China 'pivot' trips over McMahon Line

[This piece originally appeared at Asia Times Online on November 6, 2012.  It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.  Rehashing the Sino-Indian War, with India's unwise fetishizing of the McMahon Line and the principle of sovereignty over genuine national interests that are strategically and tactically viable, has interesting implications for the current Senkakus/Diaoyutai confrontation between the PRC and Japan, as reflected in the closing paragraph: India drew the line in the Himalayas - but it turned out to be the wrong line. As for the Senkakus/Diaoyus ...?  PRL 11-8-12]

China is looking for a "Western" pivot to counter the United States' diplomatic and military inroads with its East Asian neighbors such as Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Myanmar.

For China's strategists, as an interesting analysis in the Indian Express tells us, the "Western" pivot means nurturing the PRC's continental Asian relationships with the interior stans and, across the Himalayas, India. Pakistan's descent into basket-case status and the PRC's concurrent anxiety about Islamic extremism in Xinjiang indicates that the old China/Pakistan lips and teeth united front against India (and offsetting threats of destabilization in Kashmir and Tibet) may be past its sell-by date. [1]

But, if Inner Asia lacks disputed islands and the Seventh Fleet, it has disputed borders and an aggravated Sinophobe faction in India eager to spurn China and strengthen ties with the United States.

This is Sino-Indian friendship year, a good omen for rebooting Sino-Indian relations. Unfortunately for Beijing, it is also the fiftieth anniversary of the Sino-Indian war, a golden opportunity for refighting the battles of 1962.

Sino-Indian relations, like Sino-Japanese relations are potentially hostage to territorial disputes. The disputes date back to imperial escapades from the turn of the 20th century. In the case of Japan, it goes back to the seizure of the Senkakus as war spoils in 1895. For India, it is the McMahon Line, first drawn in 1914, and the grim precedent of the 1962 war.

Although the Sino-Indian border war of 1962 is largely forgotten by Chinese - a Global Times poll apparently showed that 80% of Chinese youth didn't even know it had happened - it is still an occasion for handwringing in India that borders on the masochistic. [2]

That is because India, though it only suffered 7,000 casualties and lost no effective control of territory, lost the brief war in as complete and humiliating a fashion as can be imagined.

The short-form version of the war is that the Indian government escalated its border disputes with the People's Republic of China by establishing military outposts north of the McMahon Line, the Line itself a piece of unilateral boundary-making mischief executed by the British Raj.

The Nehru government calculated that its exercise in establishing "facts on the ground", combined with diplomatic backing from the Soviet Union and the United States and India's position of moral authority, would cause Beijing to back down and accept Indian claims in Aksai Chin (a bleak desert north of Kashmir) and the North East Frontier Administration (the southern face of the Himalayas east of Nepal; now Arunachal Pradesh).

In one of many ghastly miscalculations, the Nehru government had concluded that the PRC would not respond militarily to the encroachment of military posts into the disputed territories.

Unfortunately, Nehru's crystal ball, especially when it came to Chinese supremo, Mao Zedong, was remarkably foggy, especially as it related to the PRC's touchiness over Tibetan issues, the equivocal Indian stance over Tibet and, critically, Nikita Khrushchev's delight in rubbing the Chairman's nose in the debacle of his Tibet policy.

In his study China's Decision for War with India in 1962, John Garver (currently professor of international relations at the Georgia Institute of Technology) describes the encounter:

The question of responsibility for the crisis in Tibet figured prominently in the contentious talks between Mao Zedong and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Beijing on 2 October 1959. After a complete disagreement over Taiwan, Khrushchev turned to India and Tibet, saying: "If you let me, I will tell you what a guest should not say - the events in Tibet are your fault. You ruled in Tibet, you should have had your intelligence [agencies] there and should have known about the plans and intentions of the Dalai Lama" [to flee to India].

"Nehru also says that the events in Tibet occurred on our fault," Mao replied.

After an exchange over the flight of the Dalai Lama, Khrushchev made the point: "If you allow him [the Dalai Lama] an opportunity to flee to India, then what has Nehru to do with it? We believe that the events in Tibet are the fault of the Communist Party of China, not Nehru's fault."

"No, this is Nehru's fault," Mao replied.

"Then the events in Hungary are not our fault," the Soviet leader responded, "but the fault of the United States of America, if I understand you correctly. Please, look here, we had an army in Hungary, we supported that fool Rakosi - and this is our mistake, not the mistake of the United States."

Mao rejected this: "The Hindus acted in Tibet as if it belonged to them."

Mao was determined to assuage his feeling of embarrassment (and his jealousy of Nehru's leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement and his anger at Khrushchev's pro-Delhi tilt) by knocking India off its perch.

Nehru apparently misread the conciliatory stylings of Zhou Enlai as an accurate representation of China's military determination, and the Indian military was completely unprepared in every conceivable way - manpower, materiel, logistics, conditioning, positioning, tactics, or strategy - to withstand the People's Liberation Army when it attacked on October 20, 1962.

Actually, Indian failures were not limited to diplomatic and military tunnel vision. They also extended to profound conceptual shortcomings, ones that have relevance to today's standoff between the PRC and Japan over the Senkakus/Diaoyu Islands.

Nehru leaned on the McMahon Line for his definition of the PRC-Indian boundary. The McMahon Line, originally designed to contain China, turned out to be a generous gift to the PRC.

In the early years of the 20th century, protecting India by creating a Tibetan buffer zone between China and Russia and the precious Raj was a priority for imperial British thinkers. To this end, the British government took advantage of China's post-1911 disarray to convene a conference of representatives of China, Tibet, and Britain in New Delhi in 1914 to negotiate the Simla Accord.

Its key objective was to partition Tibet into Chinese-governed Outer Tibet and locally governed Inner Tibet "under Chinese suzerainty" and define a border between India and ethnic Tibetan regions that had the buy-in of the largely autonomous Tibetan government in Lhasa. The Tibetans were eager to sign, since the Accord implied the ability of the Lhasa government to conduct its own foreign policy and conclude treaties; the Chinese government repudiated the treaty.

The British Foreign Office did not support Tibetan independence, however, and was more mindful of maintaining cordial relations with China; it let the initiative fade away. The Accord was published in the official compendium of Indian treaties, Charles Umpherston Aitchison's Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sanads, with the notation that no binding accord had been reached at Simla.

The Accord and the McMahon Line languished in obscurity until Olaf Caroe, a strategist in the Indian Foreign Office, decided to invoke them in 1937 as a binding precedent for settling persistent border tiffs between India ... and Tibet.

Since the historical record showed that the British government itself did not acknowledge the validity of the Simla Accord, some unseemly imperial legerdemain was called for. A new version of Aitchison was commissioned; instead of noting the Accord was not binding on any of the parties, it stated that Britain and Tibet, but not China, had accepted the Accord.

As Steven A Hoffmann wrote in his India and the China Crisis:

The Aitchison changes were allowed to appear in 1938. In order to publish them quickly, and to give a greater sense of authenticity to the new entry without having it attract undue notice, the India Office (and possibly Caroe) contrived to issue an amended version of the appropriate 1929 Aitchison volume, without giving it a new publication date. Copies of the original 1929 volume - located in offices and libraries in India, England, and elsewhere - were then replaced by request and discarded.

Perhaps only three original versions of the relevant 1929 Aitchison volume exist in the entire world (including one at Harvard University). The McMahon Line found its way onto India Survey maps and never left.

After Indian independence, Nehru inherited the now-sacrosanct McMahon Line, largely by default, and used it as the baseline for many of his boundary discussions with the People's Republic of China. (Caroe's deception was not discovered until 1964, after the war, when a British diplomat compared the two versions of the Aitchison volume at Harvard.)

But the McMahon Line had a fatal flaw: it was in a terrible, terrible place.

The line was conceived as a series of heroic outposts strung along the bleak Himalayan ridgeline. The vision of a hundred fists of stone raised in defiance against the enemies from the north on the edge of the Tibetan plateau perhaps enthralled armchair strategists, but fortifying and defending the McMahon Line demanded that troops and supplies had to be pushed from the southern valleys up to the 4,000- and even near 5,000-meter commanding heights.

For the purposes of a military commander defending Indian territory, it would have been infinitely preferable to have the boundary at the base of the foothills, within reach of reasonably expeditious resupply and reinforcement, and leave to the enemy the glory of clambering across the jagged mountains and battling out of the valleys.

Neville Maxwell, the London Times South Asia correspondent at the time and author of India's China War, a widely-read (and, in India, widely-resented) depiction of the 1962 war as Nehru's folly, described the military state of affairs in an interview:

The very idea of a strategic frontier was out of date by the 1930s. Any sensible soldier will tell you if China is going to invade India from the Northeast the place to meet them and to resist them is at the foot of the hills. So when the invaders finally come panting out of breath and ammunition, you can meet them from a position of strength. The last place, strategically, to meet the Chinese was along the McMahon alignment. Caroe is very much the guilty party in all of this. [3]

In an atmosphere of escalating tensions and distrust between India and the People's Republic of China in the aftermath of the Tibet rebellion and the Dalai Lama's flight to India, Nehru compounded his geographic disadvantage by sending troops beyond the McMahon Line to establish outposts on the Chinese side - the so-called "Forward Strategy".

