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Tibetan Uprising: China’s Responses Srikanth Kondapalli If the effort of bidding and conducting Olympics is to showcase China’s rise to the world, popular indictments at the global and Tibetan levels unnerved Beijing. For so long Tibet is considered to be the minimalist foreign policy position for China, while Olympics indicated to its bidding for the global legitimacy for its policies.
China’s Policy towards Minorities – Failure in Tibet? D S Rajan
Tibet’s strategic importance to the country has always been uppermost in the minds of Chinese leadership. President Hu Jintao, describing the TAR as China’s “Southwest Frontier”, has stressed that the “development, stability and security of Tibet have a direct bearing on the fundamental interest of China’s ethnic solidarity, national unity and state security”. Echoing the same sentiments, he has observed recently that the Tibet issue is entirely an internal issue of the country and that the conflict with the Dalai Lama is not ethnic, not religious, but a problem relating to safeguarding of national unity and preventing ‘split’ of China.
Paradox of International Political System for Tibet Question Dr. Yeshi Choeden
Tibet always believed that the truth was on its side and appealed to international community for assistance to tide over the Chinese aggression. Instead, Tibet faced the first major paradox of international political system. The modern western yardstick of determining the legal status was applied to ancient traditional nation of Tibet and declared the status of Tibet was not clear. This lack of clarity stemmed from the traditional patron-priest relationship developed between the Chinese rulers and the Dalai Lamas of Tibet, which from modern legalistic perspective appeared to blur the exercise of sovereign power by the Tibetan authority. Whereas for the Tibetans, the concept of independence and territorial state determined their nationhood, the concept of sovereignty, like to other traditional nations of Asia and Africa, was alien to them.
China’s Designs for an ‘Economic Tibet’ Dr.Jagannath P. Panda
Whatever may be the consequence of the current protest in Tibet, it is becoming increasingly clear that the world is slowly visualizing a Chinese design of an ‘economic Tibet’. Three interrelated policy measures: the open backlash against the Tibetans economic marginalization, the rising Han Chinese presence in the Tibetan region and the Communist government’s regular policy assault on Tibetan ideology, culture and ecology will help in constituting a ‘Chinese made Tibet’. This ‘Chinese made Tibet’ which will heavily be Communist construct may accentuate China’s political base in the region.
Protests in Tibet and Political Posturing: The Problematique Tshering Chonzom
There is no substantial evidence on the part of China to disparage the TYC or the Dalai Lama as terrorists; their allegations are reflective of ‘anticipatory plea’ than based on any historical evidence. On the contrary, the activities of the TYC or any other free Tibet NGOs have been centered on mostly hunger strikes, demonstrations and occasionally, scaling the walls of Chinese consulates that cannot be construed as violent means. Nonetheless, the renewed activism of not just the TYC but the whole Tibetan population in exile as well as Tibet does indicate a rise in Tibetan nationalism. Attempts to alleviate their grievances might be considered rather than carrying out counter productive policies like ‘patriotic education’.
The Tibet Factor in the Indo-Chinese Relations Claude Arpi
China has repeatedly taken refuge behind the Panchsheel and more particularly the third principle, “mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs” to say that Delhi has no say in Tibetan affairs. It is however a fact that if the Tibetan question is not solved satisfactorily for all the parties involved (and India is the one with a long border with Tibet and 1,50,000 of Tibetan refugees), the relations between India and China will never be ‘friendly’ and the border issue will never settle.
The Arrow and the Olive Branch: Conceptualizing Social Exclusion in Tibet Prashant Negi and Tshering Chonzom
Strikingly, literacy rates are low among all age groups of Tibetans and the gender gap is even more pronounced. The prevalence of low retention and high drop out rates could also accrue to the non-relativity of the curriculum with Tibetan tradition and culture and the Chinese government’s policy of forbidding monastic education of any child till the age of eighteen. It is, therefore apparent that the Tibetans in TAR, Kham and Amdo face exclusionary access to education. The role of education in enhancing available choices, multiplying human capacities and capabilities, and supporting life chances is immense. Alternatively, diminished access to education has poverty aggravating and chronic unemployment consequences. The exclusion being faced by the Tibetans is certainly “unfavourable”; whether it is “actively” fostered by the Chinese state or is a “passive” or “unintended” corollary of certain policies, remains outside the purview of this paper, but presents an interesting research question.
The Tibetan Struggle for Self-Determination: Strategies and Future Prospects Pranjali Bandhu
The current protests are mass based and include various segments of the Tibetan population—monks, nuns, the nomads, farmers, school and university students, townspeople, and in some parts even horsemen. The slogans they raise proclaim Tibet’s independence from Chinese imperialism, demand human rights, abolishment of China’s one child per family policy, release of the Dalai chosen Panchen Lama, return of the Dalai Lama and peaceful negotiations with him for granting freedom for Tibetans. The demonstrators marching in their thousands holding aloft the banned Tibetan flag and portraits of the Dalai Lama, the late Panchen Lama and the Dalai chosen Gendun Choekyi Nyima are not always peaceful. Chinese government owned properties like banks and China Mobile—the state run telecom company—have been attacked, so also Chinese businesses and shops. Chinese flags have been pulled down from government offices and schools and replaced by Tibetan flags. Protestors have set fire to government vehicles and police stations.
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