Tibet Crisis

April 14, 2008

The past of Tibet

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The United States, Tibet, and the Cold War

C Melvyn C. Goldstein

U.S. policy toward Tibet has operated on two levels. At the strategic level, the United States has consistently supported the Chinese position that Tibet is part of China. At the pragmatic or tactical level, Washington has been opportunistic in its dealings with Tibet and has been prone to wide fluctuations, ranging from the provision of financial and military aid to Tibetan guerrilla forces in the 1950s and 1960s to neglect and almost no official contact in the 1970s and 1980s.

The first phase of the U.S.-Tibetan relationship encompassed the period from World War II to the fall of the Guomindang government in China in 1949. During these years, Tibet was de facto an independent state. China had exercised no authority in Tibet since 1913, and Tibet controlled not only its internal affairs but also its territorial defense and foreign relations.

The first statement of U.S. policy toward Tibet appeared in July 1942 in a memorandum to the British government:

For its part, the Government of the United States has borne in mind the fact that the Chinese Government has long claimed suzerainty over Tibet and that the Chinese constitution lists Tibet among areas constituting the territory of the Republic of China. This Government has at no time raised a question regarding either of these claims.1
At about the same time, the United States established direct contact with Tibet, sending two reconnaissance specialists from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the wartime intelligence agency) into Tibet to travel overland to China and assess the potential for construction of roads and airfields. The U.S. government first asked its close ally, the Chinese Nationalist leader Jiäng Jièshi, to arrange this visit, but he was unable to do so because of the lack of Chinese control over Tibet. Hence, Washington asked the British (who had a representative in Lhasa) to secure permission from the Tibetan government. [End Page 145] After British envoys assured the Tibetan authorities that this was an official U.S. mission that could benefit Tibet, the Tibetan Foreign Affairs Bureau granted transit permission to the two OSS officers. They entered Tibet from India carrying presents and a letter from President Franklin Roosevelt to the 14th Dalai Lama asking him to assist the officers. Dated 3 July 1942, the letter read:

Your HOLINESS:
Two of my fellow countrymen, Ilya Tolstoy and Brooke Dolan, hope to visit your Pontificate and the historic and widely famed city of Lhasa. There are in the United States of America many persons, among them myself, who, long and greatly interested in your land and people, would highly value such an opportunity.

As you know, the people of the United States, in association with those of twenty-seven other countries, are now engaged in a war which has been thrust upon the world by nations bent on conquest who are intent on destroying freedom of thought, of religion, and of action everywhere. The United Nations are fighting today in defense of and for preservation of freedom, confident that we shall be victorious because our cause is just, our capacity is adequate, and our determination is unshakable.

I am asking Ilya Tolstoy and Brooke Dolan to convey to you a little gift in token of my friendly sentiment toward you.

With cordial greetings
Franklin D. Roosevelt2

Following this visit, the United States sent several wireless radios to Tibet, also without going through China.

These contacts, however, did not amount to government-to-government relations, at least from Washington's perspective. Although U.S. officials were dealing directly with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government, the Roosevelt administration did not regard this as in any way legitimizing Tibetan claims to independence from China. William Donovan, the director of OSS, explained this point to President Roosevelt at the time: "This letter is addressed to the Dalai Lama in his capacity of [sic] religious leader of Tibet, rather than in his capacity of secular leader of Tibet, thus avoiding giving any possible offense to the Chinese Government which includes Tibet in the territory [End Page 146] of the Republic of China."3 The United States, however, refrained from mentioning this interpretation of Tibet's status to the Tibetan authorities.

In July 1948, the situation was reversed when the Tibetan government sent an official trade delegation to the United States. The U.S. State Department informed its embassy in New Delhi that because the United States did not recognize Tibet as a country the trade mission could be received only on an informal basis. Moreover, rather than referring to Chinese "suzerainty" over Tibet as in 1942, the State Department at this point used the more anodyne term "sovereignty":

It should be recalled that China claims of sovereignty over Tibet and that this Government has never questioned that claim; accordingly it would not be possible for this government to accord members of the projected mission other than an informal reception unless the missions enjoyed the official sanction of the Chinese Government.4
Nevertheless, at the tactical level, the United States was again willing to deal with Tibet independent of China and in fact tried to ensure that the Tibetan trade delegation's visit enjoyed a modicum of success. For example, under strong pressure from China, the State Department insisted that the Tibetans could not meet President Harry Truman unless they were accompanied by the Chinese ambassador to the United States. But when the Tibetans refused, the Truman administration allowed them to meet with Secretary of State George C. Marshall without being accompanied by the Chinese ambassador.

The rapid disintegration of the Guomindang regime in the first half of 1949 pushed the Tibet question into the realm of Cold War politics. In April 1949 the U.S. embassy in New Delhi urged the State Department to conduct a review of U.S. policy toward Tibet. The embassy suggested that if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) succeeded in taking control in Beijing, the United States should be prepared to treat Tibet as an independent country. The embassy concluded that keeping Tibet friendly to the United States and other Western countries was useful so long as it did not "give offense" to the sensibilities of Jiäng Jièshi and his government on Taiwan:

It is believed to be clearly to our advantage under any circumstances to have Tibet as a friend if possible. We should accordingly maintain a friendly attitude toward Tibet in ways short of giving China [the Guomindang] cause for offense. We should encourage so far as feasible Tibet's orientation toward the West rather than toward the East. [End Page 147]
For the present we should avoid giving the impression of any alteration in our position toward Chinese authority over Tibet such as for example steps which would clearly indicate that we regard Tibet as independent, etc. . . . We should however keep our policy as flexible as possible by avoiding references to Chinese sovereignty or suzerainty unless references are clearly called for and by informing China of our proposed moves in connection with Tibet, rather than asking China's consent for them.5
Despite this recommendation, the State Department ultimately decided not to change the U.S. position. In late December 1949 the Tibetan government requested permission to send a special delegation to the United States to seek aid and support against the victorious CCP. The State Department turned down the request and instructed the U.S. ambassador in India to dissuade the Tibetans from sending such a delegation.6

Events on the ground changed quickly after the inauguration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 October 1949. The CCP promptly set out to "liberate" Tibet—that is, to incorporate Tibet into China. In October 1950, after the Chinese had tried but failed to persuade the Dalai Lama to negotiate Tibet's "liberation," the PRC invaded Tibet's easternmost province. The Dalai Lama shifted his residence from Lhasa to a town near the Indian border so that he could easily flee into exile if the Chinese pressed further with their military occupation, and he appealed for help from the United States, Western Europe, and the United Nations (UN). When none was forthcoming, he sent a delegation to Beijing to negotiate Tibet's return to China. In May 1951 the two sides signed what became known as the "Seventeen-Point Agreement" (Agreement of the Central People's Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet), a document that for the first time formally recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.

The Dalai Lama himself, however, had not signed the agreement, nor was he even aware of its terms when it was signed. Consequently, the U.S. government urged him to declare the accord invalid and to flee into exile. This effort was unsuccessful, and the Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa to try to live under the terms of the Seventeen-Point Agreement and Chinese rule. At the heart of his decision was his perception that the United States, though it might express sympathy for Tibet and offer some limited support, was unwilling to endorse Tibetan independence and would not provide substantial military aid or political backing for a government-in-exile headed by the Dalai Lama that would aspire to independence. In September 1951, after the Dalai Lama had [End Page 148] already returned to Lhasa to live under the terms of the new agreement, the U.S. government sent the last, and most forthcoming, of a series of messages to the Tibetan leader. The message called on him to flee Lhasa and stated that if he left Tibet, publicly disavowed the Seventeen-Point Agreement, and agreed to cooperate in opposing Communist aggression, the United States would officially adopt the position that the Dalai Lama is the "head of an autonomous Tibet" and would "support your return to Tibet at the earliest practicable moment as the head of an autonomous and non-communist, country."7

Thus, even at this late juncture, the U.S. government was unwilling to accommodate the Dalai Lama's fundamental desire to gain international support for Tibetan independence. Consequently, the Tibetan leader opted to remain in Lhasa as part of the PRC, dashing U.S. hopes of enlisting him in its anti-Chinese Communist crusade.8

Tibet remained in this uneasy situation for the next five years, lacking any further contact with the United States. But in 1956 the U.S. government again became actively involved in Tibet when a series of revolts broke out in Kham, the areas of western China inhabited by ethnic Tibetans. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) immediately made contact with the resistance leaders and by 1957 had begun to train and provide weapons to Tibetan guerrilla forces.9

Over the next three years, the situation within Tibet proper deteriorated, culminating in an uprising in Lhasa in March 1959 that sent the Dalai Lama into exile in India. The United States now had achieved what it so energetically sought without success in 1950–1951. Faced with this unexpected turn of events, U.S. officials had to decide how to proceed.10 [End Page 149]

At the operational level, the CIA continued its covert support for a Tibetan guerrilla force and received high-level approval to set up a new training base in northern Nepal for resistance fighters who could be infiltrated into Tibet. The CIA also provided funds and other forms of non-military support for the Dalai Lama.11 With regard to the international status of Tibet, however, the United States was much less forthcoming.

In late April 1959, just after the Dalai Lama fled into exile, he sent a message to the U.S. government that was summarized in a memorandum from Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Dalai Lama asked that "the United States recognize the Free Tibetan Government and influence other countries to do so. In this connection, he [the Dalai Lama] emphasizes his determination to work for complete independence, regardless of the time required for ending the opposition of India, and declares that autonomy is not enough."12 The memorandum addressed this issue succinctly:

Recognition is a political act and we could grant recognition when publicly asked if such a step is in the national interest. In response to previous approaches from the Dalai Lama in 1949–51 we refrained from committing ourselves to recognition of Tibet as an independent state. We continue to recognize both the claim of the Republic of China to suzerainty over Tibet and Tibet's claim to de facto autonomy.13
Dillon was averse to making any change in this policy. He warned Eisenhower that the United States must "avoid taking a position which might appear to encourage the Dalai Lama to seek international recognition."14

In subsequent months, the Eisenhower administration reexamined its policy vis-à-vis the Dalai Lama and Tibet but decided once again not to advocate Tibetan independence. Nonetheless, U.S. officials did offer stronger support for Tibet by starting to refer to it as an autonomous "country" under Chinese "suzerainty" and by also indicating that if unspecified conditions occurred in the future that made self-determination possible, the United States would support this. These nuances were made explicit in September 1959:

As to the position which the U.S. government takes with regard to the status of Tibet, the historical position of the U.S. has been that Tibet is an autonomous [End Page 150] country under Chinese suzerainty. However, the U.S. government has consistently held that the autonomy of Tibet should not be impaired by force. The U.S. has never recognized the pretension to sovereignty over Tibet put forward by the Chinese Communist regime.15
The revised U.S. position was laid out even more clearly in a memorandum from Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs J. Graham Parsons to Secretary of State Christian Herter dated 14 October 1959:

That you inform him [the Dalai Lama] that, while the United States cannot accord recognition to the Dalai Lama's government under present circumstances, it
(a) fully supports the right of the Tibetan people to have the determining voice in their political destiny,

(b) would be prepared to consider appropriate assistance to this end should a change in the situation make this practicable, and

(c) would be prepared to make a public statement, after completion of the [U.N.] General Assembly consideration of the Tibetan item, affirming our support of Tibetan self-determination.16

