Dalai Lama’s view is linked to prospects of negotiations for greater autonomy being pursued as a result of regular visits by his special envoys to China. Three visits were made in 2002-2004, creating a quasi-institutionalized forum at which both sides meet, discuss, and address issues in a regular manner. A fourth visit, for discussions of autonomy with officials of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will take place in 2005. The visits are seen by the TGIE both as part of a way to “’create atmosphere’ in a ‘long, drawn-out process’” and as setting the stage for resolving differences within a set period.
It is the expression of greater flexibility on key issues of the Tibet Question, together with a push to regularize contact between the parties that constitute the Dalai Lama’s new initiative for autonomy. The prime minister of the Tibetan Government-in-exile (TGIE) Samdhong Rinpoche has indicated as much:
Ever since the envoys of the Dalai Lama began meeting the Chinese government officials on three successive trips over the last three years, we are trying to create a congenial atmosphere to pave the way for starting formal negotiations between the two sides. We do not regard China as an enemy anymore, but more as a party with which we will have to negotiate. They have sought a reassurance from us on this.
Through recent statements on the relationship between Tibetans and China, the Dalai Lama has tried to provide that reassurance, as a result enduring unusually sharp criticism from Tibet independence supporters. When PRC premier Wen Jiabao paid a visit to India in April, 2005, moreover, Samdhong Rinpoche welcomed it, the first time the TGIE had ever welcomed the visit of a Chinese leader. In what follows, we examine the background to the Dalai Lama’s new initiative, outline recent developments, discuss obstacles to a breakthrough dialogue on autonomy, and suggest ways to overcome them.
Changing Wind
In the late 1980s, the 14th Dalai Lama proposed that the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) could remain responsible for Tibet’s foreign policy, while Tibet would be governed by its own liberal democratic constitution A decade later, he expressed disappointment that “the Chinese government has not responded positively to my proposals and initiatives over the past 18 years for a negotiated resolution of our problem within the framework, stated by Deng Xiaoping”; that apart from the question of total independence of Tibet, all other issues could be discussed and resolved.
Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have pressed PRC leaders to hold talks with the Dalai Lama and in 2001 the US Congress passed a Tibetan Policy Act with the same prescription. European Union (EU) External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten and Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes called on China in 2002 to begin dialogue with the Dalai Lama. A European Parliament (EP) delegation to China that year did the same, but were told by Beijing leaders that they were not ready for talks with the Tibetan leader. Indeed, Hu Jintao, CCP General Secretary and PRC President, stated "it is essential to fight unequivocally against the separatist activities by the Dalai clique and anti-China forces in the world, vigorously develop a good situation of stability and unity in Tibet and firmly safeguard national unity and state security."
In the late 1980s and 1990s, the collapse of the USSR brought a ray of hope to the Dalai Lama. He declined a 1989 invitation from the Chinese Buddhism Association to attend the Beijing funeral of the second highest figure in the Tibetan Buddhism, the 10th Panchen Lama, and he won the Nobel peace prize. The US Congress passed a non-binding resolution in 1991 stating that “Tibet is an occupied country” and urging the US to recognize the TGIE as the legitimate government of the Tibetan people.
Times have changed since then. Western and Indian media observers now write about a notable decline in support for the “Free Tibet movement” among political leaders and in wider circles. It now appears the disintegration of China hoped for by Tibetan exile leaders is unlikely. Instead, China has become an ever-greater regional power, a hub for world manufacture, and a catalyst for East Asian integration. Meanwhile, support for independence has seemingly diminished in Tibet, with both exile leaders and foreign supporters acknowledging there is no visible opposition movement there. The growing middle class, fostered by PRC government subsidies to the region, has not panned out as a force for separatist nationalism, but is inclined to seek stability; staying with China is seen as the best guarantor of Tibet’s interests and prosperity.
As a growing power, China has gained support from the international community for the maintenance of its recognized territorial boundaries. During his 1992 electoral campaign, Bill Clinton openly supported the Tibetan exile cause, but changed his policy toward Tibet as soon as he entered the White House. In 2000, George W. Bush said that US would defend Taiwan if the mainland attacked it, but in 2003-2004, he opposed Chen Shui-bian’s referendum proposal and has provided no meaningful support for the Tibetan exile cause. In the 2004 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate John Kerry even endorsed China’s “one country, two systems” proposal for Taiwan. A year 2000 EP resolution called for appointment of an EU Special Representative for Tibet and recognition of the TGIE as the legitimate representative of the Tibetans, if Beijing refused to hold talks with the Dalai Lama within the next three years. Meeting with the Dalai Lama a month before the three-year deadline was to expire, Anders Fogh Rassmussen, prime minister of Denmark, an EU country with longstanding ties to the exiles, stated he did not believe there was a need for new initiatives by the EU or Denmark. When the sixth EU-China Summit was held in October 2003, Tibet was not even mentioned. The EU is now contemplating lifting its arms embargo against China and has asked the PRC to meet four human rights conditions for that to happen, but none of them involve Tibet.
The Dalai Lama’s two major traditional allies have changed their position on Tibet. Britain, which had since 1906 spoken in terms of China’s “suzerainty” in Tibet, in an attempt to turn Tibet into a neutral buffer between India and China, now acknowledges PRC sovereignty. During the 2003 visit to China of Indian Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee, the Indian government, which had inherited the British “suzerainty” notion, stated that the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is a part of China. In return, China recognized Sikkim as a part of India. Although Indian officials argued their statement represented no change in policy on Tibet, the pronouncement proved a disappointment to Tibetan exiles, with the largest exile organization, the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), stating that “Vajpayee’s signing of the declaration amounted to obliterating Tibet.” TGIE Kalon Tripa (prime minister) Samdhong Rinpoche said after Vajpayee’s visit that “the reality is that Tibet is China’s autonomous part” The affirmation of PRC sovereignty by Vajpayee’s right-wing regime, which might have been expected to be hostile to China on the Tibet question, was likely a factor in causing the TYC president to speculate that it may take 500 or 1,000 years to make Tibet free and in inducing exile leaders to come closer than ever before to meeting the prime PRC condition for negotiations -- a public statement by the Dalai Lama that Tibet is an inalienable part of China. During a November 2003 trip to the Vatican, he reportedly stated “We accept Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China.”
The Dalai Lama is entering his 70s and is sometimes ill. Indeed, his life was thought to be in danger in 2002 and the question of his reincarnation was inevitably raised. In an interview with a Taiwanese journalist in 2000, he had already stated that the Tibetan theocracy, based on a reincarnation system, should be abandoned, and that he would not take part in politics if he returns to China. In a speech to Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan, he again expressed his preference for ending the system. Many Tibetans in exile disfavor this option, viewing it as an abandonment of Tibetan tradition. The most that the Dalai Lama would concede however is his intention to not be reincarnated in PRC territory.
Even if the Dalai Lama dies outside the PRC, it is likely that two 14th Dalai Lamas will emerge, one outside China, and the other chosen within China and affirmed by PRC authorities. Such an outcome will weaken the 14th Dalai Lama’s power, undermine Tibetan tradition, and increase tensions among Tibetan exiles, China, and the country where the reincarnation is found. The TGIE thus may now prefer that the Dalai Lama dies and is reincarnated within Chinese territory. The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, the next most prominent Buddhist leader in exile, has stated that “’If in his wisdom the Dalai Lama decides to take rebirth in China-held territory, one should not be surprised.” Many Tibetans want the Dalai Lama to die in Tibet because if he dies on foreign soil, his “head” and “body” will be separated. This is an important reason why the Dalai Lama is pressing China to speed up the dialogue process.
Given these conditions, as US Tibet specialist Melvyn Goldstein points out, the Dalai Lama and TGIE have three, not mutually exclusive options: 1. maintain the status quo by continuing the campaign of enhancing international support; 2. escalate the conflict by encouraging and even organizing violence in Tibet; and 3. compromise by sending Beijing a message that the Dalai Lama is ready to scale down his political demands in order to preserve a more homogeneous Tibetan homeland. Evidence indicates that the Dalai Lama has chosen the third option and made significant concessions.
The Dalai Lama’s Concessions
New Thinking about Autonomy
The Dalai Lama’s Five Point Peace Plan, presented on Washington’s Capitol Hill in 1987, and his 1988 Strasbourg Proposal before the EP, laid out his initial positions on autonomy. Under the Proposal, the PRC would remain responsible for Tibet’s foreign policy, while Tibet would be governed by its own constitution or basic law. The Tibetan government would comprise a popularly elected chief executive, a bicameral legislature and an independent legal system. It would have a special duty to safeguard and develop religious practice. The Proposal’s inclusion of a directly elected chief executive and independent judiciary represents a fundamental rupture in the current Chinese political system and makes no room for the CCP, implying an end to party leadership. Given its authoritarian system, Beijing will not accept a proposal of this kind.
In 1992, the Dalai Lama demanded that Chinese leaders allow Tibet, Inner Mongolia and East Turkestan [Xinjiang] “to become free and equal partners in a new world order.” In recent years however, the Dalai Lama has emphasized cultural autonomy, played down political autonomy, and shown respect for the Chinese constitutional framework. There was an internal discussion among Tibetan exiles in 1999 about the possibility of proposing a power sharing mechanism. It is also suggested that the TGIE recognize the reality of CCP leadership in Tibet and the role of the central government in a transitional arrangement. While the central party organization would have the right to appoint Tibet’s party secretary, Tibet would have the right to elect its governor. Learning from the practice of India, it is suggested the center would have the right to remove the governor if necessary. If China lists convincing reasons for an appointed chief executive, the TGIE would agree to postpone direct elections for ten-years.
In a 2005 interview, the Dalai Lama presented a substantially changed view of Tibet’s relationship with China and prospects for governance in Tibet. He recognized that PRC Tibetans are in some measure Chinese, because Tibetan culture and Buddhism are part of Chinese culture and Tibet is part of China's 5,000 year history. He also affirmed that Tibet gains materially from being part of China. His previous view was that Tibet might benefit in the future from being part of China, but that it does not presently, because China exploits Tibet, so that it benefits from having Tibet and not the other way around.
It was also reported that a TGIE official stated that the Dalai Lama now only wants autonomy as to religious and cultural matters, not political, economic and diplomatic affairs. This position was pre-figured by a 2004 statement of Thubten Samphel, the TGIE’s spokesman, that Tibetans “should be allowed genuine spiritual and cultural autonomy, and a degree of political space.” In terms of religious and cultural autonomy, the Dalai Lama reportedly has been concerned he be able to live year-round in Lhasa’s Potala Palace, travel in and out of China and to all Tibetan areas, have full control over the publication and editing of religious texts, and have undisputed authority to appoint abbots of monasteries and supervise the choice of reincarnations of important lamas. Such concerns are vastly different from those reflected in past assertions that Tibet must have a liberal political system. The Dalai Lama now speaks of enhanced autonomy under the PRC constitution and the need to remain in China to foster economic development.
The borders of an autonomous Tibet
Its conception of Tibet’s borders is one of the most sensitive aspects of the Dalai Lama’s 1988 Autonomy Proposal: Tibet would take in the whole Tibet Plateau, encompassing the traditional Tibetan areas of U-Tsang, Kham and Amdo, an area one-fourth of PRC territory. Besides the TAR, “greater Tibet” would include most of Qinghai province and parts of Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan, areas where 53% of PRC Tibetans live amidst Han Chinese and other ethnic groups. Greater Tibet would become a self-governing democratic political entity.
Although before the 1950s, Tibet’s boundaries and political status were not determined by modern standards, “greater Tibet” is at the core of modern Tibetan nationalism. Since 1959, Tibetan nationalists have sought to create a pan-Tibetan identity, fueling antagonism with PRC leaders, for whom Tibet is confined to today's TAR, the area previously ruled by the Dalai Lama. By 1996, the Dalai Lama had already acknowledged that much of the eastern Tibet Plateau had not been under Lhasa’s rule and expressed an interest in cultural preservation, rather than political control of the area. While the TGIE until at least 2003 still insisted that “The whole of Tibet inhabited by the Tibetan people should be given genuine autonomy,” the Dalai Lama no longer uses a concept of greater Tibet in the sense of insisting on unification of all Tibetan areas, but focuses on cultural protection within a Tibetan cultural zone. He avoids emphasizing political boundaries, has stated that “my concern is culture, and spirituality, and environment,” and seems to accept there will be no boundary question under the constitutional framework of China.
In a forum on Tibetan autonomy, Prof. Ezra Vogel of Harvard University asked whether re-drawing boundaries to include Tibetans outside the TAR would be acceptable to China. Zheng Shiping, a US political scientist originally from China, replied, "I don't think it would be possible to change the boundaries. It would just be a waste of time." Bhuchung Tsering, director of International Campaign for Tibet, stressed however that "We should look at this issue from a different perspective. Let's put the emphasis on the survival of the Tibetan people. I don't see why this can't be accommodated within Chinese limitations. To the Chinese, the idea of a 'Greater Tibet' seems very sinister. But the survival of the Tibetan people would be acceptable." The provision to Tibetans outside the TAR of any social and cultural benefit accorded TAR Tibetans may be a suitable way to realize this goal. For example, for a quarter century TAR Tibetans have not had to pay regional taxes on farming and herding income. In 2004, Sichuan province exempted its autonomous area minorities (mostly Tibetans) from paying such taxes. By the same token, TAR Tibetans would be allowed rights accorded Tibetans elsewhere; for example, the right to publicly display photos of the Dalai Lama.
The withdrawal of Chinese troops
The Dalai Lama’s 1988 Autonomy Proposal demanded withdrawal of Chinese troops, to transform the whole of Tibet into a zone of peace. Only with the withdrawal of troops could a genuine process of reconciliation begin. China would have the right to maintain a restricted number of military installations in Tibet, solely for defensive purposes, until a peace conference is convened and demilitarization and neutralization achieved.
In 2003, the Dalai Lama stated that the number of paramilitary People's Armed Police should be reduced in Tibetan cities, implying his acceptance of the deployment of Chinese troops. The Dalai Lama no longer demands a complete withdrawal of the Chinese army, nor does he insist on any withdrawal as a precondition for negotiations.
The Hong Kong Model of Autonomy
The Dalai Lama has demanded that Hong Kong’s one country two systems policy be applied to Tibet and many commentators have considered its suitability for Tibet. Under it, Beijing would be responsible only for Tibet's foreign affairs and defense, while Tibetans would be free to make their own decisions as to other matters. To endorse a Hong Kong model for Tibet however, the Dalai Lama must be aware of its political implications. Under it, China’s sovereignty includes a Hong Kong garrison, Beijing’s appointment of all high-level officials, and executive dominance through the tight circumscription of legislative power. This set-up differs fundamentally from what the Dalai Lama demanded in his original autonomy proposal, which was essentially an American-style system of governance. The Dalai Lama does seem impressed however with Hong Kong’s ability to control the movement of population from mainland China. Though it will not totally end migration of Han into Tibetan areas, a Hong Kong model would slow the process. Tibetan autonomy could then focus on preservation of culture and religion, with Tibetans having a greater say about such matters.
Three Visits
In late 1978, the Dalai Lama established his first direct contact with PRC leaders since 1959. That came to an end in 1993, but indirect contacts via private persons and semi-officials continued. In January, 2002 a face-to-face meeting between the Dalai Lama’s representatives and PRC officials responsible for Tibet policy took place outside China. This paved the way for a September 2002 visit to Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Lhasa by a four-member Tibetan exile delegation, headed by the Dalai Lama’s special envoys, Lodi Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, and including their special assistants, Sonam Dagpo and Bhuchung Tsering. The same delegation visited Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Yunnan provinces from May 25-June 8, 2003, soon after changes in the CCP and PRC leaderships. In a third trip of the same four-member team, from September 12-29, 2004, they met Minister Liu Yandong, Vice Chairperson of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and leader of the CCP United Front Work Department [UFWD], Zhu Weiqun, a Vice-Minister, Chang Rongjun, head of the UFWD Nationalities and Religion Department, and other Beijing officials. The three visits have given Tibetans in exile the opportunity to re-establish contacts, explain the Dalai Lama's approach, and engage extensively with new Chinese leaders and officials responsible for Tibet policy.
There have been positive effects from the three visits. The TGIE first ordered exile officials abroad to not organize protests against PRC leaders who visit Western countries. It then asked Tibet support groups and NGOs to not be very aggressive in staging such demonstrations and, according to the TYC, demanded that pro-independence activists in India not hold processions or shout anti-Beijing slogans on the occasion of the March 10 commemoration of the 1959 Lhasa uprising. During a 1984 visit to China by Tibetan exile officials, they encountered cadres who complained of the Cultural Revolution and their suffering, but the recent delegations were impressed by self-confident officials empowered by China’s development and were overwhelmed by the development itself, thus strengthening the idea Tibet is better off staying in China than seeking independence. As the Dalai Lama said, “the best guarantee for Tibet” is to “remain within the People’s Republic of China,” and “more union, more cooperation is in our best interest.” In 2003, an exile special task force discussed how Sino-Tibet relations could be enhanced, with Lodi Gyari consulting with specialists on whether the Dalai Lama should visit China.
On China’s side, TAR leaders regarded the first visit as purely private, but Beijing did acknowledge the second visit and the existence of “official” contact between the two sides. Harsh criticisms of the Dalai Lama as a “splittist” were reduced and his positive efforts to create a constructive environment were explicitly recognized. In 2003, the TAR governor told foreign journalists that China welcomes the Dalai Lama to visit Tibet if he comes as a PRC citizen and recognizes Tibet as an inalienable part of China.
The three visits were aimed at building confidence by dispelling misconceptions and distrust. A lack of sincerity and mutual trust remains. In addition, there are fundamental differences in the two sides’ conceptions of autonomy. Indeed, the Tibetan exile delegation stated that “there are major differences on a number of issues, including some fundamental ones. Both sides acknowledged the need for more substantive discussions in order to narrow the gaps and reach a common ground. We stressed the need for both sides to demonstrate flexibility, far-sightedness and vision to bridge the differences.”
Why the Absence of Dialogue?
There are several reasons for the absence of a formal dialogue between the exiles and Beijing. First, some Chinese hardliners believe the Dalai Lama’s death will be a grave blow to the Tibetan independence cause and that migrants will create a multi-ethnic community in Tibetan areas that will weaken the demographic basis for an independence movement. They even prefer the Dalai Lama die outside of China, as that may create religious divisions, as has been the case with the designation of the reincarnation of the 17th Karmapa. Most exiles do not deny that the Dalai Lama’s passing will sharply set back their cause: one pro-independence member of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile has stated that “As long as he is alive, he will be the foremost motivating factor. After his passing away, for the next 50 years Tibetans will not be able to bring any sort of momentum for their struggle and the Tibetan issue will be lost.” Others contend that the Dalai Lama’s passing will not mean an end to the Tibet Question.
Second, to Beijing, Tibet already enjoys autonomy. In visits to China in 2002 and 2003, Lodi Gyari, the delegation head, confronted Chinese cultural and ideological opposition to the 1988 Autonomy Proposal. Many PRC officials told him that China has already developed a sound system of autonomy, implying it does not need the Dalai Lama’s proposal. Lodi Gyari would like the Chinese to revise their view of autonomy, taking it as an intrinsic value that provides citizens with inalienable rights, rather than using it as an instrument for national unity and social control, demonstrated for example through Tibet being accord the right to elect its governor.
Third, there is fear the CCP will lose control if the Dalai Lama returns to Tibet. A senior PRC official has stated that “The Dalai Lama’s return to China will bring a great risk of instability. We will then not be able to control Tibet.” Reportedly, officials in the TAR fear that with the Dalai Lama in the Potala Palace, “he will inevitably become the source of all authority. Any theoretical separation of church and state will be impossible to maintain and the [CCP] will lose its influence over Tibetans.” One might argue however that if the Dalai Lama returns to Tibet with a PRC passport and TV stations show this passport, this will strengthen China’s stand.
Fourth, a key reason is Beijing thinks the Dalai Lama has not met its preconditions. Then-President Jiang Zemin stated in 1998 that before dialogue could begin, the Dalai Lama must “publicly make a statement and a commitment that Tibet is an inalienable part of China” and “must also recognize Taiwan as a province of China.” Premier Wen Jiabao reaffirmed that in 2003 and noted that “regrettably” the Dalai Lama had not met the preconditions and had not genuinely given up independence and separatist activities. PRC government spokespeople continue to uphold the preconditions, indicating that they believe the Dalai Lama has not actually forsaken independence and separatist actions.
Many exile officials also refuse to commit to the idea that Tibet is an inalienable part of China and in interviews in 1999 in India gave several reasons for not stating that Tibet is an inalienable part of China. First, the Dalai Lama has already announced he would not seek independence. Second, the Dalai Lama’s public declaration should be linked to China’s promise to grant genuine autonomy, but exile officials argued that PRC leaders will not do so even if the Dalai Lama makes this declaration. Third, Tibet’s history as an independent country is bargaining power for greater autonomy; a public announcement will deprive Tibetans of this power. Fourth, Tibetans want independence, not autonomy; a public declaration would mean giving up the goal of independence, which should never be renounced.
Another position was also mentioned: that Tibet was not an inalienable part of China in the past, but is now a part of China, a position the Dalai Lama now seemingly follows. Thus, the TGIE has stated that the Dalai Lama has “acknowledged the de facto status of Tibet” as part of China, but that “the issue of Tibet is yet to be resolved.” Queried about whether he is ready to acknowledge that Tibet is an integral part of China, the Dalai Lama replied, “Not that one sentence. Since 1950-51, as far as the central autonomous region of Tibet is concerned, after the seventeen-point agreement was signed, then Tibet became part of the People's Republic of China … But then in the past, that's up to history.”
The Dalai Lama’s statements on Tibet being a part of China thus far have not been seen by the PRC as sufficient because he has not used the term “inalienable.” Beijing does not think the Dalai Lama has met its precondition because he has not repudiated his 1991 statement that “Tibet was an independent country before its occupation by China. It had its own government, now in exile…There is no justification claiming that Tibet was ‘part of China’ as Peking claims today.” In response to a PRC offer to return the Dalai Lama to Tibet if he becomes a PRC citizen and acknowledges Tibet is an inalienable part of China, TGIE Department of Information and International Relations secretary Sonam Dagpo said the latter pre-condition was not acceptable, since Tibet had always been an independent nation until China occupied it forcibly. The PRC and Tibetan exiles may however set aside the issue of whether Tibet was independent before 1951, as Britain and China eventually did with the question of the validity of “three unequal treaties” that were the basis for British rule in Hong Kong. In any case, the Dalai Lama’s 2005 statement that Tibet is part of China’s 5,000 year history of tradition excludes an insistence that Tibet has always been independent, while the Chinese government does not demand the Dalai Lama affirm that Tibet has always been part of China.
