By ANURAG MOHANTY-VISWANATH
His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibetans worldwide and head of the Tibetan Government in Exile (TGiE) headquartered in Dharamsala, India (where he fled to in 1959), will celebrate his 71st birthday in July, in the shadow of yet another round of failed negotiations with the Chinese government over the Tibet autonomy issue.
Negotiations between the TGiE and the Chinese government, which started in the post-1978 Deng Xiaoping years, with the visit to China of Gyalo Thondup (an elder brother of His Holiness), continue to remain in limbo.
The Dalai Lama’s Special Envoy, Lodi Gyari, led the fifth round of talks in February 2006, which remain inconclusive due to a “major difference even in the approach in addressing the issue”.
The Chinese government is perhaps hoping that with the demise of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan problem will die a natural death.
However, as history shows, such issues never just go away _ Chechen aspirations have survived the Soviet era, Kurdish aspirations have survived many past and present “empires”, and closer to home, the Uighurs of western China (Xinjiang) are restless as ever.
Historic Tibet consisted of three regions _ Amdo, Kham and U-Tsang. After the Chinese annexation of Tibet in 1950, the region was reorganised. Primarily, the U-Tsang region became what is today the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) in 1965. Amdo became assimilated into the neighbouring provinces of Qinghai and Gansu; Kham was divided between TAR and the neighbouring provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan.
In the backdrop of the long lingering Tibetan issue, China’s ambitious US$3.16 billion Qinghai-Tibet railway, the longest railway project at the highest elevation (reaching 5,072 metres in places), will link Golmud (in Qinghai) and Lhasa (the capital of TAR). Covering a distance of 1,118km, the operations will commence on July 1, 2006, a year ahead of schedule.
This is expected to bring in an estimated 4,000 additional tourists to a landlocked TAR. Built over difficult terrain, construction commenced during the 10th Five Year Plan (2001-2005) _ considered widely as former President Jiang Zemin’s “political project” aimed at “reinforcing economic development and consolidating national security”‘.
It is being projected by the official Chinese media as one that will bring “trade and investment” into TAR and develop yet another “golden tourist” route. Tickets for the first batch have already been sold out _ China is set to celebrate this as a public event _ a media blitz led by Shanghai Media Group will present live coverage of the train’s entry into Lhasa.
There is a proposed extension on the anvil _ to the second biggest city in Tibet, Shigatse, by 2010, during the ongoing 11th Five Year Plan (2006-2010) and onward to Khasa, a town at the border with Nepal. Plans to get Lhasa connected to other Chinese centres: Lanzhou, Chengdu and Dali have also been mapped out, which will complete the “integration” _ making Tibet’s assimilation in China “complete”.
The rail project marks a turning point in the tumultuous China-Tibet association _ coupled with other ominous signals _ increasing media coverage of the Bejing-installed 11th Panchen Lama, Gyaltsen Norbu.
The Dalai Lama’s candidate, Gedun Choekyi Nyima, continues to be under official protection _ in other words, has disappeared from the public eye.
The recent installation of the first ever Mao statue in the Changsha Square of Lhoka prefecture in TAR is also symbolic, and raises questions. It is perhaps a culmination of what critics say, “demographic overwhelming, ethnic cleansing and finally Chinese economic and political might” over Tibet.
As TAR, the “Roof of the World”, so far largely isolated and ecologically fragile, gets connected with the larger Han Chinese nation, there are increasing questions regarding its future as well that of displaced Tibetans, within and outside of China.
Public memory, in India and elsewhere, glosses over the plight of a stateless, displaced 90,000 (CIA World Factbook 2006) ethnic Tibetan exiles scattered in India, Nepal and Bhutan, amongst other countries following the Dalai Lama’s escape. A majority resides in India, which granted political asylum to the Dalai Lama.
Historically, whether Tibet was ever independent or not, is a vexed question, as both Tibet and China offer contending and contentious versions of history. According to the Chinese version, Tibet was never an independent state _ a tributary relationship dating to 634 AD; later in the 13th century it was conquered by the Mongols and became an “incorporated territory”. The Lhasa Convention of 1904 (“Tibet could not permit its territory to be occupied by a foreign power”), and the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 and Simla Convention of 1914 which asserted Chinese “suzerainty” as contrasted with “sovereignty”, were not ratified by China.
The Tibetan version claims that Tibet has been independent. Tibet specialist, the late Dawa Norbu, notes that Tibet was independent for 281 years (600-842 and 1911-1950), but dependent on the Mongol and Manchu empires for 378 years (1249-1358 and 1642-1911) _ and that even during these dependency periods, “enjoyed a high degree of genuine and domestic autonomy that most fair-minded historians of any persuasion would not deny”. The nature of the personal cho-yon (priest-patron) relationship that existed between the Lama and the Manchu emperor and Tibet’s neutrality during Second World War are also cited in favour.
