At Newsweek, Sudip Mazumdar writes that the government of China appears to be re-evaluating its policy toward Tibet, and also its policy toward His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
China, slowly and reluctantly, has come to two painful conclusions, Mazumdar says. First, the stability and development of Tibet are essential to China's future. Second, China has been mishandling Tibet all along.
It is true that China has invested many billions of dollars in Tibet. For this, they expected the Tibetans' loyalty and gratitude. But China also has treated Tibet as a colony run by and for ethnic Han Chinese, with Tibetans locked out of most positions of authority and the better-paying jobs. And, of course, the repression of Tibetan Buddhism and exile of the Dalai Lama remain causes of discontent.
China's policy of demonizing the Dalai Lama and refusing to work with him is beyond irrational. For 60 years China has believed His Holiness was the chief obstacle to gaining the loyalty of the Tibetan people. In fact, he was probably the one means China might have had to gain the loyalty of the Tibetan people. An agreement with him would have had the moral authority among Tibetans that China very much needs.
Mazumdar writes that China recently decided to resume talks with the Tibetan government-in-exile, and last week two envoys from Dharamsala were received in Beijing. But don't expect any dramatic breakthroughs, but a gradual shift is possible, Masumdar says.
This is interesting, considering that China is now threatening Obama with economic sanctions if he meets with the Dalai Lama this month.
I think China has a stack of boilerplate press releases threatening economic sanctions for meeting with the Dalai Lama. They just fill in the date and the name of the offending nation, and out it goes.
I really want to believe they’ll have real discussions, but I have a feeling it’ll be the same as the last discussions with nothing being accomplished. I’ve read about China’s new “threats” about sanctions as well. It’s kind of funny, but sanctions might actually help the U.S. as it may cause companies to bring jobs back to America and help with the unemployment problem. We’d end up thanking China for the sanctions. Of course that’s why they won’t go through with it either. There’s not many actions they could take that wouldn’t backfire and I really doubt they would want to take the chance simply because the president had a chat with a guy.
China being upset about the arms trade with Taiwan though, they may have a reason to be a little upset there. I’ll admit I don’t the know the facts about it, but there certainly needs to be some care when selling weapons to other countries.
China sees Taiwan, which is where the Nationalist government fled after their defeat by the Communists on the mainland, as a “rogue province”. Generally, there has been “peaceful co-existence” between the two as long as the Nationalists are in charge, and they don’t directly threaten China. A pro-independence party came into power several years ago, and there were concerns that China might try to invade Taiwan. Eventually, the Nationalists won back power, and relations improved. Taiwan does have it’s own armed forces, which in the past have been supported by the US. Ultimately, I believe the Chinese govenment’s goal is “re-unification”, and anything like arms sales from the US get in the way of their long term strategy.
On the main topic, I think that the Communist government is as always just acting strategically- any meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama would solely be to try to gain his endorsement of their Tibet policy, the end. The perceived goal would be stability in Tibet, no more revolts, no more PR problems when they steam roll over those pesky Buddhist monks- Done the right way, I think a China/Dalai Lama dialogue would be a good thing, but my personal feeling is that in any dealing with the Chinese government, God is in the details.