A few months later, on 20 February 1960, Herter conveyed this message in a letter to the Dalai Lama.17

These indications of greater political support for Tibet were carefully couched. On the one hand, U.S. officials wanted to placate Tibetan sensibilities and assist the Tibetans in keeping their cause alive; on the other hand, they wanted to avoid any change in the international political status of Tibet as part of China. Consequently, rather than launching a campaign to secure international recognition of Tibet as an independent state (as the Tibetans themselves hoped to do), the Eisenhower administration actually constrained the Tibetans from presenting a political case to the United Nations (UN) that would have accused the PRC of aggression against an independent country. Instead, the United States pressured the Dalai Lama to refer to the suffering of the Tibetan people and human rights issues when making his case against [End Page 151] China. This distinction was emphasized by CIA Director Allen Dulles at a meeting of the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) on 10 September 1959. The notes from the meeting indicate that "Mr. Dulles then took up Tibet. . . . The U.S has felt that he [the Dalai Lama] should not, in his presentation to the U.N. emphasize aggression, since Tibet was for many years a part of China. In our view, his case is stronger on a human rights basis."18 The same point was conveyed by Secretary of State Herter to the Dalai Lama in a letter dated 6 October 1959: "Consultation with other United Nations Members on this subject [the record of Chinese Communist activities in Tibet] have confirmed our view, made known to you earlier, that wider support can be obtained for a hearing of Tibet's case if the suppression of human rights aspects of it are stressed rather than matters relating to sovereignty."19

For the Dalai Lama, this was a crucial issue. Two days after the Tibetan leader received Herter's letter, Gyalo Thondup (the Dalai Lama's older brother who had led a Tibetan delegation to the UN headquarters in New York to lodge an appeal with the UN General Assembly) met with the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Henry Cabot Lodge. The Tibetans' lawyer, Ernest Gross, left no doubt that "Thondup had arrived with instructions . . . to raise question of independence."20 Lodge reported to the State Department that Gyalo Thondup "questioned US repeatedly as to whether action on human rights basis would in some way affect adversely cause of Tibetan independence. He clearly continued hope GA [General Assembly] might address itself to question of Tibetan independence."

A few days later, on 14 October 1959, Assistant Secretary of State Parsons sent a memorandum to Herter summarizing the conclusions of a policy review undertaken by the Far Eastern Affairs division (FE). Parsons recommended that no change be made in the long-standing U.S. strategic position on Tibet:

Our Embassy in India has reported that the Dalai Lama has requested United States support for hearing the Tibetan case in the United Nations on the basis of aggression and that the Tibetans are pressing for recognition of the independent sovereign status of Tibet. . . . FE has completed a study . . . of the question of United States recognition of the independence of Tibet in which the considerations both for and against such action are examined in detail. Taking these factors into account, we have concluded that on balance the arguments against recognition of Tibetan independence under present conditions are stronger than [End Page 152] those in favor. I consider this conclusion valid from the standpoint of both the United States national interest and from that of the Tibetans. We share with the Tibetans the objectives of keeping the Tibetan cause alive in the consciousness of the world and maintaining the Dalai Lama as an effective spokesman of the Tibetan people. I believe that United States recognition of the Dalai Lama's government as that of an independent country would serve neither purpose well.21
Consequently, despite the Cold War and the flight of the Dalai Lama into exile, the U.S. government continued to believe that American interests were best served by adhering to the position that Tibet was part of Communist-controlled China. The United States at the tactical level supported a Tibetan insurgency force and financially assisted the Dalai Lama, but it would not support the Tibetans' political aims. Moreover, U.S. officials repeatedly exhorted the Dalai Lama to shift the main focus of his campaign against the PRC, basing it not on the question of Tibet's independence but on issues of human rights violations. The public U.S. expressions of support for Tibetan self-determination if conditions ever became appropriate were, therefore, mainly an attempt to placate the Dalai Lama in the face of Washington's refusal to support his requests for help on the political front. Parsons acknowledged the gap between rhetoric and reality in his memorandum to Herter:

The Tibetans will probably be unhappy at our failure to go all the way toward recognition of Tibetan independence. Nonetheless, I think Thondup could be made to see that recognition under present conditions would not serve the best interests of the Tibetan people and that in offering to state publicly at an appropriate time in the future our support of the right of the Tibetans to self-determination we are moving in the direction he desires us to take. However, so long as the Chinese Communists occupy Tibet self-determination is not practicable and the struggle of the Tibetan people for control of their own political destiny is likely to be a long one.22
The rapprochement between the United States and Communist China in the early 1970s changed U.S. Cold War strategy and created a new set of foreign policy conditions that quickly marginalized the U.S. government's "pragmatic" interest in Tibet. Consequently, for more than a decade after the restoration of U.S.-China relations in 1969–1971, Tibet remained an obscure issue in U.S. foreign policy. The United States halted all remaining support for the Tibetan guerrillas and ceased to use terms such as "autonomous country."23 U.S. officials also stopped talking about vague support for the Tibetans' [End Page 153] right to self determination if conditions changed. Although the Cold War continued, Tibet ceased to be a part of it and faded into the shadows.

The early record of U.S. involvement with Tibet is thus relatively clear. Despite rhetoric about promoting freedom and democracy, the United States was unwilling in the case of Tibet to compromise its larger interests in China and Asia. Although in one sense the United States was clearly a friend and supporter of Tibet, in a more basic sense it was not a "good friend" and might even be described as a cynical and deceptive friend.24 Tibet's quest for independence ran up against the pragmatic side of U.S. foreign policy. On this issue, the triumph of realpolitik over what Henry Kissinger called America's "pursuit of its historic moral convictions" is particularly striking when we compare U.S. support of Tibet with the Soviet Union's support of Mongolia.25 Although Tibet and Mongolia were of a politically equivalent status at the time of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911–1912, Mongolia has long been an independent state and a member of the UN. The reason is simple: At the Yalta conference in early 1945, the Soviet leader Josif Stalin persuaded Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to support a plebiscite for Mongolia, a demand that the Chinese Nationalist government was forced to accept. Mongolia was heavily dependent on the Soviet Union for decades but is today an independent country.

Tibet and the United States in the Deng Xiaoping Era
From the time of the Dalai Lama's flight into exile in 1959 until the rise to power of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, the Tibetan government-in-exile had no official contact with the Chinese authorities. The situation changed in 1978 after Deng Xiaoping initiated a new Chinese external and internal initiative [End Page 154] to resolve the Tibet question. The external initiative sought to induce the Dalai Lama to return from exile. Deng invited the Tibetan leader to send delegations from India to observe the situation in Tibet, and these overtures quickly led to secret face-to-face meetings in Beijing in 1982 and 1984.

At the same time, Beijing launched a parallel strategy to reverse the policies of the Cultural Revolution and meet Tibetans' ethnic sensibilities by making the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) more Tibetan in overall character. This initiative, led by Hu Yaobang, essentially gave the green light for a revitalization of Tibetan culture and religion, including the reopening of monasteries, permission to recruit new monks, greater leeway to use written Tibetan, and the replacement of large numbers of ethnic Chinese cadres with Tibetans. Deng Xiaoping also sought to foster accelerated economic development in Tibet that would rapidly improve the inhabitants' living standards.

Despite these promising signs, the reconciliation talks between Beijing and the Dalai Lama's representatives were unsuccessful. The Chinese authorities wanted to persuade the Dalai Lama and his officials in exile to set aside past animosities and exhibit a new friendship toward China—an acceptance of being part of the "motherland" and being loyal citizens of China. To achieve this, Deng was willing to allow a substantial degree of cultural autonomy, but he was unwilling to yield any real political power to the Dalai Lama or his officials. The CCP under the new initiative would remain in power in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

The Tibetans quickly realized that Beijing was not even going to consider granting them independence. With that overriding goal still out of reach, the key question in Dharamsala was how much less than independence—if anything—they were willing to settle for. After considerable discussion, the Dalai Lama's government in 1984 proposed that China should grant Tibetans in all parts of China complete internal political autonomy—in essence self-rule. Tibet could then adopt a political system different from that in the rest of China, presumably something closer to a Western-style democracy. This proposal was along the lines of the "One Country Two Systems" offer the CCP had been floating for Taiwan. But in Beijing the Tibetan proposal met a hostile reception. The Chinese authorities argued that the two situations were not comparable because Tibet, unlike Taiwan, was already an integral part of the PRC. The talks collapsed because the Dalai Lama's bottom line was far above what China was willing to contemplate.

The Launching of the Pro-Tibet International Campaign
As officials in both Beijing and Dharamsala assessed these failures, the PRC increased its effort to stimulate economic development in Tibet in the hope of [End Page 155] winning over ordinary Tibetans who would be induced to accept limited autonomy. The Dalai Lama, for his part, launched an international campaign to win worldwide support and assistance for his cause. The Tibetan leader realized that he needed new sources of leverage if he was to have any hope of prying the concessions he wanted from Beijing. A full-scale international campaign, he believed, was the only means by which he could gain the requisite level of support.

The U.S. government was central to this new international campaign. Of all the Western democracies, the United States had provided the most extensive support for Tibetans during the difficult times of the 1950s and 1960s. However, the U.S. relationship with Tibet had changed a great deal in the 1970s when the U.S.-PRC rapprochement made the Dalai Lama and the Tibet question an issue that ranked low among U.S. foreign policy priorities. The exiled leader's new campaign, therefore, sought to regain U.S. attention and support by working through the backdoor of U.S. foreign policy—Congress. The key innovation in this strategy was that the Dalai Lama for the first time carried his political message to the United States and the world. Prior to this the Dalai Lama had traveled and spoken only as a religious leader.26

With the help of Western supporters and donors and of sympathetic members of the U.S. Congress and their aides, the Tibetans launched a campaign in the United States to gain support for the Dalai Lama's cause, in essence recasting the Tibet question not in geopolitical terms but in terms of the U.S. commitment to freedom and human rights. The goal was to highlight China's human rights violations in Tibet and to present the Dalai Lama as a champion of Western values.27

In 1987, the campaign achieved several major breakthroughs. In June, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a bill that condemned human rights abuses in Tibet, instructed the president to express sympathy for Tibet, and urged China to establish a constructive dialogue with the Dalai Lama.28 In September the Dalai Lama was invited to speak to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in Washington, DC. In his speech, the first he had given [End Page 156] in the United States, he argued that Tibet had been "fully independent" at the time of the Chinese invasion in 1950. The Dalai Lama claimed that the invasion had begun China's "illegal occupation of the country" and that "although Tibetans lost their freedom, under international law Tibet today is still an independent state under illegal occupation."29 The speech also raised human rights charges in provocative terms, referring twice to a "holocaust" against the Tibetan people.

