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First Post
07-07-2025
- Politics
- First Post
Why Tibet & Dalai Lama make China nervous?
Even as the Dalai Lama has called for a 'middle way' approach, the Communist Party of China (CPC) cannot come to terms with the idea of co-existing with Tibetans as its totalitarian ethno-nationalist state has no room for a non-Han group or leader — and certainly not for someone like the Dalai Lama whom his followers revere like a god. read more Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama speaks in a video broadcast at the start of the 15th Tibetan Religious Conference, a meeting of religious leaders in McLeod Ganj, near Dharamsala on July 2, 2025. (Photo: Sanjay Baid/AFP) Even as the Dalai Lama has given up the demand of Tibet's independence and has called for a 'middle way' approach, China has rejected it and has continued to call the 90-year-old leader as a 'separatist'. China has made it clear that there will not be any compromise. Under the middle way approach, the Dalai Lama has sought genuine autonomy for Tibet within the Chinese state wherein Tibetans would have rights for the management of religious, cultural, educational, linguistic, health, and environmental affairs and China would be in charge of foreign relations and defence. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD China has rejected the approach and said it calls for 'splitting China' and has accused the Dalai Lama of seeking a 'semi-independent political regime' or a 'state within a state' within China under the guise of autonomy. The real reason, however, is that an autonomous Tibet, is incompatible with Communist China's ethos. The subjugation of Tibet has been a must for the Communist Party (CPC) and any cordial co-existence has been off the table since the very beginning, according to Prof. Tej Pratap Singh, a scholar of China at the Department of Political Science at Banaras Hindu University (BHU). Indeed, one of the first things that the CPC leader Mao Zedong did after establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 was to order the invasion of Tibet. The fact that Chinese began the invasion of Tibet even as Tibetan negotiators were holding talks with the Chinese envoy, General Yuan Zhongxian, in Delhi shows that talks were a ruse and the invasion was decided from the beginning. 'The People's Republic of China is an ethno-nationalist state of the Han people and the Communist Party has no tolerance for any other ethnic group having a province of their own and that too an autonomous province like Tibet. Moreover, China wanted to control Tibet to lay claims to Indian territories. So, the subjugation of Tibet and the erasure of Tibetan identity have been enshrined in the foundations of Communist China,' says Singh. Indeed, China's claims on India's Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh are rooted in its claim on Tibet. China has said that Ladakh and Arunachal are parts of Tibet, and as it claims to be a part of China, it also claims these Indian regions to be a part of China. Totalitarian China has no room for non-Han people Even though China claims to be a multi-ethnic, atheist state, it is a totalitarian ethno-nationalist state of the Han people. It's not just that the vast majority of Chinese people —91 per cent— are Han, all Chinese leaders from Mao to Xi Jinping have been Han. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD By definition, an ethno-nationalist state is one in which national identity is defined by shared ethnicity. Formally, China considers 56 ethnic groups as part of China, but that is a farce as China's policies lay bare that it is a Han ethno-nationalist state and everyone has to comply to the Han way of life. For example, China has made it clear that all religious groups and institutions in the country, whether Buddhists in Tibet or Muslims in Xinjiang, have to incorporate 'Chinese characteristics' in the practice of their religious. For Muslims, China has even gone to the length of demolishing traditional mosques and getting them rebuilt as per the architecture of the Han people. Similarly, China has set up internment camps and put hundreds of thousands of Muslims in those camps to be taught the Han way of life — China calls them 'reeducation camps'. For Tibetan Buddhists, China has denied them the right to recognise their leader, the Dalai Lama, and has said it will appoint the next Dalai Lama. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The 'Chinese' national identity is essentially Han identity and every ethnic group, whether Tibetan Buddhists or Uyghur Muslims, have to mould themselves as per the Han way of life, says Singh, the China scholar at BHU. Scholars have described the imposition of Han way of life on other groups inside China in the name of Sinicization as 'internal colonialism' where regions of non-Han people like Tibet and Xinjiang have been converted into Han colonies. No room for Tibet & Dalai Lama in China As China is an ethno-nationalist state of Han people, a Chinese leader can never tolerate someone like the Dalai Lama — even if he offers concessions like ceding the demand for independence for autonomy within the People's Republic. 'The Dalai Lama is a symbol of Tibetan Buddhists and a reminder that Tibet had remained out of China's active control for centuries. China can never allow the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet and can never allow an autonomous Tibet to coexist with China as that would give prominence to a non-Han people and their leader. That's why China is committed to not just subjugating Tibet but keeping the Dalai Lama out of Tibet and erasing the Tibetan identity with the destruction of monasteries, replacement of Tibetan language with Mandarin, and the break-up of the Tibet province,' says Singh. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Historically, Tibet comprised three provinces of U-Tsang in central Tibet that included Lhasa and was the spiritual centre, eastern province of Kham, and northeastern region of Amdo that had many monasteries. China broke large parts of Kham and merged them into Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and parts of Amdo were incorporated into Qinghai and Gansu. Currently, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is less than half of the size of the pre-1950 Tibet. Singh says that China wants to name the next Dalai Lama as the one it would support would toe its line and lead its Sinicisation efforts. 'On the other hand, a successor recognised by Tibetans in exile, as the Dalai Lama announced last week, is bound to be anti-China and is bound to deny legitimacy to the Chinese rule in Tibet and any territorial claims on Indian land that arise from Chinese rule. That would be unacceptable to China,' says Singh. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
AllAfrica
01-05-2025
- Politics
- AllAfrica
China's new revolution of culture
