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An article titled "What is
the realintention of the United States" published
Monday refutes a US report on Tibet negotiations. Following is a summary of the article written by
Hua Zi: In accordance with the
"Foreign Relations Authorization Act, 2003", US
president George W. Bush submitted a report on Tibet
Negotiations Consistent with Section 613 of the Act to the
Congress on May 8,2003. The report on the
one hand reiterates that the United States recognizes Tibet
to be part of the People's Republic of China, whereas it
claims that it supports Dalai Lama's "Middle Way
Approach" of seeking "genuine self-rule", and
urges the Chinese government to respect the unique
religious, linguistic, and cultural heritage of its Tibetan
people and to respect their human rights and civil
liberties. According to the report, the
"important objective" of the United States is to
encourage the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama to hold
substantive dialogue, to lead to a negotiated settlement of
"questions related to Tibet".
The report also lists efforts taken by the US President,
Secretary of State and other US government officials to
encourage the Chinese government to enter into a
"dialogue" with the Dalai Lama.
As is well-known, the "Foreign Relations Authorization
Act, 2003" carries quite a number of anti-China
clauses. The Chinese government immediately expressed strong
opposition to the legislation right after it was raised in
the US Congress. In September,
2002, President Bush made an announcement when signing the
legislation, noting that the clauses related to China in it
were inappropriate, that the one-China policy of the United
States had not changed, and that its signing did not mean
that he had accepted them or incorporated them into the
country's foreign policy.
Commenting on the announcement made by President Bush,
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said at a
press conference on Oct.4, 2002: "We hope the US side,
being true to its word, will not implement those clauses so
as to avoid any negative impact on China-US
relations." It is a regret that the
US government submitted the presidential report on Tibet
eight months later. Such a move by the US government, which
went back on its word, has already had a negative impact on
China-US relations, no matter what the content of the
report is. This writer has been following
the "Tibet issue" in China-US relations for years,
and has noted that it was the first time that a US President
ever submitted such a report, which showed the degree of
Bush administration's concern on the "Tibet
issue". Strictly speaking, there
would have been no "Tibet issue" in the world,
just as there have been no "Washington issue" or
"New York issue". The
"Tibet issue" essentially arose from the fact that
for nearly a century western imperialist forces had fostered
and supported Tibetan separatists attempting to separate
Tibet from China. At present, the
"Tibet issue" would not exist, if the United
States and other western countries don't support the Dalai
clique, if the Dalai clique gives up its intention of
seeking "Tibet independence" or independence in
disguised forms, and stops activities of splitting the
country. The United States should not shun the essence of
the issue.
So far, all previous US
governments have never recognized Tibet as an independent
state, but recognized that the Tibet Autonomous Region is
part of the People's Republic of China, and also held that
this is the view of the international community. People will naturally ask: Why has the United
State showed so much interest in China's internal affairs
and concerned itself so much over the "Tibet
issue"? According to the report, the
United States is concerned about the "Tibet
issue", taking it as an "important objective"
of the US government to "encourage substantive dialogue
between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama,"
just because "for China to work with the Dalai Lama or
his representatives to resolve problems facing Tibet
is in the interest of both the Chinese Government and the
Tibetan People", and also because "the Dalai Lama
can be a constructive partner as China deals with the
difficult challenges of regional and national stability. He
represents the views of the vast majority of Tibetans". If the Chinese government doesn't hold
"substantive dialogue" with the Dalai Lama
"without preconditions" and doesn't reach
resolution of differences at an early date, it will lead to
"greater tensions inside China and will be a stumbling
block to fuller political and economic engagement
with the United States and other nations."