The PLA pounced, and the result was a humiliating defeat followed by a unilateral Chinese withdrawal to north of the "Line of Control", the unofficial but effective boundary that divides India and the People's Republic of China even today.

On the 50th anniversary of this debacle, it is hard for Indian nationalists to find silver linings. One noteworthy example was an article describing the closer integration of the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh into the Indian linguistic, cultural, and political mainstream: "India Lost War With China But Won Arunachal's Heart"

When the Dalai Lama thinks of India's consolidation of Arunachal Pradesh, however, he probably feels little joy and more than a twinge of bitter melancholy in his heart, relating to the great religious town and market center of Tawang, which occupies a thumb of territory sticking out on the northwest corner of the state and which has always been the critical pivot upon which the northeast Indian version of the Great Game has revolved.

Tawang is triple-Tibetan: it is in a Tibetan cultural area, it has been a major center of Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhist practice for centuries (the 6th Dalai Lama was reincarnated there; the town hosts a large monastery); and it holds a special place in the history of the modern Tibetan resistance. The Dalai Lama entered India from the PRC at Tawang in 1959, and actively patronizes the monastery and the town.

In addition to its ethnically Tibetan residents, Tawang also hosts a considerable number of Tibetan refugees.

In 1914, at Simla, the Tibetan government had acquiesced to the inclusion of Tawang into British India by endorsing the McMahon Line. However, as the Simla Accord languished, it was subsequently understood on both sides of the McMahon Line that Tawang was under the administration and effective control of Tibet - if not by Lhasa, then by the local monastery.

In 1935, a British botanist/spy Frank Kingdon-Ward was arrested in Tawang; the Tibetans compounded their error by complaining to a British mission in Lhasa. This disturbing state of affairs came to the notice of Olaf Caroe and led to the resurrection of the Simla Accord and the McMahon Line - and the Indian claim on Tawang.

In 1947, after Indian independence, the government in Lhasa appealed to the new government to acknowledge its rule over Tawang.

Didn't happen.

The India-friendly Wikipedia entry on Tawang states:

[Tawang] came under effective Indian administration on February 12, 1951, when Major R Khating led Indian Army troops to relocate Chinese squatters. India assumed control and sovereignty of the area and established democratic rule therein to end the oppression of the Monpa.

An article in the Guardian provides an interesting picture of the political dynamic that the Indian government found and exploited in Tawang:

Pema Gombu says he has lived under three flags: Tibetan, Chinese and Indian. Although his living room is decked with pictures of the current Dalai Lama, the 81-year-old says the Tibetan administration in the early 20th century was the worst.

"The [Tibetan] officials in that time were corrupt and cruel. I am sure his holiness did not know this. In those days if a Tibetan stopped you they could ask you to work for them like a slave. They forced us to pay taxes. Poor farmers like me had to give over a quarter of our crops to them. We had to carry the loads 40km [25 miles] to a Tibetan town as tribute every year."

It was this treatment that turned Tawang away from Tibet. Mr Gombu said he helped guide Indian soldiers into the town in 1950 who carried papers signed by the Tibetan government which transferred Arunachal's 35,000 square miles [90,000 square kilometers] to India. "It was the happiest day of my life."

Judging from Pema Gombu's references to Tibetans, he is presumably ethnic Monpa. Monpa are an ethnic group that adopted Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhism in the 17th century and center their religious practices on Tawang. They form the demographic backbone of Tawang. Although they are "Tibetan Buddhists" ie followers of the Gelugpa sect, they aren't Tibetans, as the history of Tawang makes clear.

It would appear that the Indian government used the same justification to take control of its Tibetan areas as Beijing did: to rescue the local inhabitants - the Monpa, in this case - from the corrupt and brutal rule of their Tibetan overlords - possibly the government in Lhasa, but more likely the overbearing bosses of the monastery in Tawang.

This history provides an interesting and melancholy perspective on the Dalai Lama's 2009 visit to Tawang.

The visit attracted an enormous amount of media interest because there was the Dalai Lama, going up to the Chinese border, stating that the contested territory of Arunachal Pradesh belonged to India, thereby sticking his finger (in a non-violent, Buddhist fashion) in the Chinese dragon's eye!

But for the Dalai Lama it must have been, at best, a bitter-sweet experience.

He is clearly unwillingly to accept that Tawang is Indian territory. In 2003, as the Times of India tells us, the Dalai Lama asserted that Tawang was part of Tibet, before backpedaling:

NEW DELHI: For the first-time, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama has said that Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, a territory that's still claimed by China, is part of India.

Acknowledging the validity of the MacMohan Line as per the 1914 Simla Agreement in an interview to Navbharat Times, he said that Arunchal Pradesh was a part of India under the agreement signed by Tibetan and British representatives.

In 2003, while touring Tawang, the Dalai Lama had been asked to comment on the issue, but had refused to give a direct answer, saying that Arunachal was actually part of Tibet. China doesn't recognize the MacMohan Line and claims that Tawang and Arunachal Pradesh are part of its territory.

The statement is bound to impact the India-China dialogue, as Beijing has already stated that if Tawang is handed to it, it will rescind claim on the rest of Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese proposal is strategically unacceptable to India, as Tawang is close not just to the northeastern states but also to Bhutan.

After the Dalai Lama's 2009 trips to Japan and Arunachal Pradesh, the Indian press reported that he had stated categorically that Arunachal Pradesh and Tawang are part of India.

In a rather bitter irony, amid the myriad failures of the McMahon Line in securing the borderlands, its only triumph is the modest advance Olaf Caroe intended in 1938: the alienation of Tawang from Tibet.

Nehru's unwise fetishizing of the McMahon Line has been carried on by many in India's political, military, and security elite. In an interesting inversion of the secretive Communists versus transparent democracy framing, the PRC has declassified many official documents relating to the war. The Indian government, on the other hand, has still classified the official inquiry into the war - the Henderson-Brooks report - presumably because it documents the shortcomings of Nehru, the civilian government, and the Indian military in embarrassing fashion.

The cock-up was so complete, in fact that the line between incompetent provocateur and innocent victim has blurred, to India's advantage. Plenty of self-serving assertions have filled the informational vacuum left by the continued classification of the Henderson-Brooks report, allowing nationalistically minded or Sino-phobic Indian commentators to describe the Chinese attack as unprovoked aggression and warn darkly that Chinese perfidy can and probably will be repeated.

On the 50th anniversary of the war, the Deccan Herald declared:

Make no mistake about it. That China is a hydra-headed monster with massive expansionist plans across South Asia is no longer a secret. It was Mao who termed Tibet as the "palm" of a hand with its five fingers as Ladakh, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan, and what has so long been as NEFA [North East Frontier Agency] that pertain to our north eastern states. [4]

Brahma Chellaney found a Western home for this particular brand of historiography at the Daily Beast, the electronic rump of the now-defunct Newsweek, in an article intended to use the Indian experience to educate the democracies of East Asia about how to protect their precious atolls from the PRC: Mr Chellaney declares: China gave India a "lesson" in 1962. Study it now.

My advice: by all means study the 1962, but please don't study Mr Chellaney, especially since he says things like:

China's generals believe in hitting as fast and as hard as possible, a style of warfare they demonstrated in their 1962 blitzkrieg against India. The aim is to wage "battles with swift outcome" (sujuezhan). This laser focus has been a hallmark of every military action Communist China has undertaken since 1949. [5]

In a spirit of scholarly skepticism, I presume to direct Mr Chellaney's attention to the PRC intervention in Korea: three years (1950-53), 500,000 casualties. 'Nuff said.

The key lesson from the 1962 is not that China's neighbors should muscle up in order to counter a PLA "blitzkrieg": rather that it is dangerous to fetishize territorial boundaries in order to make them into national rallying points. As Mr Hoffmann observed in his largely sympathetic account of the Indian government's border catastrophe:

[The] Indian government came to believe that the McMahon Line was not merely a British Invention ... the McMahon line itself constituted recognition that the watershed crest of the Assam Himalaya formed the natural geographical divide between Tibet and [the Assam Himalaya].

... the weight of all the evidence amassed by the Indians ... made for a plausible case ... But to the extent that India claimed absolute rather than relative worth for its border case, by holding that linear borders had been conclusively "delimited' by history and discovered through documentary investigation, the Indian case became vulnerable ...

India drew the line in the Himalayas - but it turned out to be the wrong line. As for the Senkakus/Diaoyus ...?

Notes:
1. China's new 'Look West' policy to give primacy to India: expert, The Indian Express, Nov 1, 2012.
2. Over 80 per cent Chinese have no knowledge of 1962 war: Survey, Niti Central, Oct 20, 2012.
3. China Was The Aggrieved; India, Aggressor In '62, Outlook India, Oct 22, 2012.
4. The Battle of Attrition, Deccan Herald, Nov 2, 2012.
5. How China Fights: Lessons From the 1962 Sino-Indian War, The Daily Beast, Oct 29, 2012.

Ai Wei, Liao Yiwu, the Dalai Lama...and Nouriel Roubini

I’ve had several articles up at Asia Times in the last few weeks.

Ghosts of Wenchuan marks the third anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake of May 12, 2008. 

Two of China’s best known dissident artists, Ai Weiwei and Liao Yiwu, make Wenchuan an important part of their critique of the Chinese political system.

