GREAT BRITAIN, CHINA, AND TIBET. T HE situation in Tibet has
changed completely since it was last necessary for the British Government to decide what their policy should be. Changed conditions no doubt require a changed policy ; no sensible person would wish to cling to a formula when the circumstances to which it was applicable have passed away. At the same time it is not necessary, merely because a fresh treatment of the Tibetan problem has become obligatory, to get into a passion of inventiveness and frame new plans, as though our past experiences held nothing for our guidance. If some of the Liberal newspapers are to be believed, the Govern- ment are heading straight for a protectorate of Tibet, and incidentally are inflicting a peculiarly gratuitous injury on the Chinese Republic. We are certain that this alarm does a grave injustice to the Government, although we should be the last to deny that the new policy will require careful handling if it is to work out in accordance with what we are sure are the blameless intentions of the Foreign Office.
Two principles must always be kept in view if we are to emerge from the Tibetan tangle with credit and success. The first is that, although we have a right to negotiate directly with Tibet, instead of as formerly through the Chinese Government, and although we mean always to act on that right, we must not commit ourselves to any " for- ward " movement. Our hands are already full. -We have almost more than we can do already in managing the Empire. Yet nothing is more true than that if we send troops provisionally to an unsettled and little understood country it almost always turns out to be impossible to withdraw them. Unforeseen events prevent the fulfilment of the original intention, and one is forced on from one step to another lest one should have to make the humiliating confession that the policy has been a. mistake from the beginning, and that the money spent on it has been wasted. In such circumstances it is good to have the moral courage to cut the losses, but it is better not to have put oneself into such a position at all. In the case of any country which lies beyond the rampart of the Himalayas it is particularly desirable to remember this truth, because the danger there is that Great Britain might revert by insensible stages to a general forward policy, which for the purpose of defending India has been rejected, and we trust finally rejected, on its merits. The second principle to bear in mind is that the suzerainty of China —shadowy though it be—which has always been recognized and respected by us should still be recognized. Even to seem to be lopping off a limb of China at a time when the Chinese Republican Government lives by its prestige, and must die if it loses prestige, would be tanta- mount to signing the death warrant of that struggling Administration. The new policy of Sir Edward Grey must satisfy these conditions if it is to be successful, and we see no reason why it should not.
We may briefly review the events which have led up to the recent demands of the British Foreign Office. These demands are that Tibet should be allowed to manage her own affairs, instead of being incorporated as a pro- vince of the Republic, while a Chinese representative might be stationed at Lhasa to advise her on foreign affairs. The Chinese representative might have a body- guard, but no indefinite force of Chinese troops should be kept in Tibet, nor should the present Chinese expedition to Tibet be allowed to proceed. A new agreement between China and Great Britain is demanded, and this is made a condition of the recomnition of the Chinese Republic by Great Britain. We need not review events further back than 1904, when we sent a mission to Lhasa to exact amends for the violation of treaties by the Tibetans. At that time the air was full of rumours of the intrigues of the notorious Russian Dorjieff, and the mission inci- dentally had the satisfaction of being able to say that these intrigues had been brought to an end. Sir Francis Younghusband, the leader of the mission, explicitly informed the Tibetans that Great Britain recognized the suzerainty of China. When the mission withdrew we exercised the complete self-denial to which we had decided to submit ourselves. We left no British representative in Tibet, and our Foreign Office has done its beet ever since to restrain British subjects from even entering the country. There was a good deal of angry criticism in Great Britain of this com- plete detachment ; it was said that we were throwing away all the results of the expedition. We ourselves always considered that the negative policy of the British Govern- ment was wise and politic. Great Britain had secured, so far as possible, that no other Power should get a foothold in Tibet, and we certainly did not want one our- selves. The Government of India, it ought to be said, desired to place a Political Resident at Lhasa, but the Government at home definitely refused their consent.
