Tibet at a Turning Point

__"The Dalai Lama’s Dilemma" by Melvyn C. Goldstein, in Foreign Affairs (Jan.–Feb. 1998), 58 E. 68th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.__

With the recent appearance of the film Kundun, dramatizing his early life, the Dalai Lama appears to have won over Hollywood. But that may be of scant help to the 63-yearold spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists as he deals with a growing dilemma. Committed to nonviolence, he is being forced to choose between making concessions to China and giving at least tacit sanction to a campaign of organized violence against Chinese rule in Tibet. Some militant Tibetans already favor such a campaign; in 1996, there were three bombings in the capital, Lhasa. The Dalai Lama’s only other choice, contends Goldstein, director of the Center for Research on Tibet, at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, is to sit back as his Himalayan homeland is changed beyond recognition.

Beijing, which has rebuffed the Dalai Lama’s recent efforts to arrange talks, is pouring economic development funds into Tibet and flooding it with thousands of Chinese entrepreneurs and laborers. Of the "several hundred thousand" residents of Lhasa, at least half, Goldstein says, now are non-Tibetan. Although the newcomers are expected eventually to return home, Tibetans fear that the character of their sparsely populated land is being altered forever.

The roots of the conflict run deep. Formally part of the Manchuruled Chinese Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries, Tibet functioned as a quasi-independent theocracy under a Dalai Lama after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1912. But that changed once the Communists came to power in China in 1949. China invaded Tibet in 1950, forcing the current Dalai Lama to recognize Chinese sovereignty. After an independence uprising was crushed in 1959, he fled to India, followed by 80,000 Tibetans. Secret talks with Beijing in 1982 and 1984 proved fruitless. The exiles demanded a Western-style democracy for Tibet, while the Chinese insisted that the Communist Party remain in control. "Complicating matters," notes Goldstein, "was the exiles’ demand for the creation of a Greater Tibet that would include... ethnic Tibetan areas in western China, most of which Tibet had lost in the 18th century."

After the Dalai Lama launched his campaign for international support in 1987, Beijing was put on the defensive, Goldstein notes. There were protests in Lhasa, and some led to riots. In the belief that events were going his way, the Tibetan leader rejected an overture from Beijing in 1989; then, after another riot broke out in Lhasa, Beijing imposed martial law, adopted a new hardline policy, and accelerated a program of rapid economic development.

Now it is the Dalai Lama who is on the defensive. His past successes at attracting support in the West "look more and more like Pyrrhic victories," Goldstein says. The temptation will be strong for him to give a tacit nod to organized violence by Tibetan militants. But, in Goldstein’s view, the exiled leader should opt instead for concessions and compromise.