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Five questions on the Tibetan issue

Question 1: Why do the Chinese people doubt the sincerity of Dalai Lama’s suggestion for “genuine autonomy” of Tibet within China?

One of the main reasons is that the Dalai Lama refuses to recognise Tibet has been part of China for several hundred years. The issue of “Tibet independence” began emerging in the beginning of the 20th century, but in the last one hundred years there was no sovereign state recognising Tibet as an independent country. It was not because China was influential, but because the historical evidences were strong.

This is the key question. If you don’t recognise Tibet was part of China before 1951, then the logical consequence would be like this: the action of the People’s Liberation Amy in 1951 was an illegal aggression; Tibet now is an “occupied country”; the Dalai Lama has been forced to agree that Tibet can be within China; and, finally, Tibetans have the definite right to declare Tibet independence when the opportunity comes in the future. However, if you recognise that Tibet was part of China, then whatever happens in Tibet is the internal affair of China, and Tibet independence cannot be the solution. Actually, some important Tibetans in exile openly said their strategy was that the “genuine autonomy” would be the first step and independence would follow some time later.

Question 2: Why does China refuse to recognise the massive human rights violation in Tibet as some international media declared?

Because the Chinese government has made great efforts to improve the living conditions of the people in Tibet. Due to its unique geographic factors, Tibet is a harsh place for human beings to live. Almost all the people who have lived in Tibet for years agree that the basic human right in Tibet is the right to live. A census by the Tibetan regional government in 1953 showed the population at that time was one million. The latest census showed that the population in Tibet reached 2.8 million by the end of 2007. And statistics also show that the average life expectancy of Tibetans was 35.5 years in the 1950s and now it is 67.

Question 3: Why does China refuse to recognise that there is no religious freedom in Tibet as some international media declared?

If religious freedom means lamas can shout slogans for Tibet independence and throw stones in the streets, yes, there is no such freedom in any part of China. We admit that in the time of the so-called Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, religious activities were severely restricted in Tibet. However, it was not a unique phenomenon that took place only in Tibet. All of China was in chaos during that period of time. Just like the Han Red Guards destroyed numerous temples and churches all over China, the Tibetan Red Guards damaged many monasteries in Tibet.

However, the situation has fundamentally changed since 1980. Now Tibet has more than 1,700 monasteries that accommodate 46,000 monks and nuns who can fulfil their religious duties without any interference. The so-called Prime Minister of the “Tibetan Government-in-Exile” is a lama and he recently said: “They [the Chinese Government] have even restricted the number of monks being admitted to monasteries. My monastery in Tibet had 8,000 monks, but now the number is just 4,000.” In his opinion 4,000 monks are not enough for a monastery. But in the opinion of many objective Tibetan scholars, the extraordinary big number of monks and lamas in the past, which sometimes even accounted for more than one-quarter of all the Tibetan male population, was one of the main reasons why Tibetans as an ethnic group became weak over the last several hundred of years.

Question 4: Why did Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao say the accusation by the Dalai Lama that China is engaged “cultural genocide” in Tibet is nothing but a lie?

Again let’s see the facts and figures. Before 1951, less than 2 per cent of Tibetan children went to school and the illiteracy rate among young and middle-aged adults was 95 per cent in Tibet. Now the illiteracy rate has dropped to 4.8 per cent of the same age group and the overall rate of illiteracy in Tibet is below 30 per cent. Over the past two decades, the central and local governments have allocated around $100 million for the preservation and maintenance of historical and cultural relics in Tibet. A sentimental question that has been quite often raised by Dharamsala is about Chinese language education in Tibet. Honestly, if you want to make Tibet a modern society, Chinese language education is something unavoidable. The Tibetan language is rich in religion and culture, but is not much developed in science and technology. It lacks a modern vocabulary. The Tibetan rulers in the past should have taken the responsibility for this fact. There was no Tibetan language dictionary until 1949 and the first one in history was compiled not by Tibetans themselves but by a Mongolian scholar born in Russia. Now bilateral linguistic education has become common in Tibet. Young Tibetans in China love to learn the Chinese language just as those in Dharamsala love to learn English for whatever reason.

Question 5: Why is ‘Greater Tibet’ not acceptable to China?

In a hall of the so-called “Tibetan Government-in-Exile” in Dharamsala, there is a large map of the supposed Greater Tibet. The area of ‘Greater Tibet’ covers the Tibet Autonomous Region, the whole of Qinghai Province, a half of Sichuan Province, one-third of Gansu Province, one-fourth of Yunnan Province, and one-fifth of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. It spans about 2.4 million square kilometres, nearly one quarter of China’s territory.

The Dalai Lama has advocated a “high degree of autonomy” for Tibet in such a geographic scope and made it a preliminary condition for any negotiation with the central government. Anybody who has a basic knowledge of the history of China would point out that there is no historical basis at all for an administrative division such as a ‘Greater Tibet.’ The Dalai Lama himself was born in a remote village in Eastern Qinghai. In those days, a Muslim warlord named Ma Bufang ruled Qinghai Province and the Dalai Lama could not even go to Lhasa as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama without permission from Ma.

More significantly, for several hundred years different ethnic groups have been living together in most of the areas that Dharamsala wants to be included in ‘Greater Tibet.’ For example, in 1949, when New China was just founded, Qinghai Province had a Tibetan population of 438,000, but Han Chinese were more than 700,000. According to the memory of a Chinese governmental official who attended the enthronement ceremony of the 14th Dalai Lama in Lhasa in 1940, the Dalai Lama’s father could not speak the Tibetan language well but spoke Qinghai dialect of Chinese language quite fluently.

(The writer is the Consul General of China in Kolkata.)

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