Contemporary Tibet

Politics, Development and Society in a Disputed Region

Barry Sautman, June Teufel Dreyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780765613578
• eBook ISBN: 9781315289991
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

The subject of Tibet is highly controversial, and Tibet, as a political entity, is defined differently from source to source and audience to audience. The editors of this path-breaking, multidisciplinary study have gathered some of the leading scholars in Tibetan and ethnic studies to provide a comprehensive analysis of the Tibet question. "Contemporary Tibet" explores essential themes and issues concerning modern Tibet. It presents fresh material from various political viewpoints and data from original surveys and field research. The contributors consider such topics as representations and sovereignty, economic development and political conditions, the exile movement and human rights, historical legacies and international politics, identity issues and the local society. The individual chapters provide historical background as well as a general framework to examine Tibet's present situation in world politics, the relationship with China and the West, and prospects for the future.

1
Introduction

The Tibet Question in Contemporary Perspective

Barry Sautman and June Teufel Dreyer

Contemporary Tibet¹ is the subject of one of the world's longest running ethno-territorial conflicts, dating from just after the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949. Virtually every aspect of state-society interaction in Tibet has been contested by the principal parties—the Tibetan exiles led by the Dalai Lama and the PRC government led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).² It is this "Tibet Question" that links the essays in the present volume, most of which are revised and updated versions of papers presented on panels at international conferences on Asian studies or political science held in North America from 1999 to 2001.

There have been intermittent expectations of formal negotiations between the principal parties to the Tibet Question, but their zero-sum view of Tibet's political status, harsh recriminations, and mutual suspicion have been persistent obstacles. The participation of other actors has also had an effect. Foreign states acknowledge that Tibet is part of China and none formally recognizes the Tibet government-in-exile (TGIE), yet a number of states sustain the exile cause in other ways. Thousands of "Tibet supporters" have also rallied to it, including members of parliaments, rights activists, actors, musicians, and ordinary converts to Tibetan Buddhism in the West. Scholars have also begun to influence debates about the Tibet Question. The present volume is a contribution to that trend, one that will likely continue for some time because, as the Dalai Lama has observed, a political solution to the Tibet Question is still far off.³

The conflict over Tibet has above all been about its political status. As with many sovereignty disputes, the seas of ink spilled in polemics over historic claims have not formed an ocean of wisdom. That is because, as our contributor Wang Lixiong often argues, it is anachronistic to use modern political and legal standards to judge pre-modern Tibet's relationship with China.⁴ As with other disputes, moreover, Tibet's status cannot be resolved mainly through assertions of priority of possession or rule, which is seldom straightforward. Exercises of actual and symbolic authority and the attitude of the international community have proved to be more relevant to framing and settling the sovereignty aspects of such conflicts.⁵

Many of our contributors have previously produced works on salient historical issues,⁶ allowing us to focus on matters of contemporary concern. In the present volume, several contributors (Dibyesh Anand, Robbie Barnett, He Baogang, Wang Lixiong) deal with the status and governing of Tibet. Other contested areas examined by chapters herein include economic development (June Teufel Dreyer, Melvyn Goldstein, Hu Xiaojiang and Manuel Salazar, Dawa Norbu), population (Barry Sautman), religion (Yu Changjiang), the role of external powers (A. Tom Grunfeld, Xu Mingxu and Yuan Feng), and representations of the Tibet Question itself (Christiaan Klieger, Amy Mountcastle).