Ai focussed on the apparently disproportionate number of deaths of children who perished when shoddy “doufu dregs” schoolbuildings collapsed.  He organized citizen investigators to come up with a list of children killed, organized a reading of their names, and created an installation on the facade of a museum in Munich spelling out the phrase “She lived happily on this earth for seven years” (the phrase of a mourning mother of one of the victims) using 9000 children's backpacks.

9000 may well be chosen to represent his estimate of the number of schoolchildren who actually died.  His count and official statistics are at the 5000 level, but it is alleged that the death toll was twice that.

Wenchuan is close to the center of Ai’s criticism of the political and moral rot he sees in Chinese society under the CCP.

Liao Yiwu, a writer, has become more and more well known in the West for his reportage on the marginalized citizens of China that the government doesn't want you to know about. He went into the quake zone and compiled a record, Earthquake Madhouse: A Record of the Big Sichuan Earthquake, of what he saw and heard.

A lot of it apparently did not reflect particularly well on the government’s response, especially its policy of treating the local populace as blame-placing and compensation-seeking troublemakers and placing the quake zone under virtual military lockdown during the rescue, recovery, and early rebuilding period.

Both men labored under government hostility for their advocacy.  Liao was denied the opportunity to go to Australia to accept an award for his eathquake book in 2009, and the Chinese authority recently pulled him off the plane just as he was about to embark on an international tour that would promote his latest book, The Corpse Walker.

As for Ai, he was punched in the face while in Chengdu attempting to testify at the trial of Tan Zuoren, an earthquake investigator who was sentenced to five years in prison for his activism.  The punch apparently caused hemorrhaging in Ai’s brain, and he had a procedure in Munich a few weeks later to drain it.

In April, Ai was detained for suspicion of “economic crimes”, which is what I guess they call lese majeste these days.

The Chinese government would like everybody to remember the $1 trillion yuan it claims to have poured into the reconstruction of Wenchuan.  However, a lot of people apparently don’t see it the same way.  On the third anniversary of the quake, Southern Metropolis Daily ran a quickly-censored editorial invoking Ai’s art as a mourning offering to the dead schoolchildren.

For a lot of activists Wenchuan looks like one of those naked lunch moments, when they witnessed and were nauseated by what they saw to be the regime’s true nature.

I also wrote two Tibet-related pieces.

One was a quickie, Osama and the Real Dalai Lama, on the absurd media fuss that the Dalai Lama has “implied” that the killing of Bin Laden was “justified”.  He said nothing of the sort, and the news reports that raced around the world on the wings of the Internet and little Tweetie feet were all drawn from a single piece of misreporting by the Metro reporter of the LA Times.  The story was useful primarily as a lesson that newspapers behave just like blogs.  They need to fill their screens and follow the buzz.  A false controversy is just as good as a real fact—better, because there is no limit to the juiciness of a falsehood-- so they are happy to peddle BS first and ask questions later if at all.

The second Tibet piece, Tibet’s Only Hope Lies Within is built around McClatchy correspondent Tim Johnson’s new book Tragedy in Crimson.  He argues that the Tibetan political movement is doomed by the power of China and the resulting indifference of all the nations that matter to Tibetan political aspirations.  I take the somewhat different tack that local Tibetan identity—and activism--will survive the tsunami of investment and Han immigration moving into the region.  In fact, marginalization of Tibetans in their own homeland seems to be evoking even stronger feelings of solidarity and grievance as many of the young find refuge in monasteries.

Finally, I wrote a piece China has tool-box to head off high-speed crash about Dr. Doom—Nouriel Roubini’s—prediction that the Chinese economy is due for a burst bubble and hard landing pretty soon.  I agree! But posit that the Chinese government has an active Keynesian doctrine and capacity and will to intervene that the US apparently lacks, and therefore has some effective tools to deal with its problems.

photograph of Ai Weiwei installation by Zoltan Jokay from http://zoltanjokay.de/zoltanblog/2010/01/ai-weiwei-she-lived-happily-for-seven-years-int-his-world-ai-weiwei-she-lived-happily-for-seven-years-int-his-world/  

The Little Town of Tawang: the Dalai Lama’s Headache

I have an article up at Asia Times, China yearns for peace on southern flank, that covers China’s efforts at the BRICS conference in Hainan to rebrand itself as “regional leader” (instead of the contentious “***hole of Asia”) as it hunkers down for a politically difficult and dangerous summer of simmering discontent in Tibet and in the Han areas.

Part of this effort appears to involve making nice with India on the issues of trade and the perennial border disputes in the Aksai Chin region of Kashmir in the west and Arunachal Pradesh in the east.

In the article, I tweak the Dalai Lama for the Tibetan government’s century-long gyration over the town of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh.

Arunachal Pradesh is a mixed bag of ethnicities and confessions: Burmese to the east, local animists/Buddhists in the center, and, on the western boundary, Tibetan Buddhist.  The major market town in the Tibetan region is Tawang.

You might call Tawang triple-Tibetan: it’s in a Tibetan cultural area, it has been a major center of Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhist practice for centuries (the 6th Dalai Lama was reincarnated there; the town hosts a large monastery); and it holds a special place in the history of the modern Tibetan resistance.  The Dalai Lama entered India from the PRC at Tawang in 1959, and actively patronizes the monastery and the town.  In addition to its ethnically Tibetan residents, Tawang also hosts a considerable number of Tibetan refugees.

In 1914, at Simla, the Tibetan government acquiesced to the inclusion of Tawang into British India by endorsing the McMahon Line.  The British wanted to alienate a piece of Tibet from China to create a buffer zone; the Tibetan government wanted to gain international recognition by treating directly with Great Britain, and apparently decided that giving up Tawang was an acceptable price to pay.

The Chinese government never accepted the Simla accord or the McMahon Line, and that rejection forms the basis of the PRC’s outstanding claim on Arunachal Pradesh—which it calls South Tibet.

It appears that, regardless of who was claiming what, governance in the remote town was in the hands of the Tawang monastery.

Anyway, in 1947, India achieved independence and the Tibetan government in Lhasa decided to try its luck with the new administration.  It wrote a letter asserting that Tawang should be administered by Lhasa.

India had other ideas.

An article in the Guardian indicates that the Tibetan government flip-flopped on Tawang again in 1950, while in the process providing an interesting picture of the dismal governance record of Tibetan elites before the Dalai Lama fled to India and was recognized as humanity’s shining light:

Pema Gombu says he has lived under three flags: Tibetan, Chinese and Indian. Although his living room is decked with pictures of the current Dalai Lama, the 81-year-old says the Tibetan administration in the early 20th century was the worst.

"The [Tibetan] officials in that time were corrupt and cruel. I am sure his holiness did not know this. In those days if a Tibetan stopped you they could ask you to work for them like a slave. They forced us to pay taxes. Poor farmers like me had to give over a quarter of our crops to them. We had to carry the loads 40km [25 miles] to a Tibetan town as tribute every year."

It was this treatment that turned Tawang away from Tibet. Mr Gombu said he helped guide Indian soldiers into the town in 1950 who carried papers signed by the Tibetan government which transferred Arunachal's 35,000 square miles to India. "It was the happiest day of my life."

Judging from Pema Gombu’s references to Tibetans, he’s probably ethnic Monpa.  Monpa are an ethnic group that adopted Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhism in the 17th century and center their religious practices on Tawang.  They form the demographic backbone of Tawang.

Although they are “Tibetan Buddhists” i.e. followers of the Gelugpa sect, they aren’t Tibetans, as the history of Tawang makes clear.

The India-friendly Wikipedia entry on Tawang states:

[Tawang] came under effective Indian administration on February 12, 1951, when Major R Khating led Indian Army troops to relocate Chinese squatters. India assumed control and sovereignty of the area and established democratic rule therein to end the oppression of the Monpa.

It would appear that the Indian government used the same justification to take control of its Tibetan areas as Beijing did: to rescue the local inhabitants from the corrupt and brutal rule of their Tibetan overlords—possibly the government in Lhasa, but more likely the overbearing bosses of the monastery in Tawang.

In best divide-and-conquer fashion, I suspect the Indian occupiers aligned themselves with the disenfranchised Manpo majority in order to erode the local standing of the Tibetan elites—and Tibet’s claim on the area.

Which makes it pretty clear that the the Dalai Lama is now called upon to confirm Indian rule over a place his people used to run until the Indian government kicked them out until 1951, and which the Indian government has been working actively to alienate from Tibetan influence ever since then.

Awkward.

Anyway, in 1986, the territory—previously the North East Frontier Authority-- was organized as the state of Arunachal Pradesh.

In 2003, as the Times of India tells us, HHDL went “off the res” and once again asserted that Tawang was part of Tibet, but later back-pedaled:

NEW DELHI: For the first-time, Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama has said that Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, a territory that's still claimed by China, is part of India.

Acknowledging the validity of the MacMohan Line as per the 1914 Simla Agreement in an interview to Navbharat Times , he said that Arunchal Pradesh was a part of India under the agreement signed by Tibetan and British representatives.

In 2003, while touring Tawang, the Dalai Lama had been asked to comment on the issue, but had refused to give a direct answer, saying that Arunachal was actually part of Tibet. China doesn't recognize the MacMohan Line and claims that Tawang and Arunachal Pradesh are part of its territory.

