Talking of Tibet

Representatives of the Dharamsala-based Tibetan government-in-exile are currently in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials on the restive region over which China claims historical sovereignty and which witnessed an uprising against Chinese rule as recently as two years ago. The current, ninth round of talks, like much of the eight earlier rounds since 2002, are enveloped in secrecy, but there is little indication that any progress has been made towards political reconciliation.

The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader and temporal authority who fled to India in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule, claims he isn’t campaigning for Tibetan independence but only seeks ‘meaningful autonomy’ for Tibetan areas within the framework of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. But even up until the latest round of talks began, the Chinese propaganda machinery, which is given to purple prose, has been projecting the Nobel Peace laureate as a “splittist” with a secessionist agenda. It has also sought to blame the “Dalai clique” for the riots in Lhasa in May 2008, despite disavowals from Dharamsala. 

Given that India has offered refuge to the Dalai Lama and the countless Tibetans who’ve fled their homeland — including the rather more radical Tibetan youth movement — Beijing authorities are also deeply suspicious of India’s intentions and motives vis-à-vis Tibet. This is despite the fact that India, like the rest of the world, acknowledges Tibet to be an integral part of China.

Sino-Indian distrust, of course, runs deep, and across several other issues, including the unresolved border dispute, but China’s insecurities arising from its infirm hold on Tibet only serve to widen that trust deficit. 

Chinese claims over Arunachal Pradesh, the northeastern Indian state that is home to the Tawang Tibetan Buddhist monastery, represents the most stark manifestations of this insecurity. They also underline India’s strategic misstep in acknowledging China’s territorial sovereignty over ‘Tibet’ without an underlying understanding on precisely how that geographical entity was defined in the Chinese perspective.  At their core, China’s dilemmas over Tibet arise from its inability, even 60 years after it secured control over it, to win over the hearts and minds of the Tibetan community. As the uprising in May 2008 demonstrated, Tibetan resentment over the clampdown on religious freedoms (particularly the worship of the Dalai Lama) and the Sinicisation of Tibet, including the incentives to Han Chinese to settle in Tibetan regions to alter the demographic profile, run deep. 

For all the inflamed passions of radical activists in exile, however, the movement for Tibetan independence today enjoys no international support: not a single government recognises the Tibetan government-in-exile, not even the host country. And even the Dalai Lama has publicly reconciled himself to Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Given China’s ascendance as a global economic power, and its ability to garner political influence on the strength of that economic might, Chinese sovereignty over Tibet faces no real threat. Even so, for Communist Party leaders, their manifest inability to completely pacify Tibet even 60 years after the founding of the modern nation-state, counts as a colossal failure of their Tibet policy. 

Yet, Chinese policy towards Tibet has proved singularly lacking in imagination. Last fortnight, the Chinese government unveiled what it claimed was a ‘new approach’ to Tibet, but which in effect amounts to more of the same: greater investments in the region, coupled with a tightening of political hold — as manifested in the appointment of hardline, militarist leaders to the Tibetan Autonomous Region. In Beijing’s perspective, there is no provision for acknowledgement of the popular disaffection that Tibetans feel.
China’s strategy on Tibet evidently lies in ‘waiting out’ the Dalai Lama. Even the best efforts of the virulent Chinese propaganda machine haven’t taken anything away from the enormous goodwill that the Dalai Lama commands on the international stage. But since he is of advanced age, and since there isn’t a second-rung leadership among the Tibetan exile community that has an international standing, Beijing perhaps calculates that after his time, the Tibetan movement — such as it is — will flounder, enabling it to tighten its hold without any international pushback. 

That prospect holds implications for India’s relations with China, as well. Should the Tibetan community in India become more radicalised after the current Dalai Lama’s time — as seems increasingly likely — it would bode ill for Sino-Indian relations. The best-case scenario would be for an enduring political reconciliation between Beijing and Tibetan leaders during the Dalai Lama’s time that would allow China to feel rather more secure about its hold on Tibet, perhaps in exchange for some concessions on preservation of Tibetan culture. But in a political environment where Chinese leaders believe they hold all the aces, and have everything to gain from outwaiting the Dalai Lama, the prospects for such an outcome appear decidedly dim.