For China, settling the boundary dispute with India is an issue motivated by several caveats.
First, as part of its ‘periphery’ policy it has concluded boundary agreements with most of its
neighbors excepting Bhutan and India. Unless a border demarcation agreement is signed with India, its ‘periphery’ policy cannot be termed a success. Second, for both countries – especially India -‐ the 1962 conflict is a template of national vulnerability. The spate of recent articles in the Indian media on the fiftieth anniversary of the war with China seems to reiterate and reinforce this vulnerability more than ever. Third, to China, an undefined border to its south is an anomaly. Its swift victory in the 1962 war with India did not lead to a border agreement – rather it pushed an eventual settlement to the indeterminate future. Fourth, to the leadership in Beijing, as long as the boundary dispute persists, it has to pander to the influential voice of the military on relations with India. Fifth, China’s geographical insecurities regarding Tibet will remain as long as the Sino-‐Indian border is not demarcated. To quote Zhao Gancheng, leading expert on South Asian security at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies:
China has accomplished the demarcation work with most land neighbors except India and Bhutan. After, decades long efforts, China has achieved progress with far-‐reaching significance in its periphery which will impact the security situation in the region, and also the stability in China’s border areas.
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Tibet and the Dalai Lama
The primary connective to the boundary issue is the question of Tibet and China’s unrelenting propaganda and vicious personal attacks on the Dalai Lama.22 The Tibet issue from the outset has been closely related to China’s relations with India. 23 It could be stated that ‘Tibet’ is an
‘overlap’ issue involving China and India with the Tibetans making up an important third vertex.
Unlike the boundary dispute where a politico-‐institutional mechanism (however incipient and stodgy) in the form of the Special Representatives is in place, there are no ‘official’ frameworks between India and China to discuss Tibet and Tibetan issues. China would not countenance the existence of such a theme in its bilateral relations with India and India has been unsuccessful in convincing China that it indeed has no hidden agenda or levers to play as regards the Tibet issue.
Tibet is not only a politico-‐strategic problem for China but also one with contesting political
Intractability of Territorial Conflict” International Studies Review (Storrs, CT), Vol.5, No.4, December 2003, pp.137-‐
53.
21 Zhao Gancheng, “Features and Changes of Geopolitical Situation in China’s Periphery” Foreign Affairs Journal
(CPIFA, Beijing), Issue 91, Spring 2009, p. 87.
22 During the 2008 riots, Zhang Qingli, Party Secretary for the TAR, had described the Dalai Lama as a “wolf wrapped in monk’s robes, a devil with a human face and a best’s heart.” For the Party Secretary of Tibet to say this indicates Beijing’s attitude towards the Dalai Lama.
23 Chen Jian, “The Tibetan Rebellion of 1959 and China’s Changing Relations with India and the Soviet Union,”
Journal of Cold War Studies (Cambridge: MA), Vol. 8, No. 3, Summer 2006, p.100.
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narratives since the conflict over Tibet’s status is a conflict over history.24 By seeking to constantly build an ‘internal political fence’ around the Tibet issue, China would want the rest of the world to ignore the impact Tibet’s occupation had on the collective conscience of the world in 1959. Although largely forgotten today, even the United Nations had passed resolutions that touched upon Tibet’s right to self-‐determination.25
For China’s political leadership and intellectual elite, the mere questioning of the legitimacy of Tibet’s incorporation with China is akin to challenging the very acceptability of the idea that is the PRC as constructed by the CCP.26 Even Chiang Kai-‐shek’s Nationalist government – the Kuomintang (KMT) -‐ had at one time “sought to use military force to settle the long-‐standing Tibetan question for good and thereby bring the de facto independent Tibetan territory into China’s effective jurisdiction.”27 The version China wants the rest of the world to accept, as regards Tibet, is a ‘political product’ that celebrates Han sovereignty over Tibetan – negating cultural and ethnic determinants to place ‘political’ triumphalism at the forefront.28 To the CCP, Tibet’s long theocratic tradition coupled with the charismatic appeal of the current Dalai Lama is at one level an ideological conundrum where religious sanction (‘spiritual’) coexists with political legitimacy (‘temporal’). It has been pointed out that the appeal of Tibetan Buddhism as religious anchor to a society that has battled ideological campaigns in the past and rapid modernity in the contemporary period is an aspect the party cannot countenance. 29
For China, control over its land borders is demonstrative of the territorial integrity of the country and two parallel realities – generating internal legitimacy for the CCP and projecting China externally as a sovereign country.30 The recurrent influence of Tibet in an overall bilateral perspective especially since the March 2008 riots in Lhasa and other parts of Tibet could in the
24 Elliot Sperling, “The Tibet-‐China Conflict: History and Polemics,” Policy Studies 7, East-‐West Center, Washington,D.C, 2004, p.3
25 See United Nations General Assembly, “Question of Tibet” Res. 1723 (XVI Session), 1085th Plenary Meeting, 20 December 1961. Accessible at:
http://daccess-‐dds-‐ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/167/76/IMG/NR016776.pdf?OpenElement (Accessed on 22 November 2011)
26 Elliot Sperling, Ibid., p.5.
27 Lin Hsiao-‐ting, “War or Strategem? Reassessing China’s Military Advance towards Tibet, 1942-‐1943” The China Quarterly (London). No.186, June 2006, p.446.
