The Dalai Lama has called for new thinking on Tibet. Tiring, as he says, of getting nowhere with an unresponsive Chinese Communist Party leadership closed to new thinking, it is now up to new voices to propose fresh approaches.

Calls for a middle way, for historic compromise, ceding to China ongoing sovereignty over Tibet, if only Tibetans can have cultural autonomy, prompted no corresponding compromise by the Party leaders. Now the Dalai Lama, after decades of hopefulness, is calling it bluntly as it is: a stalemate. Yet he remains adamant that a stance of enmity towards China remains utterly useless and self-defeating. Violence, he says unequivocally, would be suicidal. So he challenges those who criticise his middle way to come up with something new, not a regression to anger and blame.

How could we begin to imagine a fresh approach? How about, for starters, looking closely at what Tibet means to China, to today’s Party leaders, not only today but in their long term plans?

It might seem we already know, and have long known the answer: China holds on to Tibet because it is a major strategic asset, a treasure house of minerals, and a source of nationalistic pride. Those who say these three motives drive Beijing have said the same for 50 years. Has China’s stake in Tibet remained unchanged for 50 years?

China today is far different to what it was 50 years ago. China’s reasons for holding Tibet have evolved. They have mutated over the years in ways that Tibetans, and their supporters, might find surprising, even disturbing, while some of the old reasons have faded. This shift suggests we could look at Tibet, through Chinese eyes, in quite new ways, not through the customary lens of religious freedoms and human rights, rape and exploitation. Instead, we encounter Tibet as an asset, a building block of China’s grand project of comprehensive national power, integral to the rise and rise of China as a global power.

This is unfamiliar territory, to many Tibetans and their supporters. It doesn’t mean spiritual Tibet is no longer relevant. It does mean economics is everything in today’s capitalist China, which has long term plans for massive urbanisation of China’s west, with Tibet having a part to play in this dramatic depopulation of the rural areas, industrialisation and megacity construction. In short, we need to see Tibet through the eyes of China’s planners, learn not only their dreams but also the many constraints they face.

We also need to see more broadly, discerning long term patterns that add up to a bigger picture. The Dalai Lama has said the Tibetan struggle may take generations, and we need a framework capable of standing back from the immediate stalemated situation to see wider trends.

Searching for a new framework may seem dreamy and irrelevant, if your sole focus is the urgent needs of the many Tibetans being sentenced daily to harsh prison terms for voicing Tibetan frustrations. Human rights advocacy must continue, but we might also find time to consider the long term.

One such broader framework is the comparative study of the life cycles of empires. No empire lasts forever, and usually empires fall because of internal strains and contradictions, due to the unintended consequences of decisions made by the imperial masters. More specifically, empires commonly fall apart because the hegemonic rulers become intolerant and contemptuous towards the other ethnicities they govern. As empires get older, the initial tolerance that enabled founders of empires to win the tacit support of conquered peoples gradually hardens into stereotypes of the contemptible backwardness of the governed. The chauvinism of the master race intensifies, and this in turn generates strong national consciousness among those ruled by the imperial centre.

The British in India grew more and more contemptuous of the Indians, triggering the birth of Indian nationalism and the campaign to mobilise the masses to forcer Britain to quit India. The Habsburg Empire fell apart because German chauvinism triggered an equally strong counter-reaction among Hungarians, Czechs and many other peoples who demanded their own language, culture, history, traditions, identity etc be given a special place. Ultimately, this led to the creation of many new countries, not only a fully independent Hungary and Czechoslovakia but also Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Poland etc. More recently, the USSR fell apart when Soviet nationalities policy (which China copied) created the very Kazakh, Turkmen, Tajik, Latvian, Lithuanian, Georgian nationalism that split the empire into fragments. Although Soviet policy was to contain and control minority nationalism in practice it fostered a stronger sense of identity, achieving the opposite of its intended outcome. The same is now happening in Tibet.

