Claude Arpi
Daily News and Analysis
March 6, 2013
Things are changing very fast in China; in a few days, a new leadership will take over from Hu Jintao’s team. One could also ask, is anything really changing?
In Tibet for example, Padma Choling is an important man. Officially, he is not only a deputy to the 12th National People’s Congress (NPC), the Party’s Deputy Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), but more importantly, the lone Tibetan ‘elected’ in the elite 205-member Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In other words, he is the senior-most Tibetan in the Communist hierarchy today.
In an interview on the side of the NPC, he said with a straight face that “no local residents, monks or nuns in Tibet Autonomous Region have self-immolated so far.”
Will denying the obvious help the new team solve the Tibetan issue?
Is Padma Choling so poorly informed of what is happening in Tibet?
While it is true that most of the self-immolations occurred in the former provinces of Amdo and Kham (now administrated by the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan, and Sichuan), several immolations were reported from the TAR.
International Campaign for Tibet, a Washington-based organization mentioned: “Two young Tibetan men set fire to themselves on May 27 [2012] outside one of Tibet’s holiest shrines, the Jokhang Temple. …Nineteen-year old Dorje Tseten had left home after high school and had been renting a room in a house in Lhasa. The entire household was detained soon after his self-immolation. …The self-immolations took place during Saga Dawa, an important religious period for Tibetan Buddhists that commemorates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death”.
Dargye who committed the fatal act on the same day, also died. When Padma Choling declares: “the key to the development of Tibet is good management of its own regional affairs, particularly improvement of people’s livelihood. Only in this way would the ordinary people embrace the Party and motherland,” can he be taken seriously?
Looking at ominous signs, nothing seems to be changing in China. On the eve of the Two Meetings (the NPC and the Chinese Political People’s Consultative Conference), hardliner Zhu Weiqun was seen roaming around Lhasa to check the latest preparations for the usually ‘hot’ month of March (while the Chinese are busy with the Two Meetings in Beijing, the Tibetans commemorate March 10 as their uprising Day; on that day in 1959 they revolted against the occupying forces, forcing the Dalai Lama to escape to India).
Zhu Weiqun, who was the interlocutor of the Dalai Lama’s envoys in the Beijing-Dharamsala talks, is infamous, amongst other things, for arguing that China must change some aspects of its present political and educational system in order to achieve ‘national cohesion’.
A year ago, Zhu raised the possibility of abolishing special privileges and preferential policies offered to ‘minorities’, taking the nationality name off all IDs cards and passports by removing the name of the provinces of origin.
It meant deleting ‘regional autonomy’ from the Chinese Constitution in the name of promoting a ‘greater cohesion’ (read, Han dominance).In the new dispensation, it appears that Yu Zhengsheng, a Standing Committee of the Politburo and No 4 in the Middle Kingdom’s hierarchy, will be in charge of Tibetan (and Taiwan) affairs.
A couple of weeks back, an article of The South China Morning Post announced that Yu may become Chairman of the Leading Group for Taiwan, implicitly becoming the chairman of the Tibet Work Coordination Small Group, as both issues come under the same umbrella. Interestingly, when he visited Tibetan areas in Sichuan, Yu, who belongs to the Shanghai faction of former president Jiang Zemin, was accompanied by Zhu Weiqun. One can guess that the hard-line will prevail.
Interestingly, Xi Jinping, whose father Xi Zhongxun, an associate of Deng Xiaoping was close to the late Panchen Lama, paid a visit (‘an inspection tour’) to Gansu province from February 2 to 5.
The monastery of Labrang Tashikyil, where several self-immolations were reported, is located some 100 km from Dongxian Autonomous County, where Xi spent time with another minority, the Hui Muslims.
Why did Xi decide to not visit Tibet?
One possibility is that Xi prefers (or is forced) to let Yu Zhengsheng, his colleague in the Standing Committee of the Politburo to handle the Tibetan affairs; another reading is that he did not want to provoke the Tibetans before the succession is fully settled. Some commentators have suggested that officials of Gannan Prefecture have probably called on Xi during his stay in Gansu and briefed him about the prevalent situation in ‘Tibetan areas’.
A footnote: the Chinese government has announced that the domestic security budget would rise 8.7 per cent to 124 billion dollars; for the third year in a row, it will be higher than the defence budget; this speaks for itself of the situation in the Middle Kingdom. The writer is a French-born journalist and a writer.