The statement is bound to impact the India-China dialogue, as Beijing has already stated that if Tawang is handed to it, it will rescind claim on the rest of Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese proposal is strategically unacceptable to India, as Tawang is close not just to the northeastern states but also to Bhutan.

After the Dalai Lama’s 2009 trips to Japan and Arunachal Pradesh, the Indian press reported that he had stated categorically that Arunachal Pradesh and Tawang are part of India.

I suspect that his statements are really more nuanced.  Tawang is obviously part of the traditional Tibetan cultural and administrative sphere, and the Dalai Lama’s preferred position, I think, would be that the Tibetan government and people agree that India administers the area at present, while implying that the issue would merit revisiting at a future date.

As I say in the article, going along with Indian claims to Arunachal Pradesh are simply the cost of doing business for the Tibetan government-in-exile, reliant as it is upon Indian good offices for a haven in northern India.

The Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government have been given a home in Himachal Pradesh, which shares a boundary with the Tibetan Autonomous Region but way out west and remote from the heartland of the Lhasa and the Tibetan plateau.  Himachal Pradesh itself is 95% Hindu and no hotbed of Tibetan independence sentiment.

The emigres are thereby quarantined, appeasing Beijing and also making sure that the Dalai Lama’s leadership of the emigre community does not translate into incitement of Tibetan nationalism vis a vis China or the Manpo—and the Manpo’s patron, India--as it might in Arunachal Pradesh.

The Indian government keeps the Dalai Lama on a tight leash concerning Arunachal Pradesh, rarely allowing him to travel there—except apparently, when the Indian government wants to tweak China, and when it feels confident that the Dalai Lama will not assert Tawang’s Tibetan character in an inconvenient fashion.

Dalai Lama Challenges China! Chaos in Nepal! Tension at the Border!

Parsing Sino-Indian Tensions

I have an article up at Asia Times Online under the pen name Peter Lee entitled Dalai Lama at apex of Sino-Indian tensions.

It's keyed to a high profile news item--the Dalai Lama's provocative visit to a border town in territory held by India but disputed by China--and a significant but rather underreported development--the escalating political struggle between pro-Chinese and pro-Indian political forces now reaching its climax in Nepal.

The Chinese themselves have said that the biggest irritant to Sino-Indian relations is the unresolved border dispute. To them, it’s more of an issue than economic competition, India’s growing integration into the U.S. South Asian security regime, or Indian unease at Beijing’s cozying up to Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the Maldives at New Delhi’s expense and raising the specter of maritime encirclement.

This would seem counterintuitive, since the remote boondocks that have formed the basis of the border dispute—the desolate wasteland of Aksai Chin (China’s share of the Kashmir dispute) in the west and the multi-tribal mélange of Arunachal Pradesh in the east at the Burmese border—are already occupied by the parties that have the strongest claim. A simple swap—the Indians recognize Chinese jurisdiction over Aksai Chin and the Chinese acknowledge Indian control of Arunachal Pradal—has, indeed, been on the table for a half century.


I make the case that perpetual tensions at the border reflect the destabilizing potential of the “Tibet card”—the possibility that India will abandon its “One China” policy once the current Dalai Lama passes on and overtly or covertly support Tibetan independence activities along the border of the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

China wants to secure its borders and also increase its ability to project power into adjoining areas in order to deter potential shenanigans by the Tibetans with Indian connivance. India, on the other hand, wants border conditions favorable to a possible play of the “Tibet Card”.







The slow-motion collapse of Pakistan, China’s closest ally in the region and India’s major military antagonist, has deprived Beijing of its most important asset. The idea that, if India messed with Tibet, Pakistan would unleash hell in Kashmir with Chinese support, is a vain hope today.

With this geostrategic deterrent out of the picture, the focus has shifted to securing the physical space at the borders. Both China and India are pouring money and troops into the border region and arguing over the status of a little town in Arunachal Pradesh called Tawang.




The map to the right, provided by Andy Proehl, shows the disputed area of AP. In the political map of AP below, Tawang is the district to the west sticking out between Tibet and Bhutan.



Tawang is in the news because the Dalai Lama is visiting there on November 8 to visit old friends and figuratively stick his thumb in the dragon’s eye. The Dalai Lama already made some serious waves last year when he reportedly departed from his usual apolitical stance and said that Tawang—within the contested territory in Arunachal Pradesh—was part of India.

It might be noted that the Dalai Lama looks slightly out of line here.



In 1947, the Tibetan government (the Dalai Lama was at that time a youth of twelve who had been identified as the reincarnation and resided in Lhasa but had not yet been enthroned) tried to renegotiate its border deal with the British (the famous Simla Accord of 1914 between Great Britain and Tibet that generated the McMahon line but was never accepted by China) to get acknowledgment of its de facto control of the town.

In fact, according to an interesting Wikipedia entry, the status of Tawang has been the key factor in the contested Himalayan border for well over one hundred years:

Early British efforts to create a boundary in this sector were triggered by their discovery in the mid-19th century that Tawang, an important trading town, was Tibetan territory. In 1873, the British-run Government of India drew an "Outer Line," intended as an international boundary … [In 1912-13] the Outer Line was moved north, but Tawang was left as Tibetan territory…. When the British demanded that the Tawang monastery, located south of the McMahon Line, cease paying taxes to Lhasa, Tibet protested. …. In 1944, NEFT [North Eastern Frontier Territory] established direct administrative control for the entire area it was assigned, although Tibet soon regained authority in Tawang. In 1947, the Tibetan government wrote a note presented to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs laying claim to Tibetan districts south of the McMahon Line. In Beijing, the Communist Party came to power in 1949 and declared its intention to "liberate" Tibet. India, which had become independent in 1947, responded by declaring the McMahon Line to be its boundary and by decisively asserting control of the Tawang area (1950-51).

How 'bout that. This backstory makes the Indo-Tibetan posturing over Tawang appear pretty provocative.

However, in my piece I argue that the true focus of international attention should be Nepal, which is careening into a political crisis as pro-Indian and pro-Chinese factions slug it out for dominance (with the barely concealed political, diplomatic, and financial support of their respective patrons).

At the same time that the Dalai Lama is visiting Arunachal Pradesh, the pro-Chinese Nepalese Maoists are threatening to bring the current, pro-Indian government down through mass action. The Nepalese Maoists, who abandoned their insurgency to participate in the political process, emerged from the 2008 elections as the largest political party in parliament.

This clip of the Maoists' anti-government rally in Kathmandu on November 1, beyond some Triumph-of-the-Will type thrills, gives an idea of the intensity of the current political scene in Nepal.



If the Maoists succeed—which appears very likely—India will face the unwelcome prospect of Nepal edging into the Chinese camp.

Considering that, in the 1970s, India dealt with its other unruly satellite state—Sikkim—by orchestrating the overthrow of the monarchy, dispatching Indian troops to Sikkim at the request of local pro-Indian politicians, and arranging a plebiscite that voted for union with India and the extinction of Sikkimese independence by a vote of 97.5%--there is no guarantee that the Nepalese imbroglio will end quickly or amicably.

Nobody, not even the Nepalese Maoists, seem interested in having this thing boil over into a regional crisis, and perhaps that’s why the whole mess has been almost invisible from the standpoint of the international media.

But Asia Times Online has the story. Hey, go read the thing!

As a lagniappe for China Matters readers, some serious scholarship was done on the origins of the Sino-Indian War of 1962—the mother of all Chinese border conflicts—after the Chinese government declassified documents relating to the origins of the war.

Bottom line: misunderstandings on both sides.

The Chinese misinterpreted Nehru’s expressions of sympathy with the Tibetan people and their aspirations for autonomy as an active Indian policy to challenge the PRC’s control of its Tibetan regions.

Nehru, on the other hand, made a more fatal miscalculation, believing that China lacked the military heft and will to push back when he decided to expel the PLA from Aksai Chin.

Perhaps the key psychological element in the war was the fact that Nikita Khrushchev pissed off Mao Zedong.

In his study China’s Decision for War with India in 1962, John Garver (currently professor of international relations at the Georgia Institute of Technology) describes how Krushchev got into Mao’s face about screwing up Tibet:

The question of responsibility for the crisis in Tibet figured prominently in the
contentious talks between Mao Zedong and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Beijing
on 2 October 1959. After a complete disagreement over Taiwan, Khrushchev turned to
India and Tibet, saying: "If you let me, I will tell you what a guest should not say --- the events in Tibet are your fault. You ruled in Tibet, you should have had your intelligence [agencies] there and should have know about the plans and intentions of the Dalai Lama" [to flee to India]. "Nehru also says that the events in Tibet occurred on our fault," Mao replied. After an exchange over the flight of the Dalai Lama, Khrushchev made the point: "If you allow him [the Dalai Lama] an opportunity to flee to India, then what has Nehru to do with it? We believe that the events in Tibet are the fault of the Communist Party of China, not Nehru's fault." "No, this is Nehru's fault," Mao replied. "Then the events in Hungary are not our fault," the Soviet leader responded, "but the fault of the United States of America, if I understand you correctly. Please, look here, we had an army in Hungary, we supported that fool Rakosi --- and this is our mistake, not the mistake of the United States." Mao rejected this: "The Hindus acted in Tibet as if it belonged to them." [emph. added]

Self-reflection and the willingness to admit a mistake were not Mao Zedong’s signature virtues under the best of circumstances.