The 17-point agreement between China and Tibet in 1950, the “Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” (1951), ratified by the Dalai Lama, is dismissed by some Tibet specialists as having been negotiated under duress.
In 1984, China passed the National Regional Autonomy law (amended in 2001), whereby TAR enjoys “full autonomy”. China suggests in its earlier 1992 White Paper on Tibet as well as in recent ones _ Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet, 2004 and Regional Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities, 2005 _ that TAR has made rapid demographic and economic progress (the official website highlights that the population of 2.74 million is more prosperous than ever), having stepped out from a “feudal serf system to a socialist society”.
In the 2004 ranking of 12 of China’s provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities under the central government, Tibet ranks second in terms of disposable income of urban residents. It also claims that the average life span is 67 years, infant mortality is down from 43.3% (before 1959) to 3.1% (2004) and that Tibetans make up 95.93% of the region’s population (2003). Key industries such as mining are being developed, cultivated land is going up, power grids established and huge amounts of money are being pumped in for the restoration of the Potala Palace, Norbulingka and Sagya Monastery.
Chinese statistics also claim that in 2001, Tibetan and other ethnic group officials account for almost 75% of the region’s total government officials.
Tibetans in exile and Tibet specialists around the world provide dissenting arguments. While the population is indeed on the increase and on the high economically _ they claim that Tibetans are a minority within TAR (6 million Tibetans in Greater Tibet outnumbered by 7.5 million Han Chinese), and indeed the “beneficiaries” are questionable. Andrew Fisher, in his 2005 book, State Growth and Social Exclusion in Tibet, argues that the benefits have been tapped by the competitive superiority of migrants who have swamped TAR _ leading to marginalisation and exclusion of Tibetan society.
TAR also happens to have among the highest urban incomes, because of the weight of the state sector. Affirmative action that supports the locals _ articulated by Deng’s protege, Hu Yaobang in the early 80s _ never came into existence.
The recent Tibet railway has accentuated ecological fears that the line, which cuts across the natural reserves of Ke Ke Xi Li and Qiang Tang will have repercussions on the fragile ecology (e.g. Tibetan antelopes, though China claims to have built 33 passageways for the animals). There have been allegations about the presence of nuclear missile bases at Delingha, Datong and Da Qaidam (in and near TAR) as well as of dumping of radioactive waste. There are fears the train line will accentuate plunder of Tibet’s natural resources and the hordes of tourists swamping in will not only strain the eco-system but also cause a virtual cultural genocide.
The Dalai Lama has vacillated between outright independence and genuine autonomy. Today, he has given up the demand for independence. At the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus (1987), he unveiled his Five-Point Peace Plan and later reiterated them in his Strasbourg Proposals (1988) _ articulating for the need for transformation of the whole of Tibet into a “zone of peace” and a halt to China’s population transfer policy.
Now, he espouses a moderate “Middle Path” that seeks genuine and meaningful autonomy. The key components are that Tibet would not seek separation from, but remain within, China; creation of a political entity comprising the three traditional provinces (re-unification of U-Tsang, Amdo and Kham) and to be governed by a popularly elected legislature and executive through a democratic process.
China, on its part, has shown a willingness to keep the dialogue process alive _ and also welcomes the Dalai Lama back, to even enjoy the same political status and living conditions as he had before 1959, suggesting that “he will not go to live in Tibet or hold posts there; of course, he may go back to Tibet from time to time”. The core of the Chinese policy is the demand that the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner give up his “splittist” activities and recognise “Tibet and Taiwan” as part of China.
The Taiwan pre-condition surfaced in 1998, when President Clinton took the initiative to revive the dialogue between the two sides. The TGE holds that this issue is for the people of PRC and Taiwan to resolve.
An ageing Dalai Lama is widely regarded as the “key link” to resolve the problem. He has indicated in his statement on the 47th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day (May 10, 2006), a need to find a “mutually acceptable solution”.
Of the new leaders, President Hu Jintao not only served in Tibet for many years (1985-93), but is also regarded as a protege of the reformist Hu Yaobang. On the other hand, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has been associated with the pro-democracy leader Zhao Ziyang.
If China is indeed changing _ appropriating, as it has been of late, viewpoints of the “new left” on the home turf and global discourse _ it is to be seen whether the leadership will chart a realistic settlement or keep the issue festering, hoping it dies a natural death with the Dalai Lama’s eventual passing.
Anurag Mohanty-Viswanath is a Bangkok-based researcher who spent a year in China working on her doctoral dissertation on “Poverty Alleviation Programmes in China”.