It seems China’s leaders utterly lack the imagination to see the world through Tibetan eyes, and have retreated to whipping up Han chauvinist contempt for the Tibetans as China’s incurably criminal tribe. China has lost its long tradition of a statecraft of calculated tolerance of difference; and is becoming overtly racist towards Tibetans and Uighurs, the two ethnicities numerous enough and geographically coherent enough to be seen as a threat, for their obdurate insistence on being themselves and not second class Chinese.

Several recent books on the rise and fall of empires make this point about the hard-headed tolerance of difference that characterises successful empires; and the descent into competition, exclusiveness, hatred and bitterness once the rulers forget their carefully crafted policy of tolerance. Yale law prof Amy Chua’s Day of Empire: how hyperpowers rise to global dominance –and why they fall (Doubleday 2007) is especially useful.

China was itself ruled by nonChinese minorities so often and for so long –by the Mongols for a century, and the nomadic Manchu for two and a half centuries- that emperors crafted very careful policies of tolerance that allowed conquered peoples exactly the sort of cultural autonomy the Dalai Lama has always sought. Even the cruel Mongols were highly tolerant of difference, as long as we understand tolerance not as Enlightenment liberalism but “the kind of toleration that allows an imperial power to maintain its authority over a widely dispersed, multiethnic population… a readiness on the part of an imperial power to allow its subjects to believe whatever they liked as long as they remained peaceful and cooperative.” (Alan Ryan, reviewing Amy Chua and other books on empire, NY Review of Books Oct 23 2008)

China’s official rhetoric has now criminalised the Tibetans, as a race, as congenitally uncooperative and ungrateful for all the uplift provided by the Chinese elder brother. This shift of discourse, since the March 2008 Tibetan protests, is extremely dangerous, foolish and counter-productive. It leads to extremes of Han Chinese nationalism versus Tibetan nationalism, with no middle ground remaining. Little wonder the Dalai Lama says his trust in China gets thinner, thinner, thinner.

This shift in Chinese attitudes may start at the top but it spreads right through a society that has few alternate sources of information and few Han Chinese who personally know any Tibetans. A Chinese academic studying in the US recently said: “In China, I attended a wedding of a fellow professor from Beijing Normal University. All the professors were standing around discussing what should be done about the problem in Tibet. Later everyone decided that the Tibetans should just be “Han-ified,” then it would all be fine.” (China Rights Forum, no3, 2008 p 35, Human Rights in China)

The result is hatred, in the streets, and the closing of minds. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not only are the Tibetans ungrateful, they are a drag on China’s development, a thorn in the flesh. China tried to swallow Tibet, but it is stuck in China’s throat.

This fatal hardening of the categories has serious consequences. Obviously, it leads to an intensification of repression in Tibet, directed with special ferocity at what makes Tibet exceptional- its religiosity. In recent months we have seen such an increase ion attacks on religion and the religious that this point does not need elaboration.

But Chinese policy has always had two sides: security and development, stability and infrastructure, repression and investment. All are now being intensified, not just the repression. While China’s leaders remain obsessed with security/stability/repression as the immediate threat; they have long embraced development (with Chinese characteristics) as the long term solution, culminating in the announcement a few years ago of “leap-over development” in Tibet, a phrase signalling China’s new capacity to throw endless billions of yuan at Tibet, in the hope of assimilating Tibet, both by providing jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities for Chinese immigrants and in the hope of creating a Tibetan middle class loyal to Beijing.

China has not lost sight of this long term goal and in fact has accelerated its investment in essential infrastructure needed to bring in more immigrants and attract Chinese businesses that might make profits from Tibet once the railways, highways, power plants and urban centres have been built by the party-state. This is why economics is now so central. Some observers assume security/stability and repression somehow negate China’s massive statist investments in development of Tibet. Certainly, to Tibetans on the ground, there does seem to be a contradiction between punitive repression and suspicion of everything Tibetan, coupled with massive handouts to accelerate development. Yet, in the eyes of the central leaders, these twin polices are two sides of one coin, the short term and the long term of the same solution.