Having Khrushchev—who had not only presided over de-Stalinization (a process that Mao detested) and the Sino-Soviet split; he was also pursuing a strategic alliance with India!-- rub his nose in the embarrassment of the Dalai Lama debacle and take India’s side undoubtedly infuriated the Chairman.

In this context, it isn’t surprising that Mao would welcome the opportunity to assert China’s position on the Sino-Indian border and humiliate Nehru, who was not only Mao’s rival as leader and role model for the Non-Aligned Movement; he was also Krushchev’s current darling.

When war came in 1962, the Indian Army, acclimated to service in the plains and lacking the logistical wherewithal to push men and supplies up through the Himalayan foothills to the front lines, was resoundingly thumped by the PLA.

China fielded units and commanders battle-hardened in the harsh conditions of the Korean War, and benefited from the more manageable logistics involved in resupply across the Tibetan plateau.

India’s defeat was a shock to its military planners, and the lessons of the war have guided the Indian Army’s order of battle and the militarized infrastructure development of the border regions to this day.

In this context, it’s interesting to note that the Indian government, as part of its strategy to entrench itself in Afghanistan and irritate and terrify Pakistan has the same outfits building strategic roads in Afghanistan (such as the Zaranj highway connecting Afghanistan to Iran and intended to bypass Pakistan and the Khyber Pass for trade and military resupply) that build them on the Sino-Indian border: the Border Roads Organization engineers guarded by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police.

China still holds the high ground on the Sino-Indian border, however. This year India announced it was moving a squadron of nuclear-capable Sukhoi 30 MKI fighters to within striking range of the border at Arunachal Pradesh, just to keep things even.

It looks like the Tibetan problem will keep the Sino-Indian border tense for the foreseeable future.



The maps of the contested Himalayan regions were prepared by Andy Proehl, proprietor of the blog Random Axis.

The map of Arunachal Pradesh is from Wikipedia.

Photo of Dalai Lama at Tawang November 8, 2009 flanked by Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu AP Photo/Manish Swarup

China Connects the Dots from Lhasa to Dharmsala...

...With Some Help From the TPUM

I'm not about to say that stories about the Tibet People's Uprising Movement (TPUM) are getting spiked in some kind of journalistic omerta dedicated to keeping the existence of this awkward group out of reporting on the Tibetan disturbances...

...but I was interested enough in the issue to send a query about the absence of TPUM from news reports to a distinguished Asian correspondent.

He responded! and advised that he considered that TPUM was not important enough to merit mention in dispatches.

Not important! I sputtered to myself.

I think TPUM's plenty important.

So do the Chinese, for that matter.

TPUM is a five-member coalition comprised of: the two biggest Tibetan NGOs: the Tibetan Youth Congress (30,000 members) and the Tibetan Women's Association (13,000 members); the TYC's political wing, the National Democracy Party of Tibet; Students for a Free Tibet, India; and Gu-Chu-Sum Association of Ex-Political Prisoners, which, if a critical post on a site called World Report is accurate, ranks second on the list of recipients of National Endowment for Democracy Tibet-related largesse, only behind Richard Gere's International Campaign for Tibet.

TPUM is noteworthy for its fire-eating declaration calling for direct action inside as well as outside Tibet:

The Tibetan People's Uprising Movement is a global movement of Tibetans inside and outside of Tibet taking control of our political destiny by engaging in direct action to end China's illegal and brutal occupation of our country. Through unified and strategic campaigns we will seize the Olympic spotlight and shine it on China's shameful repression inside Tibet, thereby denying China the international acceptance and approval it so fervently desires.[emph. added]

We call on Tibetans inside Tibet to continue to fight Chinese domination and we pledge our unwavering support for your continued courageous resistance. [emph. in original]

On one hand, TPUM has only associated itself publicly with one action, a protest March to Tibet from Dharmsala that, thanks to a hostile attitude by the Indian government, has sputtered along ineffectually.

The concrete goals of the march have never been clearly articulated but apparently range from a best-case destination of Lhasa (they are rather coy about how they hope to get there) and a minimum objective of heightened Tibetan consciousness and independence-related militancy.

On the other hand, there's the statement in the declaration that“we will bring about another uprising that will shake China's control in Tibet and mark the beginning of the end of China's occupation”, and a video message (undated, but apparently prepared prior to March 10) from the leaders of the five groups comprising TPUM.

Ngawang Woeber of Gu-Chu-Sam leads off with the longest message, concluding:

Our goal is to bring together all Tibetans inside and outside Tibet before the Beijing Olympics begin. We will join a unified campaign to restore Tibetan freedom. This is an historic opportunity we can't afford to miss. This opportunity won't come again. Secondly, China's policies in Tibet are getting more destructive day by day. Chinese population transfer to Tibet has made matters even more urgent for us. Now it is time for Tibetans everywhere to rise up. In the spirit of the 1959 Tibetan national Uprising we must rise up and resist and bring about an even greater Uprising. An Uprising that will shake the Chinese government to its core. Those who can walk shall join the March to Tibet. Those with money shall support the movement. In short, whatever resources you have—skills, experience, wealth, courage—this is the time to bring it to the table and make a real impact on our struggle. We need everyone. [emph. added]

To me, that sounds like a call to action. Inside Tibet as well as outside. And it's not coming from some slogan-spouting wannabe college revolutionary. Those are the words of somebody who did hard time in a Chinese prison and knows the terrible cost that anti-government words and actions can bring.

And it sounds to me like the kind of appeal that might bring several hundred monks out of their monasteries to protest fifty years' worth of Chinese affronts to Tibetan freedom, religion, and culture on March 10—the 49th anniversary of Tibetan National Uprising Day—and trigger the Chinese police response in Lhasa and the subsequent disturbances.

Two of the other spokespeople on the video, Tsewang Rigzin, president of the TYC, and B. Tsering, head of the TWA, have been all over the newspapers providing reports and commentary on events inside Tibet since March 11.

But nary a whisper about their affiliation with TPUM can I find, outside of a couple posts I wrote and a March 20 Wall Street Journal profile by Peter Wonacott , which reports Tsewang Rigzin's denial of TPUM involvement in the unrest in Tibet and describes the group's ambitions to act as a source for Western coverage:

Protests this month have unleashed a wave of violence inside Tibetan areas of China. Mr. Rigzin says the protests in Tibet were spontaneous, and had no backing from a group he helped establish in January, called the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement.

He says the group -- comprising five different nongovernmental exile organizations including the Youth Congress -- has swapped information since the protests began with those inside Tibet through phone calls and text messages. That information has often made its way into news releases emailed to journalists or has been posted on the group's Web site.

Let me hasten to point out that the existence of TPUM is no secret, either to the Tibetans, journalists...or to the Chinese.

Its manifesto and activities have been covered by the Students for a Free Tibet blog and, when I discovered the TPUM website on March 16, it was already being disrupted, presumably by a Chinese cyber attack of the disruption of service variety.

At the time, I speculated that China would seize upon TPUM to discredit the Tibetan emigre movement and attempt to place the Dalai Lama on a cleft stick by forcing him to disavow either non-violence or the demonstrators.

On March 18, I wrote:

Regardless of what the TPUM did ...and even if the TPUM just a collection of big-talk and little-action emigres, rest assured that the Chinese media will be happy to connect the TPUM dots as they see fit...

Sure as sunrise, the lead paragraph of an April 2 report on the official Chinese government website read:

China's Ministry of Public Security said on Tuesday that it had gathered sufficient evidence showing that March 14 riots in Lhasa was not isolated or accidental but was part of the "Tibetan People's Uprising Movement" plotted by the Dalai clique.

The report continued:

"The 'Tibetan People's Uprising Movement' plotted by the Dalai clique is intended to sabotage the peaceful, stable and unified social situation in China and use the Olympic Games to put pressure on the Chinese government, thus achieving their political aims," a spokesman with the Ministry of Public Security said.

"The word 'uprising' means to overthrow the present regime through armed force and violence. So I'm wondering, is there any country that allows such an 'uprising' against the central government? Is there any country that tolerates such activities wantonly instigating the subversion of a state regime?" he said.
...

Police officers have also found copies of a "Declaration of Tibetan People's Uprising Movement;" copies of the Dalai Lama's speech on March 10; pictures of the clique's members undertaking secessionist activities and computers used to contact officials of the clique's "government in exile" in the residence of a person who allegedly took place in the riots.

The suspect was arrested on March 15 of charges of accepting the clique's orders and undertaking secessionist activities, including beating, smashing, looting and arson, in Lhasa on March 14.

Xinhua reported additional allegations on April 2:

A large quantity of offensive weapons suspected to be used for riots were discovered in several Tibetan temples, China's Ministry of Public Security said here on Tuesday.

The public security authorities turned up 178 guns, 13,013 bullets, 359 swords, 3,504 kilograms of dynamite, 19,360 detonators and two hand grenades in the rooms of lamas in some temples in Tibet with the information from lamas and other people, said ministry spokesman Wu Heping.

He said that the Dalai Lama and his followers had recently planned and organized activities around the world to support "Tibet Independence", such as "Support Tibet" and "Global Action Day".