The TGIE has quoted only the Dalai Lama’s statements that the Taiwan issue “is not my business” and “mainly depends on the people of Taiwan.” For Beijing, Tibet and Taiwan must adhere to the one-China policy and recognize each other as a part of China. For the Dalai Lama, it is thought his image would be damaged if he publicly opposed Taiwan independence in response to political pressure. Taiwan independence forces have moreover been allies with a goal similar to his own; an acknowledgement that Taiwan is part of China would weaken an alliance enhanced by Chen Shui-bian’s presidency.
The Dalai Lama reportedly said in 1998, however, that “’Taiwan’s future should . . . be viewed under the one China policy . . . My stand is: I don’t support or encourage Taiwan’s independence movement.” Kelsang Gyaltsen affirmed at the time -- a moment of hope for a breakthrough to negotiations -- that “the Dalai Lama has never doubted the ‘one China’ policy.” The Dalai Lama may revert to that position if it appears that little has been gained from his de facto alliance with Taiwan independence forces. In 2000, he denied a report that “Tibetans and Taiwanese would form a common front to press for independence from China.” He may come to view the Taiwan independence forces as taking advantage of the Tibet issue, adding obstacles to creating conditions favorable to a dialogue, especially as other allies, most notably the Bush administration, have disapproved Taiwan pro-independence moves.
Beijing sees the Dalai Lama’s advocacy of autonomy for Tibet as a smokescreen for independence because he fails to stop separatist activities, yet TGIE spokesman Thubten Samphel has claimed to have “no idea what China means by ‘separatist activities.’” TGIE/TYC relations are an example of such activities, however: the TYC goal is an independent Tibet headed by the Dalai Lama. It has launched campaigns like “Boycott Made in China” and “No Olympics 2008 in Beijing,” efforts blessed by the Dalai Lama's oldest brother, Professor Thupten Norbu and by his prime minister, who addressed a 2004 Tibetan youth leadership training program organized by the TYC, an organization that announced in the same year its plans to train for “guerrilla activities” and in 2005 said “We are opposed to the Dalai Lama’s stand” and “We do not support the Dalai Lama at all.” Another example is TGIE participation in the pan-separatist Allied Committee of the Peoples of East Turkestan, Tibet and Inner Mongolia, founded in 1985 and still being promoted in 2005. The history of negotiating processes to reach agreements aimed at settling major ethno-territorial disputes shows that no progress is possible if the two sides do not decisively break with nationalist extremists in their midst.
Tibetan Exile Perspectives
The Dalai Lama, TGIE and pro-Dalai Lama Western scholars have provided several reasons for Beijing to start a dialogue as soon as possible.
View the Dalai Lama as an asset
The main problem lies in the PRC leader’s negative perception of the Dalai Lama. If they change their view, the Tibet problem can be solved. Lodi Gyari argues that Beijing sees the Dalai Lama as used by the USA to “split” China: to reduce the chance of his being used by outsiders, the best solution is to let him live in China. As long as the Dalai Lama lives outside China, Tibetan loyalty will follow suit. Kelsang Gyaltsen has said that “the Dalai Lama is the only person who would persuade Tibetans to accept an agreement with the Chinese government that would recognize Tibet to be part of the PRC.” Orville Schell, dean of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, has advised Beijing to view the Dalai Lama as an asset who could serve the interests of Han and Tibetans alike, rather than as a die-hard "splittist," and to return him to Lhasa as a religious and cultural avatar. John Kenneth Knaus, a Harvard researcher, has asserted that “for China, it would be a loss of an opportunity to benefit from the presence of the one person who is best able to guarantee peace….”
Consequences of Denying Dialog
Kelsang Gyaltsen warns that failure to reach agreement with the Dalai Lama could inspire generations of Tibetans to resistance. Lodi Gyari argues that the longer the PRC waits, the greater will be the resentment, the difficulty in convincing Tibetans to accept a solution short of independence, and the danger extreme leaders will emerge.
Preventing Political Violence
Currently, the Dalai Lama and TGIE are pledged to a nonviolent strategy, which most Tibetan exile leaders are dedicated to realizing. If that strategy cannot work, however, radical groups such as the TYC will gain the confidence needed to launch violence, as was the case for the Irish Republican Army and Hamas in recent decades. The ideal of peace-loving among Tibetans is a contemporary development. There have been many instances of mass violence in Tibetan history and Tibetan youths still protested against Jiang Zeming’s visit to the US, despite a good-will gesture ban by the TGIE.
To prevent radicals from gaining influence, the Dalai Lama insists that China begin a dialogue sooner rather than later. He warned in 2003 that violence may occur that he is unable to stop, if peaceful dialogue does not produce results within two or three years. History shows when moderates fail, radicals take over and when they do, even more hardline elements emerge to outbid them for support. It is shortsighted to imagine exile violence will favor China because it goes against the Dalai Lama’s strategy, damages his reputation as a peacemaker, and serves to justify suppression. Israel adopted that approach in facilitating the emergence of Hamas as a counter to the Palestine Liberation Organization and now faces dire consequences.
Benefits for China’s Unity
The Tibet problem directly threatens China’s unity, but also has implications for Taiwan and Xinjiang. The Dalai Lama has stated that if China were to address the Tibet issue properly, it could only have positive implications for Hong Kong, Taiwan and the PRC international image. With many Taiwanese moving away from a Chinese national identity in recent years, peaceful resolution of the Tibet issue will help China to strengthen its national identity and persuade Taiwan leaders to come to negotiate.
Difficulties from Democratization
The Dalai Lama praises democratization among Tibetan exiles, who in 2001 directly elected the Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies. Samdhong Rinpoche was elected Kalon Tripa by over 84 per cent of the vote. Exile democracy is characterized however by the overriding power of the Dalai Lama, who gave instructions for direct elections and an increase in the parliament’s power. Samdhong Rinpoche has said of the Dalai Lama that “we can’t do anything without him.” Indeed, even a move by the TGIE to close down its Budapest office in 2005 required approval by the Dalai Lama. The exile political system integrates political institutions and Buddhism and the very top positions are held by monks (the “head of state” and “head of government,” so to speak). There are no party politics and criticism of the Dalai Lama is treated as illegitimate in the exile community. Will top-down democratization ensure that moderates wield power or will it empower radicals?
When the Dalai Lama dies, exile democratization may deepen, but that would make it more difficult for Beijing to strike a deal with the TGIE, as a pact will be subject to the will of diverse exiles. The lesson from East Timor is that an early grant of autonomy is an effective way to prevent future independence. If Indonesian strongman Suharto had offered autonomy, the East Timor issue would likely have been resolved. When his successor Habibie offered autonomy in 1999, rapid democratization was already underway in Indonesia and it was too late. If China had made a deal with Taiwan’s then- President Jiang Jinguo in 1986, before Taiwan’s democratization, the one China principle would have become entrenched there.
Preparing Groundwork for Breakthrough
Cognitive and ideological gaps between Tibetan exile and PRC perspectives have been so great the two sides have been unable to sit together at a negotiating table. While China sees the Dalai Lama as advocating “disguised independence,” the TGIE sees Beijing as playing games. Both sides need to take steps to reduce animosity and increase familiarity with each others’ positions; for example, the Tibet exile delegation has attempted to prove the Dalai Lama’s autonomy is not equivalent to independence. Both sides need to develop a non-zero-sum game, re-examine tendentious claims, drop recriminations, and create a roadmap to negotiations. Instead of being preoccupied with talk of “fake” or genuine” autonomy, for example, the focus should be on improving the existing autonomy system.
The Dalai Lama Side The Dalai Lama needs to reconsider his strategy. The TGIE has had international successes, but has had little impact within China, where it invites suspicion. It views internationalization as overcoming Beijing’s winning position in politics, by making it a loser in the moral battle, as reflected in Samdhong Rinpoche’s statement that “We have a unique source of strength, which puts us in a position to negotiate with China on equal terms. We have the strength of truth and non-violence, which, if anything, makes us more powerful than China.” The sense of international success, measured in terms of politicians, cultural figures, and NGOs favoring the TGIE position, obscures its view of the realities of the politics of creating expanded autonomy for Tibet.
The Dalai Lama should adopt a gradual strategy starting from cultural autonomy, before moving on to other forms of autonomy. There is reason to believe that he is willing to do so. He stated in 2004 that China had to accept three things in order to solve Tibet’s problems: “’Tibet’s unique cultural heritage and compassionate spirituality, and delicate situation of environment.’” Both sides could cooperate in building the Tibetan economy. While it is legitimate and appealing to hold to a Buddhist green vision of economic development, it is unproductive for the TGIE to reflexively oppose China’s economic development projects, especially given that the Dalai Lama has recognized that “all Tibetans want more prosperity, more material development.”
Autonomy is not created full-blown, but involves an on-going process of learning and mutual adjustment. Patience is the key to progress, as it is impossible to remove fifty years of distrust through a few visits. China has reason to be suspicious, due to the historical involvement of the CIA, the internationalization of the Tibet Question, TYC support for Tibetan independence, etc. Moves such as deadlines for negotiations moreover have led nowhere, but have only proved the ineffectiveness of those who set them, when no action was taken after the deadline passed. Finally, there is a need to contain rejectionists on both sides. As long as moderates are in power and work towards a cooperative, interactive future, there is hope for a peaceful settlement in the long run.
Beijing Side In January 2005, the TGIE, guided by Dalai Lama, added a new unit, “the Task Force on Negotiations.” To respond to this initiative, the CCP UFWD should not host Tibetan exile delegations, as that may be misconceived as merely an effort to persuade the world of the Party’s beneficent inclusiveness. Rather, the PRC government should rename the working group now composed of officials from the UFWD, the Department of Public Security, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a Tibet Commission or create such a commission to concentrate work on the issue. It should also extend the scope of official Tibetan exile visits beyond the Dalai Lama’s representatives. Moreover, the Tibetan exiles’ visits and meetings with PRC officials should be institutionalized, as a forum to be held once a year, with a working group focusing on education and culture, and an exchange program between Buddhist schools and institutions established.
To facilitate a settlement Beijing needs to create political space for the TGIE to take the actions needed for negotiations to begin, such as granting the inalienability of Tibet. If the PRC addresses issues of importance to Tibetans, the TGIE can work around its previous objections to preconditions for negotiations. For example, both sides frame the issue of Tibet’s status as a question of history. Émigré leaders claim the PRC insists that they recognize that Tibet has always been part of China, while the TGIE holds “Tibet has always been an independent nation.” Recently however, Samdhong Rinpoche has said that Tibet’s administrations from 1640 to 1951 were local governments in relation to China. That goes some way toward circumventing the historical issue.
Before the Cultural Revolution, PRC leaders urged Chinese to fight against Han chauvinism (da hanzu zhuyi). Since then, attention in minority areas has been on fighting “local nationalism.” To restore the balance in Tibetan areas, the government could finance a program to educate non-Tibetans who migrate there about the achievements of Tibetan culture. An anti-racial discrimination law, similar perhaps to the one planned for Hong Kong, would also address a key issue that creates ethnic tension and could be important in combating employment discrimination. While even a vigorously enforced law will not change the ethnic distribution of labor in Tibet, it would empower jobseekers who face ethnic and “home place” (lao jia) nepotism.
Tibet has never had a Tibetan Party Secretary. That may be because of a tradition from imperial times to not employ officials in their home areas. Exceptions to this policy now exist however; in 2003, 18 of the 62 “provincial chiefs” (governors and party secretaries) were serving in their birth provinces. Because there has not been a Tibetan Party Secretary, many believe Beijing does not regard any Tibetan as competent and loyal enough to hold the office; yet there are doubtless Tibetans qualified to do so: a disproportionate number (6 of 198 full members) of the current CCP Central Committee are Tibetans. A Tibetan Party Secretary would be regarded an indication that the CCP trusts Tibetans to lead Tibet.
It is often argued that Han benefit more than Tibetans from development in Tibet, not surprisingly as they heavily concentrate in favored urban areas, while most Tibetans are peasants or herders. Although there is growing Tibetan migration to cities, ethnic disparities are significant there as well and will persist as long as there is an educational and experiential gap between Han and Tibetans. To compensate for this tendency, preferential policies in the state economy should be reinvigorated and extended to the private sector, including mandates, such as job and shareholding quotas, that favor Tibetans. Wide-ranging affirmative action in Malaysia resulted in greater equality and reduced ethnic tension: in 1970 ethnic Malays owned 2.4% of corporate wealth, but by 2003 had about 20%, yet wealth shares of ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indians rose from 30% to 40%, while average per capita income in Malaysia jumped from RM 1,132 in 1970 to RM13,683 in 2003. Results of affirmative action in Malaysia have been mentioned favorably in official PRC media.
The government could restrict migration to Tibet. To curtail or even ban migration to minority areas of a country is not uncommon: India bars the movement of “mainland Indians” to Nagaland, Kashmir and the Andaman and Nicobar islands; Vietnam prohibits “spontaneous migration” to the ethnic minority Central Highlands. For Tibetans to be at the center of Tibet’s economy, they need higher-level skills, but in rural areas especially, there is not much incentive for education, because Tibetan children contribute to family labor resources. The government could pay every Tibetan child who attends school a stipend equal to the child’s contribution to the family’s income. It would be well worth the expense, as most Tibetans can only become prosperous if education levels rise sharply. A decade ago, N. Ireland was a disadvantaged part of the UK, but today is said to have better schools, higher healthcare standards, and more cultural amenities than “mainland Britain.” The gap between Ulster’s communities has been narrowed through subsidies, fair employment legislation, affirmative action, greatly expanded educational opportunities and the adoption by Catholics of education as the main avenue of upward mobility.
Concerns are expressed about the ban on public display of Dalai Lama photos in the TAR that began in 1996. The ban is not enforced in Tibetan areas of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan however and no untoward consequences have followed, indicating that displays in a religious context can be accommodated without compromising anti-separatism.
Finally, international law entitles states to punish separatism, but those punished must be well-treated. Abusers of prisoners do sometimes face severe consequences elsewhere in China. That seems rare in Tibet, despite many credible reports of torture, yet harsh punishment for abusers should diminish sympathy for separatism.
Current global and national trends favor peaceful dialogue as a means of resolving the Tibet issue. The international environment is ripe for dialogue. Bush needs China’s support for the war against terrorism, so the US is likely to support China in an effort to solve the Tibet Question in a way that does not threaten China’s security and unity. Dialogue with the Dalai Lama will neutralize critics in Western parliaments and help convince many of the Chinese government’s good will.
With China’s increasing power, the so-called Tibet issue no longer threatens China’s national security; and the Dalai Lama’s new initiative and statement about Tibet’s history and status provide a further reassurance. The visits of Taiwan’s opposition parties to China in April and May 2005 have eased the tension across the Taiwan Strait and opened a door for a peaceful dialogue. New peace efforts elsewhere in the world, for instance, between the Indonesian government and independence forces in Aceh and between Israel and the newly-elected Palestine leadership, strengthens a global trend toward dialogue in resolving seemingly intractable conflicts.
While the Dalai Lama would have to adopt tough but persuasive measures to ensure that the growing opposition among young Tibetans in exile to his concessions would not derail his new autonomy process, it is now up to the Beijing leadership, in particular, President Hu Jintao. If Hu Jintao with his determination, commitment and wisdom can grasp this golden opportunity to take a decisive decision to engage in direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama and to make a number of concessions, there is a possibility that Hu Jintao and the Dalai Lama might share a Nobel Peace Prize one day. The Chinese and world community should be encouraged to think the unthinkable in this matter despite many rocks and steep hills remaining on the road to dialogue and a noble peace.
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Dalai Lama on the 'Middle Way'
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With Tibet in turmoil, Dalai Lama visit to 'U' still planned
With Tibet in turmoil, Dalai Lama visit to 'U' still planned
China has accused Tibet's spiritual leader of inciting unrest, he has called for end to violence
By Jillian Berman, Daily Staff Reporter on 3/26/08
PrintEmail Article Tools Page 1 of 1 With tension mounting in China, the Dalai Lama's scheduled visit to the University next month has taken on new significance.
The Dalai Lama is slated to deliver a lecture called "Engaging Wisdom and Compassion" at Crisler Arena April 19 and 20.
The Chinese government has accused Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama and spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, of inciting the recent wave of anti-Chinese violence in Tibet.
As host of the 2008 Olympic games, China is in the international spotlight and coming under fire from the United States, Britain and other countries for using force against the Tibetan protestors. The Chinese government, which has controlled the region of Tibet since 1951, claims that 19 protesters have been killed as a result of the protests, but aides close to the Dalai Lama say the toll is closer to 130.
Gyatso, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and promoter of nonviolence, told media sources yesterday that he might resign his post if "things get out of control."
In light of recent Tibetan protests calling for independence from China, his upcoming speech would likely garner more international attention. But some fear that it might not happen at all.
Prof. Mary Gallagher, the interim director of the Center for Chinese Studies, said the conflict might force the Dalai Lama to cancel the event and tend to more pressing issues.
"There's a lot of things that are happening that make it more important that the Dalai Lama is somewhere else," she said.
But Gelek Rimpoche, the founder and spiritual leader of Jewel Heart, the organization bringing the Dalai Lama to Ann Arbor, said he believes the Dalai Lama will honor his speaking engagement and come to the University.
According to the Tibetan government's website, he is also scheduled to speak in Seattle, Wash. in early April.
Rimpoche said he expects the Dalai Lama to discuss the current situation in Tibet when he comes to the University to speak.
"It will be on everyone's mind, and it's on his mind too, so he will talk about it," he said.
Rimpoche said the Dalai Lama would likely reiterate his demands for the Chinese government to give Tibetans greater autonomy, like freedom of religion.
Gallagher said the Dalai Lama's speech at the University would be an ideal forum for him to express his views on the situation in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama has provoked a reaction from the Chinese government speaking before American government officials, she said, but at the University, he can reach a wide audience without worrying about political ramifications.
The Dalai Lama has called the current situation in Tibet a cultural genocide, but Gallagher said it's possible that circumstances could "change dramatically" in the weeks before the Dalai Lama comes to campus.
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Engaging Wisdom and Compassion
Dalai Lama to deliver U-M Wege Lecture in April
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet will deliver a special Peter M. Wege Lecture on Sustainability in April at the University of Michigan's Crisler Arena.
The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet
The Nobel Peace Prize winner and Buddhist leader last visited Ann Arbor in 1994, when about 9,000 people attended a lecture at Crisler. The April 20, 2008, lecture coincides with Earth Day weekend and is free and open to the public, though tickets are required.
U-M students, faculty and staff will be able to get tickets to the Wege Lecture beginning March 4 at the Michigan Union Ticket Office. The general public can obtain tickets there starting March 5. There is a limit of two tickets per person.
Best known as an outspoken advocate for human rights and global peace, the Dalai Lama will turn his wide-ranging intellect to the topic of sustainability.
"Sustainability goes beyond protecting the environment. It includes social and economic dimensions," said Greg Keoleian, co-director of the Center for Sustainable Systems (CSS) at the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE).
"A billion people don't have access to clean water, and almost 2 billion don't have access to electricity," Keoleian said. "Encouraging individuals to take personal responsibility to address global sustainability challenges is central to the Dalai Lama's message."
The Wege Lecture is sponsored by the Office of the President and CSS. Each year, the center invites an internationally recognized leader to deliver the lecture. Recent speakers include Al Gore and William Clay Ford Jr., executive chairman of Ford Motor Co.
"The University is eager to welcome the Dalai Lama to campus for a return visit," said U-M President Mary Sue Coleman. "He is an extraordinary leader whose unwavering support of human rights and the environment makes him an exceptional choice to address the campus community as the Wege lecturer."
SNRE Dean Rosina Bierbaum said: "For decades, the Dalai Lama has spoken about how 'the world is smaller and more interdependent,' and how we need to 'cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and the planet we share. The increasing urgency of confronting climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty and famine make his message extraordinarily timely."
Other events planned for Earth Day weekend include Dalai Lama teaching sessions sponsored by Jewel Heart, an Ann Arbor-based Tibetan Buddhist Center; The Tibet Fund; and the Garrison Institute. Fees will be charged for the teaching sessions. For more information, visit: www.DalaiLamaAnnArbor.com.
Born to a peasant family in 1935, the "Buddha of Compassion" was recognized at age 2, in accordance with Tibetan traditions, as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama.
When China invaded Tibet in 1950, the Dalai Lama, at age 15, assumed full political power as head of state and government and attempted to negotiate a peaceful solution with Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders. Nine years later, after the Chinese quelled a Tibetan civilian uprising, the Dalai Lama fled to northern India, where he established the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Since that time, he has worked for the restoration of the rights and independence of the Tibetan people and for the preservation of their culture.
His commitment to the ideals of human rights, freedom, peace and tolerance, and his opposition to the use of violence in resolving conflict, has earned him numerous awards, including the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.
In October 2007, the Dalai Lama, whose birth name was Tenzin Gyatso, received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award Congress gives to civilians. President Bush attended the ceremony and described the Dalai Lama as "a universal symbol of peace and tolerance, a shepherd for the faithful, and the keeper of the flame for his people."
The medal bears an image of the Dalai Lama on one side and a quote from the Tibetan spiritual leader on the other: "World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not the absence of violence. Peace is the manifestation of human compassion."
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Tibet Railway “not built for destruction” - from Discovery Channel
I've watched the video one month ago.
I don't know why youtube removed the video recently.
It's quite strange.
http://en.dogeno.us/2008/03/tibet-railway-not-built-for-destruction-from-youtube/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBuFzdDrsYQ
Posted by google at 01:30 AM | Comments (0)
For some young Tibetan exiles, Dalai Lama's 'middle way' is a road to failure
For some young Tibetan exiles, Dalai Lama's 'middle way' is a road to failure
By Somini Sengupta
Friday, March 21, 2008
DHARAMSALA, India: "Long live the Dalai Lama!" is the most common cry on the streets here.
