Plateau bargaining

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Plateau bargaining
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13269905

Mar 11th 2009 From Economist.com

The solid Great Wall on the march

The solid Great Wall on the march


Fifty years after the 1959 uprising, Tibet remains restive
THE year 2008 was “extremely unusual”, said Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, at the opening of parliament’s annual session on March 5th. For two hours, his speech surveyed the year’s peaks and valleys: the massive earthquake in May that “shocked the world”, the Olympic Games in August and the “unprecedented difficulties” presented by the global economic crisis. But of the biggest outbreak of unrest in Tibet in 50 years he mentioned not a word.

Mr Wen had reason to be cautious. On March 10th, 1959, thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama’s summer palace in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, to forestall a rumoured plot by the Chinese authorities to kidnap him. A week later the Dalai Lama, disguised, escaped to India. A bloody crackdown on his supporters by Chinese troops ensued. It was the anniversary of the March 10th uprising that triggered last year’s unrest across the Tibetan plateau (which accounts for one-fourth of China’s landmass). Authorities feared larger protests for the 50th anniversary this year.

In March 1990, nine months after the crushing of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, Li Peng, who was then prime minister, opened the annual session of the National People’s Congress, as the parliament is known, with a declaration that the Communist Party had achieved “victory” over the “counter-revolutionary rebellion”. Ten years later his successor Zhu Rongji used the same opportunity to declare “major victory” for the party in its campaign against Falun Gong, a quasi-Buddhist sect that had staged widespread protests a year earlier. When it comes to Tibetan separatism, Chinese leaders are less confident.

Still, the government’s anticipatory crackdown made significant protests unlikely. Tibet has been all but sealed off from the outside world. Foreign journalists are normally barred and now are being kept away from Tibetan-inhabited areas far beyond the Tibet Autonomous Region itself. Army and paramilitary troops have been deployed across the plateau. In some places, internet and mobile-telephone services have reportedly been cut off. Such technology played a big role in fanning the flames last year.

Mr Wen’s reticence could also be a sign that when it comes to Tibet, the party has run out of ideas. In the 1990s it was able to marginalise the Tiananmen protestors’ demands by launching market-oriented reforms that resulted in rapid economic growth. This decade it has marginalised Falun Gong with the help of a remarkably effective propaganda campaign that has convinced many people that the once-popular spiritual movement is no more than a sinister cult. In both cases, widespread arrests and other forms of official intimidation kept dissenters in check.

In Tibet, the party has tried economic inducement and failed; the region’s economy has grown at a double-digit rate annually since the early 1990s. The party has had no better luck with trying to portray the Dalai Lama as a manipulative figure who uses religion to deceive his people (similar accusations were made against Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong). In Tongren county of Qinghai province, which borders on Tibet, portraits of the Dalai Lama are still ubiquitous in monasteries (officials in the area have not sought to eliminate them with quite the dedication shown by their counterparts in Tibet itself).

Arrests and patrols by riot police may have kept the plateau quiet so far (as the Dalai Lama put it in an anniversary speech delivered in India, “Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear”), but few officials believe that separatist sentiment has ebbed. If anything, the central government’s behaviour over the last year will have strengthened support for greater Tibetan autonomy, if not outright independence. Economic growth may not have nurtured Tibetan fondness for the Communist party, but the slump brought on by the crackdown and the global economic crisis will certainly fuel hostility.

Another explosion of discontent in Tibet is therefore just a matter of time. Why such an outbreak occurred last year, despite extensive security preparations in preparation for the Olympics, remains a matter of conjecture. But one plausible explanation is that some officials actually wanted turbulence in Lhasa so that they could justify tighter security in the city well before the games. With thousands of foreign journalists due to cover the Olympics in August, officials would have feared that any outbreak of unrest close to that date would be difficult to control because of intense media scrutiny. The clampdown enabled the authorities to keep the media hordes at bay and protesters off the streets. The astonishing near-total absence of any security deployment across a wide area of Lhasa during the first few hours of the rioting on March 14th last year lends credence to this theory.

If this is what the authorities had intended, they are unlikely to try the same tactic again. Even the most Machiavellian of officials would not have wanted last year’s outcome: protests that spread rapidly across a huge area and an international outcry that—until the earthquake in Sichuan Province in May—threatened to overshadow the Olympics and seriously undermine relations between China and the West.

But the political machinations behind China’s handling of Tibet are difficult to divine. Mr Wen and his Politburo colleagues have avoided visiting Lhasa publicly since March 2008. It is widely supposed that President Hu Jintao is a hardliner on Tibetan issues, having presided over the imposition of martial law in Lhasa in 1989 when he was party chief in Tibet. On March 9th, Mr Hu told deputies to the legislature that China should reinforce its “solid Great Wall for combating separatism”. No doubt some officials may not be convinced by his approach, but the unrest last year caught many by surprise. This year they have become more wary.

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