The Issues: Binaries and Beyond

The debate about Tibet is often framed in binaries, but varied views do exist within the two camps on key issues, such as how Tibet relates to China's prospective political development. Many exiles argue that independence is attainable because China, like the former Soviet Union, will disintegrate due to economic and social problems.⁷ Among advocates of independence are some who "propose the use of all means, violent if necessary" to achieve it.⁸ From the early to late 1990s, the Dalai Lama also foresaw the PRC's collapse,⁹ but did not support violence to hasten this result. He no longer speaks of the possibility of collapse,¹⁰ hoping instead that "China will become more open and eventually more democratic" and that this change will lead to an offer of expanded autonomy for Tibet.¹¹ By the same token, some PRC officials contend that the exile cause will recede when the Dalai Lama passes on and development transforms Tibetan society,¹² while others hold that these changes will not end the dispute.¹³

The two sides' judgments of each other's staying power affect not only their "negotiations about negotiations," but also a range of PRC policies and the exiles' reactions to them. For example, the PRC would not likely invest the billions of dollars it has put into building a railway into central Tibet, across hundreds of kilometers of the world's most difficult terrain,¹⁴ if it believed its hold on the region were shaky; nor would the exiles criticize the railroad as sharply as they have if they were convinced that Tibet (and the railroad with it) were soon to be theirs.¹⁵ Internal disaccord thus often determines policy as much as do the differences between the two sides. That being said, the principal parties have evinced sharp and longstanding—although not necessarily unbridgeable—differences on many matters. As one of our contributors, Melvyn Goldstein, has said elsewhere, "Both sides have expended an enormous amount of time and effort to spread their representations of past history and contemporary politics, the result being diametrically opposed constructions of reality."¹⁶ The contrasting positions of the parties as to the most significant issues can be briefly introduced as background to the chapters that follow.

Status and Governance

Tibetan exiles maintain that for the past 2,000 years Tibet has always been an independent political entity,¹⁷ while the PRC contends that Tibet has been part of China since the Yuan dynasty of the thirteenth century.¹⁸ The two sides have quarreled over this historical issue more than any other matter, with the debate aiming at mobilizing support, rather than arriving at a common ground. A resolution of the historical dispute is not, however, the make or break matter it is often portrayed to be: neither side explicitly demands that the other accept its view of history as a precondition to negotiations. Some exiled leaders, such as the Dalai Lama's eldest brother, do hold that the consequence of asserting the past independence of Tibet is not only that Tibet is an occupied state, but also that its independence must be regained.¹⁹ The Dalai Lama also holds that Tibet was independent before 1951, but argues that the matter of its past status should be left "up to historians and up to legal experts" and that "We accept Tibet as part of the People's Republic of China."²⁰ The PRC has accused the Dalai Lama of "mak[ing] false propaganda of Tibetan history" and sometimes cites his claim that Tibet has always been sovereign as evidence that he has not abandoned the goal of independence. It does not, however, require that he renounce his view of Tibet's history in order for negotiations to begin.²¹

If the Tibet Question's principal parties were to set aside their dispute about Tibet's historical relationship with China and agree, in some fashion, that Tibet is part of China, it would not mean that they concur on the consequences this has for governance in Tibet. The Dalai Lama seeks "genuine autonomy" for Tibet in cultural, religious, economic, environmental, and educational affairs.²² He has also proposed a "one country, two systems" relation with the PRC,²³ based on a high degree of political autonomy, with a multiparty system and direct elections. Because it would obviate the CCP's leading role,²⁴ the PRC opposes for Tibet the model it supports for Hong Kong and Macao²⁵ and maintains that the Tibetan exiles want this arrangement as "a disguised independence of Tibet, a gradual progression to independence."²⁶

Development

While the Dalai Lama has stated that "all Tibetans want more prosperity, more material development,"²⁷ Tibetan exiles and Tibet support organizations criticize development in Tibet as primarily benefiting the Chinese state and Han migrants, whether permanent or temporary, to the region.²⁸ At the same time, Tibetans are impoverished²⁹ even as their environment is irreparably damaged.³⁰ They argue that the PRC government carries out development in Tibet with little regard for the views of Tibetans, and that the PRC treasury profits from Tibet through state enterprises, such as in mining and timber, that operate in Tibet. Infrastructure in Tibet, it is argued, is constructed to facilitate military operations and the central government's exploitation of resources, while most Tibetans, who are peasants and herders, are shut out of development or at least have benefited from it much less than Han Chinese migrants to Tibetan areas.