Even so, the 72-year-old monk's refusal to call for independence from China more forcefully as it has cracked down on the protests in Tibet has sharpened disagreement with younger and more aggressive Tibetan exiles.
Tenzin Wangdue, who has spent the last 11 days shouting slogans, including some that the Dalai Lama would shun, is typical of the new generation. While not rejecting the Dalai Lama's authority, he believes Tibetans have to push harder if they are going to get anywhere. "They're not going to give total independence," he said of China. "But I think there's hope they're going to accept genuine autonomy if we say we want total autonomy."
Since March 10 the Dalai Lama has stuck to his "middle way" script and appeared remarkably affable, at least publicly, even as China accused him of masterminding the uprising and called him "a devil with a human face."
He has repeatedly said he advocates only nonviolence, presses not for independence but a "preservation of Tibetan culture," endorses China's role as host of the Olympic Games in August and is happy to speak to Chinese authorities, including President Hu Jintao.
"I'm fully committed to eliminate negative feelings among Tibetans and fear, distrust among Chinese," he said Thursday in his third meeting with reporters this week. Reminded of the latest slurs against him, he leaned back in his chair and howled with laughter. "As a Buddhist monk, whatever they call me, doesn't matter."
Yet, a handful of radical Tibetan exile groups have said angrily that the "middle way" has achieved nothing in nearly 30 years. They have called for an Olympic Games boycott, burned Chinese flags and refused to call off a march from here to Lhasa, Tibet's capital, which he has called impractical in opposing a mighty state intent on using force.
So the question arises of whether the Dalai Lama, who has spent the last 49 years here in India and built one of the most powerful exile movements in the world, is out of touch with his own people. Or is this monk, regarded by his followers as a reincarnation of Buddha, the ultimate political pragmatist?
There is no clear answer. Whether his doggedly conciliatory posture will ever assuage China's government, or whether his allies will intensify pressure on China on his behalf remains a mystery.
But a hint of his influence here bleeds through the often angry, inventive protests that have gone on nearly nonstop for over a week. For all the slogans of fury "Free Tibet" and "Death to Hu Jintao" China's president, the most common is a call-and-response homage: "Long live the Dalai Lama."
Nuns chant it. Scruffy young men with painted faces shout it. Indeed, half the town seems to have gone hoarse this week calling out his name. He remains revered.
Wangdue, 26, is representative of the foot soldiers of the Tibetan exile movement. Born here to refugee parents, he has never seen Tibet, but dreams of going there one day and coaching the first Tibetan soccer team. He will go back when there is freedom, he said, and though he has never farmed, he will become a farmer on the family's ancestral land.
He was educated in Tibetan schools here, raised on a curriculum that emphasized Tibetan suffering and Chinese atrocities, and studied politics and sociology in Delhi University, in the Indian capital. Twice he was arrested for protesting in front of the Chinese Embassy there.
This week, he was shouting "Free Tibet!" up and down the hills. During the protests, several Chinese flags were burned. "I'm a supporter of the Dalai Lama," he confessed. "But when I saw these demonstrations, the blood was boiling in me."
The most explicit face-off here came this week when the Dalai Lama summoned the groups organizing the march to Lhasa. He told them they would risk not only alienating their Indian hosts (the government does not like refugees agitating against China on Indian soil), but also invite fatal fire from Chinese troops on the border.
He told reporters after the meeting that while he welcomed dissent, he felt compelled to ask the groups to be "practical." They are after all the foot soldiers of his movement, and his appeal to them was a sign of how they present both opportunity and a headache for his movement.
"I have no authority, no power to say 'Shut up!' " he said. "I'm always telling them: 'You are fighting for our rights. But today we are almost a nation dying. This moment important is survival. Practical solution is necessary.' "
But voices of Tibetans here in the seat of the government in exile made it plain that while they had reverence for the Dalai Lama's leadership, they did not feel bound by his directives.
Tashi Phuntshok, 40, a resident of a dormitory for new refugees here, said he understood that the Dalai Lama's political strategy was intended to spare more Tibetan lives. If he called for independence, Phuntshok said, there would be outright war. "His Holiness, he is kind-hearted," Phuntshok explained.
"For us," he said, "it should be full independence."
Onpo Lobsang, rushing up the road on his way to pick up a banner for a demonstration, said he backed the march to Lhasa despite the Dalai Lama's reservations. "Our goal is the same, we need both sides," said Lobsang, 29, who came here with his parents at age 9. "He's the supreme leader, but we don't need to listen to everything he says. He is a Buddhist monk. We are common men."
Tsering Dorje, 34, came out of an Internet café on the same road, having scoured the Web for the latest news inside Tibet. He regarded the "middle way" as still the soundest strategy, but said that China would have to respond favorably soon for Tibetans to keep faith in the concept. "It's time for China to show whether it has the courage," he said. "If China doesn't change its stance, I will change my mind."
Samdhong Rinpoche, the prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile, said he recognized the "energy and fire" of younger, more radical exiles, but dismissed their expectations.
"They have all lived in a world of dreams," he said. "And they are driven by emotions."
He maintained that his cause enjoyed greater prospects of success than ever before. His statement offered a window into at least the rationales of the Dalai Lama's political circle.
Rinpoche, 69, also a monk, gave three reasons: first, that China would find it impossible to continue to suppress by force; second, that public opinion had become divided in China; and third, that his government's demands for greater autonomy had widespread international support, which China, as an aspiring world power, could not ignore forever.
"If you talk about the long-term Tibet issue, I am very much hopeful," he said. "I never live in dreams. I live in reality, and in the present."
The Dalai Lama has flatly said that to call for independence would be to lose the support of world leaders, including that of his hosts in India.
The Dalai Lama and the government here have had talks with the Chinese government since 2002, most recently last summer. On Thursday, he said he was ready to talk again, but not in Beijing, unless there was "a concrete development" in government policies toward Tibet. He did not elaborate.
China has said it will talk only if he gives up on a claim of independence. The Dalai Lama has said repeatedly that he has. "One hundred times, thousand times I have repeated this," he told reporters Thursday. "It is my mantra we are not seeking independence."
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Tibetans divided over protest strategy
Tibetans divided over protest strategy
Dalai Lama vows to quit if violence worsens, but youth voice frustration
updated 6:19 p.m. ET, Tues., March. 18, 2008
DHARMSALA, India - Tibetan exiles saw a chance to put China on the spot ahead of the Beijing Olympics, but never expected their protests to spread to Tibet and turn violent. Now the Dalai Lama is threatening to quit if his people don’t return to peaceful resistance.
It’s a warning he has used before — telling Tibetans to return to peaceful protests during 1989 unrest — but this time it comes amid deep divisions within the Tibetan community between those who back his pacifist approach and an angry young generation that demands action.
While the situation inside Tibet remains unclear, much of the violence last week appears to have been committed by Tibetans against Han Chinese — a fact that troubles the 72-year-old Dalai Lama, who has long called for Tibetans to have significant autonomy within China.
“Whether we like it or not, we have to live together side by side,” the Dalai Lama told reporters Tuesday in the northern Indian hill town of Dharmsala, seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. “We must oppose Chinese policy but not the Chinese. Not on a racist basis.”
Though fearful of a Chinese crackdown — he compared the plight of Tibetans to that of “a young deer in a tiger’s hands” — the Dalai Lama insisted he could not abide violence by his own people. Peaceful protest is the only way, he said.
He said that if the situation gets out of control, his “only option is to completely resign.”
An aide later clarified that the Dalai Lama meant he would step down as the political leader of the exile government — not as the supreme religious leader of Tibetan Buddhists.
Regardless, his call for Tibetans to work with the Chinese stands in stark contrast to the “Free Tibet” chants of thousands of Tibetan youths, Buddhist monks and nuns who have marched the steep paths of Dharmsala in recent days, angry faces painted with Tibetan flags and chests smeared with blood-red paint.
They want action not diplomacy, independence not autonomy.
Youth activist cites frustration
“There is growing frustration among the younger generations. They have been talking for 20 years and nothing came out of it,” said Tsewang Rigzin, head of the Tibetan Youth Congress.
He urged “the protesters in Tibet to continue in their protests until China gets out of Tibet.”
While hesitant to directly criticize the Dalai Lama — who is deeply revered by Tibetans — and careful not to endorse violence, the younger activists warn that patience with his approach is running thin.
“I certainly hope the middle way approach will be reviewed. The Tibetan nation and Tibetan culture are on the verge of extinction,” Rigzin said.
Another activist, Tenzin Choedon, a 28-year-old student, said: “It is time for a change in Tibet and the Tibetan movement.”
The activists argue that the Dalai Lama is squandering a golden opportunity by not opposing China hosting the Olympics.
“We have to seize the opportunity of the Olympics,” said Rigzin. “We have to shift the spotlight while the whole world is watching to show the true color of China.”
The Youth Congress and other exile groups began a Dharmsala-to-Tibet walk on March 10 — just before Beijing was to kick off its Olympic celebrations with a torch run through Tibet. It was also the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising in Tibet that forced the Dalai Lama to flee to India.
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Dalai Lama finds leading Tibetans harder than being peace icon
Dalai Lama finds leading Tibetans harder than being peace icon
By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 email | print tool nameclose
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Chuck Kennedy / MCT
The Dalai Lama. | View larger image
BEIJING — This is not an easy time for the Dalai Lama, who seems to find it easier to trot the globe as a holy man promoting peace than to serve as a political leader of his Tibetan people.
Twice in a little more than a week, the Dalai Lama has suggested that he might resign if Tibetans don't stop using violence to press for greater freedom under Chinese rule.
It's an unusual warning for a religious leader who ranks in many parts of the world up there with Nelson Mandela as a universal moral figure and international emissary of peace and harmony.
The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader isn't talking about relinquishing his role as "Ocean of Wisdom" for Tibetan Buddhists, who believe he's a reincarnation of previous dalai lamas. Instead, his threat is to quit as head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, based in the hill station of Dharamsala, India.
In New Delhi on Tuesday, the Dalai Lama deplored the violence that has marred some demonstrations during the past two weeks in Tibet and surrounding areas of China where ethnic Tibetans live. On Wednesday, China said 660 people involved with the protests had surrendered to authorities.
China also says the protests have taken 22 lives, while exile groups claim the toll has reached 140. The Dalai Lama pleaded Tuesday with protesters to keep strong emotion in check.
"If it is out of control, we have no option. If the violent demonstrations continue, I will resign," the Dalai Lama told journalists in the Indian capital. "Inside or outside China, if demonstrators use violent methods, I am totally against it."
A week earlier, the Dalai Lama made a similar warning, saying his "resignation is the only option" if protests spin further out of control.
Some experts say the threats are aimed at radical Tibetan exiles, some of whom differ with the Dalai Lama's insistence on nonviolence in the struggle to attain greater freedoms for Tibet, which was overtaken by Chinese troops more than half a century ago.
"It's probably more of a tactic than something he seriously contemplates doing," said Barry V. Sautman, an expert on Tibet at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "I'm sure the Dalai Lama feels very frustrated about the fact that his own view on how things should proceed is being flagrantly opposed by those who should be deferent."
Most Tibetan Buddhists revere the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader and view him as their temporal chief.
After fleeing into exile 49 years ago, the Dalai Lama set up the government-in-exile and a parliament, advocating democracy among the 120,000 or so Tibetan exiles, who reside mainly in India and Nepal.
Yet his lack of success in gaining greater freedoms for Tibetans living under China's control — or even setting foot back in his homeland himself — has disillusioned many younger Tibetan exiles.
"They respect the Dalai Lama as a religious leader. But as a political strategist to lead them forward, they believe he has failed," said Dibyesh Anand, a lecturer writing on Tibet at Westminster University in London. "He's in a very difficult position."
Chief among those differing with the Dalai Lama's "Middle Way," a platform adopted in 1987 that seeks greater autonomy for Tibet but recognizes China's sovereignty over the plateau, is the Tibetan Youth Congress, a group that claims some 30,000 members and advocates for complete independence.
The Web page of the Tibetan Youth Congress says that its members pledge "to struggle for the total independence of Tibet even at the cost of one's life."
Previous leaders of the Congress were always young exiles who had grown up in India in the shadow of the Dalai Lama. New leaders differ more sharply with the Dalai Lama on tactics. The latest president, Tsewang Rigzin, is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Oregon who sharpened his teeth on more radical techniques to achieve goals.
Reached by telephone in Dharamsala, where the Congress is based, Rigzin couldn't say clearly whether the group still agrees with the Dalai Lama's insistence on nonviolence.
"I am not sure. Our struggle has been nonviolent so far," Rigzin said.
He downplayed the Dalai Lama's warning that he might quit his leadership of the government-in-exile. "He has been saying that he's semi-retired," Rigzin said.
Samdhong Rinpoche, a 68-year-old monk who is the prime minister of the government-in-exile, also backed away from the Dalai Lama's warnings.
"There's no question of his resigning, absolutely not," the prime minister said in a telephone interview.
The Dalai Lama has other troubles, among them an intense vilification campaign in China that has tarred him as a virtual criminal. China accuses him of orchestrating rioting across ethnic Tibetan areas and says that his supporters infiltrated saboteurs into monasteries with the hopes of swapping Communist rule for a theocracy in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama was unusually slow to condemn the actions taken by violent mobs against ethnic Han Chinese in rioting in Lhasa on March 14.
"Ethnic violence — killing, beating, burning — was carried out on the streets of Lhasa by people chanting the Dalai Lama's name," Sautman said.
That has contributed to a broadly negative image in China, according to an advocate of the Dalai Lama.
"There's a crisis in the relationship with the Chinese people," said Kate Saunders, the London-based communications director for the International Campaign for Tibet.
Posted by google at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)
Down with the CCP?
Posted by: SamMarvin from Univ. of Michigan
I won’t pretend to be an expert on China, but I like to think I know quite a bit.
China has had territorial claims of Tibet since the early Qing dynasty in the 17th century. In fact, the first Dalai Lama was installed as the political and spiritual leader of Tibet by Qing emperors. The same emperors also intervened militarily several times on the behalf of the Dalai Lama. I’ll avoid a lengthy recounting of history, but the facts are that China has legitimate historical claims to sovereignty over Tibet.
During the Republican and warlord era Tibet was autonomous from China and began to assert its independence. In 1951 the PLA invaded parts of Tibet and routed the Tibetan army. Following this military defeat the central government of Tibet negotiated surrender, acknowledging China’s suzerainty in a 17 point agreement. The agreement was between two legitimate governments and hence is the reason why almost every nation in the world recognizes China’s rule over Tibet.
The issue, according to the Dalai Lama himself, is not one of independence but of autonomy and he has called for Tibetans to accept Chinese rule.
None of this, however, excuses the particularly violent repressions of protesters at the hands of Chinese government forces.
I expect to see an easing of protests in the days to come. Tibetans obviously thought that China might succumb to international and media pressure to relax some of their policies and reactions. Unfortunately, China stuck to their old playbook of harsh repression.
If people want to talk more about China I encourage them to come the Roosevelt Institution’s China Policy Cente. We meet every Monday at 7pm in the Dana building.
Posted by google at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)
More brain, less adrenalin
by Iris from Univ. of Michigan
It holds true most of the time that the harshest condemnation of China comes from people who have little first-hand information about the country. Sure, China has a lot of problems, but if you have ever visited the country or talked to 10 people from China for a combined length of more than 5 hours, you wouldn’t picture China as a hell-like nation where miserable people are ruled by devils and subsequently reflect that imagination in your language. It is exactly the same on the other side of the earth. The majority of the Chinese Fen Qing (abbreviation of “angry youths”) who would never have enough trashing Japan and other “hostile countries” (U.S. included) are those who have never visited those countries and who know nothing about the place other than the tiny little bit they want to believe. So here comes Human Nature No. 1: the less you know about something, the more judgmental you allow yourself to be.
I guess most of you have no idea about the courteous receptions Deng Xiao-Ping received when he visited U.S. in 1979 and the subsequent honeymoon years of the Sino-US relationship. The human rights situation in China was far worse then compared with right now. Even after the Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989, China didn’t enjoy as much denunciation on its human rights situation as it does today. Why? First, China was barely off the brink of collapse and it was so feeble economically and militarily that it could be largely overlooked. Second, Soviet Union and its close allies occupied the top of the list of enemies and China just did not have the priority. But now, it disqualifies in both aspects, so who else? Here comes Human Nature No. 2: people’s negative force has to find a target, and the target is the most prominent (in terms of power) among the most different, no matter how its situation of the area being attacked compares with its past or with others in the absolute sense.
The aftermath of the Tibet Riot is analogous to a typical scene in Everybody Loves Raymond—although surveys show that people who watch Everybody Loves Raymond are more likely to vote for the Republican, I suppose you know that Marie, the mom, has an unconditional preference to her younger son Raymond over her elder son Robert. So, Marie saw Robert shove Raymond to the ground. “Oh my god! Robert, how could you be so cruel to your brother?” This is the reflex of the western media after they learned about the unrest in Tibet. Then witnesses came forward and told Marie that it was Raymond who started the skirmish and he had hit Robert with a baseball bat. Accordingly, the distortion of facts by the western media was pointed out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQnK5FcKas), and as more foreign tourists provided their recounting of the incident, it is clear now that it was a violent ethnic riot during which innocent non-Tibetan Chinese were cruelly beaten and killed, their properties burned and looted (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/world/asia/24tibet.html?scp=5&sq=&st=nyt ). Marie’s reaction? “Robert, had you not mistreated your brother, how could Raymond have acted like that?” True, maybe Robert had indeed mistreated his brother before, but maybe not. No matter what, the truth of this very skirmish is covered up, because in Marie’s eyes, Raymond can never be wrong, and Robert can never be right.
I am blogging here not because people are outrageous in censuring China here. On the contrary, I see people who have the potential to listen and who are willing to reach out. You are the hope to act with more brain and less adrenalin.
Posted by google at 12:43 AM | Comments (0)
Interview of James Miles of The Economist
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- James Miles, of The Economist, has just returned from Lhasa, Tibet. The following is a transcript of an interview he gave to CNN.
Q. How easy was it for you to see what you wanted to see?
A. Well remarkably so, given that the authorities are normally extremely sensitive about the presence of foreign journalists when this kind of incident occurs. I was expecting all along that they were going to call me up and tell me to leave Lhasa immediately. I think what restrained them from doing that, one very important factor in this, was the thoughts of the Olympic Games that are going to be staged in Beijing in August. And they have been going out of their way to convince the rest of the world that China is opening up in advance of this. I think they probably didn't want me there but they knew that I was there with official permission, and one thing they've been trying to get across over the last few months is that journalists based in Beijing can now get around the country more freely than they could before. Of course Tibet is a special example. I've been a journalist in China now for 15 years altogether. This is the first time that I've ever got official approval to go to Tibet. And it's remarkable I think that they decided to let me stay there and probably they felt that it was a bit of a gamble. But as the protests went on I think they also probably felt that having me there would help to get across the scale of the ethnically-targeted violence that the Chinese themselves have also been trying to highlight.
Q. What you say you saw corroborates the official version. What exactly did you see?
A. What I saw was calculated targeted violence against an ethnic group, or I should say two ethnic groups, primarily ethnic Han Chinese living in Lhasa, but also members of the Muslim Hui minority in Lhasa. And the Huis in Lhasa control much of the meat industry in the city. Those two groups were singled out by ethnic Tibetans. They marked those businesses that they knew to be Tibetan owned with white traditional scarves. Those businesses were left intact. Almost every single other across a wide swathe of the city, not only in the old Tibetan quarter, but also beyond it in areas dominated by the ethnic Han Chinese. Almost every other business was either burned, looted, destroyed, smashed into, the property therein hauled out into the streets, piled up, burned. It was an extraordinary outpouring of ethnic violence of a most unpleasant nature to watch, which surprised some Tibetans watching it. So they themselves were taken aback at the extent of what they saw. And it was not just targeted against property either. Of course many ethnic Han Chinese and Huis fled as soon as this broke out. But those who were caught in the early stages of it were themselves targeted. Stones thrown at them. At one point, I saw them throwing stones at a boy of maybe around 10 years old perhaps cycling along the street. I in fact walked out in front of them and said stop. It was a remarkable explosion of simmering ethnic grievances in the city.
Q. Did you see other weapons?
A. I saw them carrying traditional Tibetan swords, I didn't actually see them getting them out and intimidating people with them. But clearly the purpose of carrying them was to scare people. And speaking later to ethnic Han Chinese, that was one point that they frequently drew attention to. That these people were armed and very intimidating.
Q. There was an official response to this. In some reporting, info coming from Tibetan exiles, there was keenness to report it as Tiananmen.
A. Well the Chinese response to this was very interesting. Because you would expect at the first sings of any unrest in Lhasa, which is a city on a knife-edge at the best of times. That the response would be immediate and decisive. That they would cordon off whatever section of the city involved, that they would grab the people involved in the unrest. In fact what we saw, and I was watching it at the earliest stages, was complete inaction on the part of the authorities. It seemed as if they were paralyzed by indecision over how to handle this. The rioting rapidly spread from Beijing Road, this main central thoroughfare of Lhasa, into the narrow alleyways of the old Tibetan quarter. But I didn't see any attempt in those early hours by the authorities to intervene. And I suspect again the Olympics were a factor there. That they were very worried that if they did move in decisively at that early stage of the unrest that bloodshed would ensue in their efforts to control it. And what they did instead was let the rioting run its course and it didn't really finish as far as I saw until the middle of the day on the following day on the Saturday, March the 15th. So in effect what they did was sacrifice the livelihoods of many, many ethnic Han Chinese in the city for the sake of letting the rioters vent their anger. And then being able to move in gradually with troops with rifles that they occasionally let off with single shots, apparently warning shots, in order to scare everybody back into their homes and put an end to this.
Q. Would be false to suggest there was heavy-handed security approach?
A. Well this was covering a vast area of the city and I was the only foreign journalist, at least accredited, to ... who was there to witness this. It was impossible to get a total picture. I did hear persistent rumors while I was there during this rioting of isolated clashes between the security forces and rioters. And rumors of occasional bloodshed involved in that. But I can do no more really on the basis of what I saw then say there was a probability that some ethnic Chinese were killed in this violence, and also a probability that some Tibetans, Tibetan rioters themselves were killed by members of the security forces. But it's impossible to get the kind of numbers or real first hand evidences necessary to back that up.
