Left Flank

I don't understand US Congress's love affair with the Dalai Lama. I especially can't understand why the Pelosi wing of the Democratic Party would want to make such a paltry public relations gesture when the US needs China to consider its role in the world (i.e., Myanmar, India, Sudan) reasonably. It seems, according to The Economist, that Tibetan monks read newspapers quite proficiently, and aren't so contemplative, either.

On this occasion, the confrontation was sparked not by protests, but by some do-it-yourself work. Monks in the Drepung monastery were whitewashing and painting auspicious symbols on the walls of one of its buildings, assigned as a ceremonial residence for the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, who has been in exile since fleeing Chinese repression of an uprising in 1959. The painting celebrated his latest trophy: a Congressional Gold Medal from the United States—its highest civilian honour.

The police wanted to stop the painting. The monastery was then sealed off and surrounded by armed police. The reports tell of a similar showdown at another Lhasa monastery, Nechung, and of various other attempts by Tibetans to celebrate the congressional honour. It is impossible to confirm their accuracy. For all the relative openness of China these days, much of what goes on in Tibet remains hidden from the outside world. New rules introduced at the beginning of the year to make it easier for foreign reporters to travel and report in China excluded Tibet.

The reports are entirely plausible, however. Tibetans revere the Dalai Lama, both as a spiritual leader and as a symbol of a national identity that is not â€ūChineseâ€?.

Howard W. French thoughtful essay goes a long way to understand Tibet as it is.

As with most long-running disputes, the facts that underpin the Tibetan question are full of nuance and subject to competing interpretations. That no major party to this situation has been particularly generous in acknowledging this has only reinforced the overall air of intractability.

China's rulers, accustomed to controlling the flow of information and ideas, and hence how history is taught, skim over - or edit out - parts of Tibet's past that are inconvenient to their narrative.

Tibet's formation as a recognizable nation began as far back as the fourth century. In the early seventh century, Tibetans, under Songtsen Gampo, converted to Buddhism and adopted a written language based on the Ranjana script - both imported from India, it is worth noting.

Tibetans came to control much of their region, including parts of Nepal, Burma, India and present-day Xinjiang (China), and they did it the old-fashioned way, through warfare. They pointedly refused to defer to Tang Dynasty emperors, and in the late eighth century even briefly captured Changan, the Chinese capital, leading to the negotiation of borders between the two states.

Effective Chinese control over Tibet didn't come until the late 18th century and even then was mostly supervisory. Early in the last century, even that began to fall apart, as did China's hold on other parts of its periphery.

To enhance their position in India, the British worked intermittently to reinforce the de facto Tibetan state, which China wiped out in 1950 amid since-flouted promises of «broad autonomy,» and an understanding of this leads to the second important acknowledgement.

Chinese insecurity is driven, and understandably so, by the involvement of Western powers on its periphery. Even as the People's Liberation Army marched into Tibet, Chinese troops were girding to repulse the United States from the Korean peninsula.

Where President Truman saw Communism on the march, China's eyes were fixed on another prize: ending a so-called century of humiliation, which required establishing buffers of its own. The Dalai Lama's popularity in the West arouses Chinese suspicions for much the same reason.

The third unpleasant fact is the ugly record of feudal rule by Tibetan lamas, which China naturally enjoys highlighting.

«Do you know how cruel the lamaism was?» asked Lu Xiuzhang, Tibet's former deputy chief of propaganda. «People were dismembered to be served up in ceremonies, and ordinary people were slaves.» The characterization may not be the fairest, but the man has a point.

Under Communist rule, though, this country committed widespread abominations of its own in Tibet, killing monks, destroying temples and causing famine, yet the only account you can get is of the march of progress as investment pours in.

«Even though the Dalai Lama has agreed to give up the request for Tibet's independence, there's been no breakthrough,» said Wang Lixiong, a Chinese author whose writing about the country's western regions have caused his arrest. «China really doesn't have any intention to solve this issue.»

Wang, like many others, believes China is content to play a game that involves meeting with delegations of exiled Tibetans when the demands of public relations require it, while patiently awaiting the Dalai Lama's death.

That might sound like playing a strong hand smartly, but is it really?

After all, well before the Chinese in Tibet, European colonists and South African whites asked: Why would black Africans prefer independence with poverty to association with deep-pocketed outside powers?

The answer is that self-respect and cultural integrity have no price.

On the surface, Tibet is like Taiwan and Hong Kong, both regions Beijing claims for its own, but which should be independent. Yet, Lamaism is no way to improve Tibet. What Beijing needs to know is, that it doesn't need to grab all the territory around its periphery. Histrionics over the Dalai Lama will not reassure Beijing, but only hardens centralizing tendencies.

After all, even Beijing understands the limits of its own outrage, even when it does repay insults.