" If the new Convention which has just been signed at Lhasa by Sir Francis Younghusband," they said in effect, " does not keep the Tibetans faithful to their pledges the whole situation will have to be reconsidered' [these last were the exact words of Mr. Brodrick], but at present it seems best from every point of view to allow the Tibetans to remain in the isolation to which they have been accus- tomed." We shall now see how and why the situation did change so that the present Government have been forced to " reconsider " it. By one of those ironies which are characteristic of in- ternational affairs the highly self-denying expedition to Lhasa had attracted Chinese attention to Tibet. In ordinary circumstances Peking would have given scarcely a thought to Lhasa. A Chinese expedition was, however, sent to Lhasa, and the Dalai Lama fled to India. The Chinese occupied the country, and China became much more than a suzerain Power; the Dalai Lamawas formally deposed, and direct Chinese sovereignty was exercised. During this period the old criticism of the self-denying policy broke out again in England, but for our own part we did not pretend to be perturbed at what had happened. We recognized that the Chinese with all their defects were on the whole less uncertain neighbours than the Tibetans. We had had long experience in dealing with them, and it even seemed to be a convenience to be able to settle Tibetan affairs (so far as they ever can be settled) at Peking, instead of treating with incalculable people who live in a rarefied mountain atmosphere and in an almost inaccessible place. Meanwhile, it is to be remembered that we had drawn up the Anglo-Russian Convention in 1907, in which it was agreed that neither Britain nor Russia should have a political representative at Lhasa. The Chinese in Tibet acted oppressively and even cruelly. All this had not been foreseen at the time of Sir Francis Younghusband's mission. So we come to the time of the Chinese Revolution, when the Chinese garrison at Lhasa mutinied in sympathy with the revolu- tionists. The Chinese oppressions became barbarities in the following months, and the Tibetans rose in self-defence. The Chinese garrison was besieged, and the promises of relief from Peking were never redeemed. At length the Dalai Lama returned to his former capital, and is esta- blished there once more. The Chinese troops have all departed, though a Chinese Agent is allowed to remain. The Chinese Republican Government is acting, however, as though Tibet were an ordinary Chinese province. Twelve seats are assigned in the future Parliament to Tibetan deputies, and a Chinese expedition, as we have seen, has been dispatched to reconquer Lhasa. Has the time come when the British Government are compelled to say, in Mr. Brodrick's phrase, that the situation must be " recon- sidered " ? We think, on the whole, that it has. Tibet has been unable to keep her promises to us, not perhaps because she did not desire to keep them, but because when she was under Chinese subjection she was unable to do so. If the Chinese expedition were allowed to reach Lhasa the old excesses would almost certainly be repeated. There is thus a strong humane reason for checking the expedition. Moreover, when the Chinese were dominant in Tibet there were stories of their tampering with the integrity of Assam, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan. We think that the Government at home were right not to pay too much attention to such stories, as it was convenient to put up with the situation as it was, lest worse evils might come. But now the central Chinese Govern- ment is so much occupied at home, and in such an unstable condition, that he would be a sanguine man indeed who saw any near prospect of China being able to set up a respectable government in Tibet. Moreover, there is a great difference between recognizing an accomplished fact, such as the last Chinese conquest of Tibet, and assenting in the present circumstances to a re- conquest of Tibet, which has not yet begun. In the Anglo-Chinese Conventions of 1890 and 1906 we recognized Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, but nothing more. Our treaty with Tibet provides that Tibet shall not cede any of her territory, shall not grant concessions, and shall not pledge her revenues without the consent of Great Britain. If China reoccupied Tibet that treaty would be of much less value than before if it remained of any value at all. Thus our aim is to retain the right to have treaties with Tibet and to have them kept.
But what is our policy to be if we wish to ensure, as we ought, the autonomy of Tibet, while refraining from any " forward " movement, and while doing no injury to the prestige of the Chinese Republican Government ? The Times thinks it necessary that a British Political Resident should be placed at Lhasa.. If that is to be done the Anglo-Russian Convention would have to be amended. Russia would probably ask for something in return for her compliance. Much would depend on what she demanded. We confess that we do not like the idea of keeping a Political Resident at Lhasa, for he would be only a symbol of the force which lay behind him. But there may be no other solution. The whole question is full of difficulties, and we have no wish to dogmatize till we see how Chinese policy shapes itself. If the Chinese Government are wise they will admit that in recognizing their suzerainty we are going as far as we have ever gone, and that we are really doing nothing whatever that can be described as dismembering the Chinese Republic. If our policy appeared to have that in view we should know exactly what to expect. It is absurd to suppose that the Republic would be more backward than the Monarchy in resisting us. The Young Turks have been less able to tolerate the thought of losing territory than Abdul Hamid himself, just as, to the surprise of many people, the Convention in the French Revolution was found to be more punctilious and exacting about its rights than the Monarchy had been. We sympathize sincerely with China in her efforts towards Constitutionalism. We are not wildly sanguine of her success, but at all events we should be careful to do her no disservice. We are glad to learn from a message to the Times that the Chinese Government do not discover anything unreasonable in the British Memorandum. If that be so, the anti-British campaign in the Chinese Press may be left to wear itself out. And for the rest we must wait upon the tardy proceedings of the Chinese Foreign Office.
Previous page
