Apr
19
By Cindy Ru
I mentioned Melvyn C. Goldstein in one of my previous Tibet post. Dr. Goldstein is a world renowned Tibet scholar and social anthropologist. He has conducted research in Tibet, inland China, India, northwest Nepal and western Mongolia on various issues related to the Tibetan history and its socio-economic changes. Several of his publication have become the benchmarks of Tibet Study, such as A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State(1991) and The Snow lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet and the Dalai Lama(1997).
Dr.Goldstein co-founded the website The Center for Research on Tibet, and on it, you can find a lot of his articles on Tibet. I’ve gone through two of his articles which I think are really helpful, or rather essential, for those of us who want to know more about the complexity of the Tibet issue.
In this post, I am going to talk about the longest one among the two, The Dragon and the Snow Lion: The Tibet Question in the 20th Century, published in the book “China Briefing” in 1990. In the article, he goes through the history of the Tibet issue from the late 18th century till 1989, a time when a series of riots broke out in the region. In light of what is happening now, I feel a lot of his analysis in 1990 are of great value and insight to us almost two decades later.
As Goldstein points out in the opening, his aim of writing the chapter is to explore “shades of gray” and present “complex historical antecedents of today’s situation”, because
The pervasive tendency of both the Tibetan exiles and the Chinese leadership to describe events in Tibet in either black or white – horrendous oppression or magnificent reform and development – pressures the nonspecialist to choose one side and accept its version in entirety.
but looking at the history prior 1990, we realize the Tibet problem is never as simple as that.
In the late 18th century, the Qing emperors created a kind of loose protectorate over Tibet. But this “loose protectorate” declared independence in 1913 when the Qing dynasty fell into pieces and they expelled the Qing garrison. That year British India pressured the Yuan Shikai government and Tibet to take part in a conference held in Simla, India to reach a consensus on Tibet. The conference produced the Simla Convention in 1914, which said “Tibet would be autonomous from China, but also acknowledged Chinese suzerainty over Tibet.” So 1911 to the end of World War II was an de facto independence period for Tibet because it was free from central control, although no Chinese governments have officially acknowledged this independence.
The relevant Western countries were content to adhere to the convenient Simla conditions, acknowledging de jure Chinese suzerainty over Tibet while dealing directly with Tibet as if it were a de facto independent state. Much of the current confusion over Tibet’s political status derives from this double standard on the part of the Western nations concerned.
During 1951-59, the PRC government postponed socialist reforms in Tibet to show its respect to Dalai Lama’s rule and the Tibetan religion. But with Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile fleeing to India in 1959, it “marked the reemergence of the Tibet question as an international issue”.
The Cultural Revolution from 66-76 had disastrous effects on the social and cultural fabric of the traditional Tibetan life, and starting from 1980, Beijing started a new reform policy “to redress the wrongs that had been done to Tibetans” under the leadership of Hu Yaobang. By 1982, delegation representing the Dalai Lama began to hold talks with Beijing. But these talks bore little fruit. Why? because both sides tried to compel the other to accept its conditions, and “Dharamsala was unwilling to discuss a compromise that would address the cultural issues but leave the political structure-continued rule by the Communist Party – intact”.
Dharamsala’s continuing accusation about China abusing human rights in Tibet and “portrayed Chinese communists one-dimensionally as monsters” may help to unite their internal nationalistic sentiment and demonize China in the Western eyes, but it will only push Beijing to adopt a harder line and shut doors for future negotiations.
The four riots in Lhasa from October 1, 1987 to March 5, 1989 really made the Chinese realize one thing – only by delivering the goods cannot tame Tibetan people, they were still bitter about the loss of their nationhood and the Han influx has “made them a minority in their own city”. Monks were angry because Beijing had not give complete autonomy to the monasteries. To address the core of Tibetan discontent, Goldstein says the Chinese government should focus on preserving the “cultural and ethnic autonomy” of Tibet.
On the other hand, the Tibetan exile government has done a good job in its propaganda in the west that there is an “almost universal acceptance in the West of the exiles’ cultural and political construction of modern history and the contemporary situation in Tibet”. The militant fraction in the exile government-such as the Tibetan Youth Association-may want to escalate their leverage by encouraging more violent civil disobedience, or even, anti-Han terrorism in Tibet, which would only irritate Han Chinese and push Beijing for a hard-line Tibet policy. As Goldstein argues, “From this point of view, the 2 million Tibetans of Tibet are the losers of the confrontation between the Dalai Lama and Beijing during the 1980s.”
What about today? Who are the losers of the 3.14 Lhasa riots? The PRC, the West, or Tibetans? Or, all of them?
Comments
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I think that the the upcoming Olympics will have an great influence on the China-Tibet relationship. I however hope that the protests will stay peacefully.