The Dalai Lama called on China to resolve the Tibet problem through five specific steps:

transforming the whole of Tibet into a zone of peace—this would include not only Tibet proper but also ethnographic Tibet (the ethnic Tibetans in Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan) and would require the withdrawal of all Chinese troops and military installations;
abandoning the policy of forced population transfers, which, according to the Dalai Lama, threatened the very existence of the Tibetans as a people;
respecting the Tibetan people's fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms (the Dalai Lama asserted that Tibetans are "deprived of all basic democratic rights and freedoms [and] exist under a colonial administration in which all real power is wielded by Chinese officials of the Communist Party and the army");
restoring and protecting Tibet's natural environment and halting China's use of Tibet for the production of nuclear weapons and dumping of nuclear waste; and
holding negotiations about the future status of Tibet and of relations between the Tibetan and Chinese peoples.30
The speech was received well in the United States, and three weeks later, on 6 October 1987, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the earlier House bill. On 22 December 1987, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal year 1989, which contained a sense of the Congress resolution affirming that

the United States should express sympathy for those Tibetans who have suffered and died as a result of fighting, persecution, or famine over the past four decades;
the United States should make the treatment of the Tibetan people an important [End Page 157] factor in its conduct of relations with the People's Republic of China;
the Government of the People's Republic of China should respect internationally recognized human rights and end human rights violations against Tibetans;
the United States should urge the Government of the People's Republic of China to actively reciprocate the Dalai Lama's efforts to establish a constructive dialogue on the future of Tibet;. . . [and]
the United States should urge the People's Republic of China to release all political prisoners in Tibet.31
The resolution also contained a provision about the sale of defense-related articles to the PRC, indicating that the United States should take into consideration "the extent to which the Government of the People's Republic of China is acting in good faith and in a timely manner to resolve human rights issues in Tibet." Finally, it authorized funding for fifteen scholarships that would allow Tibetans to attend American universities.32

After the Cold War ended, congressional support for Tibet grew. In 1990, Congress authorized the creation of a Tibetan-language broadcast unit at the Voice of America, and in 1991 Congress included a number of tough though non-binding provisions on Tibet in a State Department authorization act that was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush later that year. The provisions described "Tibet, including those areas incorporated into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai," as an "occupied country" and declared that the Dalai Lama and the government-in-exile were "Tibet's true representatives."33

Although the pro-Tibet statements in the legislation were only a non-binding "sense of Congress" resolution, they were seen in Dharamsala as a major victory and the start of a congressional move to establish a new policy that would actively pursue a settlement favorable to the Dalai Lama and his government. In that sense, the United States was again actively involved in Tibetan affairs, albeit primarily through Congress rather than the executive branch.

The Impact of the Pro-Tibet International Campaign
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the pro-Tibet sentiment in Congress was supported by the growth of a number of Tibet lobbying groups such as the [End Page 158] Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet, the Tibet Justice Center, Students for a Free Tibet, and broader human rights groups like Asia Watch and Amnesty International. As the Cold War drew to an end, policy vis-à-vis Tibet had to be made with an eye not just to U.S. global and economic interests but also to domestic political concerns.

The Dalai Lama himself became a major public advocate for his cause. On 15 June 1988, nine months after his successful speech to the U.S. congressional caucus, he spoke explicitly about political issues when he addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg. In the speech he set forth, for the first time publicly, his conditions for settling the Tibet question and for his return to Tibet. The main points were:

The whole of Tibet [political and ethnographic Tibet] . . . should become a self-governing democratic political entity founded on law by agreement of the people for the common good and protection of themselves and their environment, in association with the People's Republic of China.
The Government of the People's Republic of China could remain responsible for Tibet's foreign policy. The Government of Tibet should, however, develop and maintain relations through its own Foreign Affairs Bureau, in the fields of religion, commerce, education, culture, tourism, science, sports and other non-political activities. Tibet should join international organizations concerned with such activities.

The Government of Tibet should be founded on a constitution of basic law. The basic law should provide for a democratic system of government. . . . This means that the Government of Tibet will have the right to decide on all affairs relating to Tibet and Tibetans.

As individual freedom is the real source and potential of any society's development, the Government of Tibet would seek to ensure this freedom by adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the rights to speech, assembly, and religion. Because religion constitutes the source of Tibet's national identity, and spiritual values lie at the very heart of Tibet's rich culture, it would be the special duty of the Government of Tibet to safeguard and develop its practice.

The Government should be composed of a popularly elected Chief Executive, a bi-cameral legislative branch, and an independent judicial system. Its seat should be Lhasa.

The social and economic system of Tibet should be determined in accordance with the wishes of the Tibetan people, bearing in mind especially the need to raise the standard of living of the entire population.

. . . A regional peace conference should be called to ensure Tibet becomes a genuine sanctuary of peace through demilitarization. Until such a peace conference can be convened and demilitarization and neutralization achieved, China [End Page 159] could have the right to maintain a restricted number of military installations in Tibet. These must be solely for defense purposes.34

The Strasbourg proposal did not seek complete independence, but it also did not accept limited autonomy within the Chinese political system. Rather, it called for Tibet to have a new status as a kind of autonomous dominion that conceivably could even field its own sports teams in international competitions. The Dalai Lama would accept being part of the PRC, but the Chinese authorities would have little authority over affairs in Tibet, and the Communist Party would not rule Tibet. Because this proposal had in essence been presented to Beijing at the secret 1984 talks, it did not represent anything new to the Chinese. But it did seem new to everyone else because it was the first time that the Dalai Lama had openly stated his willingness to settle for something less than independence. The proposal was well received around the world, solidifying the Dalai Lama's reputation as a leader who was reasonable and seeking a compromise solution.

In subsequent years the international campaign for Tibet did, in one sense, enjoy extraordinary success. It generated new visibility and sympathy in the West for the Dalai Lama's cause, made the Tibet question a part of U.S. domestic and international politics, and helped the Dalai Lama win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. In the process, he became an international symbol of peace and justice and a powerful spokesman for Tibet.

The Dalai Lama's international campaign also had an enormous impact in China. Tibetans in Lhasa knew about the Dalai Lama's visit to the United States in 1987 because of foreign short-wave broadcasts and because of attacks on the Dalai Lama's visit that appeared in the official Chinese media. As a result, less than a week after the Dalai Lama's first speech in Washington, a small group of nationalistic monks from Drepung monastery in Lhasa staged a political demonstration supporting Tibetan independence and the Dalai Lama. The monks were arrested, but four days later a second demonstration that was held to demand the release of these monks ended in a full-scale riot, killing several people.

Although China had liberalized its religious policies and allowed monasteries to reopen in Tibet, thousands of average Tibetans by this point were angry enough to face death and prison by rising up against Chinese rule in Tibet. The Dalai Lama's international campaign had stirred up Tibetan nationalist sentiment and focused it on the Dalai Lama and the West as the answer to Tibet's problems. Many Tibetans saw the visible U.S. support for the Dalai Lama as a sign that a turning point had been reached in Tibetan history and that this was the time to support the Dalai Lama's efforts by engaging [End Page 160] in active political dissidence. Two further riots erupted in Lhasa in 1988, and on 5 March 1989 a fourth riot occurred in the Tibetan capital. The Dalai Lama's international initiative had successfully turned the tables on China, placing Beijing on the defensive both internationally and within Tibet. In March 1989, three months before the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Chinese authorities imposed martial law in Tibet, a status that lasted more than a year.

The martial law declaration signaled a shift by the PRC to a more repressive, integrationist policy in Tibet. In Beijing, hardliners who gained ascendance after the Tiananmen Square massacre were able to make the case that China had to stop "coddling" Tibet lest matters get completely out of hand. Many officials in Lhasa and Beijing had believed from the start that liberalizing the practice of religion and allowing the reopening of monasteries in Tibet would only increase nationalistic and separatist sentiments, and their view now prevailed.35

Beijing's new policy in Tibet led to more effective security measures that prevented further riots. At the same time, the hardline policy constrained institutions that could potentially strengthen Tibetan ethnic identity, notably language and religion. To be sure, the Tibetan language and Buddhist religion were not prohibited, and Tibetans still spoke their own language and studied it in primary school. Moreover, monasteries and nunneries remained open. Nonetheless, the new policy placed increasingly sharp restraints on how such institutions could operate and develop. In particular, it shelved a number of plans to increase the Tibetanization of Tibet. These reversals angered many Tibetans who, for example, wanted Tibetan to be the language used not only at home but also in government and higher education (including science) and who wanted monasteries and nunneries to be free of government limits on the number of monks and nuns they could have and the age of boys and girls who could enter. In addition, many Tibetans were offended by the tone of the new campaigns and their demeaning comments about Tibetan religion and culture, particularly by a wave of personal attacks on the Dalai Lama.

The new Chinese policy also accelerated the existing program of rapid economic development in Tibet, including much closer economic integration of the region with the rest of China. This was accomplished by further opening up Tibet for commercial development and resulted in a growing influx of non-Tibetan (Han Chinese and Hui Chinese Muslim) entrepreneurs and laborers, who were eager to receive some of the massive funds being poured into [End Page 161] Tibet and to take advantage of new economic opportunities. These non-Tibetans were not colonists in the normal sense of the term, inasmuch as their official residency permits did not refer to Tibet and they were expected eventually to return to their home areas. They were temporary migrants, or what is known in China as the "floating population." Nevertheless, their numbers and increasing ability to take control of Tibet's growing economy sparked widespread resentment.

A bittersweet joke making the rounds of minority officials in Lhasa conveyed these popular sentiments by sarcastically summarizing four periods of Tibetan history under the PRC:

In the first 10 years [1950–1960] we lost our land [i.e., Chinese troops entered and took control of Tibet];
In the second ten years [1960–1970] we lost political power [i.e., the traditional government was replaced by a Han dominated Communist government];

In the third ten years [1970–1980] we lost our culture [i.e., the Cultural Revolution destroyed religion and other traditional customs];

In the fourth ten years [1980–1990] we lost our economy [i.e., the open door economic policy allowed non-Tibetans to dominate the autonomous region's economy].

Despite much criticism both within Tibet and internationally, China's huge investment in rapid economic development in Tibet is having a major impact in rural Tibet, where the standard of living in recent years has increased markedly. At the same time, Beijing has been able to implement its hardline policy with impunity. Neither the United States nor the UN took any concrete steps, such as economic sanctions or diplomatic pressure, to try to compel China to moderate its policies in Tibet. In fact, a 1994 State Department report to Congress clearly reiterated the long-standing U.S. strategic position on Tibet:

Historically, the United States has acknowledged Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Since at least 1966, U.S. policy has explicitly recognized the Tibetan Autonomous Region . . . as part of the People's Republic of China. This long-standing policy is consistent with the view of the entire international community, including all China's neighbors: no country recognizes Tibet as a sovereign state. Because we do not recognize Tibet as an independent state, the United States does not conduct diplomatic relations with the self-styled "Tibetan government-in-exile." The United States continues, however, to urge Beijing and the Dalai Lama to hold serious discussions at an early date, without preconditions, and on a fixed agenda. The United States also urges China to respect Tibet's unique religious, linguistic and cultural traditions as it formulates policies for Tibet.
Internationally revered for his spiritual and moral leadership, and honored with the Nobel Prize for Peace, the Dalai Lama has been a committed advocate [End Page 162] of nonviolent change and resolution of disputes. To show respect for his religious leadership and courtesy to adherents of Tibetan Buddhism, senior U.S. officials—including the President of the United States—have met from time to time with the Dalai Lama. In addition, administration officials at appropriate levels occasionally meet the Dalai Lama's representatives informally, to exchange views about conditions in Tibet. These informal meetings are a routine part of informal U.S. diplomacy, and do not imply recognition of the political goals of Tibetan exile groups.36

Beijing therefore, in a sense, turned the tables back on the Dalai Lama. The triumphs won by the Dalai Lama's international campaign and its Congressional supporters looked more and more like pyrrhic victories. The international initiative won significant symbolic gains for the exiles in the West, and it spurred Tibetans in Tibet to demonstrate their support for the Dalai Lama, but it did not compel China to yield to its demands. To the contrary, it played a major role in precipitating the new hardline policy that the exiled leaders argued was destroying Tibet by changing the demographic and ethnic nature of the region. Ironically, by threatening China's political hold over Tibet, the Dalai Lama and his Western supporters provided the advocates of a hardline policy in China the leverage they needed to shift Beijing's Tibet policy away from the more ethnically sensitive approach pursued by Hu Yaobang in the early 1980s.

