Glyn Ford says reaching an accommodation with the Dalai Lama may be China’s best approach in Tibet
BY ALL measures, Tibet’s economy is booming. Over the past 30 years, its growth rate has outstripped the rest of China – 10.4 per cent to 9.8 per cent, year on year. The result is that the vast majority of the population have been pulled out of deep poverty where they lived on less than a euro (approximately 78p) a day.
Simultaneously, there has been massive investment in soft and hard infrastructure, with the central government picking up 93 per cent of the bill. Education has been expanded from virtually nothing in 1951, when the Communists took over, to 92 per cent of the population completing the nine-year education programme. A new university campus for 9,000 students has just opened. Healthcare has improved.
In addition, the Qinghai-Lhasa railway has opened, making Tibet the last province of China to join the network. Many new roads have been built and a new airport is planned for western Tibet.
Yet the new prosperity has been as much of a problem as a solution. While indigenous Tibetans have done well, incoming Han Chinese have done better in terms of incomes, jobs and status. Equally, the social structures of centuries have been broken and this has led to many young people becoming alienated, rootless and under-employed in urban areas.
All this is coupled with a government-in-exile demanding autonomy in the name of the Dalai Lama. As far as the Tibetan Youth Congress is concerned, that translates as independence.
March 14, the anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight to India in 1959. This year, that date, conveniently close to the Beijing Olympics, saw organised and initially peaceful demonstrations by monks rapidly turn into “race riots”. Up to 10,000 people, mainly young Tibetans, joined in, taking to the streets of Lhasa and burning shops, cars, schools and hospitals. One wonders what many of these fashion-conscious and street-wise young people think they have in common with the ultra-traditionalists in exile – except for a dislike of China.
The main targets of the demonstrators were the Han Chinese and the Muslims whose shops and residential areas were attacked. One of Lhasa’s two mosques was damaged. In the ensuing mayhem, 18 people died, including three Tibetans and one policeman. As many as 400 others were injured, as ambulance and fire services were prevented from reaching victims and blazing buildings.
The response from the security authorities was uncompromising. The rioters were driven back off the streets of Lhasa and all the other towns and cities in Tibet and in other provinces with high Tibetan populations. More than 360 people were arrested and 170 names were placed on a wanted list. Officially, no one was killed, but the word on the streets of Lhasa is that several dozen people lost their lives.
At the same time, the Dalai Lama panicked, as events seemed to be spinning out of control. He called for an end to the violence with the threat of his resignation – it was not entirely clear from what – if he was not obeyed. This almost certainly helped to defuse the situation and his desire for calm was matched by the Chinese government’s desire for a smooth run-up to August’s Olympics.
Now Lhasa remains outwardly calm. But the tension is palpable, with the numbers of police on the streets and checkpoints in the centre of town. People are scared. On my recent visit, only one of three Han Chinese taxi drivers we asked was prepared to take us to Barkhor in the centre of the Tibetan area of town in the evening. Meanwhile, the teaching monasteries have been temporarily closed and the monks sent home.
The extent of the damage is still obvious with burned-out shops punctuating many of Lhasa’s streets. We were shown Lhasa’s Number Two Middle School, where two major buildings have been burned down and where demolition is underway to allow for rebuilding.
The direct economic cost of all the devastation is estimated at more than £25 million. Yet this is inconsequential compared to the indirect costs. Growth and investment in Tibet have halved this year, while the number of tourists has dropped by two-thirds, as Han Chinese are frightened and Westerners forbidden. Interestingly and in contrast, the Jokhang Temple, one of Tibetan Buddhism’s two most holy sites, is seeing a boom in business, with pilgrims thronging around it.
If China has filled the pockets – to a degree – of Tibetans, it clearly hasn’t captured their hearts and minds. They look to Tibet’s aristocrats in exile in India for solutions. What is necessary is a meaningful autonomy for Tibet that allows its people to make their own decisions, within some kind of national framework, on education and culture, low-level policing and future immigration that goes beyond what they are currently allowed. For example, at university, Tibetans should be able to study subjects such as medicine, physics and chemistry in their own language, while schools such as the Number Two Middle School should not have four to six hours of compulsory Chinese for its Tibetan classes and two hours of English and no Tibetan for its Han Chinese pupils.
Although the Chinese won’t want to hear it, the Dalai Lama may be their last, best hope for a peaceful resolution in Tibet. Biology and politics are conspiring against them. While the Dalai Lama seems to be in excellent health, he is now in his 70s. Also, the lack of progress over what will be 50 years of self-imposed exile next year means that the nationalist Tibetans in the Tibetan Youth Congress – many of whom have never been to Tibet – are losing patience. This time, the Dalai Lama was able to exert his authority, but that will not always be the case.
China’s military believes the three biggest threats the country faces are secessionism, extremism and terrorism. Two of these are already present in Tibet and the third will surely follow unless the current stalemate is ended.
At the Dalai Lama’s summer palace complex of Norbulingka in Lhasa, there is a wall painting of the history of creation. Its Darwinian overtones of monkeys being transformed through labour into men would appal Middle America, but its final frame is a portrayal of the 1956 meeting of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama with Mao Zedong in Beijing. Perhaps it is time for China’s current leadership to meet the Dalai Lama and make him an offer he would be unwise to refuse if he wants to stay on the right side of international opinion.
Glyn Ford is Labour MEP for South West England. He recently returned from a four-day visit to Lhasa – the first by a Western politician since the events of March 14
