The Dalai Lama’s delegation has returned from a visit to China, including the traditional Tibetan area of Kham now incorporated into Yunnan province, issuing a carefully-worded statement that appears to give a more cautious assessment of the visit than the delegation’s previous trip to China and the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) last September. The delegation travelled straight to India on 8 June to brief the Dalai Lama on their trip. Envoy to the Dalai Lama Kelsang Gyaltsen said today: ‘I have the impression that these new contacts are proceeding well and are being considered by both sides as positive and useful. We expect this progress to continue.’
The delegation’s departure from China coincided with the release of a strongly-worded article by a Chinese writer published by the official news agency Xinhua, affirming the system of ‘regional national autonomy’ under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and condemning the US government for its interference in China’s ‘internal affairs’ over Tibet.
The leader of the delegation, the Dalai Lama’s Special Envoy Lodi Gyari, said in his statement of 11 June that the delegation was received by the new head of the Party’s United Front Work Department, her deputy and the deputy secretary general of the United Front, representing meetings at the same level of seniority within the leadership as their visit last September. On the delegation’s last visit, they also met a more senior Party bureaucrat, who had served in Tibet and who reported directly to former President Jiang Zemin and the Party Central Committee. This meeting was not part of the formal programme of the delegation last September but was a contrived encounter at a reception. The new United Front head Liu Yandong is a 58-year old female administrator whose appointment replacing Wang Zhaoguo was reported by the Chinese press in December 2002. Both Wang and Liu Yandong were in the Communist Youth League and known to be affiliates of China’s most senior leader Hu Jintao as opposed to being in former President Jiang Zemin’s faction. Wang Zhaoguo was once Hu’s superior at the Youth League.
During the visit, the Tibetan delegation, which was in China from 25 May to 8 June, made a ‘brief’ visit to Gyalthang (Chinese: Zhongdian), including the Gaden Sumtsening monastery, founded by the 5th Dalai Lama, in Dechen (Chinese: Diqing) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan province, the traditional Tibetan area of Kham. To the government in exile, the fact that the delegation was allowed to travel to Tibetan areas outside the TAR could imply that all Tibetan areas, not just the central Tibet Autonomous Region, are potentially under discussion. The Chinese authorities do not generally recognise the “Tibet issue” as applying to areas outside the TAR – the traditional Tibetan areas of Kham and Amdo are now incorporated into the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan and Sichuan. Envoy Kelsang Gyaltsen, who is based in Switzerland, said: “When we arrived [in Beijing] we were told that because of SARS [SevereAcuteRespiratorySyndrome] visits to Tibetan areas were severely restricted. We suggested that as Yunnan was quite free of SARS perhaps it would be possible for us to go there, and so this was arranged at short notice. Previous Tibetan delegations have also travelled to Kham and Amdo; the Chinese authorities recognise that representatives of the Dalai Lama would wish to go to these areas.’
Lodi Gyari’s statement appears to indicate some concern over the preservation of Tibetan culture, language and religion in the area, as he states: “We have been impressed by efforts to protect the beautiful environment of Gyalthang as well as the living conditions of some of the families that we visited. However, we emphasised to the officials the importance of maintaining Tibetan religious, cultural and linguistic identity along with the material development.’ Lodi Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, who were accompanied by aides Bhuchung Tsering and Sonam Dagpo, also stressed that the visit was too short to enable adequate assessment of how effectively Tibetan language, culture, religion and identity were being preserved, protected and promoted in this Tibetan area. Kelsang Gyaltsen said: “We were restrained in the expression of our views. Even in the autonomous Tibetan areas we were concerned about the preservation of Tibetan culture and cultural values, and we pointed out the need not only to protect the environment but also to protect the distinctive Tibetan culture. This can only help make these areas an attractive place for tourism.’
The delegation also visited two pilgrimage sites sacred in both the Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist tradition, Mount Putuo (Riwo Potala) in Zhejiang province and Mount Jizu (Riwo Jakang) in Yunnan. Since the mid-1980s, the Dalai Lama has made requests to visit Wutai Shan in northwestern Shanxi province, a well-known Buddhist pilgrimage site, as a means of establishing contact and building confidence within the leadership and among the Chinese people, possibly prior to an invitation to visit Tibet. The delegation did not discuss the issue of a possible pilgrimage of the Dalai Lama to Wutai Shan; the meeting largely focused on confidence-building and an exchange of views between the Envoys and their Chinese counterparts.
