> The Portrait of an Hatefully Racist "Olympic Host" -- Chinese view of
> Dalai Lama bodes ill for its Tibet policy / IHT
>
> International Herald Tribune
>
> Chinese view of Dalai Lama bodes ill for its Tibet policy
>
> By Howard W. French
> Saturday, March 29, 2008
>
> SHANGHAI: Across much of the Western world, the Dalai Lama is known as
> the beatific spiritual leader of a humble community of Buddhists,
> beloved in Hollywood, Congress and the White House, winner of the Nobel
> Peace Prize.
>
> Chinese leaders cast him in a different light. They call him a
> separatist and a terrorist, bent on killing innocent Han Chinese and
> "splitting the motherland" - an Osama bin Laden of the Himalayas.
>
> That gap in perception, which has grown immeasurably wider in the two
> weeks since violent unrest rocked Tibet, is breeding pessimism that
> Chinese leaders are willing - or perhaps even able - to embark on a new
> approach to Tibet even as it threatens to cast a long shadow over its
> serving as host of the Olympic Games this summer.
>
> President Hu Jintao, whose rise to leadership of China's Communist Party
> was built partly on his record as party boss in Tibet during a period of
> unrest in 1989, has so far shown no signs of making a historic gambit
> for peace there. Rather, analysts say, he seems to be wagering that
> China can hunker down, keep a rein on Tibet through the Olympic Games
> and wait for the Dalai Lama, who is 72, to die.
>
> "I would obviously like for there to be a policy debate, but I see no
> suggestion of one," said Wang Lixiong, a Chinese expert on Tibet who
> signed a recent petition by Chinese lawyers and scholars urging the
> government to resume discussions with the Dalai Lama. "There has been a
> big failure, but to see the government change its path or policy right
> before the Olympics isn't likely."
>
> The inflexibility in Beijing's position leaves Western countries with a
> problem. President George W. Bush and a roster of European and Asian
> leaders have called for Hu to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama as a
> first step toward reducing tensions in Tibet. If Hu declines to do so,
> those leaders seem likely to face pressure from their own constituents
> to take stronger diplomatic or political steps against Beijing at the
> moment it had expected to bask in the international limelight.
>
> Already, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has suggested that he might
> consider using his presidency of the European Union this summer to
> organize a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Games.
>
> The call for some kind of Chinese-Tibetan talks continues to mount. On
> Friday, the Dalai Lama, speaking in India, made his most extended
> comments on the Tibetan violence, accusing the Chinese state-run media
> of trying to "sow the seeds of racial tension" there but calling for
> "meaningful dialogue" with Beijing about how to reduce tensions.
>
> Speaking of the possibility that Hu might pursue diplomatic talks with
> Tibetan exiles, Bush said "it's in his country's interest." Standing by
> Bush's side, Kevin Rudd, Australia's newly elected, Chinese-speaking
> prime minister, who was visiting Washington, said, "It's absolutely
> clear that there are human rights abuses in Tibet."
>
> Hu told Bush during a phone call on Wednesday that he was willing to
> talk to the Dalai Lama, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news
> agency. But what was most striking about the exchange was the
> consistency of Beijing's language on Tibet, which analysts say provides
> little reason to expect new initiatives.
>
> Hu's formulation, which has been used almost word for word since the
> time of Deng Xiaoping, said that China would resume contact with the
> Dalai Lama as long as he abandoned advocating Tibetan independence,
> stopped activities aimed at "splitting the motherland," and accepted
> that Tibet and Taiwan were inalienable parts of China.
>
> The problem with Beijing's formulation is that even when the Dalai Lama
> insists that he does not seek independence, as he and his
> representatives have repeatedly done, the Chinese government has merely
> repeated this trope, leaving little room for progress.
>
> Hu Yan, a professor of social sciences at the party's Central Committee
> School, expressed confidence in its ability to prevent further trouble
> before the Olympic Games even as he seemed to concede that Beijing made
> mistakes in handling the protests.
>
> "I think we can control the situation before it spreads any further," he
> said. "We were too soft at the beginning, allowing them to destroy
> ambulances and rob banks without doing anything. We should have fired
> more tear gas, at least."
>
> Robert Barnett, director of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia
> University, dismissed the Chinese contention that the protest amounted
> to little more than criminal riots, calling their spread through several
> provinces significant. "Nothing like this has happened for the last 40
> years, and no Chinese leader is going to miss that," Barnett said. "They
> have lost the countryside, and they are going to have to work very hard
> to get win it back."
>
> But Hu Yan hinted at what many believe is Beijing's bottom-line thinking
> on Tibet. "This issue can only be resolved in the long term," he said.
> "It's a long-term campaign, and we probably have to wait for the Dalai
> Lama to reincarnate."
>
> Beijing's long-term strategy, which the recent violence may have only
> reinforced, has been to wait for the Dalai Lama to die on the theory
> that it can control his successor as Tibet's spiritual leader. A new
> Dalai Lama would most likely have little of the prestige, inside China
> or abroad, of Beijing's current nemesis.
>
> In 1995, Beijing arrested the Panchen Lama, the No. 2 in Tibetan
> Buddhism, a 6-year-old at the time. He has never been seen since. China
> then anointed another Tibetan youth as a replacement Panchen Lama, and
> has tightly controlled his education and public duties ever since. Under
> Tibetan Buddhism, traditionally the Panchen Lama names a new Dalai Lama,
> theoretically giving Beijing control over the present Dalai Lama's
> succession.
>
> To counter this approach, Tibetans have floated ideas about changing the
> rules of succession, allowing the Dalai Lama to anoint a Tibetan child
> who lives in exile, or an even more radical change, allowing Tibetans to
> select a new Dalai Lama by voting. Either of these measures would be
> certain to infuriate China, which reserves the right to control all
> organized religion.
>
> The Dalai Lama has repeatedly promised that he has no desire to see
> Tibet break free of Chinese sovereignty. He has, though, pressed for
> what he calls "genuine autonomy" under Chinese rule for Tibet, which is
> defined by the Chinese as an autonomous region, though smaller than
> historical Tibet. He refers to the Chinese Constitution, which invokes
> the right of autonomy and self-government "in areas where people of
> minority nationalities live in compact communities."
>
> Party leaders have resisted even that modest vision of enhanced
> self-government. Officials seem to fear that enhanced political autonomy
> could overload the circuits of the Chinese state, inciting demands from
> other ethnic or religious groups and unleashing centrifugal forces that
> could break up the country as surely as Tibetan demand for independence.
>
> Zhang Yun, a scholar at the China Tibetology Research Center, said the
> Dalai Lama's demands were impossible for the government to meet.
>
> "If you look carefully at what the Dalai Lama says, the giving up
> independence part is really empty, while the demands for a greater Tibet
> and a high degree of autonomy are real," Zhang said. "A high degree of
> autonomy means giving up everything: our administrative system, our
> cadre system, and even party-led socialism."
>
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