Tibet & Xi who must be obeyed

This week, China’s heir apparent to succeed Hu Jintao as President, Xi Jinping, is on a “coming out” diplomatic visit to the United States where he’ll hold wide-ranging discussions on bilateral ties between the world’s two greatest powers. In light of the transition at the top of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), this visit is being monitored for the kind of first impressions that Mr Xi will leave on the international stage.

Is he another hardliner like President Hu? Will he continue China’s assertiveness towards southeast and northeast Asia, which have ignited fears of the return of a 21st century Middle Kingdom? As the scion of an elite CCP family with leadership in his bloodline, will he be more liberal and daring in reforming China’s ossified political structure? Does the fact that he headed the CCP in a booming metropolis like Shanghai imply that he is more global in orientation than his predecessor and hence open to foreign opinion?
Such questions are boggling China watchers right now because Mr Xi has kept policy cards close to his chest throughout his cautious rise within the politburo of the CCP. The typical opaqueness of CCP power transitions has led to a guess work about what kind of continuities and changes China is in for during the 18th Party Congress, scheduled for later this year, which will witness the passing of the baton from Mr Hu to Mr Xi.
Yet, for all the speculation about the direction Chinese policies will take under Mr Xi, it is certain that Beijing’s repressive rule in Tibet will remain in place or even intensify. Central governments in China have always been convinced that Tibet must be subdued with force and that its stubborn Buddhist natives must be “re-educated” to become patriotic Chinese. The coming Xi era in Chinese history is unlikely to veer away from coercion and intimidation, especially as controlling mechanisms in the face of a spirited newer generation of Tibetans which is more radical and seething with dissatisfaction against one of Asia’s last instances of orthodox colonial rule.
Over the years, Beijing has accumulated enough confidence that it can clamp down on Tibetan aspirations without paying a heavy cost. In a reprise of previous decades, when mainland China used its diplomatic clout to severe Taiwan’s linkages with the wider world, Beijing is making its foreign aid, outward investment and political relations with most countries conditional upon the latter boycotting the Dalai Lama and fastening the lid on political activism of Tibetan refugees.
The refusal of South Africa, a close partner of China within the Brics group, to grant a visa for the Buddhist spiritual guru late last year was just one instance of China’s effective pressure tactics. Far from critiquing China’s appalling human rights record in occupied Tibet, many governments which do business with China or have strategic partnerships with it are now unwilling to even permit peaceful actions of Tibetan émigrés that help to keep their cause in international consciousness.
This trade-off between the economic and military benefits of associating with China and the moral duty of assisting Tibetans who are being browbeaten and marginalised in their homeland is, of course, explained by a realpolitik world where material self-interest trumps normative ideals. China is basically getting a free pass on Tibet these days in the capitals of the world which are inferior to Beijing and are afraid of rubbing it the wrong way.
In the case of countries that are equal to or materially stronger than China, Tibet does get mentioned and raised in diplomatic settings as a problem that needs to be addressed. On Mr Xi’s US trip, he is being reminded by high-level American interlocutors that China must exercise restraint and safeguard human rights for Tibetans. That these appeals would fall on deaf ears is obvious, but the needle between China and the US in the Asia-Pacific region and the atmosphere of great power competition between the two means that there is enough political will in Washington to keep reminding China that it must relax its iron hand in Tibet.
For the sake of the persecuted Tibetan people, who are a shining example of non-violent resistance, it is essential that other countries also tell China that its behaviour in Tibet is unacceptably violent and soul-crushing. Tiptoeing around the gravity of Tibet today is proving impossible after nearly 20 self-immolations by monks over the last one year and a discernible sense of mass unease on the eve of the Tibetan New Year and the anniversaries of the March uprisings of 1959 and 2008.
The double standards of condoning Chinese excesses in Tibet, while harshly denouncing regimes for brutality in Syria or the Palestinian territories, reveal the stark hypocrisy underlying international politics and are not surprising since we are talking about priorities in statecraft. But what happened to the news media and to civil societies in democratic societies? Why are they underplaying the Tibetan tragedy when there should be headline stories and a barrage of petitions about it?
Time magazine recently called the self-immolations of Tibetan monks the most unreported story of 2011. Are concepts like the “free media” and civil society mere window dressing for opinion making which takes cues from state and business elites who are partying with rising China?
Burma’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi wrote recently that “passion” (i.e. the degree of commitment to a cause) is more capable of ushering in durable historical change than raw “power”. Tibetans should not be punished for preserving the flame and the passion for freedom against the headwind of a China-dominated international system. Taking Tibet off the agenda is not an option for those who desire non-violent solutions to global injustices. In the words of the African American civil rights hero, Malcolm X, “If you want something, you had better make some noise.” Let Xi Jinping hear it, even if he ignores the voices of conscience.

The writer is vice-dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs and the author of the recent book International Organizations and Civilian Protection: Power, Ideas and Humanitarian Aid in Conflict Zones