Mar
25
The aftermath of tibet uprising
March 25, 2008 | | 1 Comment
By Cindy Ru
Since March 14, the protests and riots that broke out in Tibet, and later to nearby provinces in China have attracted international attention and responses. Now more than 10 days later-as Xinhua claimed situation in Lhasa is returning to normal- many questions and topics are “pushed” onto the table and are generating heated discussions all over the internet.
Melvyn C. Goldstein argues in his book The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama that human rights is not the core issue of Tibet, the Tibet problem existed long before the founding of the PRC and long before the western countries started to pay attention to its human rights issue. At core, “the Tibet Question is about control of a territory—about who rules it, who lives there, and who decides what goes on there.” (in the preface xi)
I have seen people making some interesting arguments regarding how the 2008 Tibet unrest plays in the International Politics spectrum. A post from Chinamatters asked this :
“Tibetan unrest in China is not just a problem for the PRC. It’s a major problem for the Tibetan emigre movement, which is threatening to fissure because of conflicts between moderates and militants.
And if things end badly, the question will be, did the militants fatally miscalculate the cost of confrontation, not only to themselves but the Dalai Lama?
…
The most immediate result of Tibetan militancy will be to unite the Chinese and isolate the moderates on the Tibetan side, while undermining the political standing of Tibet’s most effective political figure, the Dalai Lama, as spokesman for a unified, internationally popular political and diplomatic movement.”
Talking about the Tibet issue in a rather realist view, the genuine human rights concerns that have fueled repeated efforts from activist groups may not solve the problem or soften China’s Tibetan policy. On the contrary, it might arose fears and defensiveness on the Chinese side and give unrealistic expectations to the Tibetans. The PRC has greater leverage on the Tibet issue than the Taiwan issue since it exercise power in Tibet, so it may take a tougher stand on “foreign interference of China’s domestic affairs”.
Tibet is a complicated issue for several reasons. There have been arguments about its historical belonging and the geographic definition of Tibet. Also, the exile community has been arguing whether to fight for independence from China or an autonomy region within China. If the Dalai Lama passes away, possible violent separatist behavior is another concern. As Goldstein suggests, dealing with a complicated issue like tibet, the human rights and political freedom in the western ideology should take second place. The most important thing is to protect its ethnic and cultural integrity in the framework of the Chinese State.
Here are two comments from twofish on Rebecca’s post “Tibet…is discussion possible?” that I find quite telling:
“But I feel sympathetic to the Dalai Lama. Because people in the Tibetan community already are against him because he is too “soft.” … Getting China from a broken nation to the point where it can do what it wants with the West just standing by is why people in China care about issues of national unity so much. If Tibet becomes independent, then everyone else will go independent, and if everyone goes independent, then China will go back to where it was a hundred years ago, begging for sympathy and not generally finding it.”
“I’ve observed that Westerners admire Tibet because they see it as a “garden of eden.” A pure land unspoiled by modernity. The trouble is that if you don’t become modern, you become extinct, and part of the largely successful struggle that the Chinese nation has undergone is the struggle to be modern and avoid national extinction. To survive, you must have power. This means economic power and military power. You will get nowhere by throwing rocks at tanks, you must be able to build your own tanks. The question then becomes once you have power then how do you use it without either destroying yourself or becoming a monster. Very, very difficult.
There is a fundamental contradiction in Tibetan independence that I don’t think Westerners aren’t quite aware of. To become an independent nation-state, you must have an army, you must have schools that teach young people to salute the flag, you must have a power structure, you must be prepared to deal with demonstrators with a mix of carrots and sticks, you must write history books that justify the existence of the nation. You must in the end teach people to die and to kill for the motherland.
You must in short do hundreds of things that Westerners don’t want Tibetans to do.
…
This by the way is why the Dalai Lama is against Tibetan independence. An independent Tibet becomes “just another third-world country” with flags, schools, propaganda, soldiers, bureaucrats, history books, and riot police. The brutal reality of the world is that nation-states must be prepared to fight, to die, and if necessary to kill.”
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Mervyn Goldstein’s is probably the best account of the Sino-Tibetan relations. There is also quite a lot of published material on the negotiations that have been going on between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government for close to thirty years now, beginning with a meeting between the Dalai Lama’s brother and Deng Xiaoping in 1979. Almost nothing has been achieved through 30 years of talks.