China, Tibet and the dialogue of the deaf

magicboy

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/peter_foster/blog/2009/03/25/china_tibet_and_the_dialogue_of_the_deaf

China, Tibet and the dialogue of the deaf
Is it possible to be 'neutral' over the issue of Tibet? Probably not, but if for sake of argument, it were possible then a 'neutral' person might wonder why it is this issue which causes so much friction between China and the outside world.
China and the rest of the world have plenty of substantive things to disagree about and yet the issue that (from a Western perspective at least) is more really more moral and ethical than economic or geopolitical is the one that gives rise to such intense diplomatic heat.
Again from a Western perspective - and I also speak here as a media man, I suppose - China's pressuring South Africa into refusing the Dalai Lama a visa appears bewilderingly counter-productive.
If the Chinese had not asked South Africa to block the Dalai Lama's visa - and past history on this issue makes it highly plausible that they did - I doubt this peace conference would have made headlines beyond a few photo-calls for Nelson Mandela and some well-meaning stories about racism and football in the sports supplements.
But having taken this stand, China finds itself held up once again as an international bully-boy while handing its foreign critics an open goal (if you'll excuse the pun) in terms of international publicity.
The result is that a time when it has never been more important for China and the rest of the world to be engaging constructively, the Tibet issue is once again muddying China's reputation in the eyes of the world, even if China would never see it like that.
Whatever China says about the Dalai Lama's 'separatist tendencies' it is hard to square the China whose maxim is 'never to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries' with the China that tells other countries who they can or can't invite over for tea.
As the G20 approaches, France is still in China's diplomatic deep-freeze because Nicholas Sarkozy's refused to bow to the similar pressure when China warned him against meeting with Dalai Lama in Poland last December.
Mr Sarkozy - who, like China, objects to other nations interfering in his country's sovereign right to make its own decisions - rightly refused and met the Dalai Lama anyway.
As a result there will be no meeting between Mr Sarkozy and China's president Hu Jintao at the G20 until France "explicitly, positively, and actively respond to China's major concerns to put Sino-French ties on the right track," to quote China's vice-minister of foreign affairs at a briefing I attended earlier this week.
If you didn't know otherwise, you'd think that France, like some other countries I could mention, had been snooping on Chinese submarines in the South China Sea, cribbing about Chinese defence spending and industrial espionage or placing billions of dollars of China's foreign exchange reserves at risk through extreme regulatory incompetence.
But while all those thorny issues are open to diplomatic accommodation and finesse - as Hillary Clinton showed so clearly on her recent visit to China - on Tibet the usual diplomatic formulae about 'parking this difficult issue', 'twin-track solutions', 'respecting each others positions' or 'wanting to work together for a mutually workable settlement' falls on deaf ears with Beijing.
To get an idea of how deaf, check out this brilliant snap-survey of China's efforts to get its message across on Tibet - both inside and outside China - by David Bandurski at the South China Morning Post.
It just shows how little either side is willing or able to listen to the other. It's like two men trying to have a row when neither speaks each other's language. And it's hard to see it changing any time soon.
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