Left Flank

The Dalai Lama is a likeable kind of guy, but I'd like to see, and hear, less of him.

Tibet's case is not helped by world leaders. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's actual words were quite measured, but standing in Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, is incendiary. «We insist the world know what the truth is in Tibet,» Pelosi said.

PRC's Premier, Wen Jiaobao, even more explicitly makes the mistake Pelosi only staged with symbolism: demonizing the Dalai Lama directly.

The EU eschewed the long tradition of childishly pursuing its own foreign policy and spiting every other western state, agreeing with Pelosi not to boycott the Summer Olympics. But still, Beijing can always thank Brussels for relieving the diplomatic pressure.

I also think the Dalai Lama erred tactically by broadcasting his pledge to resign if Tibetan resort to violence. The nature of this gamble exposes Tibet's problem: there are no responsible leaders in Tibet ready to speak for Tibetans. Fortunately, the Dalai Lama maintains that he only wants "autonomy" for all Tibetans in Tibet and in western PRC.

The 73-year-old religious leader was reacting to statements made by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. In a telephone conversation with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Wen said that Beijing was prepared to talk to the Dalai Lama. The condition, however, would be that he could not demand independence for Tibet and he would have to distance himself from the violence.

Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of being a "separatist and traitor," who talks of autonomy but really means the independence of Tibet from China. The Dalai Lama calls for broad autonomy for Tibet, not only for the current so-called "Tibet Autonomous Region," but also for areas in the neighboring provinces of Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan which have large Tibetan populations.

When asked by SPIEGEL ONLINE whether he might be ready to limit his autonomy plan to just central Tibet, the Dalai Lama said no. The proposal to include other areas as well proves that he has no separatist intentions, he said. For the Tibetans, the only important thing is to "protect their culture."

"I have now repeated a thousand times, it is my mantra: We do not want independence," he said. The Chinese government should take seriously their constitution, which talks of autonomy for certain regions, he added. "It should not only be on paper," said the Dalai Lama.

Of course, Beijing will never consider an autonomous Tibetan zone encompassing western parts of its geo-economically strategic western provinces. For a refreshingly unromantic viewpoint on Tibet, FT reprises the Chinese perception of the Tibetan protests. Yet, I agree with Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, that Beijing needs to act more responsibly.

Still, the tragic and farcical developments of recent weeks underscore the inherent conflict between China's desire to place itself in the global spotlight and its hope that no one will focus on the nation's flaws. They want internationally acclaimed artists to perform in cities like Shanghai without doing unexpected things--even if, like Bjork, part of their cachet is an ability to surprise an audience. But the Chinese leadership is no more capable of balancing these tensions than Don Quixote was of slaying windmills.

Beijing knows better; Tibet just needs to learn. At 73, the Dalai Lama is past the mark where he can continue to lead Tibetans, who should find their own secular path in a very dangerous region. A new generation of leaders should realize, that simplistic notions of self-determination and autocracy are fighting words where the mountains and rivers run between vital trade, pipeline, and resource routes.

There is opportunity as much as crisis here: even the meanest dictator doesn't want to have blood all over the Internet, or disrupt his cash flow (also check out Tim Johnson's report from Sichuan province).

Military looking vehicles had their license-plates covered or removed and many troops displayed no insignia, suggesting an attempt to cover up the use of army personnel to control the unrest. China does not want the run-up to the Olympics overshadowed by accusations of military repression in Lhasa. But the army is almost certainly playing a big part in the city's clampdown on the ethnic violence that erupted on March 14th and 15th. The authorities say 160 rioters in Lhasa have turned themselves in to the police and 24 people have been charged with «grave crimes». But Tibetans say they fear widespread and indiscriminate arrests.

Ethnic Han Chinese who were targeted in the violence (officials say 13 people were killed by rioters) are fearful too. Several told your correspondent that they would leave Tibet. One Han on the flight from Lhasa to the neighbouring province of Sichuan said he would normally travel in and out of Tibet by train, but he was now afraid that Tibetan terrorists might target the line. No terrorist incidents involving Tibetans have yet been reported, but China—partly in response to an alleged attempt by an ethnic Uighur woman to start a fire on board an airplane earlier this month—has stepped up airport security in recent days.

The huge security deployment in Lhasa has prevented further outbreaks of unrest there, but reports of smaller incidents in other areas of Tibet and ethnic Tibetan regions close to it have continued to emerge. The authorities admitted on March 20th that security forces had fired at protesters in the southwestern province of Sichuan four days earlier, injuring four people. A correspondent for Reuters news agency reported from the area that local residents believe several Tibetans were shot dead. Foreign reporters are now barred from Tibet and several have been turned back from ethnic Tibetan areas of surrounding provinces.

A younger generation of Tibetans raised in the the Dalai Lama's medieval aura, but with feet and senses in the real world, would take a shrewder gamble.

(For those with an open, unclouded mind, check out the bevy of high-quality links China Beat has collected from across the Internet on Tibet.)

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.