A gaping hole
The recent meeting between the representatives of the Dalai Lama and Chinese officials is a continuation of a process that has been going on for nearly 30 years. The two sides are no closer to agreement now than they were three decades ago, and a study of the negotiating record gives little room for optimism about any early resolution of their differences.
Contact between the Tibetans in exile and the Chinese leadership began in 1979, when the Dalai Lama's elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, was invited to Beijing to meet Deng Xiaoping . The Chinese leader made it clear that the basic condition for any discussion was that the Dalai Lama accepted Tibet as an integral part of China. 'So long as it is not accepted that Tibet is an integral part of China, there is nothing else to talk about,' he is reported to have said. The Tibetans took this to mean that China was willing to consider anything short of independence, and led the Dalai Lama to drop his demand for Tibetan independence and instead adopt a 'middle way' of 'genuine national regional autonomy' for Tibet.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, there were intermittent contacts between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama's representatives, until a more formal process began in 2002. Six rounds of meetings have taken place in Beijing and elsewhere. While accounts from the Tibetan delegation describe the meetings as positive, it is clear there has been virtually no progress on narrowing the positions of the two sides.
In Beijing's eyes, the aim of the negotiations is to find a way to get the Dalai Lama back to China, to put an end to his administration in exile in India. China's idea of a solution was first set out in 1981, in a five-point proposal by the then Communist Party general secretary, Hu Yaobang. He suggested that the Dalai Lama could become a vice-chairman of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and said that his followers would be well looked after, as well.
For the Tibetans in exile in Dharamsala, on the other hand, the issue is not about finding a place for the Dalai Lama within the Chinese political system but, rather, to secure fundamental changes in the way Tibet is governed, as well as to limit Beijing's role in Tibet to foreign affairs and defence. Yet, the vision of Tibetan autonomy that the Dalai Lama and his followers hold is still far removed from anything the Chinese leadership is either willing, or able, to concede. The Dalai Lama and the Tibetan exiles have two core demands on which Beijing has refused to budge. The first is on the geographical extent of the autonomous Tibetan region and the second is on the form of governance in Tibet.
The Tibetan population in China is spread among a number of contiguous provinces on the Tibetan plateau: the Tibet autonomous region itself which, by one reckoning, has only around half the Tibetan population in China, and Tibetan areas in the provinces of Qinghai , Gansu , Sichuan and Yunnan . The Tibetans in exile have consistently asked for all these areas to be integrated into a single autonomous province. The Chinese response has been that, historically, the Tibetan-speaking areas have never been under a single administration and, secondly, if all the 55-odd ethnic minorities in China founded their own unified administrations, this would lead to inter-ethnic conflicts and social disorder. According to the Tibetan side, China has also pointed out that the area claimed for the Tibetan autonomous region would amount to a quarter of China's land mass. Beijing is clearly wary of creating an entity with substantial political autonomy covering such a large portion of the country.
The geographic differences might conceivably be resolved. But a far more intractable issue is the political system the Dalai Lama conceives and the kind of autonomy he envisages. The Dalai Lama's 'middle way' calls for a democratically elected legislature and executive, and an independent judicial system. This would, in effect, mean the end of Communist Party rule over Tibet or, at the very least, a system under which the party would have to stand for election with other political parties. For the party to allow people in any part of the mainland to vote it out of power would be little short of an act of political suicide.
The Tibetan side conceives of an autonomy similar to the 'one party, two systems' of Hong Kong and Macau. The Chinese argue that there is no precedent for Tibet enjoying a similar degree of autonomy. A white paper on Tibet published by Beijing in 2004 argues that, unlike Hong Kong and Macau - which were reintegrated into China with a pre-existing social system - Tibet has always been under Chinese rule. Reverting to a pre-existing social system would, in effect, mean returning Tibet to feudal rule.
The Dalai Lama's decision to give up the demand for Tibetan independence in return for substantial autonomy was intended to make it possible to arrive at an agreement with China. But it is clear that the alternative to independence is still far more radical than anything the Chinese system is either able, or willing, to deliver. The Dalai Lama's minimum demands for autonomy would effectively require the repealing of communist rule in Tibet, and potentially begin the unravelling of mainland China's political structure.
Thomas Abraham is director of the public health media programme of the journalism and media studies centre at the University of Hong Kong
