The Future of Tibet: A Chinese Dilemma.(obsolete imperialism or modern democracy)

Recent commentary and books on Tibet have emphasized the serious dilemma facing the Dalai Lama. [1] Well-meaning accounts have noted the reality that China's policies in Tibet have not only denied Tibetan self-rule but may eventually result in the displacement of the Tibetan people, as China provides economic incentives for increasing numbers of Han Chinese to move to Tibet. Exiled Tibetans are sometimes advised that, given China's unbending position, they should return as soon as possible, even if substantially on China's terms, or they will become a minority in their own homeland. According to this view, while principled resistance may be satisfying, it is viewed as futile. Under Chinese terms, described as the best they are likely to get, local control would remain with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), though Tibetans loyal to the Chinese government would be allowed a role in governance. The only suggested gain for this surrender to the inevitable is that China may be persuaded to cut off and reverse th e flow of Chinese migrants.

While analysts often pose these issues as a dilemma for the Dalai Lama, they fail to appreciate the dilemmas both he and the present circumstances have created for China. The Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile have been extremely effective in highlighting the imperialist and oppressive quality of China's occupation of Tibet. This has brought forth protest and embarrassment in nearly every diplomatic outing of Chinese leaders. The situation in Tibet has troubled China's international partners deeply, and foreign leaders have been pressed to urge Beijing to come up with a more satisfactory solution. The Tibet issue often overshadows others that the Chinese leaders would like to address. It provides justification for advocates of hard-line policies toward China. As a consequence, diplomacy for China is made more difficult. While China has tended to look at its Tibetan policy through rose-colored glasses made of reconstructed history, 2 it should be able to understand the international sympathy for Tibet. Ch ina, a country that has sometimes led the Third World's struggle against imperialism, finds itself accused of committing the same colonial excesses that previously visited its own shores. This leaves China's assertions of an improving human rights record in shambles. If China ever does fully accede to the international human rights covenants it has already signed it will surely be confronted with its policies in Tibet in response to the human rights reports it will be required to file. But far short of this still remote possibility, the Tibet situation poses an immediate dilemma for China as to whether to soften its Tibet policy or to continue to incur global wrath.

While Tibet presents a dilemma for the Chinese government, it is doubtful whether the Dalai Lama really faces a dilemma over submission versus violence. Although he faces issues as to what baseline for autonomy might be acceptable and strategic questions as to how to get there and beyond, neither submission nor extreme violence is a realistic option. The structure of autonomy is discussed in the following sections of this essay. Strategically, Tibetans have been quite effective in creating a dilemma for China. To heighten international pressure on Beijing they may want to better appeal to China's own commitments made to Tibet. Tibetans can highlight the fact that it is the Beijing government which uses the word "autonomy" in describing its rule of Tibet and which has publicly stated that it will discuss anything except independence.

No one can doubt the resolve of the current Chinese leaders to hold on to power and not relinquish any territory. But even for these leaders the use of sheer coercive power to subjugate the Tibetan people is not without difficulty. Forcing Tibetans to accept arduous terms will likely reverberate back to China's long-term disadvantage. As recent internal territorial conflicts in such places as Chechnya, Kosovo and East Timor amply demonstrate, the dominant parties in seemingly one-sided conflicts often face more profound issues than are initially evident. A more far-sighted view is required. Pressing the Dalai Lama to accept terms whereby the CCP continues to control every aspect of Tibetan public life, as a price of cutting off the flow of outsiders, will produce a feeling of hopelessness in the Tibetan community. In the long term, this will breed resentment. In the face of continued subjugation, Tibetans are more likely, either now or in the future, to choose intensified resistance and ultimately rebellion.

No matter what argument China makes to paper over the situation in Tibet, it is apparent to the world that China has essentially subjugated an ethnically and territorially distinct community. It does no good to note, as China does in its 1999 White Paper on National Minority Policy and Practice, that China has generously set up numerous autonomous regions for 55 recognized" national minorities." If there is no meaningful self-rule at the bottom, then this system of top-down rule through local party secretaries becomes merely an efficient system of control and a denial of autonomy. To highlight the special privileges of Tibetans and claim that they are better off under Chinese rule also fails. Such was one of the primary claims of European colonialism, to spread an allegedly superior civilization. It likewise does no good to draw analogy to the overseas territorial possessions of other countries. Colonialism is no longer acceptable wherever it takes place. There has been no plebiscite on self-rule in Tibet. C hina has not been politically able to offer true autonomy, and the result of its Tibet policy has been a giant black spot in China's international reputation.

While the immediate concern is to work out an acceptable baseline for Tibetan autonomy, in doing so it is important to bear in mind that China's own political reform process is likely to shape and be shaped by any sensible long-term solution to the Tibetan problem. China's own reform process has increasingly become a hostage to its harsh policies in respect of its peripheral communities. For China, the bogeyman in recent years has been the Soviet Union and it ignominious disintegration. China is, nevertheless, pursuing exactly the same kind of harsh policies towards its peripheral communities that the Soviets pursued for seven decades. This is a breeding ground for the same types of resentments that emerged. China's harsh policies toward its peripheral communities not only have held China's own reform processes hostage but also have shaped China's global role and have thus become a global concern. Reasonable opinion holds that China's reluctance, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, to support humanitarian intervention in places where serious humanitarian disasters have occurred is substantially shaped by the fear that such intervention will someday be directed at its own peripheral communities, especially Taiwan and Tibet. One can only hope that the circumstances of these communities need not become as dire before appropriate policies alleviate the situation.

China is called upon to step back and consider both a sensible short-term policy that will treat the Tibetan people with the dignity and respect they deserve and a long-term policy that will address the centrifugal tensions likely to emerge in China, as its reform process unfolds. Both the structure of a meaningful autonomy and a long-term federal solution are addressed below. The next section discusses the prospects for any autonomy model under China's existing political system. This raises difficult questions that the Tibetan people will have to consider with great care. The federalism proposal, discussed in the succeeding section, provides a more visionary view of a truly autonomous Tibet as part of China's long term democratization prospects. The present discussion sets aside the difficult question concerning the appropriate territorial boundaries for a future Tibet. [3]