The PRC government contends that it sustains a net loss from Tibetan areas because it heavily subsidizes infrastructure development and government services, including more than 90 percent of the annual budget of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).³¹ It argues that Tibetans are the principal beneficiaries of Tibet's development, which provides opportunities and facilities open to all, including elements of preferential policies for Tibetans. Government statements emphasize that most Han Chinese in Tibet are temporary migrants engaged in small trade and thus should not be the most significant elements in any assessment of who, among long-term residents of Tibet, benefits from development. While urban areas, where non-Tibetans concentrate, are at the level of other PRC towns and thus much more prosperous than the countryside, urban–rural disparities are a universal phenomenon, while most rural Tibetans have experienced significant increases in income levels, education, health care, transport, and communications over the past half-century. The environment, it is argued, is the best preserved in China and pristine by world standards.³²

Population

Demographic issues in the Tibet Question have been about the effects of conflict, migration, and family planning. Both the TGIE and Tibetan Youth Congress have compared China's actions in Tibet to the Nazi extermination of Jews.³³ Exile leaders contend that the Tibetan population was 6 million in 1950 and the same a half-century later, because the PRC government killed at least 1.2 million Tibetans through war, imprisonment, execution, or famine.³⁴ The figure is cited in Western media,³⁵ but has been challenged by demographers³⁶ and a prominent British writer, who, while leader of the main UK Tibet support group, examined and found useless the documents on which the figure is based.³⁷

The Dalai Lama has accused China of "demographic aggression."³⁸ Exile leaders contend that as a result of migration and family planning restrictions, Tibetans in Tibet are outnumbered by 7.5 million non-Tibetans.³⁹ The geographical basis of the figure is not clear, but seems to take in all contiguous territories in which some Tibetans live. Wang Lixiong has pointed out that the 1982 census (China's first actual enumeration) showed 1.541 million Han in all the officially designated Tibetan areas, which cover almost the entire Tibet Plateau, an area comprising about one-fourth of the territory of the PRC, and most, but not all, territories the exiles claim for Tibet. The 1990 census showed Han in these areas dropping to 1.521 million.⁴⁰ By the 2000 census, the number had fallen to 1.470 million. Tibetans in the PRC numbered 3.870 million in 1982—about 99 percent in the Tibetan areas—and increased to 5.416 million by 2000.⁴¹

Tibetan exiles and supporters argue that family planning restrictions contribute to "cultural genocide" and assert that coercive birth control is applied, if not in Tibet as a whole, at least in its northeast.⁴² Government sources counter that, particularly in ecologically fragile areas such as Tibet, there is a delicate balance of population to land area that should not be exceeded. Arguing along a different line, regional Family Planning Commission head Purbu Zhoima asserts that "Tibet has no policy that sets a quota for the number of children Tibetan women may have, nor does it force women to have abortions or undergo sterilization procedures."⁴³ The U.S. government concluded in 2002 that "Family planning policies permitted Tibetans, like members of other minority groups, to have more children than Han Chinese. Urban Tibetans, including Communist Party members, were generally permitted to have two children. Rural Tibetans were encouraged, but not required, to limit births to three children. These guidelines were not strictly enforced."⁴⁴

Religion

Spirituality and sovereignty are linked in the Tibet Question through Tibet's traditional system of governance in which politics and religion were tightly intertwined.⁴⁵ Many exile officials continue to regard this system as ideal for Tibet, and the two top leaders of the exile administration, the Dalai Lama and his prime minister Samdhong Rinpoche, are indeed religious figures. Ten of the forty-six seats in the Tibetan parliament-in-exile are reserved for representatives of the four Tibetan Buddhist "sects" and a pre-Buddhist Tibetan religion. Religion expressly underpins Tibetan nationalism.⁴⁶ The Dalai Lama may not view this arrangement as ideal, however. He has stated that "Religious institutions and politics s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Tables
• Frontmatter
• 1 Introduction The Tibet Question in Contemporary Perspective
• Part I Politics and Representation
• Part II Economic Development
• Part III Society and Identity
• Part IV The International Dimension
• List of Contributors
• Index