Q. Form any sense of where it would go from here?
A. Well I think they now have a huge problem on their hands. When I left Lhasa yesterday the city was still in a state of effectively Martial Law. They've been bending over backwards this time not to declare martial law as they did in 1989 after the last major outbreak of anti-Chinese unrest in Lhasa. This time they have not used that term and yet the conditions now in Lhasa are pretty much the same as they were in 1989 under martial law. Officials say there are no soldiers, no members of the People's Liberation Army involved in this security operation. And yet I saw numerous, many military vehicles, military looking vehicles with telltale license plates covered up or removed. And also many troops there whose uniforms were distinctly lacking in the usual insignia of either the police or the riot police. So my very, very strong suspicion is that the army is out there and is in control in Lhasa. And removing that security given the way Tibetans are now focusing on the Olympics as a window of opportunity, removing that security now I think would be something they would be very, very cautious about. And yet there are enormous pressures on them to do so. Coming up to the Olympic torch carrying ceremony in Lhasa in June. That is one obvious event they will want the world to see and they will want the world to see that Lhasa is normal. But I think getting to that stage will be enormously tricky given the depth of feeling in Lhasa itself among Tibetans.
Q. Did you actually see clashes between security forces and Tibetan protesters?
A. Well what I saw and at this stage, the situation around my hotel which was right in the middle of the old Tibetan quarter, was very tense indeed and quite dangerous so it was difficult for me to freely walk around the streets. But what I saw was small groups of Tibetans, and this was on the second day of the protests, throwing stones towards what I assumed to be, and they were slightly out of vision, members of the security forces. I would hear and indeed smell occasional volleys of Tear gas fired back. There clearly was a small scale clash going on between Tibetans and the security forces. But on the second day things had calmed down generally compared with the huge rioting that was going on...on the Friday. And the authorities were responding to these occasional clashes with Tibetans not by moving forward rapidly with either riot police and truncheons and shields, or indeed troops with rifles. But for a long time, just with occasional, with the very occasional round of tear gas, which would send and I could see this, people scattering back into these very, very, narrow and winding alleyways. What I did not hear was repeated bursts of machine gun fire, I didn't have that same sense of an all out onslaught of massive firepower that I sensed here in Beijing when I was covering the crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests in June, 1989. This was a very different kind of operation, a more calculated one, and I think the effort of the authorities this time was to let people let off steam before establishing a very strong presence with troops, with guns, every few yards, all across the Tibetan quarter. It was only when they felt safe I think that there would not be massive bloodshed, that they actually moved in with that decisive force.
Q. At time you left, were Han Chinese moving freely back?
A. There were some on the Saturday morning. On the second day we came back to the shops and I saw them picking through the wreckage, tears in their eyes. They were astonished, as I was, at the lack of any security presence on the previous day. It was only during the night at the end of the first day that this cordon was established around the old Tibetan quarter. But even within it, for several hours afterwards, people were still free to continue looting and setting fires, and the authorities were still standing back. And it was only as things fizzled out towards the middle of the second day that as I say they moved in in great numbers. Ethnic Chinese in Lhasa are now very worried people. Some who had been there for many, many years expressed to me their utter astonishment that this had happened. They had no sense of great ethnic tension being a part of life in Lhasa. Now numerous Hans that I spoke to say that they are so afraid they may leave the city, which may have very damaging consequences for Lhasa's economy, Tibet's economy. Of course one would expect that ethnic Chinese would think twice now about coming into Lhasa for tourism, and that's been a huge part of their economic growth recently. And leaving Lhasa, I was sitting on a plane next to some Chinese businessmen, they say that they would normally come in and out of Lhasa by train. But their fear now is that Tibetans will blow up the railway line. That it is now actually safer to fly out of Tibet than to go by railway. We have no evidence of Terrorist activity by Tibetans, no accusation of that nature so far. But that is a fear that's haunting some ethnic Han Chinese now.
Q. When you were told to leave, what were you told?
A. Well I had an 8-day permit to be in Lhasa. That permit began two days before the rioting, on March 12, and was due to run out on March 19. My official schedule was basically abandoned after a couple days of this. Many of the places on my official itinerary turned out to be hotspots in the middle of this unrest. They left me to my own devices. I was stopped by the police at one point, taken to a police station. They made a few phone calls and then let me go back out on the streets full of troops and police carrying out the security crackdown. They insisted however that when my permit did expire on the 19th that I had to leave. I asked for an extension and they said decisively no.
Q. So you weren't expelled? It just ran out?
A. Well we're in a gray area here. Because in theory China has been opened up to foreign journalists since January 2007, which means no longer, which was the case before, do we have to apply for provincial level government approval every time we leave Beijing for reporting. The official regulations don't mention Tibet. But orally, officials have made it clear that Tibet is an exception to these new Olympic rules and journalists who have made their own way there, unofficially, both before this unrest and during it have been caught or ... and expelled. Or those who have succeeded in making it out without being detected have been criticized by the authorities for doing so. So one could argue that yes I was expelled, if one looks at the regulations they've announced which one could interpret as meaning we have the freedom to be where we like. But in their interpretation, Tibet is an exception and in their view they were being rather liberal towards me by letting run to the end of my official permit.
Q. Is Dalai behind this?
A. Well we didn't see any evidence of any organized activity, at least there was nothing in what I sensed and saw during those couple of days of unrest in Lhasa, there was anything organized behind it. And I've seen organized unrest in China. The Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 involved numerous organizations spontaneously formed by people in Beijing to oppose, or to call for more reform and demand democracy. We didn't see that in Lhasa. There were no organizations there that ... certainly none that labeled themselves as such. These accusations against what they call the Dalai Lama clique, are ritual parts of the political rhetoric in Tibet. There is a constant background rhetoric directed at the Dalai Lama and his supporters in India. So it is not at all surprising that they would repeat that particular accusation in this case. But they haven't come across, haven't produced any evidence of this whatsoever. And I think it's more likely that what we saw was yes inspired by a general desire of Tibetans both inside Tibet and among the Dalai Lama's followers, to take advantage of this Olympic year. But also inspired simply by all these festering grievances on the ground in Lhasa
Posted by google at 12:19 AM | Comments (0)
Dalai Lama Says He’ll Resign if Violence Escalates
Dalai Lama Says He’ll Resign if Violence Escalates
Published: March 19, 2008
DHARAMSALA, India — The Dalai Lama on Tuesday invited international observers, including Chinese officials, to scour his offices here and investigate whether he had any role in inciting the latest anti-Chinese violence in Tibet. He also threatened to resign as leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile in the event of spiraling bloodshed in his homeland.
He said he remained committed to only nonviolent agitation and greater autonomy for Tibetans, not independence. He condemned the burning of Chinese flags and attacks on Chinese property and called violence “suicidal” for the Tibetan cause.
In a clear effort to quickly seize the higher moral ground and at the same time poke at China’s important aspirations, he complimented Beijing for having met three out of four conditions to be a “superpower” — he acknowledged it has the world’s largest population, military prowess, and a fast-developing economy.
“Fourth, moral authority, that’s lacking,” he said, and for the second time in two days he accused Chinese officials of a “rule of terror” in Tibet, the formerly Himalayan kingdom he fled for exile in India 49 years ago.
The Dalai Lama’s remarks to reporters on Tuesday, here in the seat of the Tibetan exile movement, also revealed thathe has been unnerved by the violence across the border in Tibet and by the increasingly radical calls from Tibetan exiles in this country.
The 72-year-old spiritual leader of Lama Buddhism said he would step down from his political post if things “get out of control.”
He said he planned to meet Wednesday with those who have vowed to march 900 miles from here to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, and convey his “reservations” about their effort. The march has been a source of embarrassment to New Delhi. The first batch of marchers that set off from here last week was arrested by Indian police; the second batch was allowed to continue, but they are still well inside Indian territory. The Dalai Lama chided their ambitions. “On border, some clash with Chinese soldiers, what use that?” he said.
He acknowledged there was growing frustration and a feeling that his “Middle Way” approach — no independence for Tibet but a large degree of autonomy — had achieved no concrete gains. But but dismissed talk of any other path as impractical.
“Last few days I had a sort of feeling, a tiger, of a young deer in a tiger’s hand,” he said, in the most intimate confession during the winding, two-hour long exchange. “Deer really can fight the tiger? Can express. But actual fight? Our only weapon, only strength is justice, truth. But effect of truth, justice sometimes takes longer time. Weapons power is immediately there.”
No sooner had he finished speaking that protesters outside the gate of his compound torched a Chinese flag, shouting “Hu Jintao Murdabad,” which in Hindi is literally “death to Hu Jintao,” the Chinese president. Two hours later, they burned more Chinese flags. Earlier, monks chanted prayers and walked in thick columns through the hills. Gory photographs were pasted across town, of Tibetans allegedly shot and killed by Chinese forces.
The Dalai Lama said he remained open to resuming peace talks with Chinese officials, and in an impish reference to the criticisms by Chinese leaders, said a solution could be reached swiftly if there were “mutual respect” and a willingness to take Tibetan grievances seriously.
There was no direct criticism of either Mr. Hu or China’s Premier Wen Jiabao, only of local officials whom the Dalai Lama accused of creating “artificial facts.” “Prime Minister,” he said, addressing Mr. Wen, “Come here and investigate thoroughly.”
He went on: “Since we are not seeking independence, actually we are helping the Chinese government to build harmonious society, happy society and Tibet remain within the People’s Republic of China, happily. I am helping them, if they look at the situation calmly. But so far it’s full of suspicion, so therefore they cannot see reality.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/world/asia/19dalai.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Posted by google at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2008
Twelve Suggestions for Dealing with the Tibetan Situation by Some Chinese Intellectuals
1. At present the one-sided propaganda of the official Chinese media is having the effect of stirring up inter-ethnic animosity and aggravating an already tense situation. This is extremely detrimental to the long-term goal of safeguarding national unity. We call for such propaganda to be stopped.
2. We support the Dalai Lama’s appeal for peace, and hope that the ethnic conflict can be dealt with according to the principles of goodwill, peace, and non-violence. We condemn any violent act against innocent people, strongly urge the Chinese government to stop the violent suppression, and appeal to the Tibetan people likewise not to engage in violent activities.
3. The Chinese government claims that “there is sufficient evidence to prove this incident was organized, premeditated, and meticulously orchestrated by the Dalai clique.” We hope that the government will show proof of this. In order to change the international community’s negative view and distrustful attitude, we also suggest that the government invite the United Nation’s Commission on Human Rights to carry out an independent investigation of the evidence, the course of the incident, the number of casualties, etc.
4. In our opinion, such Cultural-Revolution-like language as “the Dalai Lama is a jackal in Buddhist monk’s robes and an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast ” used by the Chinese Communist Party leadership in the Tibet Autonomous Region is of no help in easing the situation, nor is it beneficial to the Chinese government’s image. As the Chinese government is committed to integrating into the international community, we maintain that it should display a style of governing that conforms to the standards of modern civilization.
5. We note that on the very day when the violence erupted in Lhasa (March 14), the leaders of the Tibet Autonomous Region declared that “there is sufficient evidence to prove this incident was organized, premeditated, and meticulously orchestrated by the Dalai clique.” This shows that the authorities in Tibet knew in advance that the riot would occur, yet did nothing effective to prevent the incident from happening or escalating. If there was a dereliction of duty, a serious investigation must be carried out to determine this and deal with it accordingly.
6. If in the end it cannot be proved that this was an organized, premeditated, and meticulously orchestrated event but was instead a “popular revolt” triggered by events, then the authorities should pursue those responsible for inciting the popular revolt and concocting false information to deceive the Central Government and the people; they should also seriously reflect on what can be learned from this event so as to avoid taking the same course in the future.
7. We strongly demand that the authorities not subject every Tibetan to political investigation or revenge. The trials of those who have been arrested must be carried out according to judicial procedures that are open, just, and transparent so as to ensure that all parties are satisfied.
8. We urge the Chinese government to allow credible national and international media to go into Tibetan areas to conduct independent interviews and news reports. In our view, the current news blockade cannot gain credit with the Chinese people or the international community, and is harmful to the credibility of the Chinese government. If the government grasps the true situation, it need not fear challenges. Only by adopting an open attitude can we turn around the international community’s distrust of our government.
9. We appeal to the Chinese people and overseas Chinese to be calm and tolerant, and to reflect deeply on what is happening. Adopting a posture of aggressive nationalism will only invite antipathy from the international community and harm China’s international image.
10. The disturbances in Tibet in the 1980s were limited to Lhasa, whereas this time they have spread to many Tibetan areas. This deterioration indicates that there are serious mistakes in the work that has been done with regard to Tibet. The relevant government departments must conscientiously reflect upon this matter, examine their failures, and fundamentally change the failed nationality policies.
11. In order to prevent similar incidents from happening in future, the government must abide by the freedom of religious belief and the freedom of speech explicitly enshrined in the Chinese Constitution, thereby allowing the Tibetan people fully to express their grievances and hopes, and permitting citizens of all nationalities freely to criticize and make suggestions regarding the government’s nationality policies.
12. We hold that we must eliminate animosity and bring about national reconciliation, not continue to increase divisions between nationalities. A country that wishes to avoid the partition of its territory must first avoid divisions among its nationalities. Therefore, we appeal to the leaders of our country to hold direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama. We hope that the Chinese and Tibetan people will do away with the misunderstandings between them, develop their interactions with each other, and achieve unity. Government departments as much as popular organizations and religious figures should make great efforts toward this goal.
Signatures:
Wang Lixiong (Beijing, Writer)
Liu Xiaobo (Beijing, Freelance Writer)
Zhang Zuhua (Beijing, scholar of constitutionalism)
Sha Yexin (Shanghai, writer, Chinese Muslim)
Yu Haocheng (Beijing, jurist)
Ding Zilin (Beijing, professor)
Jiang peikun (Beijing, professor)
Yu Jie (Beijing, writer)
Sun Wenguang (Shangdong, professor)
Ran Yunfei (Sichuan, editor, Tujia nationality)
Pu Zhiqiang (Beijing, lawyer)
Teng Biao (Beijing, Layer and scholar)
Liao Yiwu ()Sichuan, writer)
Wang Qisheng (Beijing, scholar)
Zhang Xianling (Beijing, engineer)
Xu Jue (Beijing, research fellow)
Li Jun (Gansu, photographer)
Gao Yu (Beijing, journalist)
Wang Debang (Beijing, freelance writer)
Zhao Dagong (Shenzhen, freelance writer)
Jiang Danwen (Shanghai, writer)
Liu Yi (Gansu, painter)
Xu Hui (Beijing, writer)
Wang Tiancheng (Beijing, scholar)
Wen kejian (Hangzhou, freelance)
Li Hai (Beijing, freelance writer)
Tian Yongde (Inner Mongolia, folk human rights activists)
Zan Aizong (Hangzhou, journalist)
Liu Yiming (Hubei, freelance writer)
Posted by google at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)
Lhasa riot reports show media bias in West
Lhasa riot reports show media bias in West
By Ye Jun (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-22 09:04
Chinese netizens, including students studying overseas, have been angered by biased and sometimes dishonest reports about the recent riots in Tibet by some Western media.
Pictures from some media websites, including CNN and BBC, with untrue reports about the riots have been posted on chatrooms, drawing criticism.
"I used to think the Western media were fair. But how could they turn a blind eye to the killing and arson by rioters?" asked a posting at pic.qikoo.com.
The pictures illustrate how news can be manipulated.
The BBC News website carries a picture with the caption saying "There is a heavy military presence in Lhasa", while the photo clearly shows an ambulance bearing the red cross symbol.
The American Fox News website published a photo with the caption "Chinese troops parade handcuffed Tibetan prisoners in trucks", while the photo shows Indian police dragging a man away.
CNN.com used a cropped photo of Chinese military trucks, cutting off the half of the picture showing a crowd of rioters throwing rocks at the trucks.
More notably, the websites of Germany's Bild newspaper, N-TV and RTL TV, and the Washington Post all used pictures of baton-wielding Nepalese police in clashes with Tibetan protesters in Kathmandu, claiming that the officers were Chinese police.
"To tarnish China's image, the West is doing whatever they can, no mater how mean and vicious," said one netizen on www.huanqiu.com.
"Is this what they call Western democracy and freedom of speech?" asked another netizen.
Huai Bao, a student studying filmmaking in Vancouver, Canada, said: "I have read some news and online discussions made by those who have never been to Tibet, who have zero knowledge about China and the history of Tibet. These people have no rights to comment on Tibet."
Bao, from Beijing, became a believer in Tibetan Buddhism after meeting his master, a high-profile lama, in the Chinese capital.
He said that some Tibetan monks set fire to shops, schools and hospitals, and attacked Han and Tibetan people, including women and children.
"My master told me that the monks involved in the riots were not real monks, as violence and crimes are absolutely against the teachings of Buddha," he wrote in an e-mail to China Daily.
Netizens also mentioned a blog (kadfly.blogspot.com) run by a group of Western tourists traveling in Tibet during the riot, where photos and video clips of Tibet are posted.
Although their photos were used by the New York Times and the BBC, the following words did not make it into the Western press.
One blogger wrote: "I want to make one thing clear because all of the major news outlets are ignoring a very important fact the protests yesterday were NOT peaceful."
He wrote that all of the eyewitnesses agreed that "the protesters went from attacking Chinese police to attacking innocent people very, very quickly. They appeared to target Muslim and Han Chinese individuals and businesses first but many Tibetans were also caught in the crossfire."
A video clip was posted on the blog, in which a Han motorcyclist, an obvious passerby, was stoned by a crowd of mob.
Bao said there is a unanimous feeling of anger among his Chinese friends in Vancouver.
"Any news about China has to be negative so that they will believe it - from 'poisonous toys to poisonous dumplings'. Some foreign media have a particular interest in bashing China over human rights and pollution. They turn a blind eye to all progressive changes."
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-03/22/content_6557738.htm
Posted by google at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)
Comments on Tibetian Buddhism, Media censorship and Nationalism
By Shu-li Huang from Ann Arbor Buddhist Society
I thought I would not join this conversation. Inevitably, I broke my silence by sending out this email. Two questions are up front:
(1) Does anyone believe there is an ethic political regime in the world?
(2) Can anyone approve any violence toward a group of people?
If not, let's stop arguing whether the Chinese government is making an inevitable decision or not. The point is that "people are dying in Tibet and there is no reason to legitimate this kind of violence." I don't feel sorry for the Chinese or the Tibetan. I rather give my blessing to those people who are suffering. (ps. No one is suffering because he or she is a Chinese or a Tibetan. Everyone is suffering because humanity is in crisis.) What I learn from Buddhist teaching is: There is no "good killer" in the world. People all have to pay back, if not in this life, in the near future.
What happened in Tibet is nothing about Buddhism but everything about nationalism. We have a conflict between Tibetan nationalism and Chinese nationalism, Tibetan regime and Chinese regime. Ironically, both sides are making nationalist claims to legitimate the violence. Do we really need any kind of nationalism in the world?
I am not interested in accusing China or pitying Tibet. Viewing this event as a political outrage, rather I am interested in Hu Jintao and Wu Jiabao's next move. I believe that their political career is in crisis. I can only pray that they will respect Tibetan as human beings and will always put humanity in their minds.
Few words on Media control: partial truth is never the same as truth. More reports do not equal to more facts.
More words on Cultural destruction: No culture can be destructed. Culture is here and now. Both Tibetan and Han have equal right to access any part of the world. As long as mutual respect is grounded, they are jointly inventing Tibetan culture for our contemporary and our world. I believe that the Tibetan people will welcome Mengfu as well as Yang Zhi equally.
It is true that there is a dis-consent between Dalai Lama's choosing and the government's favor. However, I doubt that the majority of Tibetan would ever dare to judge who is the real Panchen Lama. Not because they are afraid of Chinese government, but because they understand that they are not wise enough to realize the ultimate "truth", to judge their spiritual leader. The Tibetan never reach the consent on who is the real reincarnation figure of 大寶法王. For me, BBC's report is also distorted. In media, pro-China and anti-China are both distorted.
Don't give me wrong, I do not claim that China should not be accused for its media censorship policy. In contrary, I think China's political leaders are very unwise to keep an out-of-date media censorship policy. This only shows their leadership is out of date. The problem of Chinese leadership is that: They have been used to lie to themselves as if there are only Chinese people in the world. Nowadays, they are forced to confront others. Unfortunately, they choose to keep "non-Chinese" out of their own game and waste out "those non-Chinese" who have been part of this game. Their inability to talk to the world in turn put their leadership in crisis.
Posted by google at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)
Charlie Rose - The Dalai Lama
Posted by google at 10:29 PM | Comments (0)
Lies in the rediff report from India
http://specials.rediff.com/news/2008/mar/17video.htm
For those who can understand Chinese, please pay attention to the words by the interviewed women. She was actually condemning the riots by some violent Tibetians. The English subtitle is quite funny.
Posted by google at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)
Exposing the Lies from the Western Media on Tibet Riots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o052_RhW15w
Posted by google at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)
tibet riot chinese media
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYdnkUbzgRU&feature=related
Posted by google at 10:06 PM | Comments (0)
Tibet WAS,IS,and ALWAYS WILL BE a part of China
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9QNKB34cJo
Posted by google at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)
The CIA in TIBET
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOhDBo6x2ZY
Posted by google at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)
cry of the snow lion - about tibet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trPZs-Nwz_I&feature=related
Posted by google at 09:49 PM | Comments (0)
My comments on Tibetan Crisis
Tibetan Crisis: Historical Context and Current Reality
by Hanlin Wang from Ann Arbor Buddhist Society
I have been sadly observing the current Tibetan crisis and the debates between people from China (China Camp) and people not from mainland of China (Western Camp, just for the sake of naming). The astonishing support of Chinese people from around the world to the government crackdown caught many westerners off guard. From one perspective, the debates offer good opportunity for both camps to better understand Tibetan issue. However, without knowing the broader historical context and the current reality, these debates cannot go very far. I came from China. Emotionally, I am with the China Camp. In the meantime, I am also a Buddhist and have great respect to Tibetan Buddhism and the DaLai Lama. Therefore, my comments just focus on context and reality. I will not touch moral or ethical issues and certainly I hope people don’t judge my comments morally or ethically either.
