Beijing’s Two-Sided Tibet Policy
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

China has turned down the volume on its attacks against the Dalai Lama, the exiled head of state and spiritual leader of Tibet who fled his homeland when China occupied it in 1959.At the same time, repression has increased in Tibet. Why are both things true?
Because they are two parts of a whole. According to a report released last month by the International Campaign for Tibet, repression of religious belief and expression has risen over the past several years, while at the same time cadres have become savvier about presenting their Tibet policy to the international community.
The report contains a number of internal party documents, including propaganda and political education manuals for cadres. Recently, there has been evidence of Chinese backsliding in basic human rights, including religious freedom. A new campaign against Protestant groups incorporating tactics developed to quash the Falun Gong, which Beijing regards as a cult, has been reported.
Within the past few days a number of Catholic clergy who still follow Rome rather than submit to the Communist official church have been taken into custody. Tibetans and their Buddhism, however, pose a particular problem for Beijing.
For Beijing, Tibetans’ distinct identity, closely linked to their faith and reverence for the Dalai Lama, is a sign of separatism, or in Party-speak “splittism,” in a vast area that borders on several countries, including India.
A 1994 meeting in Beijing reflected the authorities’ fear that religious beliefs were synonymous with a drive for independence. The meeting generated a propaganda manual that warned darkly of “enemies in foreign countries” who “assume to get hold of a monastery is the equivalent of getting hold of a district of the Communist Party.”
According to the ICT report, “When the Sky Fell to Earth,” available through the Web site www.savetibet.org, the Communist Party “has been confounded by its failure to draw Tibetans away from their religious beliefs, and particularly their loyalty to the Dalai Lama.”
That doesn’t keep the cadres from trying. Their methods include: intensive efforts to diminish allegiance to and reverence for the Dalai Lama, including imprisonment and torture; tight control over monasteries and convents, including a campaign of Patriotic Education; limits on the number of monks and nuns; and destruction of religious communities that attract thousands of believers, including Han Chinese.
Obsession with control has also led Beijing to interfere in the search for and identification of Tibetan reincarnate lamas. Subverting the selection process and installing puppets is intended to extend sovereignty, and more importantly, to create a precedent for the selection of a successor to the current Dalai Lama, 69, when he dies.
That may well be what happened with the second most important figure for Tibetans, the Panchen Lama. In 1995, Communist Party authorities took a 6-year-old boy into custody identified as the next Panchen Lama and installed another little boy chosen in his place. The first little boy has not been seen since, and it is believed that he lives under house arrest near Beijing.
It is worthwhile to point out that the Dalai Lama does not actually demand independence for Tibet. He seeks autonomy, and his priorities are saving Tibetan religion and culture from extinction, especially by ending the massive population transfer of ethnic Han Chinese that is transforming Tibet, protecting the environment, and gaining respect for human rights and political rights.
In light of all this, it’s not surprising that China feels the need for a public relations campaign. At a propaganda planning meeting in 2000, China’s information minister told of the need to “struggle for international public opinion against the Dalai clique.”
To this end, Beijing sent touring exhibitions abroad (one was mounted at the Javits Center in 2000) to tout its treatment of Tibetans and other minorities, and sends officials and approved scholars to the West. Also, in 2002 and 2003, Beijing openly received envoys of the Dalai Lama in Beijing for the first time in a decade.
Yet no public relations pitch, no matter how polished, can overcome a record like China’s in Tibet. Nor does it address the fundamental problem.
International sympathy and support for Tibetans and the Dalai Lama is a phenomenon of Beijing’s making. That is not simply because “Marxist materialism and atheism are,” in the Party’s view, “the essence of excellent human civilization.” Instead, it’s because Beijing sees a threat from Tibetans who identify more closely with their faith and the Dalai Lama than with the Communist Party.