Questions on Tibet, by Anne-Marie Blondeau, Professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, and Jean-Luc Domenach, Research Director at Sciences – Po Paris

© 2005 : F. Robin

What do the Tibetans want?
by Anne-Marie Blondeau
Professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études ¹

Since the Lhasa demonstrations in 1987-1989, publicized thanks to the western witnesses present, the media interest had subsided, and for politicians the Tibetan issue got appended to that of human rights in China; for the general public, it was seen through the stands of the Dalai Lama who no longer claimed independence for his country, but « a wide autonomy » inside the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The events of last March have brutally reminded the world that a people was suffering and was refusing to submit itself to the law of the mighty.

While the Chinese military and police repression continue to exert itself with impunity in all the Tibetan regions, closed to the foreigners (who is speaking about the damages and victims of the recent earthquake in the Tibetan zones of Sichuan?), one must wonder what caused these revolts and their possible consequences for the future of the Tibetans.

Speaking about Tibet immediately arouses pro- or anti-Tibetans, pro- or anti-Buddhists passions. Each one has his say and some, perhaps through pure ignorance, only end up taking over the Chinese propaganda. Therefore, before turning to recent events, it seems useful to examine the Chinese government’s arguments to deny the international community any right to inspection on Tibet. The first one among them is that it is about a strictly internal affair, since Tibet is part of the Chinese territory since the Yuan dynasty, in the 13^th century. Any reliable historian knows that it’s not true and Tibet’s real submission to the empire of Yuans is only a consequence, accidental, shall we say, of its submission to the Kubilai’s Mongol empire, conqueror of China and founder of the Yuan dynasty. But, as an example, not more at this epoch as under the following dynasties– including that of the Qing who established what one can call a « protectorate » in the 18^th century– the Chinese maps did not include Tibet in the Chinese territory. Without pursuing, let us just indicate that at the time of the Chinese nationalist revolution of 1911, the thirteenth Dalai-Lama proclaimed that, the personal links of the Dalai Lamas with the Chinese emperors were broken, Tibet was independent and had to fight to preserve this independence (which was effective until the Chinese invasion of 1950).

Another assertion of the Chinese government is that the People’s Liberation Army has freed the Tibetan people from the yoke of a feudal and slave society controlled by the clergy and the nobility, a society that the Dalai Lama wants to restore. Of course, like for many other countries at that time, a rigid class system put the weight of the taxes and forced labor on the people, and held one part of the population – but variable according to the regions and the masters– subjected to a form of serfdom. Incidentally, one can wonder, if the Tibetans are happier in the new socialist society, why they make demonstrations and why more than 2000 of them escape in exile every year, under the risk of being arrested, tortured or even killed. As for the so-called unspoken will of the Dalai Lama to restore the « theocracy», it is completely baseless if we consider the Tibetans’ refusal to come back to the old society and the democratization of the government in exile that the Dalai-Lama imposed; not to mention his declarations, nevertheless judged false by some people.

It is time to come back to the recent demonstrations. They were surprising by their extent and especially by their extension outside the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR, central and western Tibet), in the former Tibetan oriental provinces of Kham and Amdo, incorporated by the Chinese government in the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan : out of the hundred or so of protests as of date, most of them took place in these regions. The Chinese government reacted, like always, by denouncing a plot of the « splittist » Dalai Lama, supported by Tibetan organizations in exile, like the Tibetan Youth Congress, declared as “ terrorist organization”. The only proof of this plot given as of date is the quasi-simultaneity of the triggering of the upheavals. It is forgotten that every 10^th March, day of the first demonstration at Lhasa, is for the Tibetans the anniversary date of the upheaval of Lhasa in 1959 which saw the Dalai Lama going into exile, anniversary celebrated everywhere in the world but banished, in TAR and in the other Tibetan zones, by the Chinese authorities. It is also forgotten that, henceforth, by Internet (even subjected to censure) and the cellular phones, the Tibetans have access to information that they did not have before. There is no need for a conspiracy to imagine that, informed about the traditional speech on this date of the Dalai Lama – unusually virulent against the Chinese policy in Tibet –, the demonstrations that their compatriots in exile projected on the occasion of the path of the Olympic flame, and demonstrations at Lhasa, had allowed their frustrations and despair to be let out in protests that spread out like a powder trail.

The real question is « why these demonstrations? » which, evidently, mark the failure of the policy lead by the PRC since more than fifty years in Tibet. The western media that have widely covered the events have reported it in a simplistic way by giving the title: « the Tibetan monks demonstrate ». It is true that most of the upheavals took place according to the well-known plan of action since the 87-89 demonstrations: persons belonging to a religious order (monks or nuns) begin a peace protest; they are arrested, beaten and the crowd breaks into revolts and claims their liberation. But by analyzing the films and photos that have been circulated through Internet, we note that the laymen were the ones who lead the « toughest» actions and that, especially in the East, they were sometimes the only participants. The reasons that pushed them to undertake such desperate actions are certainly manifold; some people have suggested economic reasons, the Tibetans being in fact excluded from the development of their country, supported with big expenses by the Chinese government but without producing any effect on the population. It is certain that a lot of young city-dwellers, without work, dream of being able to have access to pleasures of modernity: motorcycle or car, cellular telephone, fashionable clothes … Having nothing to do, they hang around the bars and karaokes and there is a probability that the « rioters » of Lhasa who attacked the goods and persons of the Chinese shopkeepers were recruited among them. However, upon examining the slogans on the placards of the demonstrators, and the words of the rare Tibetans who were able to express themselves with Westerners, their claims were of another kind, displaying « religious liberty », « return of the Dalai Lama », « liberty » or « the Tibet to the Tibetans», « Chinese brothers out of Tibet ».