So we need to understand China’s “leap-over” fast track development trajectory planned for Tibet. We need to study in detail what investments are in the pipeline and how they add up to a bigger strategy which integrates Tibet into the economy of western China, feeding the rise and rise and western China’s mega-cities. We can no longer understand Tibet by looking just at Lhasa and Beijing; we need to look much more closely at Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’an and Lanzhou.

We also could usefully widen our perspectives by looking at what China wins for its global reputation by investing huge sums in opening up Tibet to mineral extraction and an urban boom. China has many reasons to invest ever more heavily in Tibet, even if the party-state makes no direct profit. First, China wins support for promoting development, partially answering or negating the critics of China’s human rights record. Of course, this is top-down development that excludes Tibetans and benefits immigrants, but many governments buy the basic argument that economic growth benefits everyone, so Tibetans must somehow be experiencing development too.

Second, by announcing a massive spending package to stimulate the Chinese economy, China shows it is a good global citizen, deserving of a bigger role globally. This will mean a bigger vote in decision-making in the International Monetary Fund, and China solidifying its effective veto over criticising odious regimes such as Sudan and Burma, where China does much profitable business with dictators. Even if only a small proportion of China’s stimulus package is new money, and only a little goes to construct new railways across Tibet, the impact can be great, in a land as sparsely populated as Tibet.

This returns us to the cycle of empire. The hegemony of the US may soon wane, as other countries rise and rise, none more so than China. Once the global financial crisis has started to bottom out and recover, China may well be able and willing to buy up major stakes in major US and European corporations and financial institutions, at very low prices. China’s rise, having already startled many, may soon be much more in our faces, whether we like it or not.

All of this was clearly anticipated long ago by the Dalai Lama, who has long argued that Tibet’s best chance comes not from Chinese failures and crises but from China’s success and prosperity. That could have happened, and indeed was happening until March 2008. The railway from Beijing to Lhasa also runs the other way, taking Tibetans to Beijing, to study, find niches in the new economy, including the street sellers of Tibetan jewellery that was becoming fashionable, even chic, among urban sophisticates. The party-state’s hate-filled response to the March 08 rioting across Tibet killed that softening and opening.

The rise and ride of China was apparent to the Dalai Lama, who saw it as an opportunity for China to become more confident, relaxed and open. Instead China has become more intolerant, led by the official class who have forgotten how vital tolerance is to running an empire. Ultimately, the Dalai Lama was thwarted by the twinned rise of Han Chinese chauvinism and the reactive rise of Tibetan nationalism, leaving him no middle way.

As he steps back from the politics of Tibet, the Dalai Lama has one more challenge to us: don’t just fall back on anger and enmity, don’t resurrect the old calls for independence in a world totally uninterested and unable to do anything to advance such goals. We must find a fresh approach, he says.

Where can we find a new way of thinking? If we look much more closely at Tibet within today’s China, we start to see not just a single statist policy for Tibet, but many Chinese voices with many widely differing visions of Tibet, not only in the present but also the future. If we tune in to internal Chinese debate, in China’s biggest cities, we discover Tibet has many meanings, some contradictory. The top-down vision of the central planners is that Tibet, at great expense, industrialises, urbanises, builds mineral extraction enclaves supported by state-financed railways, highways, power stations etc.

But there are many Chinese, especially in the cities, among those who live fast lives, who see Tibet as timeless, best left as it is, an enchanting jewel in China’s crown, a haven of recovering biodiversity, source of China’s rivers, even a source of spiritual renewal. There may be, as the Dalai Lama has said, one million Chinese who are sincere followers of Tibetan Buddhism.

