Dalai Lama's Taiwan visit a reminder for China

In this sixth article of a series on China's Future without Deng, our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin looks at the recent return of the Dalai Lama to Chinese soil for the first time since he left China in 1959, and how China's refusal to tolerate diverse political opinions is likely to affect the prospects for a viable One China.

HONG KONG (JP): The Dalai Lama returned to India on March 27 after his first visit to a part of China since he fled from Tibet in 1959.

The Dalai Lama's visit to the Republic of China on Taiwan, including informal discussions with Taiwan Vice-President Lien Chan, and then with Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, was both successful and provocative, as well as highly symbolic.

It was also ironic. The Kuomintang (Nationalist) party was once as little inclined to conceded substantive Tibetan autonomy as their successors in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dynasty have been. Unlike the PRC, the ROC, when in power on the mainland, was too preoccupied with fighting warlords, the Japanese, and the communists to be able to exert firm control in Lhasa. The ROC, on Taiwan as well as in the old days in Nanking, asserts that Tibet is part of China, just as the People's Republic of China (PRC) does.

In the years since 1959 when the Dalai Lama has been in exile at Dharmasala in northern India, relations between the Tibetan exiles and the ROC's Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission have not always been smooth. The main involvement of the ROC in Tibet came at one stage in the Cold War when Nationalist and American CIA operatives, with the knowledge of Indian intelligence, sought to use Tibetan territory to try and stir up trouble for the PRC.

No one on Taiwan this past week was so crass as to mention all this. The ostensible main reason for the Dalai Lama's visit was religious and therein lay part of its success. He was invited to Taiwan by Buddhist organizations. Buddhism thrives in the free atmosphere on Taiwan. The Dalai Lama's appearances at various temples around the island drew large crowds of the faithful and also the curious. For the most part, politics was far removed from the gatherings as the Dalai Lama carefully spoke only on religious matters in his sermons.

Yet politics was never far from the scene and therein lay part of the visit's success. For those with the eyes to see, the visit was a poignant reminder of the crucial role which the concept of autonomy will play in the future of China.

China has been officially celebrating the fact that it is now 100 or less days to the reversion of Hong Kong to the motherland, under the concept of "one country, two systems". The Dalai Lama and President Lee provided a pointed reminder that China cannot count its reunification chickens before they are hatched.

In the twilight years of China's paramount leader, the late Deng Xiaoping, China has drifted towards the unrealistic notion of "one country, one voice".

* China has refused to continue the protracted behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Tibetans on the autonomy once promised in the 1950 China-Tibetan agreement. The Dalai Lama has been denounced for being a "splittist", a most serious charge in the communist dictionary. The CCP propagandists have been so busy denouncing the Dalai Lama politically that they have ceased paying respect to his position in the Buddhist religious realm, too.

* China has refused to continue the intermittent dialogue across the Taiwan Straits between the KMT and the CCP. President Lee's offer of direct talks a year ago, immediately after his emphatic victory in Taiwan's presidential election, has been ignored by the PRC. Lee, too, has been denounced as a "splittist".

* China has moved steadily but purposefully, in advance of its assumption of sovereignty this July, to get rid of Hong Kong's exceedingly modest degree of colonial democracy. In advance of its takeover, amongst many other moves, China has pronounced all the laws relating to elections to be null and void. Being English, Governor Chris Patten, who instituted that modest degree of democracy, can hardly be denounced as a splittist -- so he is derided by the CCP as "whore" instead.

* The CCP, to a far greater extent than after the massive nationwide demonstrations in 1989, has refused to tolerate the relatively few dissident voices left in China itself, particularly in the last two years. The dissidents do not have to be denounced, since nearly all are either locked up or are in distant exile.

Against this background, and given the growing, separate sense of Taiwanese identity, it came as no surprise at all that the opposition Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) tried to use the Dalai Lama's visit to Taiwan as a platform from which to further promote its desire for the ultimate independence of Taiwan, thinking that the Dalai Lama favored the same position as the DPP.

Deftly, the Dalai Lama took the opportunity to repeatedly re- emphasize his longstanding position that what he wants for Tibet is real genuine autonomy, but not independence. The CCP, being interested only in a puppet it can control, refuses to recognize this stance, and maintains that the Dalai Lama seeks independence. The stance of the Dalai Lama not merely aligns with the ROC official position on Tibet -- it also accords with what President Lee wants for Taiwan, from China, if reunification is to ever be accomplished.

During the visit, the Dalai Lama illustrated autonomy by occasionally speaking Mandarin and talking about his autonomous government-in-exile setting up an office in Taipei. President Lee illustrated autonomy, too, by presenting the Dalai Lama with a 27-kilogram crystal statue depicting the Dalai Lama standing -- once again -- in front of the Potiala Palace in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

Meanwhile the outside world, far from welcoming this symbolism as a timely reminder to Beijing to be more tolerant, was generally too busy seeing the visit as "provocative" and "likely to arouse China's anger".

Thus the Dalai Lama's six-day visit to Taiwan succeeded in exuding a three-way symbolism. It symbolized the extent to which non-Chinese, even those in the ostensibly freedom-loving West, have succumbed to the habit of appeasing China, even when it behaves in ways unworthy of a great nation. Neither the Dalai Lama nor President Lee has spoken in favor of independence for their respective territories. China currently refuses absolutely to recognize this fact. That is what the outside world ought to worry about.

Secondly, as a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, as if on cue, simulated the anticipated "anger" and "fury" over the visit, while the New China News Agency renewed the "splittist" charge, it symbolized once again how appeasement of China inexorably brings forth further reiterations of China's current political hardline.

But, thirdly and most important, the Dalai Lama's visit to Taiwan symbolized that, if One China is to be reunified in any meaningful way, Beijing will simply have to accept the principle of "one country, many voices". In the wake of the death of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, the CCP shows no signs of doing so but instead appears to pursue "one country, one political voice" with redoubled vigor.