DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW
The New York Times
March 26, 2014
The Chinese man spying on the daughter of a prominent political prisoner at the United Nations in Geneva last week probably didn’t expect to be expelled from the international body.
But the United Nations stripped him of his pass as a representative of the China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture, a group tied to the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department. The association was accredited as a nongovernmental organization at the Human Rights Council meeting where the incident took place, but his behavior didn’t conform to what most people think of when they think of NGOs. He photographed Ti-Anna Wang and her laptop screen in what United Nations officials deemed ‘‘intimidation and harassment.’’
The almost amateur espionage involving a camera device hidden inside the man’s coat — Ms. Wang, who was there to testify about her imprisoned father, Wang Bingzhang, said in an interview she found it intimidating but also silly — prompted a prominent scholar of Tibet to see it as a reflection of deeper questions facing the United Front, long highly influential in ethnic policy in regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang but losing influence as violence there spirals.
‘‘This is symbolic, but it’s often symbolic issues that are crucial in the rise and fall of Chinese policies and politicians,’’ said Robert J. Barnett, director of the Modern Tibet Studies Program at Columbia University.
‘‘I think this is a large crack in the wall that the United Front has built around itself from a lot of internal pressures it’s under now since the disasters of 2008 in Tibet and 2009 in Xinjiang, and now Kunming,’’ Mr. Barnett said.
He was referring to two eruptions of violence involving Tibetans and Uighurs, and a knife attack in a train station in February in which the attackers — the government says they were from Xinjiang — killed 29 people. Scores of self-immolations in Tibetan areas and regular clashes between Uighurs and security forces in Xinjiang, present a picture of worsening relations between the ethnic Han majority and the two most politically sensitive minorities.
Have these events led China’s leaders to question existing ethnic policies?
Yes, said James Leibold, a political historian and ethnicity specialist at La Trobe University in Australia, in an interview.
‘‘There is a perception of rising ethnic problems,’’ he said. And under the new administration of Xi Jinping, ‘‘There’s a bit of a turf war over ethnic policy.’’
Said Mr. Barnett, ‘‘We know that the leadership is being talked to by a lot of advisers saying, ‘You should do things this way,’ and that debate is happening, and it didn’t happen before.’’
One view, associated with Ma Rong, a sociology professor at Peking University, argues for assimilation: remove the ethnic identification from identity cards, end affirmative action for education and birth quotas, make everyone ‘‘Chinese’’ just as everyone in the United States is American. Black people in the United States don’t agitate for a separate country, is the thinking, Mr. Barnett said. The government has been too generous, and that’s the reason for the violence, runs this view.
Said Mr. Leibold, ‘‘It seems that Xi right now is trying to take an ideological approach,’’ by emphasizing ‘‘the importance of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people.’’
The department was long charged with winning ‘‘middle elements’’ for the Communist cause. Ethnic minorities were a key target. It also identified ‘‘diehard elements,’’ or enemies of Communism. For publicly calling for her father’s release, Ms. Wang could be seen as one.
With the United Front weakening, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission may have a growing say in policy. But increasingly important is Yu Zhengsheng, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the scholars said. In 2013 Mr. Xi made Mr. Yu head of the party ‘‘leading small group’’ on Tibet and Xinjiang.
‘‘Real policy-making power flows through individuals and their patronage networks rather than bureaucratic organs, suggesting the bureaucratic turf war over ethnic policy will continue,’’ Mr. Leibold said.