China is promoting Chinese culture domestically against Western influence, which could be a tangible sign that the country is preparing for an extended period of isolation or siege. 'China has expanded an initiative to create a new academic discipline that aims to stamp out Western bias in ethnic studies as Beijing works to consolidate its narrative on a unified national identity,' according to a South China Morning Post report. This could be a new concept bypassing the old binary division between ethnicities inherited from the USSR. 'Museums should 'refute all kinds of wrong historical views, including attempts to create a binary opposition between China's Central Plains and the border areas, between Han and non-Han groups, and between Han culture and the cultures of ethnic minorities,' said Pan Yue, director of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, who is ethnically Han. Pan, an extremely sophisticated official, is also in charge of the campaign against Western bias. Thus, the project could be coherent: reinforcing national unity without ethnic divisions that 'mischievous foreigners' could exploit and gradually stamping out Western cultural influence, which 'mischievous foreigners' could again use for undue impact in the country. Besides national concerns, there are real cultural issues. Ge Zhaoguang (whose essays are also translated on this website) notes in the third volume of his 'Zhongguo Sixiang shi' (History of Chinese Thought, 2001) that at the turn of the 20th century, China reorganized all its thinking according to Western categories. China didn't have subjects like philosophy, religion, or economy, which were introduced via Japanese translations. The recategorization of thought brought a new worldview and system to rearrange even past Chinese knowledge and tradition. This realignment was perhaps never fully socially digested, and the Chinese lived between two worlds, the new Western and the traditional one, neither fully grasped. Mao's Cultural Revolution also addressed the issue by attempting to wipe out the culture of the past, but things possibly got worse. This attempt seems, at first glance, more cautious and more grounded. Yet these actions could hamper other developments. Beijing sees the US as deep in an opioid crisis, similar to what contributed to the downfall of the Qing dynasty 200 years ago. The official People's Daily reported that with 5% of the total world population, the US consumes 80% of all the world's opioids. About 200 years ago, the imperial court restricted opium imports at the beginning of the 19th century. Still, British traders argued it was the only product the Chinese were willing to buy from abroad. The British, in 1840, and then an alliance of Western powers in 1856, fought two wars to liberalize the opium trade in China. Historically, the Chinese blamed opium addiction for the ensuing national decadence, while foreigners shrugged off the issue, arguing that the Chinese people's consumption was the problem. Currently, the US and China are locked in a controversy over fentanyl consumption in America. Components for fentanyl—a synthetic drug that can be manufactured anywhere—are mainly exported by China. Those components are also used to produce medical drugs for clinics and hospitals. It seems like an opium crisis in reverse two centuries later. American officials blame China for turning a blind eye to the trafficking of fentanyl components. At the same time, the Chinese argue that American addiction to opioids is the real issue, asserting that blaming China won't resolve it. The US is losing its young lives and its moral compass in the fentanyl crisis, which is possibly the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 49. The US and China are collaborating to stem the fentanyl trade, but the US isn't apparently satisfied with the results. Two centuries ago, these tensions led to war. Will there be a new opium war now? In a parallel development, China is ramping up its diplomacy to replace the US, which is rattling the world with tariffs. The world relies on Western culture for communication. It's not just a matter of language; it's an issue of culture. Herein lies a dilemma: if China promotes its culture to replace Western culture, it risks losing the 'language' needed to engage with the world. China may even require further Westernization to communicate with America amid its opioid crisis or to replace the US altogether. Replacing the Western culture that has shaped the world for five centuries is a daunting task that cannot happen overnight. It requires considerable time. If the US is stepping off the center stage and China wishes to engage with the world, it must be able to talk through 'Western culture'; otherwise, it will not understand and will not be understood. Moreover, if the US opioid crisis leads to a collapse, China will again need to communicate with Americans and Europeans. In a century or so, they might learn 'Chinese culture,' but in the meantime, they must understand and be understood. In this new context, China's Westernization would be necessary. Stamping out Western concepts could be beneficial if China is defeated globally and the US survives its many crises. Yet there's a deeper underlying problem: many Western concepts and categories are no longer relevant. The crisis initiated by US President Donald Trump reflects a sense of insecurity and threat that America feels as a nation and within the global system. China's systemic approach to rethinking cultural categories mirrors its overall problem-solving methodology: there must be a system reset. The answer may not be ideal, but the issue is undeniably real. It's unclear if the US will use a holistic, systemic approach to tackle its domestic problems that translate into the opioid crisis and the trade controversy, which deal with China but do not end with China. It's also unclear whether its present strategy will suffice to cope with systemic China. This article first appeared on Appia Institute and is republished with permission. Read the original here.
South China Morning Post
19-04-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
China's museums get new mission: promote ethnic unity, counter ‘wrong historical views'
China's museums should not portray the Han ethnicity in confrontational historical contexts with ethnic minorities, and they should tell the 'China story' by using archaeological findings, according to the country's top ethnic policy official. Advertisement Pan Yue , director of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, made the remarks during an event billed as the first national training class for museum directors in Beijing on Wednesday. Museums should 'refute all kinds of wrong historical views, including attempts to create a binary opposition between China's Central Plains and the border areas, between Han and non-Han groups and between Han culture and cultures of ethnic minorities ', said Pan, who is ethnically Han. Pan Yue is the director of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission. Photo: Weibo The one-day session was aimed at cultivating a 'sense of community' within the country, and included representatives from the Palace Museum and the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the commission said. Museums should place every cultural relic and historical narrative within 'a system of overall development of the Chinese nation', Pan said, adding that the country should be represented as 'diverse but unified', emphasising that it respects and accommodates differences. Some museums have already heeded Beijing's call to tell the China story. The Sanxingdui Museum, an archaeological site on major Bronze Age culture in southwest China's Sichuan province, has created a course entitled 'Viewing Chinese Civilisation from Sanxingdui'. Advertisement Last year, the Hubei Provincial Museum staged an exhibit of 150 cultural relics intended to 'cast a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation', according to a museum statement.