This is really an
American way of thinking. Does what the report say conform
to the facts? This writer reviewed what the US
government had done on the "Tibet issue", and
analyzed whether the US concern on the "Tibet
issue" is beneficial or detrimental to the Tibetans, to
the stability of China, and to China's political and
economic exchanges with the United States and other
countries. The United States has never
denied China's sovereignty over Tibet, nor recognized Tibet
as an independent state. The State Department said in a
statement in 1995 that historically, the United States
recognized China's sovereignty over Tibet. At least
beginning in 1966, the US policy has clearly recognized the
Tibet Autonomous Region to be part of the People's Republic
of China (The Tibet Autonomous Region was established in
September 1965). This long-standing policy is in
consistence with the view of the international community,
including China and its neighboring countries. None of the
countries in the world ever recognizes Tibet as a sovereign
state. Because the United States does not recognize Tibet as
an independent state, it has not established diplomatic
relations with the self-claimed "Tibetan
government-in-exile". On April 17,
1997, US Ambassador to China James Sasser said during his
visit to Lhasa that ever since the Sun Yat-sen era, the US
government has recognized Tibet as an inseparable part of
China. On July 27, 1998, at a joint press
confernce in Beijing with Chinese President Jiang Zemin, US
president Bill Clinton said that he agrees that Tibet is
part of China, an autonomous region of China. The report submitted by President Bush also says:
"the United States recognizes the Tibet Autonomous
Region to be part of the People's Republic of China. This
long-standing policy is consistent with the view of the
international community." The report
on the one hand recognizes Tibet to be part of China and
doesn't recognize Tibet as an independent state, while on
the other hand, it holds that the Dalai Lama represents the
views of the vast majority of Tibetans, "His moral
authority helps to unite the Tibetan community inside and
outside of China". In other words,
the US government holds that the Government of the People's
Republic of China cannot represent the views and interests
of the vast majority of Tibetans, who are citizens of the
People's Republic of China. Such a
concept, putting China's vast Tibetan citizens in opposition
to the government elected by themselves, is illogical
if not ill-natured, and will by no means be
beneficial to the Tibetan people and China's stability.
The Chinese central government has
adopted explicit and consistent policies towards the Dalai
Lama. That is, only when the Dalai Lama abandon his claim
for the "independence of Tibet", halt any
separatist activities, openly states he recognizes Tibet as
an unalienable part of China, Taiwan as one of China's
provinces and the government of the People's Republic
of China as the country's sole legitimate representative,
would China have contacts and negotiations with him.
Nevertheless, those
policies, which the United States itself recognizes publicly
and the international community adheres to universally, are
not required from Dalai Lama by the US government. On
the contrary, the US government has repeatedly prompted the
Chinese government to have substantial dialogues with the
Dalai Lama unconditionally and resolve the so-called
"questions related to Tibet's relationship with the
Chinese authorities". Let the
"Tibet's relationship to Chinese authorities" and
"resolution of such questions through negotiation with
the Dalai Lama" rest for the time being, such act and
tones of connivance and provocation from the US government
have betrayed their hidden motives to abet the Dalai Lama to
dispute with the central government of China. Does this help
resolve the so-called "Tibet issue" at an early
date? Since
Tibet is an unalienable part of the Chinese territories, the
Tibet Autonomous Region exercises regional autonomy under
the leadership of central government. It is widely known to
the international public that the Chinese government adheres
to its clear and definite stances and policies on
affairs concerning Tibet. Any country in the world
(including the United States itself) would not allow foreign
forces to finger and gesture on how to deal with its
internal affairs. It is the basic norm of
the international law. On the
so-called "Tibet issue", the United States not
only failed to abide by such a basic norm, but grossly
intervene in China's internal Tibet affairs. More than a
dozen such intervening measures listed in the US "Tibet
Policy Act of 2002" include " steps taken by
the President", "steps taken by the Secretary of
State" and "steps taken by other Department of
State officials". The U.S. act even claimed
"the lack of (China's) resolution of these problems
will be stumbling block to fuller political and economic
engagement with the United States and other nations."
Aren't these threats too overbearing? For
over half a century, what had the US "concerns"
for "Tibet issue" brought to the political
situation in Tibet? What consequences they had incurred to
the Tibetan people? We'd better take a look at the
past. In the end of 1942, the American
Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the forerunner to the
Central Intelligence Agency) assigned Captain Ilia Tosltoy
and First Lieutenant Brooke Dolan to Lhasa. They were the
first officially sanctioned American mission to Tibet.
In the end of
1946, then President Harry Truman ordered to send to Tibet
several diesel generators which were used subsequently by
Tibetan separatists in 1949 as power for its radios carrying
out propaganda for the "independence of Tibet" and
also as equipment to contact and communicate with the United
States. In March 1953, the Chinese
People's Liberation Army (PLA) marched towards Qamdo as a
prologue to the liberation of Tibet. The United States then
agitated the Dalai Lama and local Tibetan authorities to
expand its arms in a bid to resist the liberation. For a time, the so-called "theory on Communist
threat" and "theory on China's aggression and
expansion" flooded all American newspapers and
journals, big and small. On May 23, 1951, Tibet was
peacefully liberated with the signing of the Agreement of
the Central People's Government and the Local Government of
Tibet on the Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet. In July 1951, Thubten Norbu, Dalai Lama's
eldest brother and his private envoy arrived in New York and
served as an intermediary for the secret contacts between
the United States and the Dalai Lama with the aid of the US
Central Intelligence Office (CIA). While another of
Dalai Lama's older brothers, Gyalo Thondup, signed an
agreement with the CIA to conduct intelligence collecting
and carry out guerrilla warfare in Tibet.