"Their next plan is to organize suicide squads to launch violent attacks, according to our investigation," Wu said, "They even claimed that they fear neither bloodshed nor sacrifice."
...
"We now have sufficient evidence to show the March 14 Lhasa violence was part of the 'Tibetan People's Uprising Movement', a scheme by the Dalai clique," he said. [emph. added]

China's play of the TPUM card did not provoke a flurry of reporting by Western journalists.

No mention of TPUM in the AP coverage of Wu Heping's press conference. Nothing in VOA. Nothing in CNN . Nothing in the IHT, which picked up the AP report. Zip in The Telegraph .

On the other hand, AFP mentioned TPUM, though it did present the existence of the group as an allegation by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security—not exactly a respected source.

There was an interesting glitch in the report by Reuters’ Chris Buckley, which did mention TPUM:

China's Ministry of Public Security said it had arrested "key members" of an underground network in Lhasa working in concert with overseas pro-Tibet independence groups to spark a "Tibet People's Uprising Movement."

The Chinese accusation is not that local and overseas groups are trying to “spark a 'Tibetan People's Uprising Movement'”. It's that the “Tibetan People's Uprising Movement”—of whose existence in Dharmsala there can be no doubt—is responsible for fomenting unrest inside the PRC—an extremely dangerous and somewhat plausible claim.

In the articles mentioning TPUM, there was plenty of aggrieved rebuttal from the Tibetan government-in-exile (and even Tom Casey of the State Department, who presumably knows zero about the issue) but, as far as I can tell, nobody said Hey, Tsewang Rigzin, he's that guy who's always sending tips to my Blackberry, he's with TPUM, let's get a quote from him!

Even though AP, Bloomberg, CNN, NPR, the Guardian, VOA, and Reuters and the London Times had all turned to Tsewang Rigzin for quotes on the Tibet unrest in his role as president of the Tibetan Youth Congress.

The difficulty of gaining traction in the Western press has not discouraged the Chinese on the TPUM issue.

The China Matters crystal ball was in good working order on March 18, when I wrote:

Don't be surprised if the Chinese invoke the Global War on Terror, that magic elixir of oppressive state power, to justify going after TPUM, Tibetan monks, and any other source of actual or potential resistance.

Sure enough, Chinese accusations subsequently extended to the Tibetan Youth Congress itself—the most logical dot to connect after TPUM.

To wrong-foot potential American and European sympathizers with Tibetan freedom fighters, the bogeyman du jour, international terrorism, was summoned:

From Xinhua on April 10.

The violent incident in Lhasa on March 14 -- including beating, smashing, looting and arson -- exposed the terrorist nature of "Tibetan Youth Congress" (TYC) as the direct planner of the riot. The crimes made the organization look like a kin member of Al-Qaida, Chechnyan armed terrorists and "East Turkistan" separatists.

Founded in 1970, the TYC advocates "complete independence of Tibet" and has fully integrated into the "Tibetan government-in-exile", entering the power core of the Dalai clique. It has long been involved in secessionist activities.

In February, the TYC held campaigns in Dharamsala to recruit participants for the "Tibetan People's Uprising Movement" and trained key members for the activity.

What makes the TYC a terrorist organization is not only what it has said but what it has done. Police in Lhasa seized more than 100 guns, tens of thousands of bullets, several thousand kilograms of explosives and tens of thousands of detonators, acting on reports from lamas and ordinary people.

These figures, in addition to the deaths of more than a dozen ordinary people in the Lhasa riot, show that the TYC is no different from Al-Qaida, Chechnyan armed terrorists, "East Turkistan" separatists and any other terrorist organization.

Under Chinese law, terrorist organizations are those which use violence to threaten national security, sabotage social stability, harm people and damage their property, those which have leaders and assigned missions, and those which have organized, planned, instigated, implemented or participated in terrorist activities, or are carrying out such activities.

Such groups also include those having built bases for terrorist activities, systematically recruited and trained terrorists, collaborated with international terrorist organizations to sponsor, train and cultivate terrorists, and have participated in terrorist activities.
Judging by these criteria, the TYC is a terrorist organization in a pure sense.

In case somebody didn't get the point, other articles on the Xinhua site declared:

“Tibetan Youth Congress” is pure terrorist organization

TYC common enemy to all human

TYC. a terror group worse than Bin Laden's

TPUM probably breathed a sigh of relief when high-profile actions against the Olympic flame relay provoked a blizzard of anti-Chinese press in the Western media and any chance of coverage of the Chinese allegations evaporated.

Nevertheless, the official Chinese media has persisted, albeit with the usual absence of international traction, in its efforts to make the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement the face of the Tibetan emigre movement.

After connecting the riots to TPUM and TPUM to the Tibetan Youth Congress, the next dot to be connected by the Chinese has been the Tibetan government in exile itself.

Most recently, a lengthy analysis of the “Current Conditions and Essential Character of the Dalai Lama Clique's Tibetan Government in Exile”
on page 4 of the April 27 domestic dead tree edition of People's Daily began:

An abundance of facts demonstrates that the March 14 riots in Lhasa were a major component of the “Tibetan People's Uprising Movement” of the Dalai Lama clique, and were carefully organized and planned.

The article winds selectively through the history of the Tibetan emigres to paint a picture of a theocratic government controlled by the Dalai Lama's family and dominated by pro-independence radicals, promoting their objectives through control of NGOs like the Tibetan Youth Congress and Tibetan Women's Association, and advancing the “Tibetan People's Uprising Movement” for the purpose of achieving Tibetan independence.

Of course, the objective of this over-the-top Chinese bluster is not to get favorable Western ink for their accusations. With the non-stop Chinese attacks on the accuracy of foreign coverage of the Tibetan disturbances, the hostility of the Western press on this issue is a foregone conclusion.

The purpose, as always, is to split the Tibetan emigre movement by creating a rift between the militants and the engagement-minded moderates around the Dalai Lama, so that the credibility and effectiveness of the Dalai Lama as a spokeman for the Tibetan community is undermined.

People's Daily's lengthy bill of indictment against the Tibetan government in exile didn't gain any foreign coverage to speak of, but an editorial on the same page did.

Entitled “Attempts to Split the Motherland Will Certainly Suffer Defeat”
, the brief editorial heaped scorn on “the Dalai Lama clique” for allegedly pursuing Tibetan independence under the guise of the “Middle Way” policy of Tibetan autonomy.

The coverage in the Western media was exemplified by the headline provided for Tania Branigan's article in the Guardian: China Ridicules Dalai Lama, despite ‘talks’ .

The Chinese media must be slapping its forehead in frustration at the gormless inability of capitalist correspondents to understand calibrated socialist invective and goal-post setting.

The editorial didn't attack the Dalai Lama personally; it attacked the “Dalai Lama clique”, meaning the stubbornly radical members of his family who serve in the government or as his advisors.

The Chinese government has not yet decided to connect the next available dot in the political chain it has constructed from the March 14 disturbances in Lhasa...the Dalai Lama himself.

The Chinese are offering the Dalai Lama the opportunity to disassociate himself from the independence movement, or even avail himself of the dubious privilege of implying he was personally held captive by the malign forces of the pro-independence clique.

You know, like the Manchu Last Emperor.

By the way, the Dalai Lama isn't the last possible dot. The ultimate accusation available to demonize and marginalize the Tibetan emigre movement would be that the United States and the UK used the Tibetan government in exile as their cat's paw to subvert China.

You know, like the Japanese with Manchukuo.

But that's a maybe for the future. Right now, the focus is on the Dalai Lama.

And the Chinese are signaling that, if and when any further meetings are held between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama's envoy, the Dalai Lama will have to come up with a new formulation to replace the Middle Way—one that precludes demands for withdrawal of Chinese troops or asserts Tibet's right to handle some of its foreign relations directly--if he wants to pursue engagement with China.

The Chinese strategy of driving a wedge between the Dalai Lama and the militants can be seen from an April 11 report in Xinhua Chinese entitled:

United Front Department: the Door will be Forever Open for the Dalai Lama

The United Front Department is, of course, the Chinese department in charge of negotiations with non-sovereign political organizations.

The vice director of the department listed the extensive contacts between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government; contacts that, to the most militant of emigres, will always carry the whiff of appeasement:

According the UFD, 20 visits have occurred since 1979, by the Dalai Lama's older brother, his second (younger brother), his brother-in-law, his younger sister, and other close associates, including(?) six visits from the Dalai Lama's personal representatives since 2002, featuring tours of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Guangdong (to see the results of economic reform); and Yunnan and Guangxi (to see multi-ethnic polities).

The UFD declared that the door to dialogue with the Dalai Lama will “forever remain open” as long as the Dalai Lama renounces Taiwan independence, ceases “splittist” activities, openly acknowledges that Tibet as an inseparable part of China, and acknowledges that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.

It is unlikely that the Dalai Lama will renounce the advocates of Tibetan independence.

But it is likely that he will have to deal with an awkward, open split within the emigre Tibetan community as a result of this year's unrest that calls his leadership and tactics into question.

The Dalai Lama has consistently labored to square the political circle between the militants and moderates, not abandoning his policy of engagement while not capitulating to the Chinese government.

Most recently, he endorsed China's hosting of the Olympic Games, in direct contradiction of the TPUM declaration, which demands “Cancel the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and never again consider China as a potential host country of the Olympic Games until Tibet is free.”