China Camp’s Nationalism:
I am with the China Camp that I do not support Tibetan independence. Tibetan independence will destroy China’s dream of becoming a strong nation. As a Chinese, I share the same dream with so many Chinese that one day, China will be a strong nation. Now, after so many generations, the dream is within reach (at least it seems to be). At this historical moment, any independent movement is the nightmare no Chinese want to dream. Look at former Soviet Union, the destruction of this world superpower is partially caused by the separation of many of its republicans. This has the rippling effect around the world. If Soviet Union still existed, the NATO wouldn't dare to conduct 70 days barbaric bombing to Serbia back in 1998. If Soviet Union still existed, US wouldn't dare to invade Iraq that by far has caused enormous humanitarian disaster in the country. So, a balanced world power distribution is beneficial to world peace. I believe the nationalism and patriotism are the driving forces behind the China Camp for strong support of government crackdown. It is the strength of this driving force that caught many westerners off guard.
Historical Context
Then, how about Tibet and its people? What is the driving force behind these endless unrests? Is DaLai Lama the master mind? China Camp people have very limited knowledge. I grew up in a society that we were told Tibet was an uncivilized, slavery society before being liberated by Communist army. Unfortunately, many Chinese (in China and aboard) are still holding this view! Therefore, it is very important for China Camp to look at the current crisis from broader historical context.
Before 1949
Tibet was an independent state, but not an internationally recognized country . We can say it has always been part of China. But Nationalist party did not have the capability to reach Tibet (they were so busy fighting with the Communists). That was the reality back then.
Tibet was also a Buddhist state, an unique Buddhist state that religion and politics are united. The spiritual leaders were also the political leaders. Ordinary people treated these leaders almost like god out of the religious faith. Of course, these leaders lived very luxury life and ordinary people were poor, but the state was more or less governed by Buddhism principles. People lived peacefully. The so called brutal slavery accusation was entirely fabricated by the communist government back then! If you don’t believe this, look at the story of Liu Wen Chai (劉文彩), the big landlord in SiChuan province. After his execution, the government fabricated an impressive story accusing him of routinely torturing his farmers in the secret water jail. There was a huge museum displaying his “crimes” in his home town. However, the truth came out by 1990s that this was more or less fabricated!
1949-1959
After communist took over China and consolidated its power, due to its vast region and strategic location (bordering India and on the highest land on earth), Tibet became a natural target for Chinese government. The occupation was peaceful and Tibet was an autonomy governed by joined government. However, tinted with communist ideology, most party officials did not like what they saw in Tibet that ordinary people worshiped their leaders like “slave to master”. Therefore, many changes were made to Tibet against their wills. I don’t know what exactly happened in Tibet during that period. However, any people familiar with China’s modern history can recall what happened during that 10 years period in the rest of China (punishing landlords, land ownership reform, great leaps, against rightist, etc). It is easy to imagine that these endless activities “naturally” spilled over to Tibet. For people in the rest of China, they had to endure the suffering. However, for Tibetans, they viewed these activities as something imposed on them! In addition, these activities were coincided with other things such as the steady influx of Han people into Tibet (in the name of helping Tibetan people) and the severe food shortage( as also occurred in the rest of China starting 1959). Therefore, overtime, Tibetans began to resist China’s governing and eventually, turned into armed uprising. The people from China Camp all know about the uprising, but very few know what were the true causes of the uprising. There is a book, [雪域境外流亡記], by約翰. F.艾夫唐 that detailed this uprising. The book was secretly used by the government as the “internal reference” regarding Tibetan affairs.
1959-1976
After the uprising was brutally suppressed and Da Lai Lama’s escape, Tibet, along with the rest of China, walked into the darkest age in China modern history. Relentless fighting, systematic destruction of all religions, severe brain wash movements were all the routine for ordinary Chinese people . There is no reason to assume that Tibet, as part of China, could have spared from this disaster. In fact, Tibetan Buddhism and its way of life had been severely destroyed. The destruction reached its peak during culture revolution. I saw many photos showing the completely destroyed temples! Many monks/nuns were forced out of the monasteries, some were in jails. During culture revolution, there was no concept of human right!
1976-2000
After culture revolution, Tibet, along with the rest of China, enjoyed more religion freedom. However, the issue remained. Before 1976, Tibetan suffering was caused by communist ideology and social movement. After 1976, the issue was caused by the failed policy! It is true that Chinese government poured billions of dollars to Tibet for economical development and religion infrastructure restoration. Many damaged temples were either re-built or restored and regular religion ceremonies were allowed. However, Tibet remained extremely poor compared with the rest of China. In May 1980, the government decided to send a high-level fact-finding delegation to Tibet. The delegation was headed by Hu Yaobang, then General Secretary of the party. Reaching Lhasa, he was shocked to see the level of poverty in Tibet. During a meeting with the Party officials, he asked 'whether all the money Beijing had poured into Tibet over the previous years had been thrown into the Yarlung Tsangpo river'. He said the situation reminded him of colonialism. Hundreds of Chinese officials were transferred back to China. However, the situation did not improve significantly and later, Hu Yaobang lost power. His death in 1989 was the direct trigger to 6/4 democracy movement .
Looking at this broad historical context, for most Chinese, we got out of the dark period and moved on. However, for Tibetans, they viewed these sufferings as imposed on them caused by occupation. This is a very important point that China Camp people don’t understand.
Current Situation
There is a new dimension to Tibetan issues during recent years: the economical development and the huge influx of migrants from inland China to Tibet. With Chinese economy on a very fast pace and the huge tourist market in Tibet, many Han people moved to Tibet to make a living. In some parts of Tibet, the Han population is higher than Tibetan population. On their own land, Tibetan people are experiencing the risk of being the minority. In term of doing business, the honest, “uncivilized” Tibetans are no match to the “smart” Han businessmen. Therefore, many business opportunities fall into Han people’s hands and Tibetan people are still poor. This polarization (rich-poor imbalance) is very common in every part of China. This new influx of Han people was not initiated by the government, but driven by the economical force. In any given day, half of Beijing’s population is migrants. But in Tibet, these changes triggered by economical development take a new meaning: the ethnical division. The recent violence against Han business owners is partially caused by this hatred, similar to the violence against Chinese in Indonesia. It is true that no violence can be justified. But it is important to understand the underlying problem.
The rapid commercialization in Tibet causes another disturbance to Tibetan traditional life and religion practice. Many Buddhist temples quickly become tourist attractions and gradually lose their religion significance. Quite often we see news on Chinese media that some temples are connected with electricity and TVs are everywhere in the temples. Monks/nuns are enjoying TVs and other type of entertainments. Young monks/nuns are riding motorcycles with cell phones on hand. Of course, this is happening everywhere in China, but in Tibet, it has totally different significance. The purpose of these media news is to showcase the economical development, but it actually showed the grave insensitivity (or should say ignorance) to Tibetan’s true religious culture!
There are many evidences indicating that Tibet was continuously governed by leftist policy in term of Buddhism religion freedom. Tinted with wrong ideology and gross ignorance, many party officials in Tibet do not have adequate respect to Tibetan Buddhism. Large scale Buddhism ceremonies require government permission and the process is closely monitored.
In recent years, Tibetan organizations around the world are getting stronger and more organized. Tibetan government in exile, led by the Dalai Lama, successfully raised Tibetan issue onto world stage. Emboldened by the independent movement in other part of the world, Tibetans in exile are hopping that one day, they too can succeed in independence, or complete autonomy. Coupled with the strong resentment inside Tibet, this independent movement forms a strong undercurrent that can erupt whenever there is an opportunity (like Beijing’s Olympic game).
In summary, the wrong ideology, failed policy, rapid social and economical transformation inside China are powerful forces that like a giant wheel rolling across Tibet and destroying everything on its way. It is impossible for Tibet to return to pro-1949’s life style and social structure. Even though Tibet has been crying for more than 50 years, ordinary Chinese are unable to hear this crying. If I were still in China, I would not understand Tibet at all. Even in US, if I were not a Buddhist, I would still not be able to understand this issue. Tibet is a Buddhist region (I don’t want to say it is a Buddhist country or state). Most Tibetans are Buddhist. In order to understand Tibetan issue, we need to have at least basic knowledge about Tibetan Buddhism. The Chinese government and many ordinary Chinese don’t have this knowledge, unfortunately.
The Other Side of Reality
Understanding the reality is to find an appropriate solution. In fact, there is another side of reality that western camp doesn’t understand. That is, there is no hope for Tibet to be independent from China as long as the current Chinese government is still in power and China remains to be a stable country. I know these days, there are many people around the world who would like to see the collapse of Chinese government. But with the population of 1.3 billion, such collapse would inevitably cause huge humanitarian crisis. If that happens, the whole world will suffer. For the sake of world wellbeing, let’s all pray that China’s current social and economic transformation is peaceful and orderly!
It is also important to understand that western countries, especially US, have very limited influence these days over China. Currently, there is a very strong anti-US sentiment among ordinary Chinese. It is the mainstream view in China that US is trying to contain China, to prevent China from becoming a strong nation. Human right is just one card US uses for the containment. US’s own behavior in the world does not offer any help at all. In fact, US has lost its moral leadership on these issues.
China’s internal political system lacks the necessary flexibility to deal with the issue either. To effectively maintain stability, the central government is unwilling to show any sign of weakness. Lina sent an email showing the possibility for the Dalai Lama to meet Chinese leadership. In my opinion, this is impossible under the current situation because that would create an impression that China is bending to external pressure (I hope I am wrong). The slightly soft tones are just the game the government is playing to silence external critics (for the Olympics!).
Dalai Lama has clearly seen through these barriers. Therefore, he has abandoned the claim of seeking independence. Instead, he is seeking Tibet autonomy under China. However, he may or may not understand that this is also impossible (at least for now). On one hand, Tibetan government in exile is one of the largest government in exile with well organized structure. On the other hand, Dalai Lama is still extremely popular among Tibetans. His own popularity is a barrier for him to return to Tibet. It is easy to imagine that if Dalai Lama (with his exiled government) returns to Tibet, very quickly, Chinese central government’s influence over Tibet will diminish.
Any Hope?
It requires enormous political wisdom from both sides to solve the issue. On the Dalai Lama’s side, it maybe wise for him to start the process of breaking the long tradition of having a unified political and religious system. To show the honesty, downgrading the exiled government may not be a bad option. But his hands are tight that many elements of his exiled government do not like his current moderate (non-violence) approach dealing with China. On the China side, any real changes have to come from within China. We hoped that the current social/economical transformation will allow the emergence of more moderate government that is more flexible dealing with Tibetan issues. For Tibetan people, their best hope is to let the general Chinese population to understand their causes. But the time maybe running out. H.H. Dalai Lama is 72 years old. After his inevitable passing away, there will be more violent uprising and more brutal suppression. If this occurs, Tibetan culture and its religion are on a faster pace to extinction. Are we witnessing the replay of a history showing one culture/ethnic group was gradually assimilated by a more powerful ethnic group? I don’t know.
Posted by google at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)
Will China be a Simile of the U.S. as its Media wishes?
Dear friends
Please take a break and come to join our NEWS TIME!
TOPIC
Will China be a Simile of the U.S. as its Media wishes? -- Some readings of mainstream American Media and 20 questions for discussion
Discussion Leader
SuiWah Chan, Professor
Abstract
We would like to read some random samples of news articles from major American media to raise some simple questions and stimulate critical discussions based on findings in these articles. For the time being, we shall spare ourselves from going down the road of the sophists or the philosophers, thus avoid splitting the meanings of what is democracy and freedom and perhaps suspend the exploration of whose definitions we use and whose criteria we think we are using. These could very well be topics of another occasion. Meanwhile let us focus on the big puzzle of how we can begin to understand how American media seems to understand China today.
1. For if you believe Taiwan, Tibet and Sinkiang is part of China then why we find articles that promote their independence, freedom and separation from China?
2. If the newsmakers really believe in independence, freedom and separation for people of different cultures, heritages and races is it plausible to suggest autonomy for the Native Americans living in isolated reservations?
3. If you think that U.S. is democratic and free, how can its media explain its invasion of Iraq? (S. Kinzer: ”Overthrow” of sovereign countries and states by U.S., 2006 )
4. If the American media let you believe that U.S. champions human rights, how can it also support the policies of torture and justify killings of innocent people everyday?
5. If they tell you U.S. has rule of law and presumably China does not, then how is it possible that habeas corpus is abandoned in violation of the law.
6. If U.S. media criticize China for violation of human rights why can it allow its government spy on their own citizens without warrant and put people in jail without trial?
7. If you know the U.S. is the biggest polluter of the world for years how come it refuses to join the Kyoto agreement with the rest of the world?
8. While China does have huge challenges in protecting its environment does the U.S. media explain the basic fact that it has five times the population and one third the air pollution of the U.S.?
9. If U.S. indeed is the most advanced in science, especially on climate change, why and how can its administration tell the world it is not happening?
10. By the same token if the media is right about the supremacy of American technology how does it report on Detroit’s incompetence to compete with Toyota and produce a clean and oil efficient car?
11. Some academics even tell us that China is not innovative and it will take 15 to 20 years to become innovative without stealing other peoples technologies. (IPR)
12. If you know that the U.S. is holding 3000 nuclear weapons, hundreds of bases around the world and spends over $500 billion for the military, how come we read American news paper and even academic and think tank articles that China is the biggest and real danger to the U.S. and the world? (R. Kaplan: ”The Next Cold War” and B. Schwartz: “Managing China’s Rise” under Section “How we would fight China” in Atlantic Magazine 6/05)
13. If the reports say China like India is taking away American jobs and even presidential candidates complain about it why doesn’t the government seek to stop it?
14. If U.S. media wants us to believe the Chinese products are unsafe and of poor quality why do the people keep buying more?
15. If U.S. is pushing for free trade what do the media say about denying Chinese companies’ investment in American companies but keep mump about the fact that over 60% of Chinese imports are made by mostly American and European corporations?
16. When the media and government pressure China to raise its currency by 30% or more why does China move only gradually? (Nobel economist Stiglitz: ”Globalization” 2007 and calls it Chinese gradualism)
17. The media insist on free market principle and yet the administration and congress takes away peoples power to bargain with pharmaceutical companies for better prices for their prescription drugs? (British economist N. Hertz: “Silent Takeover: Global capitalism and the Death of Democracy” 2003)
18. The media complain about the challenges China’s rise bring in line with the Bush doctrine of American hegemony. (see National Security Policy: Unilateralism, Supremacy and Democratic Mission and FP: “China Rising” Jan/Feb 05)
19. The media has fantastic stories about air pollution in Beijing and how a runner might boycott the Olympics.
20. Finally the media keep telling China should have free press and free speech like America so how come 40 some millions of people in this richest country have no health insurance and suffer the indignity of no voice on their suffering. Sure they can say whatever they want but have no influence and justice still fail them.
TIME
03/29/2008 Saturday night 7:00PM-9:30PM.
PLACE
Arbor Village Apt. K282, 2027 Medford St. Ann Arbor, MI, 48104
The talk will be conducted in Chinese. Drinks and light snacks provided. Please contact Wei Huang by weihuang@eecs.umich.edu or 734-272-8857 if you need ride
Posted by google at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)
Welcome to China News Club
China News Club is a UM official student organization dedicating to guide members in their learning of Chinese economic, social and political issues,
to encourage members to participate free discussions and share their ideas and experiences, and to build rational mutual understandings between Chinese students and American students.
Currently we have bi-weekly discussions on Saturday. Please join our mailinglist (chinanewsclub@umich.edu) or visit our online bbs (Chinese version now) for more information: http://www.youmebbs.com/bbsdoc.php?board=ChinaNewsClub
Posted by google at 09:11 PM | Comments (0)
How Repressive Is the Chinese Government in Tibet?
How Repressive Is the Chinese Government in Tibet? Scholar tells skeptical audience that claims by Tibetan exiles of Chinese cultural discrimination are greatly exaggerated.
By Leslie Evans
Barry Sautman, Associate Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, spoke at UCLA December 2 to defend the thesis that claims of cultural repression against Tibetans by the Han Chinese are greatly exaggerated by Tibetan exiles in India and by the liberal Western press. His talk was met with some skepticism from discussant Nancy Levine (Anthropology, UCLA) and by some members of the audience, but he presented a wide range of data to support his view. The talk was sponsored by the Center for Chinese Studies.
Sautman chose to focus his presentation on a refutation of the claims made by some Tibetan exiles that the Chinese are pursuing a policy of "cultural genocide" in Tibet. Levine suggested that this was a bit of a straw man and that most exiles are concerned more with issues of lagging development. On specific issues Sautman made the following case.
Rival Views on Tibetan Sovereignty
The Chinese government and the Tibetan exiles in India, led by the Dalai Lama, have diametrically opposed views of the rights of Tibetans to independence. The Chinese claim that Tibet was a Chinese province for eight centuries and that the Dalai Lama has forfeited his spiritual and temporal leadership because he is a separatist. The Tibetans in exile call Tibet a colony of China. This view, Sautman said, "Is widely accepted in the West. It has resonance in the West in the post-Holocaust period." In contrast, he argued, "The problems of Tibetans are typical of minorities in the era of large modern states."
It is true, he said, that there have been significant inroads of Chinese culture into Tibet since the forcible takeover in 1959, but there has been an even greater influx of Western culture. "By not defining cultural genocide the Tibetan exiles can label any changes from 1959 as cultural genocide, although many of these changes could be expected to have occurred without the issue of cultural genocide arising."
The most common specific charges raised by Tibetan exiles, Sautman said, "point to Han immigration plus restrictive birth policies. In fact the state sponsored transfer to Tibet is on a small scale. From 1994 to 2001 the PRC organized only a few thousand people to go to Tibet as cadres. Most serve only 3 years and then return to China. Those who move on their own to the Tibet Autonomous Region usually return to China in a few years. They come for a while, find the cities of Tibet too expensive, and then return to China. Some of the 72,000 Chinese who maintain their hukou [household registration] in Tibet don't really live there. Pensions are higher if your household is registered in Tibet. These facts are supported by Australian and U.S. demographers. Claims of ethnic swamping in Tibet are misleading."
Chinese Policies on Tibetan Birth Rates
The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Soutman said, "encourages Tibetans to limit their families to 3 children. The local government townships have the power to impose small fines for more than 3 children. One study showed that in 3 of 4 studied townships no fine was imposed on a birth issue and only very small fines in the fourth. Tibetan families in Tibet average 3.8 children, larger than Tibetan families in India. Han families with more than one child face much harsher penalties. In 1990 Tibetans were 95% of the Tibetan population. There has been no dramatic change in the region's ethnic balance."
Exiles also claim that birth policies are repressive against Tibetans in regions of China proper where they are significant minorities, such as in Qinghai and Gansu. "This is not sustained by available statistics," Sautman insisted. "The percent of Tibetans in Qinghai has shown no significant change from 1950 to 2000. Restriction on family size is harsher for the majority than for the minority and the effects have not changed the percent of Tibetans in the Qinghai population. This is hardly cultural genocide."
Émigrés complain of restrictions on the minimum age of monks and nuns and on affiliation with the Dalai Lama. Sautman countered by saying that China claims there are more than 2,000 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. "I have visited many of these and they are all active religious communities. The Chinese government in the remote far west actually encourages people to join monasteries to have people to take care of ethnic relics."
Sautman said that there is now 1 monk or nun for every 35 Tibetans, "the highest of any Buddhist country in the world, and much higher than the relation of ministers and priests to parishioners in any Christian country in the world, where the ratio is often 1 to 1,000. Chinese law says you have to be 18 to become a monk, but in practice there are often much younger monks."
Status of the Tibetan Language
Sautman also sought to rebut charges by Tibetan exiles that the Tibetan language is devalued and being replaced by Chinese. "92-94% of ethnic Tibetans speak Tibetan. The only exception is places in Qinghai and Amdo where the Tibetan population is very small compared with the broader population. Instruction in primary school is pretty universally in Tibetan. Chinese is bilingual from secondary school onward. All middle schools in the TAR also teach Tibetan. In Lhasa there are about equal time given to Chinese, Tibetan, and English." In contrast, Soutman said, "Tibetan exile leaders in India used English as the sole language until 1994 and only became bilingual in 1994. Schools in Tibet promote the Tibetan language more than Indian schools do in ethnic Tibetan areas--in Ladakh, India, instruction is in Urdu, with a high dropout rate from Tibetans, but India is never accused of cultural genocide against Tibetans."
There is an upsurge of the performing arts, poetry and painting by Tibetans, Sautman told the audience. "The exile leaders claim that the Chinese officials suppress Tibetan themes. In exile the Tibetan arts often introduce non-Tibetan themes, but there is no accusation of cultural genocide. Vices such as prostitution are not unique to Tibet under Chinese rule but are common throughout Buddhist lands. There are few aspects of Chinese culture in Tibet, but there are many aspects of Western culture, such as jeans, disco music, etc. The exile Tibetans do not condemn the growth of Western influence at the expense of traditional Tibetan culture."
A Discussant Demurs
Discussant Nancy Levine said it was her opinion that cultural genocide was not a central focus of exile literature. "The discussion seems to focus on social and economic marginalization. The term is problematic." She conceded that Sautman's paper contained "some strong evidence," but said he cited dubious sources as well.
"You criticize the government in exile's position that a fifth of the population was eliminated by purges from the 1959 and 1979. It appears that there was a powerful impact of the Great Leap Forward. Some areas such as the Tibetan areas of Sichuan lost as much as half of their Tibetan population during the Great Leap Forward. There were serious population losses. It should not be simply denied. It is true that the Tibetan population since the 1960s has been growing rapidly and that birth control has been fairly loose for Tibetans. The basis for fines varies sharply. The one study you site at Lhasa cannot be generalized."
On Tibetan Buddhism, she said, "There were 10,000 monks in 1959, and while there are many today, it is a radical decline from then, plus a radical discontinuity in religious training of monks. In 2000 Kirti [Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Sichuan province] was dissolved, with 2,000 monks. The practice of Buddhism is seriously constrained. Every major leader of Tibetan Buddhism except the Panchen Lama is in exile today, not only the Dalai Lama."
Levine scored Sautman for relying too much on Chinese journalistic sources. "You use a Xinhua news source to claim that there are 300 more Tibetan religious institutions today than in 1959. I have been misquoted by Xinhua and this is not a reliable figure. You do have some strong data, but you should distinguish it better from some more questionable sources that you also use."