The Dalai Lama's international campaign, moreover, also heightened China's distrust of the Dalai Lama, who, it was felt, was not serious about ceasing separatist activities and making the kind of political compromises China could agree to. Many in China came to believe that the Dalai Lama was unnecessary and that the policy of rapidly developing and modernizing Tibet would solidify China's position there regardless of what the Dalai Lama or nationalistic Tibetans thought or did. The Chinese leaders were confident that a new generation of Tibetans would emerge who would be less influenced by religion and lamas and would genuinely consider themselves patriotic citizens of China.

Conclusion
From the time the United States first made contact with Tibet, in 1942, through the end of the Cold War, successive U.S. administrations consistently refused to accept Tibet's claim to independence and, after the Dalai fled Tibet in 1959, to regard him as the head of a government-in-exile. Consequently, although many in the West (and Tibet) viewed the United States as a friend of [End Page 163] Tibetans, U.S. policy in reality played a significant role both in undermining the Dalai Lama's case that Tibet was an independent state before 1950–1951 and in validating the legitimacy of China's dominion over Tibet. At the strategic level, U.S. policy remained constant, even at the height of the Cold War. Tibet was never seen as part of America's core national interests, and when American policy toward China changed in the early 1970s, the U.S. government abandoned its erstwhile tactical support for Tibetan guerrilla forces and exiled leaders.

The end of Maoism in China led to the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the PRC in 1979 as well as the opening of a new chapter in Sino-Tibetan relations. These changes prompted the Dalai Lama to send delegations to hold secret talks in Beijing in 1982 and 1984. Optimism abounded that this renewal of face-to-face talks would yield a peaceful solution to the longstanding conflict. Unfortunately, it did not. Coming together to talk was far easier than making painful compromises to reach a solution, and by 1984 the talks collapsed. The Tibetan and Chinese objectives were too far apart to allow a settlement of the conflict.

This failure led the Dalai Lama and his supporters to launch an international campaign to try to secure U.S. and international support for Tibet in its dealings with Beijing. The campaign was successful insofar as it created a powerful, Congress-driven Tibet lobby that the White House could not ignore and that inserted Tibet into American domestic politics. The campaign successfully pressured the White House and State Department to criticize China's actions in Tibet and even, in the post–Cold War era, to take actions that treated Tibet as being partly separate from China (e.g., by having special Tibet reports and a coordinator for Tibetan affairs). Those successes, however, were essentially symbolic. They did not provide the Dalai Lama with leverage to force Beijing to make concessions or to moderate its hardline policy in Tibet.

The gains achieved by the international campaign had to be carefully crafted to appear responsive to Congress and the Tibet lobby without crossing a line that would threaten basic Chinese interests or the PRC's claim to sovereignty over Tibet. The international campaign and the Tibet lobby were able to restore Tibet as a component of Sino-American relations, but only as an irritant and only in terms of human rights issues. Moreover, the Dalai Lama's role in the international campaign had the unintended consequence of helping the hardline faction in China to implement its policies. The victories of the campaign were ultimately pyrrhic.

Even so, the Tibet question has not faded away. For the foreseeable future, this issue will likely remain an irritant to the Chinese in the international arena and a potential danger-point in Sino-American relations.

Melvyn C. Goldstein is the John Reynold Harkness Professor of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University and co-director of the Center for Research on Tibet.
Footnotes
1. Aide-mémoire from U.S. State Department to the British Embassy, 13 July 1942, FO371/35756, British Foreign Office Records, The National Archives of the United Kingdom (UKNA).

2. Letter from President Roosevelt to the Dalai Lama, 3 July 1942, in U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1942, Vol. VII, p. 113 (hereinafter referred to as FRUS, with appropriate year and volume numbers). See also Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 392.

3. Memorandum from OSS Director Donovan to President Roosevelt, 1 July 1942, in FRUS, 1942, Vol. VII, p. 115.

4. Tibet/8–2147, Dispatch No. 46, 28 October 1947, 693.0031, Record Group (RG) 59, U.S. National Archives (NARA).

5. Tibet/1–849, Dispatch No. 108, 12 April 1949, 693.0031, RG 59, NARA.

6. Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, p. 631.

7. Message from State Department to Dalai Lama, 7 September 1951, 793B.00/9–1851, RG 59, NARA: quoted in Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 808–810.

8. Although the Dalai Lama did not want to leave Tibet for exile, he did not completely sever contact with the United States. In June 1952, Princess Cocoola of Sikkim (Mrs. Phunkhang) told the U.S. consul in Calcutta that the Dalai Lama had sent an oral message to the U.S. government via his brother-in-law, Pakla Phüntso Tashi. The Tibetan leader had asked her to convey the same message. The four main points were: (1) "The Dalai Lama appreciated greatly the U.S. Government's feelings and attitudes toward him personally and toward his Tibetan subjects"; (2) "He sincerely hopes that when the time is propitious for the real liberation of Tibet from the Chinese, the United States will find it feasible and possible to lend material aid and moral support to the Tibetan government"; (3) "The Tibetan people have not changed; they are not pro-Chinese; they are Tibetans first and last"; and (4) "He hopes to get a written message 'down' soon." Cited from "Memorandum of Conversation between Consul Garrett Soulen and Princess Cocoola of Sikkim," 24 June 1952, in 7936.00/7-252, RG 59, NARA. The Dalai Lama, however, denies having sent such a message. See Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, Vol. II: 1951–1955, in press.

9. The CIA did this without seeking the approval of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government.

10. A case can be made that U.S. active involvement in the 1950s, particularly from 1956, played a significant role in destabilizing Tibet and inadvertently fostering the uprising in 1959, but that will have to be the topic for another article.

11. In 1964, for example, the CIA provided a total of $1,735,000 in support, including $500,000 for the support of 2,100 Tibetan guerrillas in Nepal; $180,00 as a subsidy for the Dalai Lama; $225,000 for equipment, transportation and training; and $400,000 for covert training in Colorado. See "Memorandum for the Special Group," 9 January 1964, in FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. XXX, p. 731.

12. This was cited in a memorandum from the Acting Secretary of State Dillon to President Eisenhower, 26 April 1959, in FRUS, 1958–1960, Vol. XIX, p. 763.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., p. 764.

15. U.S. Information Agency (USIA), Official Text, 14 September 1959 (statement read to reporters on 11 September 1959). Contrary to the USIA statement, the use of the word "country" was not the historical U.S. position. On 3 November 1959 the director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Chinese Affairs and the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs sent a joint note to George Yeh, the ambassador in Washington of the exiled Chinese Nationalist government, informing him that "the United States had made a decision to go somewhat beyond its previous position with regard to Tibet, namely that it is an autonomous country under the suzerainty of China." See "Memorandum of Conversation," in FRUS, 1958–1960, Vol. XIX, p. 801.

16. Memorandum from Assistant Secretary Parsons to Secretary Herter, 14 October 1959, in FRUS, 1958–1960, Vol. XIX, p. 794.

17. Secretary of State Herter to the Dalai Lama, 20 January 1960, FO371 150710, UKNA: quoted in Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, p. 56.

18. "Notes from NSC Meeting," 10 September 1959, in FRUS, 1958–1960, Vol. XIX, p. 784.

19. Letter from Secretary of State Herter to the Dalai Lama, 6 October 1959, in FRUS, 1958–1960, Vol. XIX, p. 790.

20. Telegram from UN Delegation to State Department, 8 October 1959. in FRUS, 1958–1960, Vol. XIX, pp. 790–791.

21. "Memorandum of 14 October 1959," in FRUS, 1958–1960, Vol. XIX, pp. 792–793.

22. Ibid.

23. The cessation of support for the Nepal-based Tibetan guerrilla force was a symbolic blow but did not affect the concrete political or military situation in Tibet. During the thirteen years of active U.S. support for the resistance, the guerrilla operations had no significant impact in Tibet.

24. It is interesting to note that Gyalo Thondup, the Dalai Lama's older brother who oversaw the Tibetans' activities with the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s, has a similar view. In a phone interview with me in April 1994 he said, "After 1956 the Americans gave us lots of empty promises. They said that after the Dalai Lama comes into exile they will help Tibet get its independence. These were said in secret talks with me by various American organizations. All these things were betrayed. The Indians betrayed the Tibetans and the American also did so." The available documentary evidence does not support Gyalo Thondup's claim that the United States ever promised to help Tibet gain independence. One possibility is that a CIA officer in the field made an unauthorized statement to this effect. Another possibility is that higher-level authorization for such a statement was issued but is contained in documents not yet released by the State Department and the CIA. A final possibility is that Thondup misunderstood something that was said or attached undue significance to a comment that did not actually depart from previous U.S. positions.

25. Henry Kissinger. Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 18.

26. In fact, he was not able to visit the United States until 1979, having previously been denied a visa for ten years. See Thomas A. Grunfeld. "The Internationalization of Tibet," unpub. ms.

27. The parallel program in Europe will not be discussed here.

28. News Tibet, Vol. 22, No. 3 (May–August 1988), p. 8. The Tibetan exiles received their first explicit support from the U.S. Congress in July 1985 when ninety-one representatives signed a letter to Li Xiannian, president of the PRC, expressing support for continued direct talks and urging the Chinese government to "grant the very reasonable and justified aspirations of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his people every consideration." See Point 14 of Section 1243 of Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989, cited in Congressional Ceremony to Welcome His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 13.

29. Office of Tibet, Tibet Briefing: His Holiness the Dalai Lama's Spring Visit to USA (New York: Office of Tibet, 1994), p. 19.

30. Ibid., pp. 18–22.

31. Congressional Ceremony to Welcome His Holiness, pp. 95–96.

32. Ibid., p. 96.

33. Tibet Press Watch, Vol. 3 (1), No. 17 (1991), pp. 1–2.

34. Office of Tibet, Tibet Briefing, p. 24.

35. On the leftist, pro-CCP orientation of officials in Lhasa in the 1980s, see the biography of Phüntso Wangye, the founder of the first Tibetan Communist Party, by Melvyn C. Goldstein, Dawei Sherap, and William Siebenschuh, A Tibetan Revolutionary: The Political Life and Times of Bapa Phüntso Wangye (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 285–306.

36. Report mandated by Section 536(a)(2) of Public Law 103–236, Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1994–1995: "Relations of the United States with Tibet."

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_cold_war_studies/v008/8.3goldstein.html

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What are the major events of Tibetan history (timeline)?

