The prevailing political opinion on Tibet in the West is so much based on simplistic conceptions, so as a Chinese scholar I find it worthy to reveal some key facts about Tibet.
First and foremost, Tibet was never a political and social Shangri-La before the peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1951. The social and political systems there were extremely medieval: brutal serfdom, totally authoritarian theocracy, and the unlimited privileges and parasitic rule of a priest class whose huge size was almost incredibly disproportionate to the size of the Tibetan population as a whole. It was neither an independent region in the sense that from the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th Century to the early Qing in the 17th Century, the legal supremacy of China's central government over Tibet had been gradually established. The legitimacy of theocratic rule of the successive Dalai Lamas was created, re-confirmed and re-granted by the central governments from the early Qing Dynasty to the end of Kuomintang-ruled China in 1949.
Despite an agreement between Dalai Lama and Beijing on maintaining the social and political status quo, theocratic serf-holders rebelled in Tibet in 1959, which ended the above "status quo" agreement. Afterwards serfdom and theocratic rule were abolished, the Tibetan people for the first time realized their fundamental human rights, and the Dalai Lama and his residual followers fled to India and set up an "exile government". Largely through its half-century subversive activity and deceptive propaganda, the West's "romanticism" about Tibet emerged and then went on a rampage.
On the other side, there had been two decades of leftist policies on religious, cultural, and social affairs in Tibet, as in the rest of China, which hurt both the Tibetan majority and Chinese minority people in Tibet.
A re-transformation of Tibet emerged from Deng Xiaoping's reforms at the end of the 1970s. Religious freedom was restored or (exactly speaking) installed in Tibet for the first time; the Tibetan culture was preserved and refreshed with the help of new policies and enormous funds from the central government. Ethnic Tibetans have been granted various preferential treatments. The regional economy has been developing rapidly and people's living standards have impressively improved.
The truth regarding the present Dalai Lama should also be told. He is not a "purely religious leader" but a very political person: Tibet's theocratic ruler before 1959 and the head of Tibetan "exile government" since then. After more than two decades of public advocacy for Tibetan independence, he changed his political posture to allegedly recognize China's sovereignty over Tibet. He did this in order to adapt to a universal recognition in the international community of Chinese sovereignty as well as China's greater stature in the world.
Instead of Tibetan sovereign independence, the present Dalai Lama has advocated a "high degree of autonomy" as the "middle-road" solution.
The essence of his proposal can be regarded as Tibetan de facto independence, overthrowing the fundamental political status in Tibet, and probably also the installment of semi-theocratic rule over that region, or even all the regions in China inhabited by ethnic Tibetans.
The Dalai Lama has proved a cunning strategist. He is fully aware that his greatest asset lies in the romantic belief held by the West, a belief in him as a "purely religious leader" and his "transcendent human charisma", together with its fixed expectations and conviction in his so-called moderation and reasonableness. Therefore, almost all his public behavior aims at maintaining, developing, and exploiting these misconceptions.
Western romantic perceptions about Tibet have resulted, to a large extent, from certain characteristics in the typical Western way of thinking, that is, a simplistic, absolute, and universalistic approach to complex and particularistic matters, together with a kind of rigidity and arrogance in refusing to listen to China. The prevailing Western response toward the mid-March riot in Lhasa in 2008, the related violent humiliation suffered by the Chinese Olympic torch relay in a few Western cities, and the recent meetings with the Dalai Lama by some Western government leaders, hurt the Chinese people's feelings.
China and the West are increasingly dependent on each other in several major fields, whether in the economic or environmental spheres. Mutual good feelings and common interests are conditions indispensable for genuine cooperation and interdependence.
Hence, listening to and understanding China is critical for considering the complex issue of Tibet with sensibility, and for dealing with it both justly and realistically.
The author is a professor of International Relations at the Renmin University of China
(China Daily February 20, 2009)