CHINESE fury at the Tibetan riots last week in Lhasa reflects the immense emotional as well as financial investment Beijing has made in the anticipated success of the Olympics this August.
In a country where loss of face is considered a serious matter, the international reaction to the authorities’ apparently harsh response to the riots is causing despair as well as anger. Talk of a boycott of the Olympics by countries protesting, not just the way in which the unrest has been handled, but even China’s annexation of Tibet following its 1949 invasion, will understandably be causing considerable concern to the Chinese government.
Yet the vehemence with which senior figures have denounced the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama — one called him “a wolf in monk’s robes, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast “ — is a mistake that is likely to increase rather than ease an already tense situation. Such a robust denunciation does not play well in international community that in the last 59 years has only heard the Dalai Lama speak in sadness rather than anger about what has happened to his countrymen. Indeed his threat Tuesday to step down as their spiritual leader if radical Tibetans now reject his peaceful “middle way”, further undermines Beijing’s attempt to characterize him as the instigator of the violence. The Dalai Lama has even condemned the idea that the fate of Tibet, even after the latest violence, should be used as a reason for any country to boycott the Beijing Olympics.
What is so puzzling is that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his administration did not long ago anticipate the possibility of unrest in Tibet in the run-up to the Games. The simple expedient would have reopened talks with the Dalai Lama earlier this year, certainly well before last week’s 59th anniversary of the Chinese takeover, in the expectation that Tibetans would wait hopefully to see if there might be any progress.
It is equally odd that Beijing analysts have not recognized that the Dalai Lama represents the best chance of a negotiated end to the deep division between Tibetan and Chinese societies. By ignoring him, they have fostered radicals who reject their leader’s policy of nonviolence and thus made a rod for their own backs, at the very moment when they want the world to be focusing on their remarkable preparations for the Olympics.
Perhaps the hope has been that the 73-year-old Tibetan leader would soon die and the challenge he presents would die with him. Unfortunately a likely disputed succession over who will be discovered to be the reincarnated and 15th Dalai Lama will surely lead to more, not less unrest in Tibet. This Dalai Lama, therefore, offers the best chance of a successful accommodation of both Chinese and Tibetan aspirations in Tibet. It may still not be too late to reverse Beijing’s uncompromising attitude to the old man and mollify world opinion. To press on with the present tough approach will surely only make matters worse.
