We Need to Talk About Tibet

TL:DNR – The issue of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation has long been overtly politicized, but it is a mechanical problem that will give the Tibetan question renewed international urgency regardless of where you stand on it.

In the Spring of 2008, I was studying in Beijing at the foreign-scholars university which coincidentally hosted many domestic minority cohorts.?During the Tibetan uprisings at the time, it took all of a millisecond for machine gun-bearing troops to station themselves on our campus, just in case someone got any ideas.?The Tibetan protests had been deliberately timed ahead of the then-upcoming Summer Olympic Games that were meant to showcase China’s gentle rise on the global stage.?There is a strong history in the Middle Kingdom of interest groups dexterously leveraging international audiences at opportune times: the late 1980s events that shall-not-be-named upended the Party’s plans for a grand display during the Sino-Soviet Summit, and coincided with the arrival of Western news agencies that had only been planning to cover the conference.?This is a similarly fragile moment with many Western eyes on Chinese territorial priorities, and there is a ticking time bomb that threatens to inflame tensions.?Wearing the robes of peace, the Dalai Lama is dangerously close to provoking conflict.

The Tibetan question is politically tricky, both in Mainland China and in the West.?American film studios still have not rehabilitated A-List movie stars that are outspoken on the issue for fear of upsetting Mainland censors, and therefore cash flow.?It is a frequent criticism of the West that it lectures about rights to autonomy yet has a terrible track record of land seizures against its own indigenous groups.?Nor was the People’s Republic of China the first Modern Power to invade the Roof of the World: for fear of Russia, Lord Curzon architected the invasion of Tibet to ensure the security of early 20th century British India.?But the Tibetan issue has been able to capture the minds of the American populace for a very long time.?The emblem of stability has been the Tibetan religious life that has managed to survive and fascinate the Western liberal mindset at a time where overall religious life has been in precipitous Coastal decline.?In Mainland China, there is much fondness of Tibetan culture in the same ‘difficult’ way that there has been problematic fondness of Native American culture in mainstream sports team branding.?The Party also invests billions of dollars in Tibetan infrastructure development and other aid that routinely outweighs what the United States provides to all of Sub-Saharan Africa.?Granted, Communist aid comes attached with the loss of culture, the same way US educational outreach efforts attempted to eradicate Native American language before they became cryptographically useful during World War II.?The Middle Kingdom is itself an active stakeholder in Tibetan Buddhism, in that it has long attempted to entrench its sovereignty by directly interfering with the question of succession; it is speculated that the Party, soon after the passing of the Dalai Lama, will quickly elevate a replacement of their own choosing.

The Dalai Lama has himself thus far abstained from providing definitive clarity.?He has made public statements attacking the legitimacy of a Beijing-selected incarnation.?The chosen line is that once he turns 90 (which is fast approaching), he will consult with the other elders as to whether a fifteenth incarnation should even be sought out.?The selection of a new Dalai Lama is itself mechanically complex, involving not only the evaluation of candidates but also the actual location and conditions of the deceased’s departure from this mortal plane.?There have been calls for the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet from exile, if only to assure that the new incarnation can be re-born of the same ethnic cloth as the previous fourteen.?The Tibetan government in exile is still sheltered in Northern India, where border clashes with the People’s Republic of China continue to kindle tensions.?Should a new Dalai Lama be selected for both political and religious reasons outside of the Communist domain, and more so if they have a Mainland-sponsored competitor, it will inject a previously unseen foreign-domestic dynamic directly into the questions of regional & religious autonomy and those of international interference in Chinese affairs.?Exile is one thing; usurpation is another.?As the Putin-Xi solidarity conference unfolds today, the situation is becoming increasingly fragile.?

The question of one’s own succession is rarely met without a degree of charm and dismissiveness from steady leaders, but for those inhabiting and surrounding dynastic institutions these questions are still of immense importance.?The West is going to have to find a way to return the Tibetan question to its vocabulary soon, for the tides of public sentiment in the age of social media are increasingly easy to manipulate for strange purposes.?The Strait aside, this here is a problem that is soon going to become very big very quickly in our discourse.