The Dalai Lama even offered to attend the games—while Western leaders are talking boycott—“under one condition, that is there must be a relaxation of suppression in Tibet...China must release all prisoners in Tibet and treat the injured.”

I hope the Dalai Lama gets tickets for the opening ceremony, but I'm not optimistic.

From the Chinese perspective, the Dalai Lama is unable to control and unwilling to renounce militants within the Tibetan community, which means an olive branch like this is being offered from a position of weakness and can be safely spurned.

It remains to be seen whether the Chinese government takes the politically inflammatory and diplomatically costly step of calling on the Indian government to dissolve the TPUM NGOs as terrorist organizations.

It's cruel to say it, but China may decide it's unnecessary. The TPUM NGOs may be more useful to the PRC if they survive as impotent scapegoats for Tibetan unrest inside China, and as a focus for polarization and division within the emigre movement.

TPUM's absence from international reporting may be a function of its true unimportance, the result of careless journalism, or a conscious refusal by reporters and editors to enable cynical Chinese propaganda and be party to the persecution of some very nice, noble people who also happen to be their sources.

But it doesn't really matter.

By now it's irrelevant if TPUM directed or encouraged or dropped plausible-deniable hints to monks inside Tibet to emerge from their monasteries for the March 10 demonstrations, or did absolutely nothing except make big, empty talk on its website and its videos for overseas consumption.

The Chinese government has the footage of the riots and they have people in detention whose confessions they can extract, coerce, or fabricate. They also have the documented professions of TPUM militancy, and the will to broadcast their allegatiions and connect the dots as they see fit.


Below is the transcript of the video appeal by TPUM.


Rev. Ngawang Woeber, President, GuChuSum Association of ex-Political Prisoners
Representing the five leading NGOs in Dharmsala, we're hereby launching the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement. Our goal is to bring together all Tibetans inside and outside Tibet before the Beijing Olympics begin. We will join a unified campaign to restore Tibetan freedom. This is an historic opportunity we can't afford to miss. This opportunity won't come again. Secondly, China's policies in Tibet are getting more destructive day by day. Chinese population transfer to Tibet has made matters even more urgent for us. Now it is time for Tibetans everywhere to rise up. In the spirit of the 1959 Tibetan national Uprising we must rise up and resist and bring about an even greater Uprising. An Uprising that will shake the Chinese government to its core. Those who can walk shall join the March to Tibet. Those with money shall support the movement. In short, whatever resources you have—skills, experience, wealth, courage—this is the time to bring it to the table and make a real impact on our struggle. We need everyone.

Mr. Tsewang Rigzin, President, Tibetan Youth Congress
50 years have passed since China invaded Tibet. In a few months the Olympics will be held in China. In our struggle for independence, culture, and religion, there has never been a better opportunity. So I request each and every one of us to take action and fulfill our duty to the six million Tibetans.

Mr. Tenzin Choeying, President, Students for a Free Tibet, India (in English)
This is a message to all Tibetans and non-Tibetans, Tibetan supporters...This is a request from us, here, in India that this is a crucial period, a crucial year for us in our cause to struggle in a year-long campaign. For us from India, we will be organizing a march back to Tibet and we hope that every Tibetan and Tibetan supporter join us in our campaign and also with that, along with that, the Chinese are organizing the torch relay as well as doing the games also, we request every people [who] support us to do whatever they can.

Ms. B. Tsering, President, Tibetan Women's Association
The time has come for all Tibetans to unite and rise up and join the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement. Every Tibetan on the face of the earth, every Tibetan organization, and every Tibet Support Group must join forces. This initiative is being launched by the coalition of five organizations, but it is a people's movement, a people's uprising, so only the full involvement of the Tibetan people can make this movement successful.

Mr. Chemi Youngdrung, President, National Democratic Party of Tibet
In the history of nations, there are critical junctures and watershed moments. Those who siezed these moments have achieved victories and changed the course of history. Today, we Tibetans are at a crossroads. And we must seize this moment. In March 1959 Tibetans all over Tibet rose up against Chinese invasion. In the same spirit of resistance, let us rise up again and make this Uprising event a watershed event in our struggle. Let's be Tibetan. Let's be proud. Let's work together. Let's achieve victory. Let's change the course of Tibetan history. RISE UP!!!

Endtitle:

RISE UP. RESIST. RETURN.

Tibet will be free.

Black Days for the Dalai Lama

...courtesy of the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement

Amidst the horrific violence of the last few days, somebody’s been working overtime to marginalize the Dalai Lama and undercut him as the leader of the worldwide Tibetan movement.

Not just the Chinese.

I’m talking to you, Tsewang Rigzin.

Tibetan unrest in China is not just a problem for the PRC. It’s a major problem for the Tibetan emigre movement, which is threatening to fissure because of conflicts between moderates and militants.

And if things end badly, the question will be, did the militants fatally miscalculate the cost of confrontation, not only to themselves but the Dalai Lama?

Finally, this side of the story is starting to trickle into the Western media.

From the UK’s Daily Telegraph :

"There is a growing frustration within the Tibetan community, especially in the young generation," Tsewang Rigzin said. "I certainly hope the Middle Way approach will be reviewed. As we can see from the protests here and all over the world, the Tibetan people remain committed to achieving independence."

The Middle Way is the Dalai Lama’s incremental approach of engagement with China, leading to autonomy, not independence.

As for Tsewang Rigzin, expressions of individual militancy are only part of the story.

Tsewang Rigzin is president of the Tibetan Youth Congress.

The Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) describes itself as the largest Tibetan emigre NGO, with 30,000 members and over 80 chapters.

It’s pretty militant.

Its Secretary for Cultural Affairs, Lhakpa Tsering, set himself on fire in Mumbai in November 2006 to protest Hu Jintao’s visit—an interesting nugget that the Washington Post’s Rama Lakshmi failed to share with her readers when she quoted Tsering’s emotional account of a phone call from Lhasa during the current unrest.

Actually, he set his pants on fire, which makes it sound somehow different, eschewing the whole-body suicide approach for a badly burned leg. He’s got a picture of the event on his blog.

The TYC’s stated “sole objective” is to “restore Tibet's lost independence .”

More importantly—and for some reason inexplicably unaddressed in the Telegraph article or, as I can determine, any other Western coverage of the unrest—the Tibetan Youth Congress is a founding member of the Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement (TPUM), which has called for “direct action” inside and outside Tibet in the cause of Tibetan independence.

Tsewang Rigzin was elected president of the TYC in December 2007. TPUM was formed in January 2008.

Its manifesto is a piece of defiant oratory:

It is time for Tibetans to take control of our future through a unified and coordinated resistance movement. We must now proclaim to the Chinese and to the world that the desire for freedom still burns in the heart of every Tibetan, both inside Tibet and in exile. In particular, the time has come for Tibetans in exile to boldly demonstrate that even after 50 years, we long to return to our homeland. A return march from exile in India back home to Tibet is being organized and will revive the spirit of the 1959 Uprising.

The 2008 Olympics will mark the culmination of almost 50 years of Tibetan resistance in exile. We will use this historic moment to reinvigorate the Tibetan freedom movement and bring our exile struggle for freedom back to Tibet. Through tireless work and an unwavering commitment to truth and justice, we will bring about another uprising that will shake China’s control in Tibet and mark the beginning of the end of China’s occupation.[emph added]

As an entity, the TPUM has been MIA since the Tibet unrest erupted.

Perhaps its leaders have made the expedient calculation that, since that Tibet is in the grips of a real uprising, the best way to avoid alienating Western support with expressions of radical militancy--and deny the Chinese government a very real and effective propaganda target--is for the TPUM to fade away.

Thanks to the TPUM disappearing act, TPUM principals are available for quotes, but only as leaders of their constituent NGOs.

However, now that TPUM members are going on record with the Western media dissing the Dalai Lama, a critical examination of their role in the current unrest inside China, and, more importantly, the merits of the TPUM strategy should be forthcoming. Maybe.

Of course, if the whole thing turns into a bloody fiasco, the TPUM--or its real story--may never resurface.

Given its stated commitment to direct action—not only direct action in principle, but direct action to disrupt the Beijing Olympics, something that has to occur on a pretty tight timeline—one has to wonder if the TPUM was involved in orchestrating the March 10 protests in Lhasa that sparked the confrontation and demonstrations throughout the Tibetan ethnic areas of the People’s Republic of China.

The press has not explored the possible TPUM connection, even in light of the report of two European tourists concerning a large, organized demonstration in Lhasa’s main Bokhara Square on March 10--several hundred monks appeared at 6:00 pm to form a ring around the police in the sqaure-- that triggered a violent Chinese security reaction and subsequent rioting at the same time the TPUM was organizing a protest march to from Dharamsala to Indian border with Tibet.

It should be said that TPUM members haven’t taken responsibility for the protests and unrest inside China. Beyond its manifesto calling for an uprising, the TPUM's main public initiative has been an abortive attempt for a non-violent march from Dharamsala to the Indian border. And ample resentment exists throughout the Tibetan areas to make it plausible to conclude that many of the protests erupted spontaneoously.

