China's view of Tibet

Try stepping into the Chinese minds to understand how different the same events look. Chinese history records dominion over Tibet as far back as the 13th century. China's control has ebbed and flowed -- but this is equally true in many other parts of China. Central control by the capital has never been consistent, shifting with the strength of the central government. But this much is certain: China has been in control of most of its territories longer than some Western nations have existed.

More important, the Chinese recall that the latest efforts to separate Tibet from China came as recently as the 1940s and 1950s, when British and U.S. agents were seen to be encouraging Tibetan independence while the new People's Republic was still weak. The Chinese also have powerful memories of Britain's central role in the notorious opium trade of the 18th and 19th centuries, when European trading companies sold the drug to smugglers, then used the ill-gotten gold to buy silk, tea and porcelain.

The related Opium Wars, during which Hong Kong was seized by Britain, are a distant memory in Western minds but remain in the forefront of the Chinese psyche. When the West is seen to be trying to detach Chinese territory again, it rubs salt into this still-fresh wound. Virtually no Chinese believe that Western governments have a strictly moral interest in Tibet. They are convinced that their efforts are only the latest efforts to dismember or derail China.

Is Chinese cynicism concerning Western human rights campaigns justified? The West, led by President Nixon and his secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, first fell in love with China when the country was barely recovered from the Cultural Revolution, but one of the worst chapters in the history of human rights went without mention. By contrast, in the 1990s, when the Chinese people were experiencing the best quality of life they'd had in centuries, the West focused incessantly on the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and other evidence of China's human rights deficiencies. It's Western internal interests, not conditions in China, that clearly drive attitudes.

The lions of human rights, particularly in European capitals, behave like poodles in Beijing. Virtually all of them spend their time trying to sell products to China. Then, in passing, they will whisper that they have to mention human rights issues because when they return home they have to say that these issues were raised. That sends an unmistakable message: This is a Western ritual; please do not pay too much attention to it. Given this record, it is not surprising that Chinese leaders have little respect for European leaders when they make grand gestures on human rights in front of their domestic audiences.

The tragedy is that any victims of such moral posturing will be Tibetans, who will suffer the most if a virulent new Chinese nationalism is created in response.

So far, even though Beijing's record of rule over Tibet is less than perfect, China's leaders have tried to preserve autonomy for Tibet. Indeed, in theory there is no fundamental disagreement between the position of the exiled Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhists' foremost spiritual leader, and that of the Chinese government. The Dalai Lama advocates autonomy, not independence; the official Chinese government policy paper on Tibet says that it "regards exercise of regional ethnic autonomy in areas where ethnic communities live in compact communities as a basic policy for solving the ethnic issue."

Given this, the West should try to narrow, not widen, the gulf between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. But that is the work of quiet diplomacy, not grandstanding.

Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, wrote "The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East."