| |
Editorial
Tibetans deserve a better deal
There is something unutterably sad and degrading about the way the Chinese government repeatedly tries to humiliate the Dalai Lama and restrict his meetings with foreign leaders. Tibet's spiritual leader has been called childish and worse in past times and his recent meeting at the White House with U.S. President Barack Obama set the stage for the repeated, if all too familiar, Chinese denunciations of foreign forces interfering in Beijing's internal affairs. 'If the U.S. leader chooses to meet with the Dalai Lama at this time, it will certainly threaten trust and cooperation between China and the United States,' a Chinese government spokesman said before the meeting. 'We oppose any attempt by foreign forces to interfere in China's internal affairs using the Dalai Lama as an excuse.'
Tibetans have never been able to mount any meaningful resistance to the forced takeover of their country. Their tiny population of six million, made up mostly of monks and farmers, is no match for the massive Chinese state of 1.5 billion people armed with nuclear weapons who increasingly dominate world trade and manufacturing. What the Tibetans do have is an inbuilt humility and a powerful sense of their own culture that is far removed from that of China. Our interview this month with the Dalai Lama's envoy, Thubten Samdup, highlights all these important differences, stressing how the Tibetan language has its origins in Sanskrit rather than Mandarin, and how the God-fearing Tibetans see their past and future entwined with the thoughts of Buddha rather than some malfunctioning communist ideologue.
Despite all these important differences, which entitle them to yearn for their own and separate identity, the Tibetans are realistic enough to accept that they will always have to deal with an all-powerful China on their borders. Hence the Dalai Lama's striving for autonomy rather than full independence. And what would this autonomy entail? China would still be in charge of finance, foreign affairs and defence. All the Tibetans seek are the limited freedoms of the type enjoyed by Canada's Quebec province. In practice this amounts to control over education, including language, and possibly immigration into their territory by non-Tibetan Han Chinese. Why do the Chinese object to these limited concessions? The answer could lie in the country's chequered colonial past when exploitative Western powers imposed unfair and unequal trade demands to exploit China's natural resources. Even worse was the way one colonial power calculatedly grew and exported opium from India, turning tens of thousands of Chinese into addicts, in exchange for Chinese gold, silk and tea.
Small wonder then that today's Chinese rulers are sensitive to what they see as continuing attempts by foreign powers to once again penetrate their country for their own benefit. In this calculation Tibet is seen as the weak link in China's defence chain; so, from Beijing's perspective, everything must be done to hug the Tibetans as close to China as possible. Never mind that this thinking might be outdated and in today's interlinked world, the idea of Tibet functioning as the cat's paw of a foreign conspiracy to undermine China seems unlikely to say the least. The Chinese, for their part, would argue that their paranoia is justified by the events of the last one hundred years when their country was at the mercy of the West.
The pity of it all is that the Tibetans are innocent victims of this murky cauldron of history that has cooked up an explosive mixture of imperialism, colonialism and fierce national pride. An even greater pity is that the Chinese, who finally secured their own country for themselves, regained their national self-respect and shrugged off the colonial caricature that depicted them as a racial menace, cannot find the right political balance to run the vast expanse of territory over which Beijing claims sovereignty. Surely, there can be no debate over the Tibetans' passion to claim a measure of autonomy to run their own affairs. Just as China did in the recent past, they too seek to protect and preserve their distinctive way of life, free from foreign exploitation. In this continuing struggle against Beijing's oppression, it is the Tibetans who come across in the public mind as quiet, gentle, civilised and cultured, whereas modern China's government is viewed as just the opposite. In the final analysis Tibetans deserve a much better deal than what is at present available to them.
top |
|