Barry Sautman responded on several fronts. On claimed declines in Tibetan population, he cited articles in the Columbia Journal of Asian Law and by an Australian Chinese demographer in Asian Ethnicity in 2000. "What I think these articles show is that there is no evidence of significant population losses over the whole period from the 1950s to the present. There are some losses during he Great Leap Forward but these were less in Tibetan areas than in other parts of China. Where these were serious were in Sichuan and Qinghai, but even there not as serious in the Han areas of China. There are no bases at all for the figures used regularly by the exile groups. They use the figure of 1.2 million Tibetans dying from the 1950s to the 1970s, but no source for this is given. As a lawyer I give no credence to statistics for which there is no data, no visible basis."
Sautman conceded Levine's point that claims of cultural genocide are not prominent in Tibetan exile literature, "But pushing the button of genocide has a bigger impact than pushing the button of underdevelopment." He denied that either the local or national Chinese government discriminates against Tibetans: "My finding is that discrimination is popular, but it comes from Han prejudice. The state in Tibetan areas does not involve itself in acts of discrimination. In part this is because many of the leaders in the ethnic minority areas are from the ethnic minority."
Center for Chinese Studies
http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=2732
Posted by google at 04:56 PM | Comments (0)
The Shadow of the Dalai Lama
For centuries after Buddha had died, his shadow was still visible in a cave a dreadful, spine-chilling shadow. God is dead: but man being the way he is for centuries to come there will be caves in which his shadow is shown and we, we must also triumph over his shadow. ---- Friedrich Nietzsche
The practice and philosophy of Buddhism has spread so rapidly throughout the Western world in the past 30 years and has so often been a topic in the media that by now anybody who is interested in cultural affairs has formed some sort of concept of Buddhism. In the conventional “Western” notion of Buddhism, the teachings of Buddha Gautama are regarded as a positive Eastern countermodel to the decadent civilization and culture of the West: where the Western world has introduced war and exploitation into world history, Buddhism stands for peace and freedom; whilst Western rationalism is destructive of life and the environment, the Eastern teachings of wisdom preserve and safeguard them. The meditation, compassion, composure, understanding, nonviolence, modesty, and spirituality of Asia stand in contrast to the actionism, egomania, unrest, indoctrination, violence, arrogance, and materialism of Europe and North America. Ex oriente lux—“light comes from the East”; in occidente nox—“darkness prevails in the West”.
We regard this juxtaposition of the Eastern and Western hemispheres as not just the “business” of naive believers and zealous Tibetan lamas. On the contrary, this comparison of values has become distributed among Western intelligentsia as a popular philosophical speculation in which they flirt with their own demise.
But the cream of Hollywood also gladly and openly confess their allegiance to the teachings of Buddhism (or what they understand these to be), especially when these come from the mouths of Tibetan lamas. “Tibet is looming larger than ever on the show business map,” the Herald Tribune wrote in 1997. “Tibet is going to enter the Western popular culture as something can only when Hollywood does the entertainment injection into the world system. Let’s remember that Hollywood is the most powerful force in the world, besides the US military” (Herald Tribune, March 20, 1997, pp. 1, 6). Orville Schell, who is working on a book on Tibet and the West, sees the Dalai Lama’s “Hollywood connection” as a substitute for the non-existent diplomatic corps that could represent the interests of the exiled Tibetan hierarch: “Since he [the Dalai Lama] doesn’t have embassies, and he has no political power, he has to seek other kinds. Hollywood is a kind of country in his own, and he’s established a kind of embassy there.” (Newsweek, May 19, 1997, p. 24).
In Buddhism more and more show-business celebrities believe they have discovered a message of salvation that can at last bring the world peace and tranquility. In connection with his most recent film about the young Dalai Lama (Kundun), the director Martin Scorsese, more known for the violence of his films, emotionally declared: “Violence is not the answer, it doesn’t work any more. We are at the end of the worst century in which the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have occurred ... The nature of human beings must change. We must cultivate love and compassion” (Focus 46/1997, p. 168; retranslation). The karate hero Steven Segal, who believes himself to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan lama, tells us, “I have been a Buddhist for twenty years and since then have lived in harmony with myself and the world” (Bunte, November 6, 1997, p. 24; retranslation). For actor Richard Gere, one of the closest Western confidants of the Dalai Lama, the “fine irony of Buddhism, which signifies the only way to true happiness, is our own pleasure to offer to each and all” (Bunte, November 6, 1997, p. 25; retranslation). Helmut Thoma, former head of the private German television company RTL, is no less positive about this Eastern religion: “Buddhists treat each other in a friendly, well-meaning and compassionate way. They see no difference between their own suffering and that of others. I admire that” (Bunte, November 6, 1997, p. 24). Actress Christine Kaufmann has also enthused, “In Buddhism the maxim is: enjoy the phases of happiness for these are transitory” (Bunte, November 6, 1997, p. 21). Sharon Stone, Uma Thurman, Tina Turner, Patty Smith, Meg Ryan, Doris Dörrie, and Shirley MacLaine are just some of the film stars and singers who follow the teachings of Buddha Gautama.
The press is no less euphoric. The German magazine Bunte has praised the teachings from the East as the “ideal religion of our day”: Buddhism has no moral teachings, enjoins us to happiness, supports winners, has in contrast to other religions an unblemished past ("no skeletons in the closet”),worships nature as a cathedral, makes women beautiful, promotes sensuousness, promises eternal youth, creates paradise on earth, reduces stress and body weight (Bunte, November 6, 1997, pp. 20ff.).
What has already become the myth of the “Buddhization of the West” is the work of many. Monks, scholars, enthusiastic followers, generous sponsors, occultists, hippies, and all sorts of “Eastern trippers” have worked on it. But towering above them all, just as the Himalayas surpass all other peaks on the planet, is His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Timeless, gigantic, respectful, tolerant, patient, modest, simple, full of humor, warm, gentle, lithe, earthy, harmonious, transparent, pure, and always smiling and laughing — this is how the Kundun (the Tibetan word means “presence” or “living Buddha”) is now known to all. There is no positive human characteristic which has not at one time or another been applied to the Dalai Lama. For many of the planet’s inhabitants, even if they are non-Buddhists, he represents the most respectable living individual of our epoch.
Many believe they have discovered in the straightforward personality of this Buddhist monk all the rare qualities of a gracious and trustworthy character that we seek in vain among our Western politicians and church leaders. In a world full of evil, materialism, and corruption he represents goodwill, the realm of the spirit, and the lotus blossom of purity; amidst the maelstrom of trivialities and confusion he stands for meaning, calm, and stability; in the competitive struggle of modern capitalism and in an age where reports of catastrophes are constant he is the guarantor of justice and a clear and unshaken will; from the thick of the battle of cultures and peoples he emerges as the apostle of peace; amidst a global outbreak of religious fanaticism he preaches tolerance and nonviolence.
His followers worship him as a deity, a “living Buddha” (Kundun), and call him their “divine king”. Not even the Catholic popes or medieval emperors ever claimed such a high spiritual position — they continued to bow down before the “Lord of Lords” (God) as his supreme servants. The Dalai Lama, however –according to Tibetan doctrine at least — himself appears and acts as the “Highest”. In him is revealed the mystic figure of ADI BUDDHA (the Supreme Buddha); he is a religious ideal in flesh and blood. In some circles, enormous hopes are placed in the Kundun as the new Redeemer himself. Not just Tibetans and Mongolians, many Taiwan Chinese and Westerners also see him as a latterday Messiah. [1]
However human the monk from Dharamsala (India) may appear, his person is surrounded by the most occult speculations. Many who have met him believe they have encountered the supernatural. In the case of the “divine king” who has descended to mankind from the roof of the world, that which was denied Moses—namely, to glimpse the countenance of God (Yahweh)—has become possible for pious Buddhists; and unlike Yahweh this countenance shows no wrath, but smiles graciously and warmly instead.
The esoteric pathos in the characterization of the Dalai Lama has long since transcended the boundaries of Buddhist insider groups. It is the famous show business personalities and even articles in the “respectable” Western press who now express the mystic flair of the Kundun in weighty exclamations: “The fascination is the search for the third eye”, Melissa Mathison, scriptwriter for Martin Scorsese’s film, Kundun, writes in the Herald Tribune. “Americans are hoping for some sort of magical door into the mystical, thinking that there’s some mysterious reason for things, a cosmic explanation. Tibet offers the most extravagant expression of the mystical, and when people meet His Holiness, you can see on their faces that they’re hoping to get this hit that will transcend their lives, take them someplace else” (Herald Tribune, March 20, 1997).
Nevertheless — and this is another magical fairytale — the divine king’s omnipotent role combines well with the monastic modesty and simplicity he exhibits. It is precisely this fascinating combination of the supreme (“divine king”) and the almighty with the lowliest (“mendicant”) and weakest that makes the Dalai Lama so appealing for many — clear, understandable words, a gracious smile, a simple robe, plain sandals, and behind all this the omnipotence of the divine. With his constantly repeated statement — “I ... see myself first as a man and a Tibetan who has made the decision to become a Buddhist monk” — His Holiness has conquered the hearts of the West (Dalai Lama XIV, 1993a, p. 7). We can believe in such a person, we can find refuge in him, from him we learn about the wisdom of life and death. [2]
A similar reverse effect is found in another of the Kundun’s favorite sayings, that the institution of the Dalai Lama could become superfluous in the future. “Perhaps it would really be good if I were the last!” (Levenson, 1990, p. 366). Such admissions of his own superfluity bring tears to people’s eyes and are only surpassed by the prognosis of the “divine king” that in his next life he will probably be reincarnated as an insect in order to help this lower form of life as an “insect messiah”. In the wake of such heartrending prophecies no-one would wish for anything more than that the institution of the Dalai Lama might last for ever.
The political impotence of the country the hierarch had to flee has a similarly powerful and disturbing effect. The image of the innocent, peaceful, spiritual, defenseless, and tiny Tibet, suppressed and humiliated by the merciless, inhumane, and materialistic Chinese giant has elevated the “Land of Snows” and its monastic king to the status of a worldwide symbol of “pacifist resistance”. The more Tibet and its “ecclesiastical king” are threatened, the more his spiritual authority increases and the more the Kundun becomes an international moral authority. He has succeeded in the impossible task of drawing strength from his weakness.
The numerous speeches of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, his interviews, statements, writings, biographies, books, and his countless introductions and forewords to the texts of others deal almost exclusively with topics like compassion, kindness, sincerity, love, nonviolence, human rights, ecological visions, professions of democracy, religious tolerance, inner and outer spirituality, the blessings of science, world peace, and so on. It would take a true villain to not agree totally with what he has said and written. Training consciousness, achieving spiritual peace, cultivating inner contentment, fostering satisfaction, practicing awareness, eliminating egoism, helping others — what responsible person could fail to identify with this? Who doesn’t long for flawless love, clear intellect, generosity, and enlightenment?
Within Western civilization, the Dalai Lama appears as the purest light. He represents — according to former President Jimmy Carter — a new type of world leader, who has placed the principles of peace and compassion at the center of his politics, and who, with his kind and winning nature, has shown us all how the hardest blows of fate can be borne with perseverance and patience. By now he symbolizes human dignity and global responsibility for millions. Up until very recently hardly anyone, with the exception of his archenemies, the Chinese communists, has dared to criticize this impotent/omnipotent luminary. But then, out of the blue in 1996, dark clouds began to gather over the bright aura of the “living Buddha”.
Charges, accusations, suspicions and incriminations began to appear in the media. At first on the Internet, then in isolated press reports, and finally in television programs (see Panorama on ARD [Germany], November 20, 1997 and 10 vor 10 on SF1 [Switzerland], January 5-8, 1998). At the same time as the Hollywood stars were erecting a media altar for their Tibetan god, the public attacks on the Dalai Lama were becoming more frequent. Even for a mundane politician the catalogue of accusations would have been embarrassing, but for a divine king they were horrendous. And on this occasion the attacks came not from the Chinese camp but from within his own ranks.
The following serious charges are leveled in an open letter to the Kundun supposedly written by Tibetans in exile which criticizes the “despotism” of the hierarch: “The cause [of the despotism] is the invisible disease which is still there and which develops immediately if met with various conditions. And what is this disease? It is your clinging to your own power. It is a fact that even at that time if someone would have used democracy on you, you would not have been able to accept it. ... Your Holiness, you wish to be a great leader, but you do not know that in order to fulfill the wish, a ‘political Bodhisattva vow’ is required. So you entered instead the wrong ‘political path of accumulation’ (tsog lam) and that has lead you on a continuously wrong path. You believed that in order to be a greater leader you had to secure your own position first of all, and whenever any opposition against you arose you had to defend yourself, and this has become contagious. ... Moreover, to challenge lamas you have used religion for your own aim. To that purpose you had to develop the Tibetan people’s blind faith. ... For instance, you started the politics of public Kalachakra initiations. [3] Normally the Kalachakra initiation is not given in public. Then you started to use it continuously in a big way for your politics. The result is that now the Tibetan people have returned to exactly the same muddy and dirty mixing of politics and religion of lamas which you yourself had so precisely criticized in earlier times. ... You have made the Tibetans into donkeys. You can force them to go here and there as you like. In your words you always say that you want to be Ghandi but in your action you are like a religious fundamentalist who uses religious faith for political purposes. Your image is the Dalai Lama, your mouth is Mahatma Ghandi and your heart is like that of a religious dictator. You are a deceiver and it is very sad that on the top of the suffering that they already have the Tibetan people have a leader like you. Tibetans have become fanatics. They say that the Dalai Lama is more important than the principle of Tibet. ... Please, if you feel like being like Gandhi, do not turn the Tibetan situation in the church dominated style of 17th century Europe” (Sam, May 27, 1997 - Newsgroup 16).
The list of accusations goes on and on. Here we present some of the charges raised against the Kundun since 1997 which we treat in more detail in this study: association with the Japanese “poison gas guru” Shoko Asahara (the “Asahara affair”); violent suppression of the free expression of religion within his own ranks (the “Shugden affair”); the splitting of the other Buddhist sects (the “Karmapa affair”); frequent sexual abuse of women by Tibetan lamas (“Sogyal Rinpoche and June Campbell affairs”);intolerance towards homosexuals; involvement in a ritual murder (the events of February 4, 1997); links to National Socialism (the “Heinrich Harrer affair”); nepotism (the “Yabshi affair”); selling out his own country to the Chinese(renunciation of Tibetan sovereignty); political lies; rewriting history; and much more. Overnight the god has become a demon. [4]
And all of a sudden Westerners are beginning to ask themselves whether the king of light from the Himalayas might not have a monstrous shadow. What we mean by the Dalai Lama’s “shadow” is the possibility of a dark, murky, and “dirty” side to both his personality and politicoreligious office in contrast to the pure and brilliant figure he cuts as the “greatest living hero of peace in our century” in the captivated awareness of millions.
For most people who have come to know him personally or via the media, such nocturnal dimensions to His Holiness are unimaginable. The possibility would not even occur to them, since the Kundun has grasped how to effectively conceal the threatening and demonic aspects of Tibetan Buddhism and the many dark chapters in the history of Tibet. Up until 1996 he had succeeded –the poorly grounded Chinese critique aside — in playing the shining hero on the world stage.
Plato’s cave
The shadow is the “other side” of a person, his “hidden face”, the shadows are his “occult depths”. Psychoanalysis teaches us that there are four ways of dealing with our shadow: we can deny it, suppress it, project it onto other people, or integrate it.
But the topic of the shadow does not just have a psychological dimension; ever since Plato’s famous analogy of the cave it has become one of the favorite motifs of Western philosophy. In his Politeia (The State), Plato tells of an “unenlightened” people who inhabit a cave with their backs to the entrance. Outside shines the light of eternal and true reality, but as the people have turned their backs to it, all they see are the shadows of reality which flit sketchily across the walls of the cave before their eyes. Their human attentiveness is magically captivated by this shadowy world and they thus perceive only dreams and illusions, never higher reality itself. Should a cave dweller one day manage to escape this dusky dwelling, he would recognize that he had been living in a world of illusions.
This parable was adapted by Friedrich Nietzsche in Aphorism 108 of his Fröhliche Wissenschaft [The Gay Science] and — of interest here — linked to the figure of Buddha: “For centuries after Buddha had died,” Nietzsche wrote, “his shadow was still visible in a cave — a dreadful, spine-chilling shadow. God is dead: but man being the way he is, for centuries to come there will be caves in which his shadow is shown — and we — we must also triumph over his shadow”. [5]
This aphorism encourages us to speculate about the Dalai Lama. He is, after all, worshipped as “God” or as a “living Buddha” (Kundun), as a supreme enlightened being. But, we could argue with Nietzsche, the true Buddha (“God”) is dead. Does this make the figure of the Dalai Lama nothing but a shadow? Are pseudo-dogmas, pseudo-rituals, and pseudo-mysteries all that remain of the original Buddhism? Did the historical Buddha Shakyamuni leave us with his “dreadful shadow” (the Dalai Lama) and have we been challenged to liberate ourselves from him? However, we could also speculate as to whether people perceive only the Dalai Lama’s silhouette since they still live in the cave of an unenlightened consciousness. If they were to leave this world of illusion, they might experience the Kundun as the supreme luminary and Supreme Buddha (ADI BUDDHA).
In our study of the Dalai Lama we offer concrete answers to these and similar metaphysical questions. To do this, however, we must lead our readers into (Nietzsche’s) cave, where the “dreadful shadow” of the Kundun (a “living Buddha”) appears on the wall. Up until now this cave has been closed to the public and could not be entered by the uninitiated.
Incidentally, every Tibetan temple possesses such an eerie room of shadows. Beside the various sacred chambers in which smiling Buddha statues emit peace and composure there are secret rooms known as gokhangs which can only be entered by a chosen few. In the dim light of flickering, half-drowned butter lamps, surrounded by rusty weapons, stuffed animals, and mummified body parts, the Tibetan terror gods reside in the gokhang. Here, the inhabitants of a violent and monstrous realm of darkness are assembled. In a figurative sense the gokhang symbolizes the dark ritualism of Lamaism and Tibet’s hidden history of violence. In order to truly get to know the Dalai Lama (the “living Buddha”) we must first descend into the “cave” (the gokhang) and there conduct a speleology of his religion.
“Realpolitik” and the “Politics of Symbols”
Our study is divided into two parts. The first contain a depiction and critique of the religious foundations of Tibetan (“Tantric”) Buddhism and is entitled Ritual as Politics. The second part (Politics as Ritual) examines the power politics of the Kundun (Dalai Lama) and its historical preconditions. The relationship between political power and religion is thus central to our book.
In ancient societies (like that of Tibet), everything that happens in the everyday world — from acts of nature to major political events to quotidian occurrences — is the expression of transcendent powers and forces working behind the scenes. Mortals do not determine their own fates; rather they are instruments in the hands of “gods” and “demons”. If we wish to gain any understanding at all of the Dalai Lama’s “secular” politics, it must be derived from this atavistic perspective which permeates the traditional cultural legacy of Tibetan Buddhism. For the mysteries that he administers (in which the “gods” make their appearances) form the foundations of his political vision and decision making. State and religion, ritual and politics are inseparable for him.
What, however, distinguishes a “politics of symbols” from “realpolitik”? Both are concerned with power, but the methods for achieving and maintaining power differ. In realpolitik we are dealing with facts that are both caused and manipulated by people. Here the protagonists are politicians, generals, CEOs, leaders of opinion, cultural luminaries, etc. The methods through which power is exercised include force, war, revolution, legal systems, money, rhetoric, propaganda, public discussions, and bribery.
In the symbolic political world, however, we encounter “supernatural” energy fields, the “gods” and “demons”. The secular protagonists in events are still human beings such as ecclesiastical dignitaries, priests, magicians, gurus, yogis, and shamans. But they all see themselves as servants of some type of superior divine will, or, transcending their humanity they themselves become “gods”, as in the case of the Dalai Lama. His exercise of power thus not only involves worldly techniques but also the manipulation of symbols in rituals and magic. For him, symbolic images and ritual acts are not simply signs or aesthetic acts but rather instruments with which to activate the gods and to influence people’s awareness. His political reality is determined by a “metaphysical detour” via the mysteries. [6]
This interweaving of historical and symbolic events leads to the seemingly fantastic metapolitics of the Tibetans. Lamaism believes it can influence the course of history not just in Tibet but for the entire planet through its system of rituals and invocations, through magic practices and concentration exercises. The result is an atavistic mix of magic and politics. Rather than being determined by parliament and the Tibetan government in exile, political decisions are made by oracles and the supernatural beings acting through them. It is no longer parties with differing programs and leaders who face off in the political arena, but rather distinct and antagonistic oracle gods.
Above all it is in the individual of the Dalai Lama that the entire wordly and spiritual/magic potential of the Tibetan world view is concentrated. According to tradition he is a sacred king. All his deeds, however much they are perceived in terms of practical politics by his surroundings, are thus profoundly linked to the Tibetan mysteries.
The latter have always been shrouded in secrecy. The uninitiated have no right to participate or learn about them. Nevertheless, in recent years much information about the Tibetan cults (recorded in the so-called tantra texts and their commentaries) has been published and translated into European languages. The world that opens itself here to Western awareness appears equally fantastic and fascinating. This world is a combination of theatrical pomp, medieval magic, sacred sexuality, relentless asceticism, supreme deification and the basest abuse of women, murderous crimes, maximum ethical demands, the appearance of gods and demons, mystical ecstasy, and cold hard logic all in one powerful, paradoxical performance.