Year Description of Event

416 BC Nyatri Tsenpo founds a dynasty in Yarlung valley, according to legend
602 AD Tibet is unified under King Namri Songtsen of the Yarlung dynasty
641 King Songtsen Gampo marries Princess Wencheng of China, his 2nd wife
670 Tibet conquers Amdo, Tarim Basin; prolonged warfare with China begins
747 King Trisong Detsen invites Padmasambhava, yogin of Swat, to Tibet
763 Tibet captures Changan, capital of Tang China; tribute paid to Tibet
779 Samye, Tibet's 1st monastery, built by Trisong Detsen & Padmasambhava
792 Exponents of Indian Buddhism prevail in debate with Chinese at Samye
821 Tibet signs its last peace treaty with Tang China: "Tibetans shall
be happy in Tibet and Chinese shall be happy in China." [Walt1]
842 King Langdarma murdered by a monk; Tibet splits into several states
1040 Birth of Milarepa, 2nd hierarch of Kagyupa order and a renown poet
1073 Founding of Sakya, the first monastery of the Sakyapa monastic order
1206 An assembly names Genghis Khan first ruler of a unified Mongol nation
1227 Mongols destroy Xixia, a Tibetan-speaking kingdom of northwest China
1247 Sakya Pandita submits to Godan Khan; beginning of the first priest/
patron relationship between a Tibetan lama and a Mongol khan
1261 Tibet is reunited with Sakya Pandita, Grand Lama of Sakya, as king
1279 Final defeat of Song by Mongols; Mongol conquest of China complete
1350 Changchub Gyaltsen defeats Sakya and founds the secular Sitya dynasty
1368 China regains its independence from the Mongols under Ming dynasty
1409 Ganden, 1st Gelugpa monastery, built by monastic reformer Tsongkhapa
1435-81 In prolonged warfare, Karmapa supporters gain control of Sitya court
1578 Gelugpa leader gets the title of Dalai ("Ocean") from Altan Khan
1635 Sitya dynasty is overthrown by the ruler of Tibet's Tsang province
1640 Gushri Khan, leader of Khoshut Mongols, invades and conquers Tibet

1642 Gushri Khan enthrones the 5th Dalai Lama as temporal ruler of Tibet
1644 Manchu overthrow Ming, conquer China, and establish the Qing dynasty
1653 "Great Fifth" Dalai Lama meets Qing Emperor Shunzhi near Beijing
1682 Fifth Dalai Lama dies; regent conceals death for the next 14 years
1716-21 Italian Jesuit priest Ippolito Desideri studies and teaches in Lhasa
1717 Dzungar Mongols invade Tibet and sack Lhasa; 5th DL's tomb looted
1720 Dzungars driven out; Qing forces install Kesang Gyatso as the 7th DL
1721 The position of Amban is created by a 13-point Qing decree on Tibet
1724 A Chinese territorial government is created for Qinghai (Amdo)
1750 Ambans murder regent; rioters kill Ambans; Qing troops sent to Tibet
1792 Qing troops enter Tibet to drive out Gorkha (Nepalese) invaders
29-point Qing decree prescribes "golden urn" lottery for picking DL
and PL, bans visits by non-Chinese, and increases Ambans' powers
1854-56 Nepal defeats Tibet; peace treaty requires that Tibet pay tribute
1876 China agrees to provide passports for a British mission to Tibet
1885 Tibet turns back British mission, rejects Chinese-granted passports
1893 China and Britain agree to regulations on trade between India & Tibet
1894 Tibetans build a wall north of Dromo to prevent trade with India
The 13th Dalai Lama takes control of the Tibetan government at age 18
1904 British troops under Colonel Younghusband enter Tibet & occupy Lhasa
A treaty signed which required Tibet to pay an indemnity to Britain
1906 The 1904 Anglo-Tibetan treaty is "confirmed" in Anglo-Chinese treaty
1907 "Suzerainty of China over Thibet" recognized in Anglo-Russian treaty
1910-12 Qing troops occupy Tibet, shoot at unarmed crowds on entering Lhasa
1912 Last Qing emperor abdicates; Republic of China claims Mongolia,Tibet
1913 13th Dalai Lama proclaims Tibet a "religious and independent nation"
Mongolia and Tibet recognize each other in a treaty signed in Urga
1914 Britain and Tibet agree to McMahon Line in a treaty signed in Simla
1917-18 Tibet defeats Chinese forces in Kham, recovers Chamdo (lost in 1910)
1921 Britain recognizes Tibet's "autonomy under Chinese suzerainty"
1924 At a KMT congress, Sun Yat-sen calls for "self-determination of all
national minorities in China" within a "united Chinese republic"
1924-25 Pressure from monks causes DL to dismiss his British-trained officers
1928 Chiang Kai-shek defeats northern warlords, reunites China under KMT
1930-33 China captures Derge in Kham in first Sino-Tibetan clash since 1918
1933 Truce ends China/Tibet fighting; the 13th Dalai Lama dies at age 58
1934 Reting Rimpoche named regent; China permitted to open Lhasa mission
1940 The five-year-old Tenzin Gyatso is enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama
1941 Unable to keep celibacy vow, Reting is replaced as regent by Taktra
1942 U.S. army officer goes to Lhasa to present a letter for DL from FDR
1944 U.S. military aircraft crash lands near Samye; crew escorted to India
1945 Newly opened English-language school is closed after monks protest
1947 ex-Regent Reting attempts to kill Regent Taktra with a package bomb
Reting dies while under house arrest; he was apparently poisoned
British mission in Lhasa is transferred to a newly independent India
1947-49 Tibetan Trade Mission travels to India, China, U.S., and Britain;
mission meets with British Prime Minister Clement R. Attlee
1949 People's Republic of China is proclaimed by Chinese Communist Party
PRC recognizes Mongolia, announces its intention to "liberate" Tibet
1950 Red China invades Tibet; Tibetan army destroyed in battle at Chamdo
1951 17-point agreement between China and Tibet; Chinese occupy Lhasa
1955 Tibetans in Kham and Amdo (Qinghai) begin revolt against Chinese rule
1956 Dalai Lama visits India for 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's birth
The United States begins to arm the Tibetan resistance via CIA
1959 DL flees to India; 87,000 Tibetans die in anti-Chinese revolt [Walt2]
1960 International Commission of Jurists: "acts of genocide [have] been
committed...to destroy the Tibetans as a religious group." [ICJ1]
1960-62 Tibet experiences its first famine as grain is requisitioned by PLA
1962 China-India War: China advances beyond McMahon Line, then withdraws
1962-75 TAR's peasants are herded into communes by collectivization campaign
1963 DL approves a democratic constitution for the Tibetan exile community
1964 The Panchen Lama is arrested after calling for Tibetan independence
1965 China sets up Tibet Autonomous Region in U-Tsang and western Kham
1966 The United States America recognizes China's sovereignty over Tibet
1966-69 Cultural Revolution: Red Guards vandalize temples, attack "four olds"
1969-71 Tibet is put under PLA military rule in order to suppress Red Guards
1971 The United States cuts off military aid to the Tibetan resistance
1974 Nepal forces the Tibetan resistance to abandon its base in Mustang
Sikkim votes overwhelmingly to join India; Ladakh opened to tourists
1976 The first permanent ethnic Chinese settlers arrive in TAR [Donnet94]
1977 Resistance burns 100 PLA vehicles in last major military operation
1978 Visitors find 8 temples left in TAR, down from 2,700 in 1959 [Far95]
1979 Tibet is opened to non-Chinese tourism for the first time since 1963
1979-80 China allows a series of three delegations from DL to visit Tibet
1980 CCP leader Hu Yaobang visits Lhasa; he promises to "relax" controls
and "restore the Tibetan economy to its pre-1959 level."[Strauss]
"Responsibility system" distributes collectivized land to individuals
1982 Writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn calls CCP regime in Tibet "more brutal
and inhuman than any other communist regime in the world."[Walt3]
1985 Bomb defused in Lhasa during the TAR 20th anniversary celebration
1987 Police fire on a massive pro-independence demonstration in Lhasa
1988 Qiao Shi, politburo member and internal security chief, visits Tibet
and vows to "adopt a policy of merciless repression." [Asia90]
Speaking in Strasbourg, France, the Dalai Lama elaborates on his 1987
"five point" proposal for Tibetan self-government within China.
1989 Police kill 80-150 in Lhasa's bloodiest riots in 30 years[Schwartz94]
Martial law imposed in Lhasa; Dalai Lama receives Nobel Peace Prize
1990 China lifts martial law in Lhasa 13 months after imposing it
The Voice of America initiates a Tibetan-language broadcast service
1992 Chen Kuiyuan named CCP leader for Tibet, calls for a purge of those
who "act as internal agents of the Dalai Lama clique."[Kristof93]
Over 30,000 visitors arrive in TAR's "Golden Year of Tibetan Tourism"
1991 1,000 Tibetan refugees, chosen by lottery, are admitted to the U.S.
1993 Residents of Lhasa protest for independence, against inflation and
the charging of fees for formally free medical services [Kaye93]
1994 Potala, former residence of the DL, is restored at a cost of $9 mln.
1995 A report on Chinese human rights violations, including one case where
a Tibetan nun was beaten to death, is narrowly rejected by the UN
DL recognizes six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as 11th Panchen Lama
China denounces the Dalai Lama's choice of Panchen Lama as a "fraud,"
selects rival candidate Gyaincain Norbu by golden urn process
Tibet's worst snowstorm in a century leaves more than 50 dead
1996 Earthquake in Lijang rates 7.0 on the Richter scale and kills 200
The U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia begins broadcasting on shortwave
Bomb explodes near government offices in Lhasa on Christmas day;
a 1 million yuan ($120,000) reward is offered to solve crime
DL takes steps to limit Shugden worship in Tibetan exile community
1997 Three monks close to DL are murdered; Shugden supporters suspected
Dalai Lama visits Taiwan and meets with ROC President Lee Teng-hui
Several major movies on Tibet, including _Kundun_ are released

http://stason.org/TULARC/travel/tibet/B1-What-are-the-major-events-of-Tibetan-history-timeline.html

Posted by google at 01:08 AM | Comments (0)

Dalai Lama Group Says It Got Money From C.I.A.

World News Briefs; Dalai Lama Group Says It Got Money From C.I.A.
The Dalai Lama's administration acknowledged today that it received $1.7 million a year in the 1960's from the Central Intelligence Agency, but denied reports that the Tibetan leader benefited personally from an annual subsidy of $180,000.

The money allocated for the resistance movement was spent on training volunteers and paying for guerrilla operations against the Chinese, the Tibetan government-in-exile said in a statement. It added that the subsidy earmarked for the Dalai Lama was spent on setting up offices in Geneva and New York and on international lobbying.

The Dalai Lama, 63, a revered spiritual leader both in his Himalayan homeland and in Western nations, fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against a Chinese military occupation, which began in 1950.