If we take only a short term view, this may not mean much, even if Chinese environmental NGOs do campaign to save Tibetan landscapes, rivers, mountains, lakes and wetlands. We could even dismiss this shift in sensibility as a repeat of the Western romanticism that made Tibet a Shangrila outside of history, outside the real world.

But if we take a longer term perspective we can see the Chinese empire becoming more contradictory, multi-vocal and more concerned with human well being rather than just material wealth creation. The signs are few at present, since the rush to accumulate wealth drowns out other voices. But empires, in their later days, do tend to lose impetus, lose focus, and even lose confidence in their civilising mission. Not only is this obvious in the latter days of the British in India or the Americans in Iraq, there are many signs of it in China. We might even speculate that the official stirring up of hatred is an attempt at reversing an irreversible long term trend towards accommodating Tibetans as different.

Certainly there are signs China is no longer so sure of its civilising mission in Tibet. Even the cruelest of China’s policies, forcing nuns and monks to denounce the Dalai Lama, is all about lips, not heart. China has long given up trying to make Tibetans think as Chinese do. China no longer expects to win hearts and minds. Instead it insists only on outward behavioural compliance, especially in public spaces. Tibetans find this not only cruel but also pointless, but it does mean thought reform is no longer on the agenda, and China has largely given up on making Tibetans into Chinese.

The big failing, on all sides, is a lack of imagination. If Tibetans are determined to be different, China, at least at the highest level, remains unreconciled to accepting difference. Equally the advocates of Tibetan independence offer little fresh.

Perhaps the key to imagining new approaches is to focus more closely, not only on China, but also on the seldom stated strengths of the Tibetans. Perhaps Tibetans have lost confidence in these historic strengths, which are no longer visible in Tibetan eyes. Yet it is not only the Chinese leadership that remains unimaginative and unconfident; perhaps many Tibetans too remain stuck in the barren dualism of middle way versus rangzen.

If we widen our perspective again, looking at the pattern of Sino-Tibetan relations throughout history, we see that china has always been much bigger, and better able to mobilise vast armies, fed by grain grown by farmers, extorted by emperors as taxation. By comparison, Tibet has had only a small population, with very little capacity to mobilise men, grain and standing armies. Even Tibetan nomadic mobility, moving at yak speed, has proven no match for aerial bombardment.

Yet Tibet survived and thrived, against the odds, by being nimble, living by its wits, outmanoeuvring giant neighbours simply by the decisive use of clear minds. Tibetan history is full of Tibetans outwitting their overlords. When precious minister Gar won Princess Wencheng to marry Songtsen Gampo, he did it by brilliant displays of grounded wit and clarity of mind. When Phagpa Lama turned the mind of Kublai Khan, it was through clarity and presence of mind.

Tibetans have a good record in seizing the moment, not just in the past but in the present too, as is evident in skilful Tibetan lobbying of the US government, for example. One cannot seize the moment unless one recognises the moment. In advance, we may not know what that moment will look like, or when it will come. We will recognise it only if we are watching China closely, assessing the long term trends as well as the immediate grind of Chinese repression and investment in Tibet.

Confident, clear headed Tibetans may yet find a fresh approach that achieves the primary goal of creating space, in Tibet, for Tibetans to live as they choose, according to Tibetan values. If the past is a guide, the well honed Tibetan Buddhist capacity for producing clear minds will be ready to act decisively and confidently when the moment is right. The result will be a Tibetan Tibet China can live with. If the present is a guide, China is both hardening and fragmenting its attitudes to Tibet. On the surface, the hardening is most evident, not only in official media but on the streets. Yet Tibet remains, for many urban Chinese, an increasingly alluring alternative to the rush of urban capitalism. Although the party-state strives, more than ever, to make Tibet a production base for creating wealth across western China, increasing numbers of Chinese environmentalists would rather Tibet, like Siberia, be abandoned as a target of industrialisation and instead be rededicated to conservation.

Does Tibet still produce ministers such as Gar, lamas such as Phagpa? Definitely.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 4:51 am and is filed under Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.