Life and death struggle

China knows that if it doesn’t quell the uprising in Tibet quickly with maximum force, its dictatorship can spin out of control. Venkatesan Vembu reports

T he uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule points to the fragility of the Communist leadership in China, and if the leaders are unable to “sort things out, it could be the beginning of the end of the dictatorship,” says a scholar on “authoritarian capitalism”.

“Dictatorships, be they Communist or otherwise, are fundamentally fragile,” Christopher Lingle, a research fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Civil Society, told DNA. “Dictators realise they rule under limited conditions, and believe they have to repress any and all dissent with maximum force,” says Lingle, who has held university professorships in several countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and America.

That’s why Tibet’s Communist Party secretary, Zhang Qingli, warned last week that China was engaged in a “life and death struggle” in Tibet, where a serious uprising against Chinese rule has been raging for nearly two weeks.

Zhang’s statement, reasons Lingle, was intended as a threat “to let people know they would use maximum force” to crush the uprising. “But, perhaps unintentionally, it also signalled the fragility of the Communist dictatorship... If they can’t quell a restive region like that, you’ll see bits of China - Tibet and Xinjiang, for instance - spinning out of orbit.”

More seriously, Zhang’s statement means that the “life and death of the People’s Republic of China as it is constituted is at a crossroads,” says Lingle. “If they are unable to sort things out in Tibet, it could be the beginning of the end of the dictatorship.”

Lingle contests China’s historical claims over Tibet on the grounds that they are based on “questionable imperial treaties or contacts between imperial powers”.
 
“It is a grotesque hypocrisy for the Chinese Communist regime, which has built its reputation on anti-imperialism, to use imperialist arrangements as a justification to acquire territory,” argues Lingle. But even if one doesn’t take that high moral ground and examines the historical claims serioiusly, “it’s still a very tenuous claim.”
Lingle acknowledges that the Tibetan people’s “right to independence” is, for all its validity on grounds of history and diplomatic logic, practically unrealisable “because very few countries - including the US and India and Nepal - are willing to challenge China on this point out of concern for economic implications.” Even the Dalai Lama’s demand for “genuine autonomy” for Tibetans - which Chinese authorities had agreed to concede in the 1950s - may be out of reach owing to the violent uprising of the past fortnight. “The Chinese are not going to put that on the table anytime soon for fear of being seen as weak,” says Lingle. “But it could be a starting point for some negotiations on the status of Tibet.”

China’s stated position - that it was open to negotiations with the Dalai Lama provided he renounced Tibetan independance and violence - was only a “gesture” meant to convey to the world that Chinese authorities were being reasonable. “What Chinese authorities want from the Dala Lama is for him to die quickly - so that they can appoint his ‘successor’ and seal the deal!”

In a perverted sort of way, the Tibetan problem will fade away when the Dalai Lama passes away, reasons Lingle. “After the Dalai Lama’s time, the world won’t care as much about Tibet. Whose voice do you think will be heard? The tiny potpourri of Tibet who lament that the Chinese government is violating everything they know about their own religion and culture - or Beijing saying ‘We have a new Dalai Lama, a new leader of the people, and he loves it here’?”

In Lingle’s estimation, it was this realisation that may have inspired the uprising of the past fortnight. “Tibetans have realised that they need to make a move before the Dalai Lama passes away. It is this that has driven them to the extreme response of the past few days.”

venky@dnaindia.net