BEIJING RULES THE MOUNTAINS
Jonathan Mirsky on why even liberal Chinese will never surrender Tibet
WHEN the Dalai Lama visited Hilary Clinton last week in the White House Map Room, President Clinton 'dropped by'. That sums up the essential non-seriousness of the American position on Tibet. Mr Clinton is never shy about attempting to seek solutions to the world's most intractable disputes. Ireland, Israel, Bosnia, Kosovo and Cambodia have been visited by some of the President's wiliest envoys, and during the Wye River negotia- tions between the Israelis and the Pales- tinians the President himself spent days urging a solution.
Many of Mr Clinton's efforts at media- tion have failed — and were in any event not serious — and he will certainly fail on Tibet. Every country has bottom-line issues, and for not only Beijing but virtual- ly all Chinese Tibet is as basic as one can get, rivalled only in terms of irredentism by Hong Kong, now back within the fold, and Taiwan.
Taiwan's immense advantages in the contest with Beijing are the 100-mile-wide straits between it and the mainland and its well-equipped and motivated army. The People's Liberation Army might storm ashore — after terrific losses — but would find itself involved in a guerrilla war with a population of over 20 million in which almost all males spend two years in the army and almost everyone wants either complete independence or real autonomy. Furthermore, the United States arms and defends Taiwan.
In Tibet, by contrast, the Chinese are already in occupation and holding down a population which adheres to the Dalai Lama's injunctions on non-violence, unlike Muslim Xinjiang where the People's Lib- eration Army regularly comes under attack. Chinese have been flooding into Tibet for at least ten years. Some of the streets of Lhasa are now lined with main- land prostitutes, and most other business- es, too, are in the hands of Chinese. Most Chinese regard Tibetans as culturally infe- rior, if not downright uncivilised, and are convinced, despite the evidence, that Tibet is and always has been a part of China. I recall the establishment in Paris, not long after Tiananmen, of the Chinese Demo- cratic Front. It was led by some of China's most distinguished dissidents, men high in the service of the government, who had fled Beijing after the killings. They made contact with the Dalai Lama's govern- ment-in-exile in northern India which sent two high officials to Paris, perhaps the first occasion in this century when Chinese and Tibetan met as equals.
The Chinese, democrats all, promised the Tibetans that eventually Tibet would have true autonomy. Why not indepen- dence, the Tibetans asked? One of the Chinese dissidents, who admitted to me later that until that day he had never met a Tibetan, exclaimed, 'If we lost Tibet I would feel that my liver had been ripped out.' Wei Jingsheng, whose views on democracy for China are world-famous, assured me in March that Tibet had always been part of China and that in his heart the Dalai Lama knows this, too.
Of course the Dalai Lama knows noth- ing of the sort. For years he has said and written that Tibet was historically indepen- dent of China. In the 20th century, at least since 1912, few Tibetologists outside China dispute this. For the previous three cen- turies the relationship was close and is dif- ficult to define. In the 7th century Tibetan armies occupied much of West China and the Tang emperor sent a princess to the Tibetan king to buy his friendship.
'Just turn the muzak off Doreen — nobody's listening.' But despite his conviction, for ten years the Dalai Lama, seeking a way to mitigate the harshness of Chinese rule, has been issuing statements indicating that he would accept Chinese control over Tibet's foreign relations and defence in exchange for guarantees of genuine internal autonomy; in conversations with visitors he has expressed alarm that the occupation will dissolve Tibet's way of life. Beijing's response to such flexibility — which enrages many young Tibetans in the dias- pora — has been to raise the stakes. The Dalai Lama, now referred to as 'the crimi- nal, splittist Dalai', must agree in advance that Tibet has always been part of China before any negotiations can begin. With Taiwan, Beijing tends not to push too hard on such a requirement, and indeed negoti- ations between Beijing and Taipei have been on-again, off-again for years although President Lee Teng-hui insists that 'Tai- wan is an independent country'.
To put it bluntly, Beijing, which has unsurpassed patience, is waiting for the present 14th Dalai Lama, who is 63, to die. In the meantime the Chinese will stall, bluster and watch men like President Clin- ton flounder into statements like, 'We hope Beijing and the Dalai Lama can enter into meaningful negotiations.' When the time comes to choose a 15th incarna- tion, Beijing will not wait. It has already showed its hand: when the tenth Panchen Lama, Tibet's second-highest religious leader, died in 1989, the Chinese kid- napped the child (and his entire family) who in 1995 had been identified as the 11th incarnation by the Dalai Lama; he has never been seen again. Beijing then chose another boy who in his audience with President Jiang was told to 'uphold the leadership of the Communist party and to love socialism'. He too has not been seen again.
This could be Beijing's ploy for solving the problem of who will be the next Dalai Lama. Perhaps to avert that final solution the present Dalai Lama will try to strike a deal, accepting Chinese rule in Tibet in exchange for the eventual selection of a legitimate 15th incarnation.
What is happening in Tibet is one of the 20th century's great tragedies, notable because almost everyone in the world is on the side of the Dalai Lama. But the Tibetans are caught up as well in the plight of ethnic minority liberation struggles, from Timor to the Iraqi Kurds to Kosovo, Where the great powers invariably, if dis- creetly, side with the sovereign power, hoping that whatever is done to crush the `splittists' will happen quickly, and if vio- lent will not show up on television in scenes so ghastly that the public will demand action. But television cannot pre- sent the horrible Tibetan actuality. Even if it did, China would not yield. All President Clinton can do is to denounce China's invasion and occupation of Tibet — and With his moral authority gone he won't.
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