Meanwhile, with the involvement of the CIA, American
diplomats in India had worked out a "outside flight
plan" in an attempt to bring Dalai Lama to India. But
the plan failed to implement immediately because of the
opposition from Tibetan patriotic strength. However,
close contacts between separatists of Tibet's upper strata
and the CIA and separatists' schemes asking for CIA's
financing, support and supply continued all along.
Initial CIA missions in Tibet
appeared in early 1957 when the first groups of six Khampas
residing in India were picked to receive secret service
training by agents from the United States. The United
States also established training camps in Colorado for those
picked agents who were later parachuted back into Tibet and
other Tibetans-inhabited areas in China to join the rebel
forces against the Chinese central government. When the Tibetan rebellion occurred in 1959,
Dalai Lama was helped to flee to India with CIA's support.
Planes of the CIA intruded hundreds of miles into China's
airspace to escort those fleeing Tibetans, spy the movement
of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and drop food, maps,
radios and money for those rebels. A trained-in-US Khampa
agent escorted Dalai Lama all along during his
flight. Around 1960, under the plotting of
the CIA, the base of the Tibetan rebelling forces were
transferred to Mustang, Nepal. In the end of 1960, some 200
Tibetan rebels arrived at Mustang and founded a guerrilla
base there. Since then, they had kept crossing border, stole
into Tibet and assaulted PLA men and other government
staffs. It was until the eve of late President Nixon's first
official trip to China in 1972 that the CIA stopped
financing Tibetan rebels, suspended their weapons supply to
those guerrillas and closed their guerrilla bases
within the boundaries of India and Nepal.
During this historical process, the United States'
"concerns" over the "Tibet issue" only
resulted in the aggravation of the rebellions in Tibet and
other Tibetans-inhabited areas. Such "concerns"
connived the flight of Dalai Lama and landed the
Tibetan people in an abyss of misery and led to many
years of unrest along the border areas in China's Tibet. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the
United States' instigated some small countries to put
forward motions on the so-called "Tibet questions"
in the United Nations. They adopted means that were so
inferior that they themselves would probably never want to
mention again. However, the history of the
United States' "concern" about "Tibet
questions" did not end there. The so-called "Tibet
questions " then became a card serving its "human
rights diplomacy." On June 18, 1987,
the US House of Representatives approved an amendment
regarding so-called "China's violation of human rights
in Tibet." The amendment, after further revision, was
passed by the US House of Representatives and US Senate and
was affixed to the US Foreign Relations Authorization Act
Fiscal Year 1988-1989. Parliaments of
other Western countries followed suit and passed bills that
interfered in China's Tibetan affairs, accused the Chinese
government for "violating human rights in Tibet,"
and supported the Dalai Lama. On Sept. 21,
1987, the human rights sub-committee of the US House of
Representatives gave the floor to the Dalai Lama, who put
forward a "five-point proposal" regarding the
so-called "status of Tibet."
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the House held a hearing on
Oct. 14, 1987 on human rights in Tibet, during which several
congressmen backed the Dalai Lama and tried to put pressure
on China. After that the Dalai Lama stepped up separatist
activities and frequently went all out selling his ideas in
Western countries. Was the US
"concern" on the questions related to Tibet really
conducive to China's domestic stability during 1987-1989?
