China to hold talks with aides to Dalai Lama
Updated
China's announcement that it wants to hold talks with aids to the Dalai Lama has been largely welcomed by the international community. But with less than four months before the Olympic Games, many say the offer for talks is just a "desperate attempt" to defuse international pressure on the Tibet issue.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Robbie Barnett, Colombia University's department of modern Tibetan studies.
BARNETT: There is a kind of world view amongst experts and the media that China may not be looking completely sincere here and may be looking for a PR gain. It's a bit unfortunate for China because it has sort of dug its own grave a bit because it's continuing to pour out newspaper articles and media reports across Tibet and China insulting the Dalai Lama, accusing him of being a blasphemer and the source of all trouble in Tibetan society and so on... at the same time he's offering to have talks. So it's difficult for China here to try to convince people that it's really committed to some kind of reconciliation.
LAM: Well what do you think? Do you think Beijing's move is in some way aimed at defusing the Tibet campaign ahead of the Olympics?
BARNETT: Well I think we have to always remember this is a huge government of a huge country and there are people nowadays saying that the centre is not as strong as we all imagine and that it's driven by a vast array of different interest groups, and now we've seen a new one to be added which is really quite a serious, even threatening one - the kind of spectre of populist nationalism in China and even outside China. So there are a lot of complex forces here. What I think is going on is that the leadership in the centre in Beijing is actually getting seriously worried about the extent of the unrest in China, in Tibet. This isn't so much a response to international pressure as a realisation that the policies they've had so far have not been able to stop the protests in Tibet. We're not hearing much but actually a few things have still been going on, and there are some reports that it's this that has been really worrying Hu Jintao and caused him to get back to the negotiating table.
LAM: So you don't think the leadership in Beijing might be heartened by the show of support by the Chinese diaspora in some of these foreign cities where the pro-Tibet campaign had been, the protestors had been demonstrating? There was a strong show of support by pro-China demonstrators?
BARNETT: Well they're certainly heartened by that but unfortunately it's the wrong kind of heartening. The question that I think nobody has asked yet is why are there no demonstrations by Tibetans in Tibet supporting China's torch relay and condemning western representations? That's the big question for China. The more the calls from the Chinese nationalists get strident, the more the Chinese leadership has to worry that they're fueling a long-term gap between Tibetans and Chinese. And this is a bigger problem for the leaders in the long-term, than just getting the boost of short-term emotion about the torch rally. So I think their leaders are really worried about what's happening in all aspects of the Tibet issue, and it's going to be exacerbated now by this torch rally from Everest and so on. But I think that doesn't mean unfortunately that the leadership has the power or the guts to really make any deal with the Dalai Lama if it does meet his representatives, that's the question. Can they actually take an initiative and make a bold move to make some kind of deal with him? Very tricky for them to do that I fear.
LAM: Politically though, do you think the climate is right for China to perhaps not make deals, but to even embark on the first stage of dialogue?
BARNETT: Well that's a very good question and unfortunately this sort of China. what we're looking at is a Chinese traditional which is essentially an imperial tradition of insulting your negotiating partner before he meets you, so that he'll be diminished and make compromises more easily, that's clearly what's been happening in China not just the last couple of weeks but the last 15 years. They've been trying to denigrate the Dalai Lama. Now this may have worked in history but it's probably going to make it very difficult now for the world to take these attempts seriously and even for the Dalai Lama to negotiate. I must say if it had been any other leader apart from a major Buddhist figure who's trained in patience and tolerance, I don't think there would be any hope of any negotiations happening while the level of insult and vitriol is so high from Beijing. But this Dalai Lama I think he probably is exceptional and he seems to be going against his own Prime Minister in saying he will be prepared to talk to Beijing. So we shouldn't give up hope here, there's still a chance although it's somewhat slender.
LAM: And just very briefly, the Dalai Lama as you say has been calling for talks for some time. If the dialogue does go ahead, what are some of the issues apart from greater autonomy?
BARNETT: Well there is the issue of migration, obviously that's been highlighted by the very ugly riot, there were about 100 protests in Tibet in the last six weeks and one of them was clearly an ethnic riot. And so migration is very important. Will the Chinese finally accept that they need to have some kind of policy to moderate that flow into the Tibetan towns? But also the level of restriction on religion is really very high and getting higher. Students in the university in Lhasa where I taught before and any government employees are not allowed any religion at all. That's illegal even in Chinese law. So these are some of the simpler things that China could deal with very, very quickly if it wanted to show sincerity towards these talks.