Thubten Samphel, head of the government in exile’s Department of Information and International Relations, said: ‘These visits give the delegation an opportunity to express the feelings that we have had in our minds for many years, and I hope they will continue. The visits are in accordance with the Dalai Lama’s philosophy that rather than not speaking to each other, it is better to make face to face contact and to talk. In this way the visit is a positive development.’ Lodi Gyari stressed the developing nature of the relationship in his statement: ‘Both sides agreed that our past relationship had many twists and turns and that many areas of disagreement still exist. The need was felt for more efforts to overcome the existing problems and bring about mutual understanding and trust.’
International media coverage of the delegation’s visit was over-shadowed by the deportation of 18 Tibetans from Nepal on 31 May, condemned by the UK and US governments and Tibet supporters worldwide. The delegation in China raised the issue of their concern over the deportations with their Chinese hosts as soon as they were informed.
The fact that the second visit took place at all indicates that the first was at least a success in this context. It is notable that leaders in Beijing followed through on a commitment that appears to have been made following the September 2002 visit to meet the delegation for a second time before July this year. On 30 September last year, after the delegation returned from China, Samdhong Rinpoche, Prime Minister of the government in exile, had made a controversial request to Tibetans and Tibet supporters around the world that they refrained from demonstrating in support of Tibetan independence in order to support the dialogue process, which he said was likely to begin again by July 2003. The government in exile also took it as a positive sign that a Tibetan analyst from the China Tibet Research Centre in Beijing was quoted by Reuters last week as saying: ‘So long as both sides are committed to serious talks, reasonable in their demands, pragmatic in their approaches, consistent in their strategies and visionary in their perspectives, I am optimistic about the talks.’ (13 June) A Tibetan source close to the delegation said: ‘I don’t think they would make this sort of response without government approval.’ It seems that there may be a willingness among senior figures in Beijing to be persuaded that the Dalai Lama is less of a threat to the Party’s authority than he has formerly been portrayed, particularly in the mid to late 1990s.
But the timing of the publication of an article refuting a recent US report on negotiations on Tibet on the day after the delegates left China is also significant, sending a more negative signal of Beijing’s intransigence on the Tibet issue. The article, written by Hua Zi, is a rebuttal of a US State Department report handed over to Congress last month by order of President Bush in line with the Tibetan Policy Act, signed into law last September.
Hua Zi said that the ‘Tibet issue’ ‘essentially arose from the fact that for nearly a century western imperialist forces had fostered and supported Tibetan separatists attempting to separate Tibet from China.’ The writer reiterated China’s policy on Tibet dialogue as follows: ‘The Chinese central government has adopted explicit and consistent policies towards the Dalai Lama. That is, only when the Dalai Lama abandons his claim for the “independence of Tibet”, halts any separatist activities, openly states he recognises Tibet as an unalienable part of China, Taiwan as one of China’s provinces and the government of the People’s Republic of China as the country’s sole legitimate representative, would China have contacts and negotiations with him.’ The writer criticises US encouragement of dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama without pre-conditions. The article reflects the Chinese authorities’ concern regarding the Dalai Lama’s ‘internationalising’ of the Tibet issue, and the popular support he has in the West. Hua Zi says that since the Dalai Lama made the ‘Strasbourg proposal’ in 1987, which proposes a genuine autonomy as opposed to independence for Tibet, he “stepped up separatist activities” and “frequently went all out selling his ideas in Western countries.”
Thubten Samphel acknowledged the critical timing of the lengthy statement about the US ‘Foreign Relations Authorization Act, 2003’ (issued on 8 May), but said: “First of all we should note that it was published under a byline of an individual, so maybe this indicates that it is an individual person’s impression or opinion. Whether this does matter in China or not I don’t know, but my perception of the article is that the outrage expressed is mainly directed against the US report.”
The full statement by the Dalai Lama’s Special Envoy Lodi Gyari.
This is one in a series of independent reports by Kate Saunders commissioned by the Australia Tibet Council, Free Tibet Campaign and the International Campaign for Tibet.