That religious freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama come at the top of the claims may seem surprising; it is to be unaware of the very nature of the Tibetan culture where the secular and the sacred are closely interwoven (and this misappreciation is probably the most terrible mistake of the Chinese politicians). Since the launching of the « Development Plan of the West » in the 2000s, the already strict control of the monasteries and religious practice got worse (for example, interference of the State in designating the highest religious instances, forbidding the Tibetan civil servants to have an altar in their house, up to them and the school goers to participate in religious activities and festivals, ban on celebrating some feasts, etc.). At the same time, Beijing’s wariness towards « splittist » Tibetans turned into a paranoia, triggering an outbreak of attacks against the Dalai Lama, stretching the ban on having his photo in Tibetan regions outside TAR (the guilty are arrested and incur prison sentence of at least three years) and the multiplication of the compulsory sessions of political re-education, not only in the monasteries but for the laymen and, since the March events, for the Tibetan civil servants; sessions during which each person should sign a paper condemning the Dalai Lama and affirming membership of Tibet to the « motherland». An unexpected consequence of this ideological brainwashing is perhaps having aroused in the Tibetans, who perceive themselves so different from the Chinese, a political conscience they were lacking: we are witnessing a national unity formation, bringing together – around the emblematic figure of the Dalai Lama – the Tibetans of the center and the east, often antagonistic during the course of history. The best example that we can give of it is that of demonstrators in the Tibetan East, marching with the Tibetan flag, bringing down the Chinese flag to replace it with the Tibetan flag, a flag created under the reign of the thirteenth Dalai Lama during which the separatist trends of the oriental provinces had provoked sometimes violent conflicts with the government of Lhasa.

The Chinese Development Plan of the West has also aggravated the frustrations of the Tibetans in the social and cultural domain. The adoption of a liberal economic system by China has resulted in the removal of the free health system for the Tibetans; henceforth access to hospital is for a fee, just like medicines, often beyond their means. New academic expenses prevent many families to send their children to school. The worry over economic efficiency has even more reduced the share of the Tibetan language in the education system– from the middle school the medium of instruction is Chinese, like in the only Tibetan university, at Lhasa – and in the administration. Most of the rural Tibetans do not speak Chinese and feel they are becoming strangers in their own cities. Especially as these attract the Chinese migrants who take away all the jobs there, including small jobs (cycle-taxis, tailors…) that the Tibetans – on the whole without any professional training – could do. Added to this is the anger of the displaced and expropriated villagers (for example during the construction of the Lhasa’s rail way), pastoral and nomadic populations, particularly numerous in the Tibetan East, whose Chinese authorities have authoritatively closed the pastures, thus banning the circuits of traditional nomadisation, and who are vigorously incited to settle down but who are being rehoused in tiny cement shacks, built in a hurry in the suburbs of the cities, without being offered any job. Consequently, some populations that provided for their needs through agriculture and breeding come to add to the urban sub-proletariat.

One could continue to make a list of the Chinese politicians’ mistakes in Tibet, which endangers the very survival of the Tibetan culture. We will provide only one example: a lot of contemporary young Tibetan writers, trained in China, do not know how to write in their language and write in Chinese. Will the recent upheavals lead the Chinese government to lend its ears to the Tibetan claims and modify its policy? One can be doubtful of it, given the brutality of the repression; besides, even « a wide cultural autonomy» like the Dalai Lama claims seems unthinkable because it would open the floodgates of the claims of the other « national minorities », Ouighours and Mongolians at the lead. One must also take into account the weight of the Chinese public opinion, united in an impressive nationalist fervor, which saw only pictures of the Tibetan demonstrations, broadcast in a loop film by the official television, of their compatriots attacked at Lhasa, and who are shocked by the « ungratefulness» of the Tibetans to whom, they are said, China has brought liberty and progress. The peoples' right for self-determination seems, alas, to be far from being granted to the Tibetans.

© 2005 : F. Robin

On the Tibetan crisis
by Jean-Luc Domenach
Research Director at Sciences-Po Paris ²

The crisis in Tibet and about Tibet last March and April calls for two types of comments from a specialist in Chinese politics: the first on the terrible story of the Chinese domination from the 1950s, which is an essential key; and the second, on the tactlessness of the Westerners and the Chinese during the recent months as well as on the difficulty in making assumptions for development.

