Archived version
An unexpected development has taken place in the seven-decades-long dispute between the Tibetan exile leadership and China’s government. In early July, for the first time since 2010, Chinese authorities reportedly held direct talks with the exile Tibetan political leadership, based in Dharamsala, India. The meeting in July followed a year or more of back-channel contacts of some kind.
These talks are at only a very preliminary stage and may not last. Beijing has not confirmed that it has had contact with the exiles, and the exile leaders have downplayed any prospect of substantive outcomes, professing interest only in long-term developments. But behind these reports are signs of a larger and more intriguing shift. This is indicated, according to the exile leadership, by the fact that it was China that initiated the resumption of talks. They “are reaching out to us, it’s not us reaching out to them,” as the exiles’ Sikyong, or political leader, Penpa Tsering, has put it. Beijing, the exiles argue, now finds itself under pressure to reach a deal with the exiled Tibetan religious leader, the 89-year-old Dalai Lama, before his health declines further. If so, this would be a 180-degree reversal from the previous dynamics of the dispute, when it was the exiles who were urgently, even desperately, seeking a settlement before time runs out.
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From Human Rights to Sovereignty
Since the late 1970s, the main approach pursued by the Dalai Lama, his political counterparts in Dharamsala, and his supporters around the world has been the promotion of Western-led criticisms of China’s human rights record in Tibet. These criticisms have been intended to persuade China to give Tibetans some degree of meaningful autonomy. This has not worked. Despite Western pressure and major concessions by the exiles, Beijing stonewalled previous talks with the Tibetans, cut off formal contact for some 14 years, embarked on policies in Tibet and other ethnic areas that are all but indistinguishable from forced assimilation, and now says that it will not discuss enhanced autonomy for Tibet. Given the rise of China as a global power and the increasing failure of Western governments regarding their own claimed values, the prospects of success for a values-based, Western-led approach to diplomacy with Beijing are vanishingly small.
[Edit typo.]