The Economist
June 22, 2013
Proposals for a different approach in Tibet suggest some in China know their policies are not working.
Conventional wisdom on Tibet among Chinese officials is that when the current Dalai Lama dies, the Tibetan problem will be solved. China has tight control over the mountainous region and believes it holds all the cards. It can choose the Dalai Lama’s next incarnation and that will be that.
So Tibet-watchers have greeted with surprised interest the interview of a leading Chinese scholar on Tibet, published this month in a Hong Kong magazine. In the interview, for almost the first time in a generation, a senior government adviser suggests that China’s Tibet policy of economic development with continued political repression is not working and needs changing.
The official, Jin Wei, is no Tibetan-hugging softy. She is the director of ethnic and religious studies at the Central Party School, a think-tank in Beijing. She takes the standard line that Tibet is an inalienable part of China (something most of her countrymen believe, too). But she suggests that the way the Communist Party treats every cultural and religious problem in the region as subversive is making things worse. Some clashes over culture and religion are unavoidable but manageable, she says, and they should not be seen as a threat to the state. Ms Jin says that stalled talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives should be restarted, and suggests inviting him to Chinese soil in Hong Kong or Macau. Most controversially, she suggests China negotiate with him about his next incarnation, and in the long term, allow him to return to Tibet itself.
The way China works means Ms Jin’s intervention must have been sanctioned by somebody near the top. This may have happened because of the recent change of leadership. Tibet’s party secretary in the late 1980s was Hu Jintao, who took over in 1988 after riots in Lhasa. He went on to become party chief and president, and hardline policies he imposed have dominated policy towards Tibet ever since. He stepped down as party leader last November and as president in March. That may have been Ms Jin’s cue. She also implies that Tibet policy should be taken away from Mr Hu’s supporters.
Don’t dilly Dalai on the way
The proposals will face a backlash from hardliners, who see any softening as the thin end of a wedge that leads to Tibetan independence. The West should therefore tread carefully. Overzealous support for these ideas would strengthen the belief, widespread among Chinese leaders, that the Dalai Lama is conspiring with the West to split China. In fact, he has long said he does not support independence and wants only more Tibetan autonomy; but most of Chinese officialdom views him with undiminished suspicion.
Yet accommodation with the Dalai Lama is the Chinese government’s only hope of ever reaching a deal acceptable to most Tibetans. Another Tibetan burned herself to death this week (the 119th self-immolation since 2011), and new forms of control at the lowest level show no signs of making Tibet any easier to govern. The death of the present Dalai Lama might well be the beginning, not the end, of real problems in Tibet: freed from the constraint of the exiled leader’s personal authority and his insistence on a non-violent stance, a younger generation of angry Tibetans may turn aggressive.
For both China’s and Tibet’s sake, it is to be hoped that Ms Jin’s proposals gain a wider currency. The idea of a Communist government sitting down with a holy monk to discuss his own reincarnation seems bizarre. But Ms Jin’s proposals are in fact far more pragmatic than the hardline ideological approach to Tibet that has succeeded only in alienating a people China claims as its own.
