By Tsering Tsomo
The importance given to Tibet’s stability at a strategy meeting in Beijing last month was suggestive of the authorities’ reaction to the widespread demonstrations in 2008 that engulfed the whole of Tibetan plateau including Tibetan areas incorporated into Chinese provinces. This spontaneous outpouring of decades of deep-seated resentment and anger among Tibetans exacerbated by increasing alienation and exclusion caught the authorities unawares. Strikingly, the largest number of protests was registered in Sichuan province where a majority of Kham and Amdo Tibetans live outside Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) – of the 1,542 Tibetans who are still detained, 820 are from this province.
Decades of Chinese policy of pumping billions of dollars in state subsidies and investments along with repression of Tibetan people has failed to buy the party-state legitimacy in Tibet. But Beijing ignored this message at the recent Tibet Work Forum, the fifth such forum in 60 years. The meeting attended by over 300 top officials from the party, government and military was chaired by President Hu Jintao who promised “leapfrog development” and “lasting stability” followed by an oblique attack against the “Dalai clique” and “foreign forces” for stoking the Tibet problem. This after a daring investigative report exposed the propaganda behind Beijing’s one-sided definition of the Mar. 2008 Lhasa incident as “beating, smashing, looting and burning by Tibetan splittists”. The July 2009 report by Gongmeng, a Beijing-based lawyers’ organization and think-tank said the “riot” was caused by official strategy to bring stability by propaganda, flawed economic measures and repression of the Tibetan people.
Describing the impact of Beijing’s policies on Tibetans, the Gongmeng report said, “When the land you are accustomed to living in, and the land of the culture you identify with, when the lifestyle and religiosity is suddenly changed into a “modern city” that you no longer recognize; when you can no longer find work in your own land, and feel the unfairness of lack of opportunity, and when you realize that your core value systems are under attack, then the Tibetan people’s panic and sense of crisis is not difficult to understand.”
The Fifth Forum pledged $46 billion to TAR alone with another $60 billion to both TAR and non-TAR Tibetan areas in the next 5 years. It is very likely that these funds will be used to build huge infrastructural projects that in the past have failed to benefit the Tibetans – 80 percent of Tibetans live in rural areas. The project to build the world’s highest airport in Tibet announced early this year is an example. The rhetoric on developing rural areas is a tired line by now with scant result. The neglect of real needs of Tibetans beyond the railways and airports was obvious in a Reuters quote attributed to Luorong Zhandui, a specialist in development economics at the China Tibetology Research Center: “This time we are really focusing on improving livelihood, whereas previous policies were mostly concerned with industry and infrastructure.”
The irony of economic development in Tibet is that the top-down measures have contributed to the ethnic exclusion and cultural corrosion of the Tibetan people – the supposed intended beneficiary. Understanding the context within which these policies are decided is instructive in understanding their failure: to Beijing development of Tibet is a means to a political end. It has never been about genuinely considering the concerns of a people who do not share the worldview of Beijing authorities. The distinctive Tibetan characteristics be it their faith, language, customs, way of life, culture, etc., are seen by the authorities as an impediment to official policies. For these policies to succeed, the modernization project with Chinese characteristics should swamp the Tibetans to a level where a homogeneous unity with the dominant Chinese culture can be ensured.
Thus the two-pronged strategy on Tibet – of developing the region and cracking down hard on ideologically deviant and politically impure Tibetans – has been reinforced at least since the Third Forum. The difference is not much in the objectives as it is in the details and the degree – for instance, how wide and severe a campaign to persecute the clergy should be or how intensive the vilification campaign against His Holiness the Dalai Lama should be.
The official campaign to discredit and isolate His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Tibet and internationally has its institutional roots in the Third Tibet Work Forum which was held in Beijing in July 1994. It called for the fight against separatism a “fight against Dalai clique” and to “reveal his (His Holiness) true color”. In his speech, the then premier Li Peng said, “the development of Tibet is not only to balance the development of different areas, is not only an economic issue but also is a political issue.” Officials also complained about “too many” monasteries and “too much” religious activity as a threat to stability. Ronald Schwartz, professor of sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland wrote that the “climate of fear and coercion” in Tibet that followed this meeting was “not seen since the days of the Cultural Revolution.”
In 1994, pictures of His Holiness were banned in public places. In 1996, patriotic re-education campaigns were instituted in monasteries and nunneries to force the monks and nuns to demonstrate their allegiance to the state and denunciate His Holiness. Evading this test of loyalty led to arrest and expulsion. Re-education of Tibetans in Tibetan politics, history, and religion was intensified. In 1998, a widespread campaign to promote atheism even in the remote herding and farming communities was launched to diminish the influence of religious leaders among the masses. The ongoing official project to resettle Tibetan nomads in urban areas can be viewed as part of this strategy. It was during this time that the then hardline TAR party secretary Chen Kuiyuan unleashed a number of measures that aimed to strike at the core of Tibetan cultural identity. Much of what was decided at Third Forum forms the heart of Chinese policy in Tibet today.
Hu’s special emphasis on “normalising” Tibetan Buddhism announced at the Fifth Forum is clearly a continuation of an existing policy. Beijing has already drafted new regulations to undermine His Holiness’ role in recognizing reincarnated lamas.
The official policy to criminalise all expressions of Tibetan identity and loyalty to His Holiness remained unchanged during the Fourth Tibet Work Forum held in June 2001. This Forum underlined the primacy of long-term stability and inclusion of TAR into the national policy of Great Western Development. With this policy, Beijing hoped to integrate Tibet into the overall homogeneity of Chinese culture by imposing unfettered modernization. Massive resource extraction drives carried out in Tibet today received official support during this period. It also accelerated the influx of Chinese migrants into Tibet changing the demographic character of the region. This meeting took place after the flight of two highly influential Tibetan lamas into exile – the 17th Karmapa and Arjia Rinpoche – embarrassing the authorities who thought they had been grooming a replacement for His Holiness and thereby get the regime legitimacy.
What was unusual about the Fifth Forum was the inclusion of non-TAR Tibetan areas in Tibet’s development policy as it points to a tacit acknowledgement of the inherent commonalities between TAR and non-TAR Tibetans. Rather than policy shift, it could mean a more efficient and uniformed surveillance system on the Tibetan plateau. If anything, the last Tibet Forum reasserted Beijing’s hardline approach as is apparent in its appointment of Pema Choling a veteran People’s Liberation Army soldier of Tibetan descent with an impressive track record of steadfast loyalty to the party. Zhang Qingli who famously called the Communist Party of China the Buddha of Tibetan people was retained as the TAR party secretary. The stress on stability will likely see more administrative and military personnel coming into Tibet.
If Beijing wants stability in Tibet, it has to consider the genuine needs, rights and interests of the Tibetan people. Development with Tibetan characteristics is possible when the Tibetans are not reduced to a powerless minority.
[OPINION-DISCLAIMER]