The decade-long covert program to support the Tibetan independence movement was part of the C.I.A.'s worldwide effort to undermine Communist governments, particularly in the Soviet Union and China.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEFD61538F931A35753C1A96E958260

Posted by google at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2008

Understanding Tibet in Time and Space

http://chinadatacenter.org/presentation/Tibet_files/frame.htm

Posted by google at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2008

Tibet Through Chinese Eyes

Many Chinese working in Tibet regard themselves as idealistic missionaries of progress, rejecting the Western idea of them as agents of cultural imperialism. In truth, they are inescapably both

by Peter Hessler, February 1999 Atlantic Monthly

Political views on Tibet tend to be as unambiguous as the hard blue dome of sky that stretches above its mountains. In Western opinion, the "Tibet question" is settled: Tibet should not be part of China; before being forcibly annexed, in 1951, it was an independent country. The Chinese are cruel occupiers who are seeking to destroy the traditional culture of Tibet. The Dalai Lama, the traditional spiritual leader of Tibet, who fled to India in 1959, should be allowed to return and resume his rule over either an independent or at least a culturally autonomous Tibet. In short, in Western eyes there is only one answer to the Tibet question: Free Tibet.

For Han—ethnic Chinese—who live in Tibet, the one answer is exactly the same and yet completely different. They serve what the Chinese call "Liberated Tibet." Mei Zhiyuan is Han, and in 1997 he was sent by the Chinese government to act as a "Volunteer Aiding Tibet" at a Tibetan middle school, where he works as a teacher. His roommate, Tashi, is a Tibetan who as a college student was sent in the opposite direction, to Sichuan province, where he received his teacher training. Both men are twenty-four years old. They are good friends who live near Heroes Road, which is named after the Chinese and Tibetans who contributed to the "peaceful liberation" of Tibet in the 1950s. This is how Mei Zhiyuan sees Tibet—as a harmonious region that benefits from Chinese support. When I asked him why he had volunteered to work there, he said, "Because all of us know that Tibet is a less developed place that needs skilled people."

I went to Tibet to explore this second viewpoint, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Tibet question through Chinese eyes. Before coming to Tibet, I had spent two years as a volunteer English teacher at a small college in Sichuan, which made me particularly interested in meeting volunteer teachers like Mei Zhiyuan. I also talked with other young government-sent workers and entrepreneurs who had come to seek their fortunes, and for four weeks that was my focus, as I spent time in Lhasa and other places where there are large numbers of Han settlers.

Of all the pieces that compose the Tibet question, this is by far the most explosive: the Dalai Lama has targeted Han migration as one of the greatest threats to Tibetan culture, and the sensitivity of the issue is evident in some statistics. According to Beijing, Han make up only three percent of the population of the Tibet Autonomous Region, whereas some Tibetan exiles claim that the figure is in fact over 50 percent and growing. Tibetans see the influx of Han as yet another attempt to destroy their culture; Chinese see the issue as Deng Xiaoping did in 1987, when he said, "Tibet is sparsely populated. The two million Tibetans are not enough to handle the task of developing such a huge region. There is no harm in sending Han into Tibet to help.... The key issues are what is best for Tibetans and how can Tibet develop at a fast pace, and move ahead in the four modernizations in China."

Regardless of the accuracy of the official Chinese view, many of the government-sent Han workers in Tibet clearly see their role in terms of service. They are perhaps the most important historical actors in terms of the Tibet question, and yet they are also the most-often overlooked. Why did they come to Tibet? What do they think of the place, how are they changing it, and what do they see as their role?

Gao Ming, a twenty-two-year-old English teacher, told me, "One aspect was that I knew we should be willing to go to the border regions, to the minority areas, to places that are jianku—difficult. These are the parts of China that need help. If I could have gone to Xinjiang, I would have, but I knew that Tibet was also a place that needed teachers. That was the main reason. Another aspect was that Tibet is a natural place—there's no pollution here, and almost no people; much of it is untouched. So I wanted to see what it was like."

Shi Mingzhi, a twenty-four-year-old physics teacher, said, "First, I'd say it's the same reason that you came here to travel—because it's an interesting place. But I also wanted to come help build the country. You know that all of the volunteers in this district are Party members, and if you're a Party member, you should be willing to go to a jianku place to work. So you could say that all of us had patriotic reasons for coming—perhaps that's the biggest reason. But I also came because it was a good opportunity, and the salary is higher than in the interior of China."

Talking with these young men was in many ways similar to talking with an idealistic volunteer in any part of the world. Apart from the financial incentive to work in Tibet, many of the motivations were the same—the sense of adventure, the desire to see something new, the commitment to service. And government propaganda emphasizes this sense of service, through figures like Kong Fansen, a cadre from eastern China who worked in Tibet and became famous as a worker-martyr after his death in an auto accident. Han workers are exhorted to study the "old Tibet spirit" of Kong and other cadres as they serve a region that in the Chinese view desperately needs their talents.

Central to their task is the concept of jianku. I heard this term repeatedly when the Chinese described conditions in Tibet, and life is especially jianku for Volunteers Aiding Tibet, who commit in advance to serving eight-year terms. Most government-sent Han workers fall into the category of Cadres Aiding Tibet—teachers, doctors, administrators, and others who serve for two or three years. Having graduated from a lower-level college, Mei Zhiyuan could not qualify for such a position, and as a result was forced to make an eight-year commitment. The sacrifice is particularly impressive considering that he assumed it would have serious repercussions on his health. Many Chinese believe that living at a high altitude for long periods of time does significant damage to the lungs, and a number of workers told me that this was the greatest drawback to living in Tibet. "It's bad for you," Mei Zhiyuan explained, "because when you live in a place this high, your lungs enlarge, and eventually that affects your heart. It shortens your life." During my stay in Tibet I heard several variations on this theory (one from an earnest young teacher who was smoking a cigarette), but generally it involved the lungs expanding and putting pressure on the heart. There is no medical evidence to support such a belief; indeed, in a heavily polluted country like China, where one of every four deaths is attributed to lung disease, the high, clean air of Tibet is probably tonic. Nevertheless, this perception adds to the sense of sacrifice, and it is encouraged by the government pay structure, which links salary to altitude: the higher you work, the higher your pay.

The roughly 1,000 yuan ($120) a month that Mei Zhiyuan earns is half what the local cadre teachers make. Even so, his salary is two to three times what he would make as a teacher in rural Sichuan, and he is able to send half his earnings home to his parents, who are peasants. It's good money by Chinese standards but seems hardly a sufficient incentive for a young man to be willing to shorten his life. Leaving before his eight years are up would incur a heavy fine of up to 20,000 yuan—$2,400, nearly two years' salary, or, for a peasant family like Mei Zhiyuan's, approximately twenty tons of rice.

The Dream of a Unified Motherland

From the Chinese perspective, Tibet has always been a part of China. This is, of course, a simplistic and inaccurate view, but Tibetan history is so muddled that one can see in it what one wishes. The Chinese can ignore some periods and point to others; they can cite the year 1792, when the Qing Emperor sent a Chinese army to help the Tibetans drive out the invading Nepalese, or explain that from 1728 to 1912 there were Qing ambans, imperial administrators, stationed in Lhasa. In fact the authority of these ambans steadily decreased over time, and Tibet enjoyed de facto independence from 1913 to 1951. An unbiased arbiter would find Tibetan arguments for independence more compelling than the Chinese version of history—but also, perhaps, would find that the Chinese have a stronger historical claim to Tibet than the United States does to much of the American West.

Most important, China's reasons for wanting Tibet changed greatly over the years. For the Qing Dynasty, Tibet was important strictly as a buffer state; ambans and armies were sent to ensure that the region remained peaceful, but they made relatively few administrative changes, and there was no effort to force the Tibetans to adopt the Chinese language or Chinese customs. In the Qing view, Tibet was a part of China but at the same time it was something different; the monasteries and the Dalai Lamas were allowed to maintain authority over most internal affairs.

In the early twentieth century, as the Qing collapsed and China struggled to overcome the imperialism of foreign powers, Tibet became important for new reasons of nationalism. Intellectuals and political leaders, including Sun Yat-sen, believed that China's historical right to Tibet had been infringed by Western powers, particularly Britain, which invaded Tibet in 1904 to force the thirteenth Dalai Lama to open relations. As Tibet slipped further from Chinese control, a steady stream of nationalistic rhetoric put the loss of Tibet into a familiar pattern—the humiliation by foreign powers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Hong Kong went to the British, Manchuria and Shandong to the Japanese, Taiwan to the U.S.-funded Kuomintang. By the time Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China, in 1949, Tibet had figured into the nation's pre-eminent task: the reunification of the once-powerful motherland.

Tibet thus changed from buffer state to a central piece in Communist China's vision of itself as independent and free from imperialist influence. Orville Schell, a longtime observer of China, says that even today this perception is held by most Chinese. "I don't think there's any more sensitive issue," he says, "with the possible exception of Taiwan, because it grows out of the dream of a unified motherland—a dream that historically speaking has been the goal of almost every Chinese leader. This issue touches on sovereignty, it touches on the unity of Chinese territory, and especially it touches on the issue of the West as predator, the violator of Chinese sovereignty."

The irony is that China, like an abused child who grows up to revisit his suffering on the next generation, has committed similar sins in Tibet: the overthrow of the monasteries and the violent redistribution of land, the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution, and the restriction of intellectual and religious freedom that continues to this day. And as in any form of imperialism, much of the damage has been done in the name of duty. When the Chinese speak of pre-1951 Tibet, they emphasize the shortcomings of the region's feudal-theocratic government: life expectancy was thirty-six years; 95 percent of Tibetans were illiterate; 95 percent of the population was hereditary serfs and slaves owned by monasteries and nobles. The sense is that the Tibetans suffered under a bad system, and the Chinese had a moral obligation to liberate them. Before traveling to Tibet, I asked my Chinese friends about the region. Most responded like Sai Xinghao, a forty-eight-year-old photographer: "It was a slave society, you know, and they were very cruel—they'd cut off the heads of their slaves and enemies. I've seen movies about it. If you were a slave, everything was controlled by the master. So, of course, after Liberation the rich lords opposed the changes [instituted by the Chinese]. It's like your America's history, when Washington liberated the black slaves. Afterward the blacks supported him, but of course the wealthy class did not. In history it's always that way—it was the same when Napoleon overthrew King Louis, and all of the lords opposed Napoleon because he supported the poor."

My friend is not an educated man, but many Chinese intellectuals make the same comparison. President Jiang Zemin made a similar remark during his 1997 visit to the United States (although he correctly identified Lincoln as the Great Liberator). The statistics about Tibetan illiteracy and life expectancy are accurate. Although the Chinese exaggerate the ills of the feudal system, mid-century Tibet was badly in need of reform—but naturally the Tibetans would have much preferred to reform it themselves.

Another aspect of the Chinese duty in Tibet is the sense that rapid modernization is needed, and should take precedence over cultural considerations. For Westerners, this is a difficult perspective to understand. Tibet is appealing to us precisely because it's not modern, and we have idealized its culture and anti-materialism to the point where it has become, as Orville Schell says, "a figurative place of spiritual enlightenment in the Western imagination—where people don't make Buicks, they make good karma."

But to the Chinese, for whom modernization is coming late, Buicks look awfully good. I noticed this during my first year as a teacher in China, when my writing class spent time considering the American West. We discussed western expansion, and I presented the students with a problem of the late nineteenth century: the Plains Indians, their culture in jeopardy, were being pressed by white settlers. I asked my class to imagine that they were American citizens proposing a solution, and nearly all responded much the way this student did: "The world is changing and developing. We should make the Indians suit our modern life. The Indians are used to living all over the plains and moving frequently, without a fixed home, but it is very impractical in our modern life.... We need our country to be a powerful country; we must make the Indians adapt to our modern life and keep pace with the society. Only in this way can we strengthen the country."