One thing is clear: since 1950, the Communist authorities’ policy has incessantly contradicted the story that they make of it, since, precisely, it has treated Tibet like a difference to be destroyed, not like a part of the Chinese world. The research I did on the work camps and political violence in China makes Tibet appear to be literally crushed by the Communist authorities until the end of the 1970s ³. Afterwards, the Chinese repression was brought down, but the problem got even more aggravated. In fact, while the Tibetans have partially regained control of their cult and customs, they have hardly strengthened their economic and social influence. The Chinese colonists, for their part, with the economic development, settled down in increasing numbers while the idea that Tibet was only just a charming tourist oddity spread in the Chinese cities. Moreover, colonists and tourists were henceforth transported to Lhasa by a train that marked the empire of modernity.

The Chinese authorities could therefore estimate their power, which was once essentially political and military, was both completed and consolidated by extending itself to more modern domains of the economy, demography and even tourism. While the preparation of the Olympic Games turned them like a cat on a hot tin roof, it is more the dissidents and the Uyghur people that they feared: their delay in reacting to the 10^th March riots can be partly explained in this way. They had not understood that, precisely, their colonial triumph put the Tibetans in a desperate situation that restrained them from acting. Then, their late reaction was all the more hard given the fact that Beijing did not dare to contradict the Lhasa authorities, at least for three series of reasons: the need to not encourage other dissident minorities, the importance of the nationalist wave in the country and the uneasiness, not to say more, between reformist central power and number of predator provincial powers, indeed even the Army itself sometimes.

History–and the Tibetologists- will say what has been the control channel on the Tibetan side. Threatened with being crushed, they chose riot and martyrdom, therefore internationalization of their cause. But, all at once, they lost partial control of it, which was tapped by foreign sympathizers: a variable nebula of press people, militants of human rights, sympathizers of Buddhism and members of modern elite who proved to be very efficient to begin with. In effect, on the one hand it had influence on the media and political undercurrents of a democratic society. On the other hand and especially, it leaned heavily on the brutality of the Beijing authorities’ repression. Now this brought out a series of aspects with varying accuracy: China was using the Olympic Games for its nationalist gain (true) ; it had not applied its ‘promise’ on human rights (partly true because it had promised nothing, it is the IOC that had believed to have heard the promises) ; and it remained a ‘totalitarian’ regime (false). A both useless and clumsy verbosity was thus formed –since China remained mistress of the Tibetan terrain – and insulting to a Chinese population that knows precisely what is better now than before (and also, besides, what still remains bad).

But amongst the Chinese leaders, while they had the possibility of making the most of their enemies’ errors, they displayed a political rigidity and a language vulgarity that we were no longer aware of since the 4 June 1989 massacre: insulting the Dalai Lama, tarnishing the reputation of his followers, threatening Western governments moved by the Tibetan cause, using a Mussolini-style vocabulary, and refusing to own some part of the responsibility. As it happens, because of not having foreseen the Sino phobia wave in the West, Beijing exaggerated it and took the major risk of supporting nationalist ground swell that is affecting the country since a decade. This support was pushed to an innovation which must have made the Prime Minister Zhou Enlai turn in his grave: the support, not to say more, following nationalist initiatives of Chinese overseas associations abroad, of which are demonstrations in Berlin, London and Paris. Zhou Enlai, had on the contrary left a slogan for the overseas Chinese « do not assert yourselves » (bu yao chutou)…

Beyond these relatively simple and known elements, there are two series of uncertainties for me. First of all, on the sequence of events. On the Tibetan side, we note that new aptitudes surface, both tactical–make the most of the Olympic Games approach and repeated tactlessness of Beijing since the beginning of the year – and organizational–communicate calls for the mobilization of the center in the different peripheries of Tibet. But one doesn’t really know if the Dalai Lama was consulted or not, to what extent the Tibetan plan of activities overtakes the claim for autonomy, and how much an accord negotiated with the Chinese authorities–which would obviously involve painful concessions- could prove to be applicable.

The uncertainties are a lot greater on the Chinese side. First of all, how the devil were the leaders of such a big country able to put Liu Qi, one of the most discredited men of the old Jiang Zemin team, at the head of the Chinese organization committee? As long as this character will remain in place, one has to expect new tactlessness… Then, the uncertainties concern the Chinese occupation authorities’ attitude at Lhasa. They were surprised: what was the use of their thousand indicators? Their reaction was at first weak, then violent: why? And how was it that they were so violent verbally? All these uncertainties converge on a central issue: in this quasi colonial situation, will Beijing (Paris) still be capable of refuting Lhasa (Algiers) ? Not sure, especially as, like we know it, Hu Jintao has ruled Tibet in the 1980s. On the other hand, the clever standpoint of the central authorities after the earthquake could be interpreted as Lhasa authorities being refuted…

Behind these uncertainties linked to the present economic climate, there is a question, a lot more fundamental in nature, which is that of the link between law and force. China pays heavily for its contempt for people’s rights, but Tibet pays for its deficit in force. Am I mistaken? I have the feeling that beyond the wavering sympathy that Tibet inspires in the West, it will for a long time remain weak. Therefore it has to be counted on an intrinsic change in China, and in particular on the formation of a rule of law at Beijing. For the moment, this development is beginning to emerge, but it is a long time coming …