28 Carole McGranahan, “Tibet’s Cold War: The CIA and the Chushi Gangdrug Resistance, 1956–1974” Journal of Cold War Studies (Cambridge, MA), Vol. 8, No. 3, Summer 2006, p. 128.
29 Yueh-‐Ting Lee and Hong Li, “Spiritual Beliefs and Ethnic Relations in China: A Cross Cultural and Social Psychological Perspective” in Zhiqun Zhu (ed.) The People’s Republic of China Today: Internal and External Challenges (Singapore: World Scientific, 2011) p.252.
30 Chien-‐peng Chung, Domestic Politics, International Bargaining and China’s Territorial Disputes (London:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p.2.
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near to middle term be a factor exercising strains in bilateral relations. In the near future, the choosing of a spiritual successor to the Dalai Lama could also test the Sino-‐Indian relationship as both countries are stakeholders in this dispute.
The complexity of the Tibet issue has intensified with the Dalai Lama recently declaring that the
“Tibetans need a leader, elected freely by the Tibetan people, to whom I can devolve power.”31 In his annual address to the Tibetan Parliament in exile on 14 March 2011 he further stated his desire to “devolve formal authority to …an elected leadership,” and seeking to be “completely relieved of formal authority.”32 This announcement by the Dalai Lama has cleared the way for Lobsang Sangay,33 an alumnus of the Harvard Law School to become the popularly elected Prime Minister of the Tibetan government in exile based in Dharamsala, India. As head of government he will marshal the popular will of the Tibetan community in exile while the Dalai Lama will remain the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and faith.34
Politically this subtle transition is not going to influence China’s attitude towards the Tibet issue, but it does create an institutional platform for negotiations to be conducted in the future. The Dalai Lama’s astute decision to hand over political power to an elected leadership is a challenge to China as the ‘exile parliament’ will function independently of Beijing and in the future will importantly have a say in choosing the next Dalai Lama, thereby reducing Beijing’s influence on the process.35 It is for Beijing to acknowledge that the Tibet issue does have a political solution, if handled with sensitivity – and that solution lies within the capabilities of Beijing’s polity.
Dialogue is the best way to ensure an accommodation and not whole sale repression of a people politically and culturally.36 Beijing (represented by the United Front Work Department of
31 “Legal Issues Implicated by the Dalai Lama’s Devolution of Power,” Memorandum prepared by the Tibet Justice Center, May 2011, p.4. Available at: http://www.tibetjustice.org/dalailamadevolution/DevolutionMemo.pdf (Accessed on 22 August 2011)
32 Ibid., p.4.
33 Lobsang Sangay is the first Tibetan to earn the Doctor of Laws (SJD) from the Harvard Law School. His dissertation was titled Democracy in Distress: Is Exile Polity a Remedy? A Case Study of Tibet’s Government in Exile 34 In an interview to a popular Indian weekly, Lobsang Sangay made an interesting observation. “Before 1959, there was a border between India and Tibet, and there was no requirement for such kind of huge defence budget (for India).” See Ashish Kumar Sen’s Interview with Lobsang Sangay, Kalon Tripa (Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government in Exile), Outlook (New Delhi), 16 May 2011.
35 Robert Barnett, “The Dalai Lama’s ‘Deception:’ Why a Seventeenth –Century Decree Matters to Beijing” The New York Review of Books, 6 April 2011.
36 The sensitivity shown by Beijing towards Tibet also extends to the internet and a landmark initiative by Wang Lixiong, prominent Chinese intellectual on Tibet to conduct an internet dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Chinese citizens on 21 May 2010, generated 282 questions, till the authorities stepped in and the Google Moderator web page was shut down by Chinese internet censors. See, Perry Link, “Talking About Tibet: An Open Dialogue Between Chinese Citizens and the Dalai Lama,” The New York Review of Books Blog, 24 May 2010.
Available at:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/may/24/talking-‐about-‐tibet (Accessed on 14 October 2011)
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the CCP) and Tibetan representatives do have channels of communication and have been meeting each other since 2002. Even after the 2008 riots in Tibet the two sides had met in November of that year where the Tibetans had put forward a “memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People” – a proposal that called for genuine autonomy for Tibetans within the parameters of the PRC’s constitution.37 China has ignored this proposal as it does not want any concessions given to the Tibetans to be interpreted by the restive Uighurs of Xinjiang to make similar, if not more demands. Unlike the Tibetans, the Uighurs have been waging a sporadic but violent campaign against Beijing.
The ‘democratic’ hue to the Tibetan government in exile will also (it is hoped) deflect Beijing’s propaganda about the “Dalai clique” being representative of a feudal, exploitative structure that encouraged serfdom and thrived on superstition. By attacking the person of the Dalai Lama, Beijing has only contributed to making the Dalai Lama and his cause more celebrated. To quote Wang Lixiong: