A mighty nation conquers new territory and exploits that territory’s resources without consideration of the needs of the people living there. The people of the territory grow angry. Their complaints are not heard. Eventually some among them form a resistance. The mighty nation strikes back harshly, attempting to maintain absolute, rigid control. The resistance may pause temporarily, but harsh controls feed the anger, and the resistance grows. Eventually there is full-scale rebellion.
Tibet, today? No, North America, 1776. The paragraph above is a synopsis of the first two episodes of John Adams, now running on HBO.
Not Learning From History
How many times has history replayed this same drama? China is following exactly the same pattern as countless imperial powers before. The irony that China’s leaders can’t see is that their very rigidity and refusal to work with His Holiness the Dalai Lama is their own worst enemy.
Randeep Ramesh writes in The Observer (March 23, 2008), that “In this Buddhist version of David versus Goliath, the Dalai Lama's strategy has been to hug his giant adversary into agreement.” Time and time again, His Holiness has said he would accept Chinese sovereignty if China would allow Tibet genuine autonomy, especially in religious matters. He has offered to resign his claims to political leadership of Tibet. He has even refused to support a boycott of this summer's Olympics.
Yet the leaders of China consider His Holiness to be China’s Public Enemy Number One. They call him “a wolf in monk’s clothing” and have accused him of being behind the recent violence in Tibet, based on no evidence whatsoever.
Independence?
As His Holiness enters the 50th years of his exile from Tibet, he has diminishing authority over younger Tibetans. Growing numbers of Tibetans in and out of Tibet are no longer listening to His Holiness’s request for nonviolence, and they are calling for complete independence from China, by any means necessary.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1776, “… all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Revolutions are messy, bloody affairs, and most people would rather avoid them. However, “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism,” people can be pushed into a place where the unthinkable becomes thinkable, even desirable.
“It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security,” Jefferson continued. It is up to Tibetans to judge where their duties lie now. But it is clear that China could have avoided facing a rebellion now had it held Tibet with less tight a grip all these years.
The Arrogance of Empire
Like many other imperial powers before them, the Chinese are willfully oblivious to what their conquered subjects really think of them and are astonished at the unrest. The people of China are being kept ignorant by state control of news sources, of course, but one wonders what excuse can be made for the leaders.
John Gittings wrote for the Guardian website Comment Is Free (March 23, 2008), “Just one day before the protests started in Lhasa, Zhang's deputy, Ragdi, triumphantly told China's parliament in Beijing that Tibet now enjoyed ‘social stability’ and all the alleged ‘conspiracies by the Dalai Lama clique’ had been foiled.” One suspects the Chinese government’s biggest problem is the combination of arrogance and obliviousness that marks most ruling classes.
Robert Kagan wrote in the Washington Post (March 23, 2008) that in many ways China is a 19th-century power. China is “filled with nationalist pride, ambitions and resentments; consumed with questions of territorial sovereignty; hanging on repressively to old conquered lands in its interior; and threatening war against a small island country off its coast,” Kagan said.
Severely Ruled
Rebellions do not always succeed. When they don’t, the grievances tend to live on in future generations. I doubt China can keep a lid on Tibet forever. The leaders of China would do well to read the Tao Teh Ching:
When the hand of the ruler is light,
the people do not contrive,
but when the country is severely ruled,
the people grow in cunning.