Virtually all my students were from peasant backgrounds, and like most Chinese, the majority of them were but one generation removed from deep poverty. What I saw as freedom and culture, they saw as misery and ignorance. In my second year I repeated the lesson with a different class, asking if China had any indigenous people analogous to the Plains Indians. All responded that the Tibetans were similar. I asked about China's obligation in Tibet. The answers suggested that my students had learned more from American history than I had intended to teach. One student replied, "First, I will use my friendship to help [the Tibetans]. But if they refuse my friendship, I will use war to develop them, like the Americans did with the Indians."

The Two Sides of Support

Regardless of China's motivations, and regardless of its failures in Tibet, the drive to develop the region has been expensive. According to Beijing, more than 200,000 Han workers have served in Tibet since the 1950s. Taxes in Tibet are virtually nonexistent; Tibetan farmers, unlike those in the interior, receive tax-free leases of land, and a preferential tax code has been established to encourage business. Low-interest loans are available, and business imports from Nepal are duty-free. Despite the dearth of local revenues, government investment is steadily developing a modern infrastructure. From 1952 to 1994 the central government invested $4.2 billion in the region, and in 1994 Beijing initiated sixty-two major infrastructure projects for which the eventual investment is expected to be more than $480 million. It is estimated that more than 90 percent of Tibet's government revenue comes from outside the region.

This investment of both human and financial capital complicates the issue of Tibet in ways that few outsiders realize. Foreign reports often refer to the exploitation of Tibetan resources as a classic colonial situation, which is misleading. Although Beijing is certainly doing what it can with Tibet's timber and mineral reserves, China spends an enormous amount of money in the region, and if self-sufficiency ever comes, it will not come soon. Tibet does have significant military value: the Chinese do not want to see it under the influence of a foreign power such as India, but not even this would seem to merit the enormous investment. In 1996 China spent some $600 million in Tibet. One foreign observer who has studied the region puts this in perspective: "For that same year the United States gave a total of eight hundred million dollars in aid to all of Africa. That's all of Africa—we're talking about hundreds of millions of people. In Tibet there are only two and a half million. So if they become independent, who's going to be giving them that kind of money?"

"Unless you're a complete Luddite," Orville Schell says, "and don't believe in roads, telephones, hospitals, and things like that, then I think China must be credited with a substantial contribution to the modern infrastructure of Tibet. In this sense Tibet needs China. But that's not to diminish the hideous savageness with which China has treated Tibet."

Almost every aspect of Chinese support has two sides, and education illustrates the point well. I met a number of young Han teachers like Mei Zhiyuan, who were imbued with a sense of service: they were conscientious, well-trained teachers, and they were working in places with a real need for instructors. One volunteer was teaching English at a middle school where the shortage was so acute that many students had to delay the start of their English studies until the following year, when additional Han teachers were expected to arrive. I visited one district in which out of 230 secondary-school teachers, sixty were Han, and many of the Tibetan instructors had been trained in the interior at the Chinese government's expense. Such links with the interior seem inevitable, given that the Chinese have built Tibet's public education system from scratch. Before they arrived, in 1951, there were no public schools in Tibet, whereas now there are more than 4,000.

Likewise the schools I saw were impressive facilities with low student fees. In one town I toured the three local middle schools; two of them were newly built, with far better campuses than I was accustomed to seeing in China. The third school, whose grounds featured massive construction cranes fluttering with prayer flags, was being refurbished with the help of a $720,000 investment from the interior. Unlike students at most Chinese schools, those at the local No. 1 Middle School paid no tuition, and even high school students, who generally pay substantial amounts in China, had paid at most $70 a semester, including board. Everything possible was being done to encourage students to stay in school: a student's tuition and boarding charge were cut in half if only one parent worked, and transportation to and from the remote nomad areas was often free.

In a poor country such policies are impressively generous; essentially, Tibetan schools are better funded than Chinese schools. And this funding is sorely needed: the adult illiteracy rate in Tibet is still 52 percent. Only 78 percent of the children start elementary school, and of those only 35 percent enter middle school. But Chinese assistance must be considered in the context of what's being taught in the schools—a critical issue for Tibetans.

One morning I visited an elementary school on a spacious, beautiful campus, with new buildings and a grass playground that stretched westward under the shadow of a 14,000-foot mountain. Most of the school's 900 students were Tibetan. I paused at the central information board, where announcements were written in Chinese.

The board detailed a $487,800 investment that had been made by a provincial government in the interior, and displayed a short biography of Zu Chongzhi, a fifth-century Chinese mathematician. Next to this was a notice telling students to "remember the great goals." They were urged to work on doubling China's GNP from its 1980 level, and they were reminded that by 2050 China needed to achieve a GNP and a per capita income ranking in the middle of developed countries. Beside these goals was a long political section that read, in part,

We must achieve the goal of modern socialist construction, and we must persevere in building the economy. We must carry out domestic reform and the policy of opening to the outside world.... We must oppose the freedom of the capitalist class, and we must be vigilant against the conspiracy to make a peaceful evolution toward imperialism.

It was heavy stuff for elementary school students (and indeed, if I were a Chinese propagandist, I would think twice before exhorting Tibetan children to resist imperialism), and it indicates how politicized the climate of a Chinese school is. Despite all the recent economic changes in China, the education system is still tied to the past. This conservatism imbues every aspect of education, starting with language. Two of the schools I visited were mixed Han and Tibetan, and classes were segregated by ethnicity. The reasons here are linguistic: most Tibetan children don't start learning Mandarin until elementary school, and even many Tibetan high school students, as the Han teachers complained, don't understand Chinese well. This segregation leads to different curricula—for example, Tibetan students have daily Tibetan-language classes, whereas Han students use that time for extra English instruction. To the Chinese, this system seems fair, especially since Tibetan students have the right to join the Han classes.

But Tibetans feel that there is an overemphasis on Chinese, especially at the higher levels, which threatens their language and culture. All the classes taught by Han teachers are in Chinese or English, and most of the Tibetan teachers in the middle and high schools are supposed to use Mandarin (although the ones I spoke with said they often used Tibetan, because otherwise their students wouldn't understand). In any case, important qualifying exams emphasize Chinese, and this reflects a society in which fluency is critical to success, especially when it comes to any sort of government job. Another, more basic issue is that Tibetan students are overwhelmed. One Han teacher told me that his students came primarily from nomad areas, where their families lived in tents; yet during the course of an average day they might have classes in Tibetan, Chinese, and English, three languages with almost nothing in common.

Political and religious issues are paramount. In Lhasa I met a twenty-one-year-old Tibet University student who was angered by his school's anti-religious stance, which is standard for schools in Tibet. "They tell us we can't believe in religion," he said, "because we're supposed to be building socialism, and you can't believe in both socialism and religion. But of course most of the students still believe in religion—I'd say that eighty to ninety percent of us are devout." One of his classmates, a member of the Communist Party, complained about the history courses. "The history we study is all Chinese history [of Tibet]," he said. "Most of it I don't believe." These students also adamantly opposed existing programs that send exceptional Tibetan middle and high school students to study in the interior, where there is nothing to offset the Chinese view of Tibet.

Such complaints reflect the results of recent education reforms. A series of them made in 1994, characteristically, represent both the good and the bad aspects of Chinese support. On the one hand, the government stepped up its campaign against illiteracy, and on the other, it resolved to control the political content of education more carefully, in hopes of pacifying the region. There has certainly been some success with this approach: I met a number of educated Tibetans who identified closely with China. Tashi, Mei Zhiyuan's roommate, seemed completely comfortable being both Tibetan and Chinese: he had studied in Sichuan, he had a good job, and he had the government's support to thank. When I asked him what was the biggest problem in Tibet, he mentioned language—but not in the way many Tibetans did. "So many [Tibetan] students can't speak Chinese," he said, "and if you can't speak Chinese, it's hard to find a good job. They need to study harder."

Most Tibetans seemed less likely to accept Chinese support at face value. But it was clear that politically they were being pulled in a number of directions at once, and my conversations with educated young Tibetans were dizzying experiences. Their questions ranged from odd ("Which do you think is going to win, capitalism or socialism?") to bizarre ("Is it true that in America when you go to your brother's or sister's house for dinner, they charge you money?"), and the surroundings were often equally unsettling. One Monday morning I watched the flag-raising ceremony at a middle school, where students and staff members lined up to listen to the national anthem, after which, in unison, they pledged allegiance to the Communist Party, love for the motherland, and dedication to studying and working hard. With the Tibetan mountains towering above, it was a surreal scene—and it became all the more so when the school's political adviser, a Tibetan in his early thirties with silver teeth, walked over and asked me where I was from. After I told him, he said, "Here in Tibet we already have a lot of influence from your Western countries—like Pepsi, Coke, movies, things like that. My opinion is that there are good and bad things coming from the West. For example, things regarding sex. In America, if you're married and you decide that you want another lover, what do you do? You get a divorce, regardless of how it affects your wife and child. But the people here are very religious, and we don't like those kinds of ideas."

I heard a number of comments like this, and undoubtedly the education system included a great deal of anti-America propaganda. I felt that here the Chinese were almost doing the Tibetans a service; nothing depressed me more than my conversations with less-educated Tibetans, who invariably had great faith in American support and believed that President Clinton, who was then in China on last year's state visit, had come in order to save Tibet. Considering that China's interest in Tibet is largely a reaction to foreign imperialism, it's no surprise that nothing makes the Chinese angrier and more stubborn than the sight of the Dalai Lama and other exiled leaders seeking—and winning—support in America and elsewhere. And yet Tibetan faith in America seems naive given America's treatment of its own indigenous people, and because historically U.S. policy in Tibet has been hypocritical and counterproductive. For example, the CIA trained and armed Tibetan guerrillas in the 1950s, during a critical period of mostly peaceful (if tenuous) cooperation between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese. The peace ended when Tibetan uprisings, in which these guerrillas played a part, resulted in brutal Chinese repression and the Dalai Lama's flight to India.

America also represents modernity, and a further complication, beyond the Chinese political agenda, is that the long-isolated Tibetan society must come to grips with the modern world. One college student said, "The more money we Tibetans have, the higher our living standard is, the more we forget our own culture. And with or without the Chinese, I think that would be happening."

Sichuanese on the Frontier

Perhaps the most hopeful moment in recent Han-Tibetan relations came shortly after 1980, when the Chinese Party Secretary, Hu Yaobang, went on a fact-finding mission to Tibet and returned with severe criticisms of Chinese policies. He advocated a two-pronged solution: Chinese investment was needed to spur economic growth in Tibet, but at the same time the Han should be more respectful of Tibetan culture. Cadres needed to learn Tibetan; the language should be used in government offices serving the public; and religion should be allowed more freedom.

There's no question that such respect is sorely needed, especially with regard to language. I never met a single government-sent Han worker who was learning Tibetan—not even the volunteers who would be there for eight years. And in Lhasa at the Xinhua bookstore, the largest in the city, I found not one textbook for Chinese students of Tibetan—books for foreign students, yes, but nothing for the Chinese.