Note on the cited literature:
The original documents which we cite are without exception European-language translations from Sanskrit, Tibetan or Chinese, or are drawn from Western sources. By now, so many relevant texts have been translated that they provide an adequate scholarly basis for a culturally critical examination of Tibetan Buddhism without the need to refer to documents in the original language. For our study , the Kalachakra Tantra is central. This has not been translated in its entirety, aside from an extremely problematical handwritten manuscript by the German Tibetoligist, Albert Grünwedel, which can be found in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Important parts of the Sri Kalachakra have been translated into English by John Roland Newman, along with a famous commentary on these parts by Pundarika known as the Vimalaphraba. (John Ronald Newman - The outer wheel of time: Vajrayana buddhist cosmology in the Kalacakra Tantra – Vimalaprabhā - nāmamūlatantrānusāriņī-dvādaśasāhasrikālagukālacakratantrarājaţīkā ) Madison 1987)
The Sri Kalachakra (Laghukalachakratantra) is supposed to be the abridgement of a far more comprehensive original text by the name of Sekoddesha. The complete text has been lost — but some important passages from it have been preserved and have been commented upon by the renowned scholar Naropa (10th century). An Italian translation of the commentary by Ranieri Gnoli and Giacomella Orofino is available. Further to this, we have studied every other work on the Kalachakra Tantra which we have been able to find in a Western language. We were thuis in a position to be able to adequately reconstruct the contents of the “Time Tantra” from the numerous translated commentaries and sources for a cultural historical (and not a philological) assessment of the tantra. This extensive literature is listed at the end of the book. In order to make the intentions and methods of this religious system comprehensible for a Western audience, a comparision with other tantras and with parallels in European culture is of greater importance than a meticulous linguistic knowledge of every line in the Sanskrit or Tibetan original.
In the interests of readability, we have transliterated Tibetan and Sanskrit names without diacritical marks and in this have primarily oriented ourselves to Anglo-Saxon usages.
Footnotes:
[1] In the opinion of the Tibet researcher, Peter Bishop, the head of the Lamaist “church” satisfies a “reawakened appreciation of the Divine Father” for many people from the West (Bishop 1993, p. 130). For Bishop, His Holiness stands out as a fatherly savior figure against the insecurities and fears produced by modern society, against the criticisms levelled at monotheistic religions, and against the rubble of the decline of the European system of values.
[2] Through this contradictory effect the Dalai Lama is able to strengthen his superhuman stature with the most banal of words and deeds. Many of His Holiness’s Western visitors, for example, are amazed after an audience that a “god-king” constantly rubs his nose and scratches his head “like an ape”. Yet, writes the Tibet researcher Christiaan Klieger, “such expressions of the body natural do not detract from the status of the Dalai Lama – far from it, as it adds to his personal charisma. It maintains that incongruous image of a divine form in a human body” (Klieger 1991, p 79).
[3] The Kalachakra initiations are the most significant rituals which the Dalai Lama conducts, partly in public and in part in secret. By now the public events take place in the presence of hundreds of thousands. Analyses and interpretations of the Kalachakra initiations lie at the center of the current study.
[4] Up until 1996 the West needed to be divided into two factions — with the eloquent advocates of Tibetan Buddhism on the one hand, and those who were completely ignorant of the issue and remained silent on the other. In contrast, modern or “postmodern” cultural criticisms of the Buddhist teachings and critical examinations of the Tibetan clergy and the Tibetan state structure were extremely rare (completely the opposite of the case of the literature which addresses the Pope and the Catholic Church). Noncommitted and unfalsified analyses and interpretations of Buddhist or Tibetan history, in brief open and truth-seeking confrontations with the shady side of the “true faith” and its history, have to be sought out like needles in a haystack of ideological glorifications and deliberately constructed myths of history. For this reason those who attempted to discover and reveal the hidden background have had to battle to swim against a massive current of resistance based on pre-formed opinions and deliberate manipulation. This situation has changed in the period since 1996.
[5] The fact that Nietzsche’s aphorism about the shadow is number 108 offers numerolgists fertile grounds for occult speculation, as 108 is one of the most significant holy numbers in Tibetan Buddhism. Given the status of knowledge about Tibet at the time, it is hardly likely that Nietzsche chose this number deliberately.
[6] There is nonetheless an occult correlation between “symbolic and ritual politics” and real political events. Thus the Tibetan lamas believe they are justified in subsuming the pre-existing social reality (including that of the West) into their magical world view and subjecting it to their “irrational” methods. With a for a contemporary awareness audacious seeming thought construction, they see in the processes of world history not just the work of politicians, the military, and business leaders, but declare these to be the lackeys of divine or demonic powers.
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Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
By Michael Parenti, Swans, 7 July 2003
Within 170 years, despite their recognized status as gods, five Dalai Lamas were murdered by their enlightened nonviolent Buddhist courtiers.
Throughout the ages there has prevailed a distressing symbiosis between religion and violence. The histories of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam are heavily laced with internecine vendettas, inquisitions, and wars. Again and again, religionists have claimed a divine mandate to terrorize and massacre heretics, infidels, and other sinners.
Some people have argued that Buddhism is different, that it stands in marked contrast to the chronic violence of other religions. But a glance at history reveals that Buddhist organizations throughout the centuries have not been free of the violent pursuits so characteristic of other religious groups. (1) In the twentieth century alone, from Thailand to Burma to Korea to Japan, Buddhists have clashed with each other and with nonBuddhists. In Sri Lanka, huge battles in the name of Buddhism are part of Sinhalese history. (2)
Just a few years ago in South Korea, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order—reputedly devoted to a meditative search for spiritual enlightenment—fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its additional millions of dollars in property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various duties. The brawls left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. (3)
But many present-day Buddhists in the United States would argue that none of this applies to the Dalai Lama and the Tibet he presided over before the Chinese crackdown in 1959. The Dalai Lama's Tibet, they believe, was a spiritually oriented kingdom, free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, pointless pursuits, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, and a slew of travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La and the Dalai Lama as a wise saint, the greatest living human, as actor Richard Gere gushed. (4)
The Dalai Lama himself lent support to this idealized image of Tibet with statements such as: Tibetan civilization has a long and rich history. The pervasive influence of Buddhism and the rigors of life amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment. (5) In fact, Tibet's history reads a little differently. In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is a historical irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chinese army.
To elevate his authority beyond worldly challenge, the first Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. (6) The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, writing erotic poetry, and acting in other ways that might seem unfitting for an incarnate deity. For this he was disappeared by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized status as gods, five Dalai Lamas were murdered by their enlightened nonviolent Buddhist courtiers. (7)
Shangri-La (for Lords and Lamas)
Religions have had a close relationship not only to violence but to economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into religious or secular manorial estates worked by serfs. Even a writer like Pradyumna Karan, sympathetic to the old order, admits that a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches. . . . In addition, individual monks and lamas were able to accumulate great wealth through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending. (8) Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries went to the higher-ranking lamas, many of them scions of aristocratic families, while most of the lower clergy were as poor as the peasant class from which they sprang. This class-determined economic inequality within the Tibetan clergy closely parallels that of the Christian clergy in medieval Europe.
Along with the upper clergy, secular leaders did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. He also was a member of the Dalai Lama's lay Cabinet. (9) Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some of its Western admirers as a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma. (10) In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order and catch runaway serfs. (11)
Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they became bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common practice for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated childhood rape not long after he was taken into the monastery at age nine. (12) The monastic estates also conscripted peasant children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.
In Old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the middle-class families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. (13)
In 1953, the greater part of the rural population—some 700,000 of an estimated total population of 1,250,000—were serfs. Tied to the land, they were allotted only a small parcel to grow their own food. Serfs and other peasants generally went without schooling or medical care. They spent most of their time laboring for the monasteries and individual high-ranking lamas, or for a secular aristocracy that numbered not more than 200 wealthy families. In effect, they were owned by their masters who told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. A serf might easily be separated from his family should the owner send him to work in a distant location. Serfs could be sold by their masters, or subjected to torture and death. (14)
A Tibetan lord would often take his pick of females in the serf population, if we are to believe one 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf: All pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished. They were just slaves without rights. (15) Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture and forcibly bring back those who tried to flee. A 24-year old runaway serf, interviewed by Anna Louise Strong, welcomed the Chinese intervention as a liberation. During his time as a serf he claims he was not much different from a draft animal, subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold, unable to read or write, and knowing nothing at all. He tells of his attempts to flee:
The first time [the landlord's men] caught me running away, I was very small, and they only cuffed me and cursed me. The second time they beat me up. The third time I was already fifteen and they gave me fifty heavy lashes, with two men sitting on me, one on my head and one on my feet. Blood came then from my nose and mouth. The overseer said: This is only blood from the nose; maybe you take heavier sticks and bring some blood from the brain. They beat then with heavier sticks and poured alcohol and water with caustic soda on the wounds to make more pain. I passed out for two hours. (16)
In addition to being under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land—or the monastery's land—without pay, the serfs were obliged to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. It was an efficient system of economic exploitation that guaranteed to the country's religious and secular elites a permanent and secure labor force to cultivate their land holdings without burdening them either with any direct day-to-day responsibility for the serf's subsistence and without the need to compete for labor in a market context. (17)
The common people labored under the twin burdens of the corvée (forced unpaid labor on behalf of the lord) and onerous tithes. They were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child, and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a new tree in their yard, for keeping domestic or barnyard animals, for owning a flower pot, or putting a bell on an animal. There were taxes for religious festivals, for singing, dancing, drumming, and bell ringing. People were taxed for being sent to prison and upon being released. Even beggars were taxed. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being placed into slavery for as long as the monastery demanded, sometimes for the rest of their lives. (18)
The theocracy's religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their foolish and wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as an atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve upon being reborn. The rich and powerful of course treated their good fortune as a reward for—and tangible evidence of—virtue in past and present lives.
Torture and Mutilation in Shanghri-La
In the Dalai Lama's Tibet, torture and mutilation—including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation of arms and legs—were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, runaway serfs, and other criminals. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion. (19) Some Western visitors to Old Tibet remarked on the number of amputees to be seen. Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then left to God in the freezing night to die. The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking, concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. (20)
Some monasteries had their own private prisons, reports Anna Louise Strong. In 1959, she visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, and breaking off hands. For gouging out eyes, there was a special stone cap with two holes in it that was pressed down over the head so that the eyes bulged out through the holes and could be more readily torn out. There were instruments for slicing off kneecaps and heels, or hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disembowling. (21)
The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master's cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away. (22)
Theocratic despotism had been the rule for generations. An English visitor to Tibet in 1895, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the Tibetan people were under the intolerable tyranny of monks and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's rule as an engine of oppression and a barrier to all human improvement. At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O'Connor, observed that the great landowners and the priests . . . exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal, while the people are oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft the world has ever seen. Tibetan rulers, like those of Europe during the Middle Ages, forged innumerable weapons of servitude, invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition among the common people. (23)
In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them, nor do laymen take part in or even attend the monastery services. The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth. (24)
Occupation and Revolt
The Chinese Communists occupied Tibet in 1951, claiming suzerainty over that country. The 1951 treaty provided for ostensible self-government under the Dalai Lama's rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal administration to promote social reforms. At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect change. Among the earliest reforms they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build some hospitals and roads.
Mao Zedung and his Communist cadres did not simply want to occupy Tibet. They desired the Dalai Lama's cooperation in transforming Tibet's feudal economy in accordance with socialist goals. Even Melvyn Goldstein, who is sympathetic to the Dalai Lama and the cause of Tibetan independence, allows that contrary to popular belief in the West, the Chinese pursued a policy of moderation. They took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion and allowed the old feudal and monastic systems to continue unchanged. Between 1951 and 1959, not only was no aristocratic or monastic property confiscated, but feudal lords were permitted to exercise continued judicial authority over their hereditarily bound peasants. (25) As late as 1957, Mao Zedung was trying to salvage his gradualist policy. He reduced the number of Chinese cadre and troops in Tibet and promised the Dalai Lama in writing that China would not implement land reforms in Tibet for the next six years or even longer if conditions were not yet ripe. (26)
Nevertheless, Chinese rule over Tibet greatly discomforted the lords and lamas. What bothered them most was not that the intruders were Chinese. They had seen Chinese come and go over the centuries and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China. (27) Indeed the approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the present-day Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the young Dalai Lama was installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chiang Kaishek's troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old tradition. (28) What really bothered the Tibetan lords and lamas was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they were sure, before the Communists started imposing their egalitarian and collectivist solutions upon the highly privileged theocracy.
In 1956–57, armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). The uprising received extensive material support from the CIA, including arms, supplies, and military training for Tibetan commando units. It is a matter of public knowledge that the CIA set up support camps in Nepal, carried out numerous airlifts, and conducted guerrilla operations inside Tibet. (29) Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance. The Dalai Lama's eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, played an active role in that group.
Many of the Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself. (30) The small and thinly spread PLA garrisons in Tibet could not have captured them all. The PLA must have received support from Tibetans who did not sympathize with the uprising. This suggests that the resistance had a rather narrow base within Tibet. Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure, writes Hugh Deane. (31) In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: The Tibetan insurgents never succeeded in mustering into their ranks even a large fraction of the population at hand, to say nothing of a majority. As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed. (32) Eventually the resistance crumbled.
The Communists Overthrow Feudalism
Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese in Tibet after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They built the only hospitals that exist in the country, and established secular education, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. They constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa. They also put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. (33)
The Chinese also expropriated the landed estates and reorganized the peasants into hundreds of communes. Heinrich Harrer wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. (It was later revealed that Harrer had been a sergeant in Hitler's SS. (34)) He proudly reports that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese and who gallantly defended their independence . . . were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived. They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants. (35)
By 1961, hundreds of thousands of acres formerly owned by the lords and lamas had been distributed to tenant farmers and landless peasants. In pastoral areas, herds that were once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, leading to an increase in agrarian production. (36)
Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But people were no longer compelled to pay tributes or make gifts to the monasteries and lords. The many monks who had been conscripted into the religious orders as children were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends, and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and funerals. (37)
The charges made by the Dalai Lama himself about Chinese mass sterilization and forced deportation of Tibetans have remained unsupported by any evidence. Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation. (38) No matter how often stated, that figure is puzzling. The official 1953 census—six years before the Chinese crackdown—recorded the entire population of Tibet at 1,274,000. Other estimates varied from one to three million. (39) Later census counts put the ethnic Tibetan population within the country at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then whole cities and huge portions of the countryside, indeed almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves—of which we have seen no evidence. The Chinese military force in Tibet was not big enough to round up, hunt down, and exterminate that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.
Chinese authorities do admit to mistakes in the past, particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when religious persecution reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming was imposed on the peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls over Tibet and tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades. (40) In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal. (41)
Elites, ɭigr鳬 and CIA Money
For the Tibetan upper class lamas and lords, the Communist intervention was a calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living. Those feudal elites who remained in Tibet and decided to cooperate with the new regime faced difficult adjustments. Consider the following:
In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited the Central Institute of National Minorities in Beijing which trained various ethnic minorities for the civil service or prepared them for entrance into agricultural and medical schools. Of the 900 Tibetan students attending, most were runaway serfs and slaves. But about 100 were from privileged Tibetan families, sent by their parents so that they might win favorable posts in the new administration. The class divide between these two groups of students was all too evident. As the institute's director noted:
Those from noble families at first consider that in all ways they are superior. They resent having to carry their own suitcases, make their own beds, look after their own room. This, they think, is the task of slaves; they are insulted because we expect them to do this. Some never accept it but go home; others accept it at last. The serfs at first fear the others and cannot sit at ease in the same room. In the next stage they have less fear but still feel separate and cannot mix. Only after some time and considerable discussion do they reach the stage in which they mix easily as fellow students, criticizing and helping each other. (42)
The 魩gr鳦#39; plight received fulsome play in the West and substantial support from U.S. agencies dedicated to making the world safe for economic inequality. Throughout the 1960s the Tibetan exile community secretly received $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama's organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual share was $186,000, making him a paid agent of the CIA. Indian intelligence also financed him and other Tibetan exiles. (43) He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked with the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment. (44)
While presenting himself as a defender of human rights, and having won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, the Dalai Lama continued to associate with and be advised by aristocratic 魩gr鳠and other reactionaries during his exile. In 1995, the Raleigh, N.C. News & Observer carried a frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right. (45) In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who had been apprehended while visiting England. He urged that Pinochet be allowed to return to his homeland rather than be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted by a Spanish jurist to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
Today, mostly through the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable-sounding than the CIA, the US Congress continues to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for democracy activities within the Tibetan exile community. The Dalai Lama also gets money from financier George Soros, who now runs the CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other institutes. (46)
The Question of Culture
We are told that when the Dalai Lama ruled Tibet, the people lived in contented symbiosis with their monastic and secular lords, in a social order sustained by a deeply spiritual, nonviolent culture. The peasantry's profound connection to the existing system of sacred belief supposedly gave them a tranquil stability, inspired by humane and pacific religious teachings. One is reminded of the idealized imagery of feudal Europe presented by latter-day conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For them, medieval Christendom was a world of contented peasants living in deep spiritual bond with their Church, under the protection of their lords. (47) The Shangri-La image of Tibet bears no more resemblance to historic reality than does the romanticized image of medieval Europe.
It might be said that we denizens of the modern secular world cannot grasp the equations of happiness and pain, contentment and custom, that characterize more spiritual and traditional societies. This may be true, and it may explain why some of us idealize such societies. But still, a gouged eye is a gouged eye; a flogging is a flogging; and the grinding exploitation of serfs and slaves is still a brutal class injustice whatever its cultural embellishments. There is a difference between a spiritual bond and human bondage, even when both exist side by side.
To be sure, there is much about the Chinese intervention that is to be deplored. In the 1990s, the Han, the largest ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China's vast population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet and various western provinces. (48) These resettlements have had an effect on the indigenous cultures of western China and Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Chinese preeminence are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing.
Chinese cadres in Tibet too often adopted a supremacist attitude toward the indigenous population. Some viewed their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and patriotic education. During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for attempting to flee the country, and for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in political subversion. Some arrestees were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment. (49)
Chinese family planning regulations that allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families have been enforced irregularly and vary by district. If a couple goes over the limit, the excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing, and education. Meanwhile, Tibetan history, culture, and religion are slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus on Chinese history and culture. (50)
Still, the new order has its supporters. A 1999 story in The Washington Post notes that the Dalai Lama continues to be revered in Tibet, but
. . . few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they gained during China's land reform to the clans. Tibet's former slaves say they, too, don't want their former masters to return to power.
I've already lived that life once before, said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave. (51)
To support the Chinese overthrow of the Dalai Lama's feudal theocracy is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in Tibet. This point is seldom understood by today's Shangri-La adherents in the West.
The converse is also true. To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal r駩me. One common complaint among Buddhist proselytes in the West is that Tibet's religious culture is being destroyed by the Chinese authorities. This does seem to be the case. But what I am questioning here is the supposedly admirable and pristinely spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. In short, we can advocate religious freedom and independence for Tibet without having to embrace the mythology of a Paradise Lost.
Finally, it should be noted that the criticism posed herein is not intended as a personal attack on the Dalai Lama. He appears to be a nice enough individual, who speaks often of peace, love, and nonviolence. In 1994, in an interview with Melvyn Goldstein, he went on record as having been since his youth in favor of building schools, machines, and roads in his country. He claims that he thought the corv饠and certain taxes imposed on the peasants were extremely bad. And he disliked the way people were saddled with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to generation. (52) Furthermore, he reportedly has established a government-in-exile featuring a written constitution, a representative assembly, and other democratic essentials. (53)
Like many erstwhile rulers, the Dalai Lama sounds much better out of power than in power. Keep in mind that it took a Chinese occupation and almost forty years of exile for him to propose democracy for Tibet and to criticize the oppressive feudal autocracy of which he himself was the apotheosis. But his criticism of the old order comes far too late for ordinary Tibetans. Many of them want him back in their country, but it appears that relatively few want a return to the social order he represented.
In a book published in 1996, the Dalai Lama proffered a remarkable statement that must have sent shudders through the exile community. It reads in part as follows:
Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. Marxism is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis and the equitable utilization of the means of production. It is also concerned with the fate of the working classes-that is the majority—as well as with the fate of those who are underprivileged and in need, and Marxism cares about the victims of minority-imposed exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and it seems fair. . . .
The failure of the regime in the Soviet Union was, for me not the failure of Marxism but the failure of totalitarianism. For this reason I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist. (54)
And more recently in 2001, while visiting California, he remarked that Tibet, materially, is very, very backward. Spiritually it is quite rich. But spirituality can't fill our stomachs. (55) Here is a message that should be heeded by the affluent well-fed Buddhist proselytes in the West who cannot be bothered with material considerations as they romanticize feudal Tibet.
Buddhism and the Dalai Lama aside, what I have tried to challenge is the Tibet myth, the Paradise Lost image of a social order that was little more than a despotic retrograde theocracy of serfdom and poverty, so damaging to the human spirit, where vast wealth was accumulated by a favored few who lived high and mighty off the blood, sweat, and tears of the many. For most of the Tibetan aristocrats in exile, that is the world to which they fervently desire to return. It is a long way from Shangri-La.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/761.html
Notes
1. Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 6-16.
2. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 113.
3. Kyong-Hwa Seok, Korean monk gangs battle for temple turf, San Francisco Examiner, December 3, 1998.
4. Gere quoted in Our Little Secret, CounterPunch, 1-15 November 1997.
5. Dalai Lama quoted in Donald Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1998), 205.
6. Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain: Travels in New Tibet (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964), 119.
7. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 123.
8. Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64.
9. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 62 and 174.
10. As skeptically noted by Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 9.
11. See the testimony of one serf who himself had been hunted down by Tibetan soldiers and returned to his master: Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World Press, 1929), 29-30 90.
12. Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and Tash쭔sering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tash쭔sering (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997).
13. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 110.
14. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 15, 19-21, 24.
15. Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25.
16. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 31.
17. Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 5.
18. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25-26.
19. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 113.
20. A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet rev. ed. (Armonk, N.Y. and London: 1996), 9 and 7-33 for a general discussion of feudal Tibet; see also Felix Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 241-249; Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951, 3-5; and Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, passim.
21. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 91-92.
22. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 92-96.
23. Waddell, Landon, and O'Connor are quoted in Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 123-125.
24. Quoted in Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 125.
25. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 52.
26. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 54.
27. Heinrich Harrer, Return to Tibet (New York: Schocken, 1985), 29.
28. Strong, Tibetan Interview, 73.
29. See Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2002); and William Leary, Secret Mission to Tibet, Air & Space, December 1997/January 1998.
30. Leary, Secret Mission to Tibet.
31. Hugh Deane, The Cold War in Tibet, CovertAction Quarterly (Winter 1987).
32. George Ginsburg and Michael Mathos Communist China and Tibet (1964), quoted in Deane, The Cold War in Tibet. Deane notes that author Bina Roy reached a similar conclusion.
33. See Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance, 248 and passim; and Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet, passim.