AP reports that B. Tsering of the Tibetan Women's Association disavowed any guiding role for emigres in the unrest:

Despite China's charge that the Dalai Lama and his supporters planned the uprising, the protests in Tibet and cities around the world were spontaneous — organized by local Tibetan groups and their sympathizers, B. Tsering said.

"If this continues I'm afraid the Tibetan people might lose control. It could get difficult," she said. "Lots of demonstrations are decided on by the young people and we can't control them.

Nevertheless, she took the rather contradictory step of defending and explaining activities inside China that emigres are supposedly not involved with :

TIBETAN exiles in India have accused the Chinese Government of distorting the nature of the protests in Tibet.

The president of the Tibetan Women's Association, B. Tsering, said the Chinese Government had released misleading images to the world's media that portray the Tibetan protest as violent.


The Tibetan Women’s Association is a founding member of the TPUM, something the Sydney Morning Herald and the AP both neglected to report--or were not told.

I guess, as far as press availabilities are concerned, the TPUM is as of now the uprising that dares not speak its name.

More believably, in line with Western reports of violence, rioting, and looting in Lhasa, and in contrast to the possibly self-serving narrative of Tsering, the Dalai Lama stated in his press conference:

"Please help stop violence from Chinese side and also from Tibetan side."

Regardless of what the TPUM did before its fadeout, and even if the TPUM just a collection of big-talk and little-action emigres, rest assured that the Chinese media will be happy to connect the TPUM dots as they see fit...once they’ve dealt with their primary political foe, the Dalai Lama.

On March 17 I wrote:

Assuming that TPUM has thought this thing [trying to get an Olympic boycott] through, the conclusion would be that they are consciously trying to elicit Chinese over-reaction, exacerbate the crackdown, and alienate more and more Tibetans from the idea of accommodation with the PRC.
...

[This approach] would also involve abandoning the moral high ground that the Dalai Lama has assiduously cultivated for fifty years...

What’s happened since then?

The Chinese have seized on the riots to discredit the Dalai Lama.

By linking the Dalai Lama to the unrest—which he opposes (and the Chinese know he opposes)—the Chinese are forcing the Dalai Lama either to repudiate the Tibetan militants and split the emigre Tibetan movement, or endorse the insurrection and permit the Chinese to portray him as an impotent captive of extremist forces.

For those unfamiliar with the Chinese pattern of denunciation, polarization, division, and destruction this is a classic tactic--call it Police State 101--intended to isolate the target of a purge by forcing him to denounce his associates—or force the target to incriminate himself by not forswearing alliance with a vulnerable, isolated, and discredited element that the Chinese government is about to land on like a ton of bricks.

What does the Dalai Lama do? Support the militants? Or denounce them?

What he does is search—desperately--for the third or middle way out :

"I say to China and the Tibetans — don't commit violence," the Nobel Peace laureate told reporters. ...

He said that "if things become out of control," his "only option is to completely resign."
...
"If the Tibetans were to choose the path of violence, he would have to resign because he is completely committed to nonviolence," Tenzin Taklha said. "He would resign as the political leader and head of state, but not as the Dalai Lama. He will always be the Dalai Lama."

In case the point needs to be driven home with a 50-pound sledge, the Dalai Lama’s threat to resign is not meant to intimidate the Chinese. There’s nothing the PRC would like better than to see their Nobel Peace Prize-winner adversary sideline himself from Tibet's political struggle.

It’s a statement to Tibetan militants that the Dalai Lama refuses to be stampeded from his advocacy of non-violence and engagement with the Chinese government on an autonomy platform.

Interestingly and I might say somewhat pathetically, the Dalai Lama is still trying to define Tibetan dissent as a non-violent movement and create political space for himself by questioning whether the undeniable violence is being stirred up by outside agitators—the Chinese:

It's possible some Chinese agents are involved there," he said. "Sometimes totalitarian regimes are very clever, so it is important to investigate."

Given understandable Tibetan anger against the occupation being manifested in dozens if not hundreds of outbursts, the Chinese will have no shortage of atrocity tales and photographs to brandish without fomenting incidents or generating forgeries .

In fact, they’ve probably already got enough material.

From Xinhua :

Thirteen innocent civilians were burned or stabbed to death, [Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet autonomous regional government] said, adding that calm had returned to Lhasa.

On Friday, violence involving physical assault, destruction of property, looting and arson broke out in urban Lhasa. Rioters set fires at more than 300 locations, including 214 homes and shops, and smashed and burned 56 vehicles.

In one case, a civilian was doused with gasoline and burned to death by rioters.

Sixty-one members of the armed police were injured, including six critically. Rioters beat a police officer into a coma and cut a fist-size piece of flesh out of his buttock, he said.

Wonder if the 2008 Lhasa riots will follow the 18th century War of Jenkin’s Ear into body-part historiography as “The War of the Policeman’s Buttock Chunk”.

But to return to the TPUM and its previously announced strategy, I see it borrowing from the Chinese playbook by advocating polarizing actions that undercut the middle ground out from under people that might be interested in appeasing the PRC, or at least repudiate the moderates willing to put up with Beijing's prolonged and cynical effort to "negotiate" the emigre movement into exhausted impotence.

However, if they hope to exploit the unrest inside the PRC to advance an alternative to the Dalai Lama's peaceful engagement, the TPUM isn't dealing from a position of sufficient strength to benefit from polarizing the Tibetan community, or "energizing the base" as American politicians might say.

Instead, it is in danger of making the critical and perhaps fatal error of dividing its own forces instead of the enemy’s, thereby weakening its own already precarious position instead of strengthening it.

The most immediate result of Tibetan militancy will be to unite the Chinese and isolate the moderates on the Tibetan side, while undermining the political standing of Tibet’s most effective political figure, the Dalai Lama, as spokesman for a unified, internationally popular political and diplomatic movement.

That’s bad politics and dumb tactics...and it's exactly what the Chinese have been trying to accomplish for the last five decades.

The worst case is that the Tibetan unrest and toothless Western censure unite Chinese elite and Chinese public opinion in favor of another one of those major security actions against Tibet’s isolated people and fragile institutions that seem to happen every twenty years.

This one might end up destroying the Dalai Lama’s authority as a leader, encourage the Chinese to further interfere in Tibetan politics and culture by aggressively inserting itself into the search for the next reincarnation, split Tibetan Bhuddism between a PRC-sponsored Dalai Lama in Lhasa and an untested child in Dharamsala, redefine the emigres as a collection of secular, angry--and vulnerable--dissidents, and put the Tibetan regions securely under Beijing’s thumb for another generation.

That’s a potential win big enough to compensate for some embarrassment at the Olympics.

Don’t be surprised if the Chinese invoke the Global War on Terror, that magic elixir of oppressive state power, to justify going after TPUM, Tibetan monks, and any other source of actual or potential resistance.

Heck, it’s already happening, as the Tibetan Women’s Association’s B. Tsering realizes:

"One of the most disturbing realities is that China is now trying to give the picture that Tibetans have adopted terrorism to raise our issues," she said.

Ya think?

An eagerly draconian Chinese response may elicit ever more powerful resistance from the Tibetans, insurrection, and even independence.

But the alternative is that the Chinese successfully mobilize their power to quash political and religious opposition inside Tibet, resulting in the discrediting of the independence movement and the political destruction of the TPUM.

Especially if the West, already committed to supporting PRC sovereignty over Tibet, finds even less reason to support Tibetan dissidents if the Dalai Lama is out of the picture.

The persona of the benevolent and moderate Dalai Lama is critical to the fortunes of every Tibetan emigre group.

With Tibetan activists now looking more like Steven Seagals than Mahatma Gandhis and the Dalai Lama threatening to resign, how to keep the West's goodwill is probably the topic of some anxious discussion at TPUM headquarters.

I wonder if Nancy Pelosi and Richard Gere will be as eager to go to bat for Tsewang Rigzin as they now do for the Dalai Lama.

In my previous post, I wrote:

If world opinion starts to regard direct action in Tibet as a Buddhist intifada led by confrontational hotheads, with monasteries and nunneries filling the role of extremist madrassahs, then the international opinion that stands between China and the most brutal public security and occupation measures may crumble and leave the Tibetan independence movement worse off than it is now.

Well, straight from China Matters’ lips to Barbara Demick’s ear.

In the print edition of the March 18 LA Times, “Years of Grievance Erupt into Outrage”, Demick writes:

The...Dalai Lama is revered as a god-kind by Tibetans, and insults toward him elicit a visceral response—not unlike the violent response of some Muslims to perceived slights against Muhammad.

Heckuva job, Tsewang.



As a footnote to this post, I’d like to thank Helena Cobham for taking on the job of analogy cop by gently but firmly by pointing out that my equation of the Intifada in Gaza and unrest in Tibet in my previous post is only useful as a discussion of tactics. The overall situations, legally, demographically, and in terms of acknowledged international standing differ markedly in the two instances.

Somewhat more bombastically, Bernard at Moon Over Alabama questioned some of my assertions and observations. I think he’s off base in his criticisms, but he did perform the valuable service of documenting the degree to which the NGOs that make up the TPUM have been playing footsie with the neocons in the US government and taking democracy promotion money.

Now that the protective aura of unity and moderation with which the Dalai Lama was able to envelop the Tibetan emigres for so many years is being slowly stripped away, a more critical and investigatory approach toward the Tibetan independence movement may be forthcoming in the international media.