Some of the 1980 reforms were implemented, but they were cut short by a series of riots in Lhasa that started in 1987. To Beijing hardliners, the riots indicated that too much freedom is a bad thing, and in 1987 Hu Yaobang was purged, partly for his recommendations regarding Tibet. By the spring of 1989 martial law had been declared in Tibet, and the Chinese concluded that relaxing restrictions on Tibetan culture and religion was tantamount to encouraging unrest. The two-pronged solution was quickly cut in half: Beijing would simply develop the economy, hoping that rising standards of living would defuse political tensions while building closer economic ties with the interior. This policy has been accelerated by the enormous investments of the 1990s.

Development, however, often comes at the cost of culture. Traditional sections of Lhasa are being razed in favor of faceless modern buildings, and the economic boom is attracting hordes of Han and Hui (an Islamic minority) migrants to Tibet.

Outsiders dominate Tibet's economy—indeed, they've essentially built it, inspiring enormous resentment among the Tibetan population. I met some Tibetans who didn't mind that cadres were sent from the interior, but I never met one who wasn't opposed to the influx of migrant workers, especially the huge numbers of Han from nearby Sichuan. Longtime Han residents, too, felt this was a serious problem.

The phenomenon of liudong renkou, or "floating population," is affecting urban areas all across China, with some 100 million people seeking work away from home. In the west and south there are particularly large numbers of Sichuanese in the floating population, and during my travels I often heard the same prejudices: the Sichuanese migrants are uncultured, their women loose, their men jiaohua, sly. And worst of all, people complained, they keep coming.

Having spent two years in Sichuan, I understand why the Sichuanese so often leave. Their province, roughly the size of France, contains 120 million people, and the economy is so shaky that recent factory closings have led to worker uprisings in some cities. Mostly the Sichuanese leave because they aren't afraid to; they have been toughened by tough conditions, and all across China that is another thing they are famous for: their ability to chiku—eat bitter. They work and they survive, and like successful migrants anywhere else in the world, they are resented for their success.

In Tibet the Sichuanese have helped themselves to a large chunk of the economy. This was clear from the moment I arrived at the Lhasa airport, where thirteen of the sixteen restaurants bordering the entrance advertised Sichuan food. One was Tibetan. Virtually all small business in Lhasa follows this pattern; everywhere I saw Sichuan restaurants and shops. Locals told me that 80 percent of Lhasa's Han were Sichuanese, and this may not be much of an exaggeration.

This influx is far more significant and disruptive than the importing of Han cadres, and it's also harder to monitor. One common misperception in Western reports is that these people are sent by the government: the image is of a tremendous Han civilian army arriving to overwhelm Tibetan culture. The truth is that the government has little control over the situation. "How do you cut off the people moving out there?" asked one American who had spent much time in Tibet. "What mechanism are you going to have to prevent that? They don't have any restrictions on internal travel—and we always beat them over the head about not having those, because to institute them would be a human-rights issue."

Far from arriving with an ethnic agenda, the independent migrants are for the most part completely apolitical. In Lhasa I often ate at a small Sichuan restaurant run by Fei Xiaoyun, a thirty-one-year-old native of Chengdu who, along with her husband, had been laid off in 1996 by a bankrupt state-owned natural-gas plant. Each of them had been given a two-year severance allowance of $30 a month, and when that was gone, they took their savings and bought plane tickets to Lhasa. They had left their five-year-old son with his grandmother—a common choice for migrants, including cadres. This is partly out of fear of the effects on health of living in Tibet, and also because Tibetan schools are considered worse than those in the interior and children who are registered outside their districts have to pay extra fees.

Fei Xiaoyun never spoke of the growth of the GNP, and she had no interest in developing the motherland. Once, I asked her about Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, whose economic reforms are closing factories like hers, and she didn't even recognize his name. "All of the country's big affairs I don't understand," she said with a shrug. She was simply a poor woman with her back against the wall, and like the rest of the Sichuanese who had made their way to Tibet, she was trying desperately to make a living.

But such migrants have a political effect, as Tibetans watch outsiders develop an economy from which they feel increasingly removed. This also presents a question: If the rules are the same for everybody, why are the Han entrepreneurs so much more successful than the Tibetans? The most common response is that the rules aren't the same: the Chinese have easier access to government guanxi, or connections. But even on a level playing field the Han would have more capital and better contacts with sources in the interior. And their migrant communities have a tendency to support recent arrivals. This is especially true of the Sichuanese—one will arrive, and then a few relatives, and before long an extended family is dominating a factory or a block of shops. In front of the Jokhang, the holiest temple in Tibet, rows of stalls sell khataks, ceremonial scarves that pilgrims use as offerings. It's a job one would expect to see filled by Tibetans—as one would expect those selling rosaries in front of St. Peter's to be Catholic. But one saleswoman explained that all the stalls were run by Sichuanese from three small cities west of Chengdu. There were more than 200 of them—relatives, friends of relatives, relatives of friends—and they had completely filled that niche.

One day I walked past the khatak sellers with a Tibetan friend, and he shook his head. "Those people know how to do business," he said. "We Tibetans don't know how to do it—we're too straight. If something's supposed to be five yuan, we say it's five yuan. But a Sichuanese will say ten." I felt there was some truth to this—the Han are successful in Tibet for some of the same reasons that they are successful in so many places, from Southeast Asia to the United States. They have a stronger business tradition than the Tibetans, and virtually all independent Han settlers in Tibet have failed somewhere else, giving them a single-minded drive to succeed.

Consequently, Tibet feels like a classic frontier region, with typically peculiar demographics. There are disproportionately few Han children, and almost nobody comes to stay: the intention is invariably to return to the interior. The majority of the Han are men, including the government-sent workers. Of the Han women I saw in Tibet, more than a few were prostitutes; locals told me that they had come in a wave in 1994 and 1995, after the investments in the sixty-two major projects. One Han volunteer I spoke with had arrived in a group of thirteen men; one woman had applied but was rejected because the authorities felt that Tibet was no place for a young woman. The young man was resigned to finding a wife during his three paid trips home. "During vacation I'll be able to look for a girlfriend," he said. "I'll have six months. You can meet one then, and after that you c can write andall when you come back here."

There were moments when everything—the ethnic tension, the rugged individualism, the hard, bright sun and the high, bare mountains—seemed more like a Jack London story than a real society. One day some American friends and I hired a driver, a twenty-five-year-old Sichuanese named Wei, who was nursing a defeated 1991 Volkswagen Santana. He had a two-year-old son at home, and he hoped to earn enough money by carrying passengers—though he wasn't registered to do so—to buy a new car in six months. We agreed to pay him $36 if he drove us to Damxung, five hours north of Lhasa. Drive he did—past the police checkpoint, where he faked his credentials ("It's simpler that way," he explained), and past a Land Rover full of foreigners driven by a Tibetan, who, realizing our driver wasn't registered, swore he'd turn him in at Damxung. "It's because I'm Han," Wei said grimly. "And at Damxung the police will be Tibetan." He drove faster and faster, racing ahead of the Land Rover, until finally he hit a bump and ruptured the fuel line.

The car eased to a stop in the middle of nowhere. To the west rose the snow-topped Nyenchen Tanglha Mountains. The Tibetan driver cruised past, glaring. Wei cut a spare hose and patched the leak, and then he addressed the problem of injecting fuel back into the carburetor. He unhooked the fuel line and sucked out a mouthful of gas. Holding it in his mouth, he plugged the line back in. Then he walked around the front of the car and spit the fuel into the carburetor.

The car started. I could see Wei working the taste of gasoline around his mouth, and then, a few minutes later, he took out a cigarette. Everybody in the car held his breath—everybody but Wei, who lit the cigarette and sucked deeply. He did not explode. He stared ahead at the vast emptiness that stood between him and $36, and he kept driving.

That was the way a Sichuanese did things in Tibet. Gasoline was bitter but he ate it, the same way he ate the altitude and the weather and the resentment of the locals. None of that mattered. All that mattered was the work he did, the money he made, and the promise that if he was successful, he'd go home rich.

A House Without Pillars?

Tibet gave rise to exciting stories, but it was indeed jianku, and the social problems made a hard place even harder. Near the end of my trip I ate dumplings at Fei Xiaoyun's restaurant, and as I ate, she complained about her situation. Business was bad, and her life was boring; she worked fifteen-hour days and she had no friends in Lhasa. She missed her son, back in Chengdu, and she probably wouldn't see him until the following year. She asked me how long it had been since I'd been home, and I said I hadn't left China in more than two years.

"We're the same," she said. "Both of us are a long way from home." I agreed, and she asked if I missed my family. "Of course I miss them," I said. "But I'll see them next month, when I go home."

It was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes went empty and then filled with tears. We sat alone in the restaurant. It was unusual for a Chinese to show emotion in public, and I didn't know what to say. Silently I ate my dumplings while she cried, the late-afternoon sun stirring the Lhasa flies that were thick about the table.

Tibet had started to depress me, and I was looking forward to leaving. Strangely, it almost seemed worse for not being as bad as I had always heard. There were definite benefits of Chinese support, and I was impressed by the idealism and dedication of some of the young Han teachers I had met. But at the same time, most efforts to develop the region were badly planned, and it was frustrating to see so much money and work invested in a poor country and so much unhappiness returned. And often I felt that the common people, who knew little of Tibet's complicated historical and cultural issues, were being manipulated by the government in ways they didn't understand. But although I was certain that nobody was truly happy (most of the Han didn't like being there, and most of the Tibetans certainly weren't happy to have them), I wasn't sure who was pulling the strings. One could go straight to the top and probably find the same helplessness, the same strings. It was mostly the irrevocable mistakes of history, but it was also money—simple economic pressure that drove a mother away from her son to a place where the people did not want her.

This was not the first time I'd seen somebody cry in Lhasa. Five days earlier I'd spent the evening in front of the Jokhang temple, where I talked with two Tibetans. The first was a doctor who had done time in prison for writing an article warning Tibetans to protect their culture, and the second was a fifty-three-year-old who described himself as a common worker. Both men were eager to speak with an American, and they had a great deal of faith in America's ability to help solve the Tibet question. That saddened me as well. I wanted to tell them that in America there are many FREE TIBET bumper stickers, but they sit next to license plates that often bear the names of forgotten tribes who succumbed to the same forces of expansion and modernization now threatening Tibet. And the Chinese solution to the Tibet question—throwing money at the problem—also seemed very American. But I held my peace and listened.

"Look at this pillar," the worker said. He was standing next to the temple entrance, and he rested his hand on the worn red wood. "If a house doesn't have pillars, or if the pillars aren't straight, what will happen? It will fall down. It's the same thing here—our pillars are our history and our politics. If we don't have those, our society will collapse, and all of it will be lost—all of our culture."

It was dark, and I could barely make out his face, but I could see there were tears in his eyes. There was no more politically sensitive place in Tibet; virtually every major protest had happened in front of the Jokhang, and I knew it was unwise to speak so openly here. He glanced over his shoulder and continued.

"You need to tell the people of America what it's like here," he said. "You need to tell them what needs to be done." I nodded and shook his hand, but I realized I had no idea what I would recommend, or what the people of America could do. Perhaps we could build casinos.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199902/tibet-china.

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March 31, 2008

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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March 29, 2008

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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March 28, 2008

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

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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.

This material is copyrighted, ? Michael Parenti 2003.

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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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