The fact was that on Sept. 27, 1987, six days
after the Dalai Lama spoke at the human rights sub-committee
of the US House of Representatives, Lhasa, the capital of
the Tibet Autonomous Region, witnessed the first riot
aimed at realizing the so-called "Tibetan
independence" since 1959. Some slogans and posters
appearing on the streets at that time said that the US
Congress had begun to pay attention to Tibetan affairs. There were dozens of riots in Lhasa in
the following two years, which caused tremendous losses of
lives and properties to people in Tibet and seriously
undermined their normal work, study and life. The riots were
resolutely opposed by people of various ethnic groups in
Tibet. The People's Government of the Tibet Autonomous
Region has irrefutable evidence that the riots in Lhasa were
directly plotted and instigated by Tibetan splittist forces
overseas. The US Government and congress
continued to support the Dalai Lama in various ways after
1989. And the tones of the Dalai Lama's splittist activities
changed from time to time. On Aug. 19, 1991, the Dalai Lama
announced abandoning the so-called "Strasbourg
Proposal" made in June 1988, and firmly asked for
"complete independence of Tibet," which he
predicted the same year would be realized within five to 10
years. After 1993, the Dalai Lama put
forward the so-called "middle road approach," and
asked for a "high degree of autonomy " in Tibet
like the "One country, two systems" designed for
Hong Kong, following a statement of the US vice president,
who advocated realizing "Tibet
independence" in two steps.
Up to now, we've not seen any public statements by the Dalai
Lama indicating he would accept the principles for
negotiations proposed by the Central Government. The United
States, taking no notice of the Dalai Lama's duplicity, has
kept pressing the Chinese Government to conduct negotiations
with the Dalai Lama "without
preconditions." Such
"concern" cannot but set people thinking as the
recent report by the US Government went so far as to say
that the issue would possibly become a "stumbling block
to fuller political and economic engagement" with the
United States. To sum up, all instability
in Tibet over the past half century and more was because of
the disturbances and sabotage by the Tibetan splittist
forces, backed by US and other Western anti-China forces. For the United States, which calls itself
a pioneer of "democratic politics," it seems
difficult to make clear who represents the interests of the
people in Tibet. The Chinese people would not allow it if
the Chinese Government, elected by the National
People's Congress (NPC), and the deputies to the NPC,
elected by people of various ethnic groups in China, do not
represent the people's interests. It's the same case with
the People's Government of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Therefore, it is the Chinese Government
and the Tibet Autonomous Regional government, rather than
the US government and the Dalai Lama who left his motherland
and religious followers more than four decades ago, that
best know how to safeguard the fundamental interests of
people of all ethnic groups in Tibet, including
protecting the Tibetan language, religions and cultural
heritage. The Tibetan local government
reported a population of one million in 1953 when new China
conducted its first census. The population of Tibetans in
China amounted to nearly 4.6 million, of whom 2.41 million
lived in the Tibet Autonomous Region in 2000, according to
the fifth national census. It is estimated that there are
120,000 to 130,000 Tibetans living overseas. Either viewed historically or realistically, the
US Government report's claim that the Dalai Lama
"represents the views of the vast majority of Tibetans
and his moral authority helps to unite the Tibetan community
inside and outside of China," is a lie.
The Dalai Lama used to be the chief executive of
the local Tibetan government, which was an integration of
political power and religious authority, and Tibet under his
rule was under the dark feudal serf system. The Dalai Lama betrayed his country and threw
himself under the shield of foreign anti-China force just
because he was opposed to any change of the barbaric system.
In exile, he has made no contribution to the development of
Tibet nor to the happiness and benefit of the Tibetan
Buddhism followers over the past 40-odd years. On the contrary, the so-called Tibetan
"government-in-exile" led by the Dalai Lama has
been involved in political activities aiming to split the
country for years. The Dalai Lama, in violation of the
religious rite and historical convention of
Tibetan Buddhism, appointed Panchen living
Buddha on his own. How could he be the representative of the
Tibetan people? How could he "unite the Tibetan
community inside and outside of China"? It is a historical choice made by all Tibetan
people to follow the socialist road and the system of
regional national autonomy under the leadership of the
Communist Party of China, and they will never turn away from
this choice. The US government,
by distorting the facts, has tried its best to puff the
Dalai Lama. It has patently profaned the will of several
million Tibetan people in China. By putting pressures or
even threat on the Chinese government, it is interfering in
China' s internal affairs, which hurts the progress of
Tibet, the stability of Chinese society, and the improvement
and development of Sino-US relations. Such interference can
but meet with firm opposition from the Chinese government
and create further distrust in the United States by
all Chinese people including Tibetans. Why is the US government concerned
about the Tibet issue, since it is not for protecting
Tibetan people's language, religion, cultural heritage,
human rights and freedom, or for safeguarding China's
stability? This writer believes that the Tibet issue or the
Dalai Lama serves as a card for the US anti-China force in
its attempts to contain China.
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