34. Los Angeles Times, 18 August 1997.
35. Harrer, Return to Tibet, 54.
36. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 36-38, 41, 57-58; London Times, 4 July 1966.
37. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 29 and 47-48.
38. Tendzin Choegyal, The Truth about Tibet, Imprimis (publication of Hillsdale College, Michigan), April 1999.
39. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 52-53.
40. Elaine Kurtenbach, Associate Press report, San Francisco Chronicle, 12 February 1998.
41. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 47-48.
42. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 15-16.
43. Jim Mann, CIA Gave Aid to Tibetan Exiles in '60s, Files Show, Los Angeles Times, 15 September 1998; and New York Times, 1 October, 1998.
44. Reuters report, San Francisco Chronicle, 27 January 1997.
45. News & Observer, 6 September 1995, cited in Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 3.
46. Heather Cottin, George Soros, Imperial Wizard, CovertAction Quarterly no. 74 (Fall 2002).
47. The Gelders draw this comparison, The Timely Rain, 64.
48. The Han have also moved into Xinjiang, a large northwest province about the size of Tibet, populated by Uighurs; see Peter Hessler, The Middleman, New Yorker, 14 & 21 October 2002.
49. Report by the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in Peril (Berkeley Calif.: 2001), passim.
50. International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in Peril, 66-68, 98.
51. John Pomfret, Tibet Caught in China's Web, Washington Post, 23 July 1999.
52. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 51.
53. Tendzin Choegyal, The Truth about Tibet.
54. The Dalai Lama in Marianne Dresser (ed.), Beyond Dogma: Dialogues and Discourses (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1996).
55. Quoted in San Francisco Chronicle, 17 May 2001.
Michael Parenti is an internationally known author and lecturer. He is one of the nation's leading progressive political analysts. Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1962. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. Parenti's most recent books are To Kill a Nation (Verso); The Terrorism Trap (City Lights); and The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (New Press). You can find more information about Michael Parenti at michaelparenti.org.
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Chronology of Sino-Tibetan Relations, 1979 to 2005
1979 - Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping invites Gyalo Thondup, elder brother of the Dalai Lama, to Beijing and conveys the message that other than the issue of independence all other issues relating to Tibet can be discussed and resolved.
August 5, 1979 - First fact-finding delegation of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, led by Kalon Juchen Thubten Namgyal, begins tour of Tibet.
1980
May 1,1980 - Second fact-finding delegation from the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, led by Representative Tenzin N. Tethong, begins tour of Tibet.
July 1, 1980 - Third fact-finding delegation from the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, led by Mrs. Jetsun Pema, younger sister of the Dalai Lama, begins tour of Tibet.
1981
March 13, 1981 - The Dalai Lama states in a letter to Deng Xiaoping that the three fact-finding missions found "sad conditions" in Tibet and therefore "genuine efforts must be made to solve the problem in accordance with the existing realities in a reasonable way."
July, 1981 - CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang announces "China's Five-point Policy toward the Dalai Lama". Asking "the Dalai Lama and his followers to come back", it says: "The Dalai Lama will enjoy the same political status and living conditions as he had before 1959. It is suggested that he not go to live in Tibet or hold local posts there. Of course, he may go back to Tibet from time to time. His followers need not worry about their jobs and living conditions. These will only be better than before."
1982
April 24, 1982 - A high level Tibetan delegation arrives in Beijing to hold exploratory talks with Chinese officials. The delegation, composed of P.T. Taklha, Juchen Thubten Namgyal and Lodi Gyari, made no substantive headway.
1984
October 19, 1984 - The three-member exploratory delegation holds a second round of talks with Chinese leaders. Again, no progress toward substantive negotiations are made.
1985
Fourth fact-finding delegation from the exile Tibetan government tours Tibet, led by Kasur W.D. Kundeling.
July 24, 1985 - 91 Members of the U.S. Congress sign a letter, urging Chinese President Li Xianian to initiate talks between China and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.
1987
September 21, 1987 - The Dalai Lama presents a Five-Point Peace Plan on solving the Tibetan problem to the U.S. Congress. The plan includes a call for commencement of earnest negotiations on the future status of Tibet.
December 22, 1987 - The United States Foreign Relations Authorization Act declares that the U.S. "should urge the Government of China to actively reciprocate the Dalai Lama's efforts to establish a constructive dialogue on the future of Tibet."
1988
June 15, 1988 - The Dalai Lama presents his Strasbourg Proposal as a framework for a negotiated solution to the Tibetan problem, at the European Parliament. He also mentioned that a negotiating team is ready to meet with the Chinese side on the basis of Deng Xiaoping's statements.
September 21, 1988 - China responds indirectly to the Strasbourg proposal with an offer to talk. In a press statement, the Chinese side said: "We welcome the Dalai Lama to have talks with the central government at any time, and talks may be held in Beijing, Hong Kong or any of our embassies or consulates abroad. If the Dalai Lama finds it inconvenient to conduct talks at these places. He may choose any place he wishes." The offer makes the talks conditional on the Dalai Lama "drop[ping] the idea of an independent Tibet."
September 23, l988 - Tibetan representatives convey the following response to the Sept. 21 Chinese message: "We welcome China's positive response to His Holiness the Dalai Lama's call for talks on the Tibetan issue. We similarly welcome their leaving the choice of the venue for the talks to us. We would like the talks to be held in Geneva, Switzerland which is most convenient and neutral venue. We would also like the first round of talks to be held in January 1989".
1989
January, 1989 - China backs out of the proposed talks.
April 20,1989 - the Tibetan Government-in-Exile announces that "His Holiness the Dalai Lama is prepared to send representatives to Hong Kong at any time" to meet with Chinese representative in order to resolve any procedural issue with regard to starting negotiations.
March 15, 1989 - U.S. Senate Resolution 82 calls upon the Chinese government to "meet with representatives of the Dalai Lama to begin initiating constructive dialogue on the future of Tibet."
1991
October 9, 1991 - In an address at Yale University, the Dalai Lama expresses his desire to visit Tibet as early as possible to personally ascertain the situation and help the Chinese leadership to understand the true feelings of Tibetans.
October 10, 1991 - The Chinese Foreign Ministry imposes the following conditions before he can return to Tibet: "The most important thing is that the Dalai Lama stop his activities aimed at splitting China and undermining the unity of its nationalities, and abandon his position on Tibetan independence."
1992
June 22, 1992 - Ding Guangen, head of the United Front Department of the CCP Central Committee, meets Gyalo Thondup and reiterates the 1979 statement that they are willing to discuss any issue with the Tibetans except total independence.
1993
May 28, 1993 - The White House report to Congress on the extension of the Most Favored Nation status (MFN) to China lists "[s]eeking to resume dialogue with the Dalai Lama or his representatives" as favourable step China should take to ensure MFN renewal.
June, 1993 - Dharamsala sends a two-member delegation to China to clear the misunderstandings raised by the Chinese leaders during their meeting with Thondup. The delegation carries a 13-point memorandum from the Dalai Lama, addressed to Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin. In the memorandum, the Dalai Lama chronicles his efforts to resolve the problem of Tibet through peaceful negotiations and says, "If we Tibetans obtain our basic rights to our satisfaction, then we are not incapable of seeing the possible advantages of living with the Chinese." In the same year, China severs all formal channels of communication with Dharamsala. However, informal and semi-official channels continue to remain open.
1994
April 28, 1994 - The Dalai Lama meets with President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore in the White House. The White House states that President Clinton met the Dalai Lama "to inquire about efforts to initiate a dialogue with the Chinese leadership" among other topics. It also says: "The United States continues to urge high level talks between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama."
1995
November, 1995 - China tries to usurp the right to choose the next incarnation of the important Tibetan religious figure, the Panchen Lama. Relations between Beijing and Dharamsala deteriorates.
1997
July, 1997 - The Clinton Administration announces its intention to establish a new position in the Department of State, Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, to handle the Tibetan issue. A central objective of the position is to promote dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government to resolve the issue of Tibet.
October, 1997 - During the US-China Summit in Washington, D.C., President Clinton presses Chinese President Jiang Zemin to initiate talks with the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan problem emerges as one of the top issues that the American people identify with Sino-U.S. relations.
October 31, 1997 - Mr. Greg Craig is appointed the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issue at the US Department of State.
1998
April 30, 1998 - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright makes it clear to President Jiang Zemin that Tibet is a high priority of the U.S. government for the June Summit in Beijing. "What we urge is a dialogue with the Dalai Lama," Albright told a news conference after her meeting.
June 27, 1998 - US President Bill Clinton urges Jiang Zemin to meet the Dalai Lama and open talks with him, during a press conference in Beijing. Televised live throughout China, Jiang Zemin admits to the existence of unofficial channels of communication and says "door to negotiation is open"
2001
January 28, 2001 - The Dalai Lama tells AFP that his latest efforts to send a delegation to China to pursue a substantial dialogue with Chinese leaders had produced no response from Beijing.
The Dalai Lama's elder brother had traveled to Beijing in late October --reopening contact after a two-year freeze -- after which the Dalai Lama proposed sending a full delegation to the Chinese capital. He said the Chinese welcomed his brother to come again, but the Dalai Lama added, "If my brother goes again, some people might get the wrong impression.
"This is an issue for the whole Tibetan community, so sending some people from a Tibetan organization would be more appropriate."
2002
September 9 -24, 2002 - Following a nine-year impasse, contact between Beijing and the Tibetan-government-in-exile resumes when the Dalai Lama's Special Envoy, Lodi Gyari, leads a delegation of four to Beijing and Lhasa. The trip is intended to create an atmosphere conducive for substantive negotiations. The team includes Kelsang Gyaltsen, Envoy of the Dalai Lama and two senior assistants, Sonam N. Dagpo and Bhuchung K. Tsering.
September 30, 2002 - President Bush signs into law a foreign policy bill that includes the Tibetan Policy Act. The Tibetan Policy Act expresses both programmatic and political support for the Tibetan people, including that the President and Secretary of State should initiate steps to encourage the Government of the People's Republic of China to enter into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama or his representatives leading to a negotiated agreement on Tibet; and after such an agreement is reached, the President and Secretary of State should work to ensure compliance with the agreement.
2003
May 25 - June 8, 2003 - A second round of talks is held between envoys of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership during the Tibetan team's trip to Beijing and parts of Tibet. The Tibetans characterize the nature of these trips as "confidence building measures".
2004
September 12-29, 2004 - A third round of talks is held between envoys of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership during the Tibetan team's trip to Beijing and parts of Tibet The international community views these visits as positive steps forward, but few governments make legitimate efforts to bring both parties to the negotiation table.
May 23, 2004 - The Chinese government issues a 30-page White Paper on Tibet aimed at dampening expectations by Tibetans for genuine autonomy. The White Paper is seen as a negotiating tactic that underscores the resistance of hardliners to move forward in good faith.
2005
June 30, July 1, 2005 - A fourth round of meetings between the Tibetan team and the Chinese leadership is held in Bern, Switzerland. The Tibetans say that the trip is designed to "move the ongoing process to a new level of engagement aimed at bringing about substantive negotiations to achieve a mutually acceptable solution to the Tibetan issue". Meanwhile, China continues publicly criticize the Dalai Lama and reiterates its long-standing preconditions to negotiations.
July 10, 2005 - During a visit to China, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asks Chinese leaders to "reach out to the Dalai Lama", saying that the exiled Tibetan leader is no threat to China.
October 11, 2005 - In its annual report for 2005, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China said, "The future of Tibetans and their religion, language, and culture depends on fair and equitable decisions about future policies that can only be achieved through dialogue. The Dalai Lama is essential to this dialogue. To help the parties build on visits and dialogue held in 2003, 2004, and 2005, the President and the Congress should urge the Chinese government to move the current dialogue toward deeper, substantive discussions with the Dalai Lama or his representatives, and encourage direct contact between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership."
2006
February 15, 2006 - Envoys of the Dalai Lama visit China from February 15 to 23, 2006 and took part in the fifth round of talks with their Chinese counterparts in Guilin, Guangxi Province of China. In a press statement following the visit, Special Envoy Lodi Gyari said, "This round of discussion also made it clear that there is a major difference even in the approach in addressing the issue. However, we remain committed to the dialogue process and are hopeful that progress will be possible by continuing the engagement."
March 10, 2006 - In his official statement on 10 March 2006, His Holiness the Dalai Lama made public the fact that his envoys have informed the Chinese Government of his desire to go on a pilgrimage to China. In the statement, the Dalai Lama said, "my envoys reiterated my wish to visit China on a pilgrimage. As a country with a long history of Buddhism, China has many sacred pilgrim sites. As well as visiting the pilgrim sites, I hope to be able to see for myself the changes and developments in the People?s Republic of China."
The Dalai Lama also said, "...in the fifth round of talks held a few weeks ago, the two sides were able to clearly identify the areas of major differences and the reasons thereof. They were also able to get a sense of the conditions necessary for resolving the differences."
April 3, 2006 - The Kashag of the Central Tibetan Administration issued the third appeal to the Tibetan people and Tibet supporters to restrain from actions that create personal embarrasment to Chinese leaders. The statement said, "President Hu Jintao will soon pay an official visit to America this month and the Kashag would like to once again strongly appeal with utmost importance and emphasis to all the Tibetans and Tibet Support Groups to refrain from any activities, including staging of protest demonstrations causing embarrassment to him. This appeal is not only to create a conducive atmosphere for negotiations but also not to cause embarrassment and difficulty to His Holiness the Dalai Lama whose visit coincides with President Hu Jintao's visit to America."
April 3rd, 2006 - The official China Daily reported that a senior Chinese official on religious affairs, Ye Xiaowen (director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs), said that China could discuss a possible visit by the Dalai Lama to China and that the visit was not impossible for consideration. Ye made the statement on the sidelines of a seminar held in Beijing.
China Daily, however, reported Ye as saying this is conditional to the Dalai Lama completely dropping "his pursuit of Tibetan "independence."
April 14, 2006 - The United States Congress receives the State Department's mandatory annual Report on Tibet Negotiations. The report details the initiatives taken by Administration officials, from President Bush to the Secretary of State and others officials, to encourage substantive negotiations between envoys of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese leadership.
May 11, 2006 - Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY) introduced the 14th Dalai Lama Congressional Gold Medal Act, as part of a campaign to award the Dalai Lama, Tibet's leader in exile, the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the U.S. government's highest honors. This Act is to award a congressional gold medal to the Dalai Lama of Tibet in recognition of his many enduring and outstanding contributions to peace, non-violence, human rights, and religious understanding.
May 25, 2006 - The United States Senate passed the Fourteenth Dalai Lama Congressional Gold Medal Act (S 2784) without amendment by unanimous consent.
August 15, 2006 - Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche, who was re-elected to a second term as the Chairman of the Cabinet of the Central Tibetan Administration, said that he will make more efforts towards dialogue with the Chinese leadership based on the Dalai Lama's Middle Way Approach.
In a statement following the taking of oath of office for his new term before the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, Rinpoche said, "It is clear to me that the recent electoral mandate is not for an individual but is a show of support for me and my administration's steadfast commitment to the mutually beneficial Middle-Way policy and the programmes initiated by us during the past five years. Consequently, I am more determined and will courageously pursue these policies and programmes."
September 13, 2006 - The US House of Representatives passed a bill to award the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal. The bill enjoyed broad bipartisan support, with 387 cosponsors drawn from both sides of the aisle in the House and Senate, representing more than two-thirds of Congress. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) were the principal sponsors of this resolution.
November 13, 2006 - A senior administration official said that President George Bush will meet President Hu Jintao during the APEC summit in Vietnam this week during which he will stress the importance of "a strong dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama to move toward some resolution of a very longstanding issue."
Giving a background briefing at the Foreign Press Center in Washington, D.C. on President Bush's trips to Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, the Senior Administration Official responded to a question on issues that will come up during his meeting with President Hu Jintao, saying, "I'm sure the issue, as it has before, the Dalai Lama will come up between the two leaders because of the importance that we have placed on believing that a dialogue needs to be a strong dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama to move toward some resolution of a very longstanding issue."
November 14, 2006 - Special Envoy Lodi Gyari gives a major briefing on the current status of discussions with the Chinese Government at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He said, "Some detractors in the Chinese Government seem to believe that the aspirations of the Tibetan people will fizzle out once the Dalai Lama passes away. This is a most dangerous and myopic approach. Certainly, the absence of the Dalai Lama would be devastating for the Tibetan people. But more importantly his absence would mean that China would be left to handle the problem without the presence of a leader who enjoys the loyalty of the entire community and who remains firmly committed to non-violence.
It is certain that the Tibetan position would become more intractable in his absence, and that having had their beloved leader pass away in exile would create deep and irreparable wounds in the hearts of the Tibetan people." He further added, "The Dalai Lama's world view, his special bond with the Tibetan people and the respect he enjoys in the international community all make the person of the Dalai Lama key both to achieving a negotiated solution to the Tibetan issue and to peacefully implementing any agreement that is reached. This is why we have consistently conveyed to our Chinese counterparts that far from being the problem, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the solution."
2007
February 6, 2007 - Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche, Chairman of the Tibetan Cabinet (Kalon Tripa), paid a courtesy call on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Tom Lantos.
February 15, 2007 - The Canadian Parliament, meeting in the Capitol city of Ottawa, adopted a motion by unanimous consent that "urges the Government of the People's Republic of China and the representatives of Tibet's government in exile, notwithstanding their differences on Tibet's historical relationship with China, to continue their dialogue in a forward-looking manner that will lead to pragmatic solutions that respect the Chinese constitutional framework, the territorial integrity of China and fulfill the aspirations of the Tibetan people for a unified and genuinely autonomous Tibet."
The motion was introduced by Ms. Peggy Nash, a Member of Parliament from Toronto where most Tibetans in Canada reside. The draft resolution has been championed by Senator Consiglio Di Nino, Co-Chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Tibet, as an initiative that parliamentarians around the world could take up in their own legislatures.
February 15, 2007 - The European Parliament, meeting in Strasbourg, France, adopted a resolution on the dialogue between the Chinese Government and Envoys of the Dalai Lama. The comprehensive resolution includes recommendations to the European Union on a more vigorous approach in support of the dialogue and, specifically, "urges the government of the People's Republic of China and the Dalai Lama to continue and resume, notwithstanding their differences on certain substantive issues, the dialogue without preconditions and in a forward-looking manner that allows for pragmatic solutions that respects the territorial integrity of China and fulfils the aspirations of the Tibetan people."
March 10, 2007 - The Dalai Lama in his statement on the anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising, said, "Since the resumption of direct contacts between the Tibetans and Chinese in 2002, my representatives have conducted five rounds of comprehensive discussion with concerned officials of the People?s Republic of China. In these discussions, both sides were able to express in clear terms the suspicions, doubts and real difficulties that exist between the two sides. These rounds of discussion have thus helped in creating a channel of communication between the two sides. The Tibetan delegation stands ready to continue the dialogue anytime, anywhere. The Kashag will provide the details in its statement."
March 10, 2007 - United States House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that 'A negotiated agreement' between Tibetan envoys and Chinese authorities 'would ensure internal stability in Tibet and bolster China's reputation in the world.'
In a statement released on the occasion of the 48th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day on March 10, 2007, Pelosi said that 'The lack of progress on freedom and human rights in Tibet is an international concern.? Saying that the Chinese government is stalling in the negotiations, Pelosi said it is critical for these discussions to resume as soon as possible.'
March 13, 2007 - The House International Affairs Committee of the United States Congress holds a hearing on "Tibet: Status of the Sino-Tibetan Dialogue." Under Secretary Paula Dobriansky, who is the US Special Coordinator on Tibetan Issues; Special Envoy Lodi Gyari; and ICT Chairman Richard Gere, testify at the hearing.
Gyari testified that the dialogue process with the Chinese leadership has reached a stage where "if there is the political will on both sides, we have an opportunity to finally resolve this issue."
In his statement, Congressman Tom Lantos, Chairman of the Committee, said, "Beijing must understand that the stalemate in the Tibetan talks is not in China's own interests. With each day that the Chinese government refuses to enter into serious dialogue over the issue of Tibet and fails to take tangible steps to provide true autonomy to the Tibetan people within the borders of the People's Republic of China, the stain on the moral authority of China grows broader and deeper."
He added, "China must meet the good faith efforts of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his envoys with good faith of its own. China states that it is a country dedica-ted to peace as it develops and strengthens. Proof of its "peaceful rise" must first come from within its own borders."
March 16, 2007 - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said in Beijing that the "The door (of dialogue) is always open" referring to the talks with the Dalai Lama. Wen made the remarks at a press conference held following the conclusion of the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature.
Wen said, "as long as he recognizes Tibet is an inalienable part of Chinese territory, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory, and as long as he gives up his attempts to split the country, we are willing to carry out consultations and dialogue on his personal future."
April 25, 2007 - The Congressional Human Rights Caucus, headed by Representative Tom Lantos and Representative Frank Wolf, held a briefing "On the Panchen Lama's 18th Birthday: A Look at Religion in Tibet Today."
Lodi Gyari, Special Envoy of H.H. the Dalai Lama, Commissioner Felice Gaer of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, T.
Kumar of Amnesty International, Mickey Spiegel, Human Rights Watch, and Kate Saunders of the International Campaign for Tibet testified at the briefing.
April 26, 2007 - The European Parliament adopted its Annual Report on Human Rights in the World 2006 in which it "calls on the Council and the Commission to raise the issue of Tibet and to actively support the strengthening of the dialogue between the Chinese Government and envoys of the Dalai Lama".
April 27, 2007 - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi goes to San Francisco to meet with the Dalai Lama who is on a visit there. This is Pelosi's first meeting with the Dalai Lama after becoming the Speaker. Pelosi took the opportunity to express her continued support for the current dialogue on Tibet's future between the Dalai Lama's representatives and Beijing, during a frank and warm conversation.
May 10, 2007 - Special Envoy gives a briefing on the status of the negotiations with the Chinese leadership at the French Think Tank, Asia Centre, in Paris. Talking about the five rounds of talks held so far, he says, "These have gone a long way towards establishing a climate of openness that is essential to reaching mutually agreeable decisions regarding the future of the Tibetan and Chinese people. It is our belif that these discussions should continue so that we can finally resolve the problem to our mutual satisfaction. Towards this end, we have been taking several initiatives to create a congenial atmosphere for the talks."
http://www.savetibet.org/news/positionpapers/chronology.php
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