2006-04-19

Dalai wants the HK model (Updated: and he demonstrates his power)

HK Model Autonomy means you yields foreign policy and military but retain the rest. What has not been discussed is the analogy for "Basic Law", and how the local leader is selected.

Dalai realizes that time is not working to his favor and is ready to yield. IMO HK Model is only his asking price. He is ready to yield considerably more. Even though CCP has said it was willing to give more to Taiwan (i.e. Taiwan can keep its own armed force), it is unrealistic for China to grant Tibet the HK status, as the status quo is different.

Preserving "Tibetan culture, Tibetan environment, Tibetan spirituality" are all fine for CCP. In fact, in recent years there was almost total freedom in China. The fact the there are still kinks in Tibet is due to CCP's suspicion of Dalai himself (Dalai also mentioned suspicion in his interview). However, I do not think it is realistic for religious leader to participate in politics, not just in China, in the USA as well. So the most they can get is, still, a few seats in the election clan like HK has today.

Financially, China has paid and is paying a lot to keep Tibet afloat today. But with tourism and better technology to extract wealth from the plateau, though mainly the potential for tourism, it is unlikely that China will yield that today.

One last note, negotiation also means that the domain of Tibet equates that of the boundary of current Tibet Autonomous Region. A strong reason I found the rumous of 50 provinces (map), which upsets the delicate treatment of ethnic composition, laughable.

Here is Dalai's Time Magazine interview
  • China's President Hu Jintao is visiting the U.S. at the same time as you are, and you have urged your supporters here not to demonstrate against him. Why?

    Since we already have some official contact with the Chinese, we believe it is very important to create impressions that we are very sincere, we are fully committed.

    Two weeks ago, the Chinese government said it would allow you to visit your homeland, which you fled in 1959, if you abandoned your pursuit of independence for Tibet. But haven't you long said that you want autonomy, not independence, for Tibet?

    Oh yes. The world knows the Dalai Lama is not seeking independence. The world knows. Still the Chinese do not know. [Laughs]

    Do you have any heaviness of heart about giving up hope for Tibetan independence?

    No. It's not necessary. ......

    As far as the future is concerned, look at the European Union. In the past centuries, those nations talked most about their sovereignty. Now, today, the common interest is more important than each individual nation's sovereignty. Tibet is a landlocked country, a large area, small population, very, very backward. We Tibetans want modernization. Therefore, in order to develop Tibet materially as a modern nation, Tibet must remain within the People's Republic of China. Provided Chinese give us a full guarantee of preservation of Tibetan culture, Tibetan environment, Tibetan spirituality, then it is of mutual benefit. [Besides] foreign affairs [and] defense [are] all the things which Tibetans can manage by themselves. Tibetans should have the full autonomy.

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(Update) Meanwhile, there is an urgent letter from Kashag, Dalai's official secretariat appealing to non-protest during the Hu visit in US
  • "If protests are held, this will give the impression that no Tibetan or Tibet Support Group is taking notice of and carrying out His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s instructions issued in the recent 10th March statement."
Dalai is showing to Hu that he can command all the Tibetan activists/separatists (I guess I can use this term now as Dalai clarified his objective) outside, or is taking a challenge from the negotiator. If this is the case, he is bold, brave and confident. This also explains the non-coincidental visit of Dalai himself, who follows Hu's footsteps to the hotspots. Being able to command the majority is something, being able to command every faction, at every instance is really something. He might have to do it a couple more times.

If the "challenge" theory ("Can you guarantee peace and no more trouble if we accept your terms?")is the case, we can hope for Dalai's visiting China within the next 1-2 years. Because only when you have something close to a draft agreement, would you answer to such a challenge. Similarly, for CCP, only when it is ready to yield a few key terms, will it offer a challenge as a pre-condition.

p.s. In September 2005, prior to the Katrina-cancelled vist, a similar urgent appeal has been issued, and explained the rationale (negotiation environment) in a little more details.

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GVO has nicely linked to this. I guess the issue is better labelled as Tibet Autonomy or simply Tibet Issue/Problem now, given Dalai's Time interview. Otherwise, we are not helping His Holiness in the negotiation table.
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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, Sun Bin! You have mentioned that the Mongolian population made up the 30% of Inner Mongolia, and then 15% in 1950s, would you please provide the source of the statistics?
The other day I read an article which claims that the Mongolian population is decreasing (http://mongolia.neweurasia.net/?p=41). I just made a quick research on the net and proved it wrong (see my comment underneath), ever since the author has made the correction, but still insists that the percentage of Mongolian population there is falling due to the continuous immigration of the Han. If you can provide an valid source, I can prove the latter claim wrong, too.

Sun Bin said...

Leo,

i think i said it is 20.76% 2000 vs 15% 1950. the source is the from the Chinese essay I linked to, weizhou blog. you can leave a message on his blog/email. i am not 100% sure of the accuracy but weizhou has done very good research.

The change is probably also due to change of boundary and also an incentive for people to identify themselves as minorities. but the basic % does not change much. there are some immigrants in the early 1970s (educated youth to the countryside) but most of them, if not all went back to the cities after the 1980s. OTOH higher birth rate for minorities more than neutralized the immigration effect.

please check with weizhou about the sources. he is very nice and his essays are academically neutral. and we have exchanged a couple messages. i think he can also understand english but he mainly writes in Chinese.

also bear in mind there are some mongolians living in Xinjiang as well.

Sun Bin said...

It seems Dalai was unable to control the Tibet Youth Congress, the fundamentalist group who may
be challenging Dalai now.

However, although the TYG leader expected 100 demonstrators, we only saw less than a dozen in the picture.

Sun Bin said...

Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama's special envoy talks about the rationale for negotiation, what has been negotiated, the positive and negative impacts of sending tibetan children to study Han Chinese, and what protest achieves and what it does not,

"The Chinese themselves have become much more sensitive. Some 20 years back, the Chinese would always help us by doing some stupid things. Now, they do not commit this type of mistakes. So, we should also not do stupid things."
i.e. provoking no longer works.
CSB please listen.

bobby fletcher said...

I really wonder what HH thinks of America's reservation system. If it's good enough for the Native Americans, it's good enough for Tibetans, right?

- China takes all of the land. Unilatterally redraw international border around the Tibeteans

- declare Tibet as subjugated thru some sort of "limited sovereignty" rationale and make laws to enforce said subjugation

- kill 99% of the Tibetans thru genocide

- those who refuse to die, stuff them in "concentration camps" consist of tiny pockets of desolate, undesirable land with little or no economic value (and march them elsewhere if any economic value is discovered.) Of course call these concentration camps "reservations" to escape world opinion

- give the Tibeteans rotten rations or poor health care, so they die 20 year earlier than rest of the population

- the Tibeteans do have an olive branch. They can leave their concentration camp and join the Chinese society. But they'll have to suffer the last bit of indiginity of cultural genocide (lose their language, identity, culture.)

Sound familiar?

AdSenseMaker said...

Chinese government is violating the basic Human Rights of Tibetans living inside Tibet. But hopefully, since the old government is getting older, the new generation will soon take over the government and be more reasonable with the Tibetans.