India - China: Relations And Developments-2

[Guest]

<b>Tibetan revolt has China's empire fraying at the edge</b>
Link
From The Sunday Times
March 23, 2008

For all its overwhelming force in the lonely mountain passes, where military convoys toil towards the clouds, or in the dark alleys of Chengdu’s Tibetan quarter, where soldiers stand watch, the sour tang of a debacle for China is in the air.

Despite 20 years of iron-fisted security, huge investments and mass migration since the last Tibetan uprising, the roof of the world once again looks like a hostile place to most Chinese.

<b>The uneasy sense of psychological defeat emerged from interviews with Chinese citizens and soldiers in Sichuan province, a vast region that includes a swathe of the Tibetan plateau, over the past week.

Almost without exception, people said they had lost faith in government propaganda and feared that Tibetans would turn to violence against China.</b>

“I believe they can never win their independence, because no big country backs them and they have no army,” said a shop owner, “and I believe we cannot win their hearts.”

This might be the most politically damaging result of the Tibetan uprising for the Chinese government. Foreign condemnation is officially scorned as biased. But public opinion at home, although hard to measure, suggests that many Chinese do not believe that Tibet is secure and do not think things can go on as they are.

The violence across Tibetan-inhabited villages and towns poses a threat to normal Chinese traffic along the strategic Chengdu-Lhasa highway.

<b>The map of disorder is extremely telling. It has forced the army to deploy troops out of a key base at Kangding, a mixed Chinese-Tibetan town wedged between soaring mountains and reached by a dramatic new highway. “Our forces have kept things peaceful here, but you could not go further along the road,” said a staff member in a hotel in Kangding.</b>

West of Kangding, the landscape changes to smooth grass-lands dotted by black-and-white Tibetan houses, towards the heights of the plateau where horse-riding nomads roam.

Fiercely resisting a Chinese campaign to force them into new towns, the nomads burst onto television screens around the world last week as they galloped into village after village at the head of protesting Tibetans.

The Chinese have spent millions on a chain of military bases along the highway. Dozens of artillery pieces can be seen lined up as if on parade grounds.

Sophisticated communications vehicles and new olive-green trucks ply the route.

Towards the troubled monastery town of Litang, where monks have secretly kept pictures of the Dalai Lama for many years, a camouflaged radar station scans the heavens.

“All the shops and businesses have been closed for three days,” said a Tibetan clerk, speaking by telephone from Litang on Friday. “It’s very tense.”

Exiles reported that Chinese stores in Litang had been ransacked and government buildings had been seized by crowds who raised the Tibetan national flag. The scenes were similar around monasteries and impoverished villages all over the ancient Tibetan areas of Kham and Amdo, now incorporated into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai.

<b>The Chinese military has trained for decades precisely for this moment. Its commander in Lhasa, a two-star general named Tong Guishan, has spent his entire career in Tibet since joining the 155nd Brigade of the People’s Liberation Army’s 52nd division in 1964. His predecessor in Tibet, General Zhang Guihua, is the political commissar in the Chengdu military command, which oversees all southwest China. These two men were responsible for ordering units of the 52nd and 55th Divisions out of Lhasa, Chengdu and Kangding last week to quench the protests in Sichuan.</b>

Tibetans in exile reported 15 deaths in Karze, north of Litang, when 500 protesters confronted troops. Clashes were said to have taken place in Markham, a key highway junction. “Tibetans are being told they will be detained until the end of the Olympics; and once the Olympics are over court proceedings will begin,” a local source told Radio Free Asia.

The worst violence was reported by Tibetans from Aba, in Sichuan province, where they alleged that 23 people, including Lhundup Tso, 16, had been shot dead by the security forces.

China has not officially admitted that its forces have killed any Tibetans. The state media have, however, said that one policeman was killed and 241 were injured, 23 of them critically, in the Lhasa protests.

Reporters have been unable to verify independently either Chinese or Tibetan claims. But the violence reached right into the centre of Chengdu, a city of 11m, where nerves were on edge last week. In scenes not witnessed in a Chinese city since 1989, troops in battledress joined black-uniformed special police in clamping a cordon around the Tibetan quarter.

“A Tibetan from Aba killed two Chinese people with a knife on Xiaotiandong Road,” said a taxi driver, repeating a rumour that spread like wildfire via the taxi radio link and text messages. Chengdu’s Public Security Bureau hastily summoned reporters to a press conference at 10.30pm to deny that anyone was dead. Its deputy chief, He Jiansheng, confirmed that the attacker was a Tibetan from Aba.

Within the bustling warren of Tibetan streets, monks in crimson robes hurried past shops selling sacred statues and pictures – none of the Dalai Lama, of course – while students ate supper at open-air restaurants under the watchful eyes of the military.

The fear, it seemed, was mutual. “No, we can’t speak,” gasped a young Tibetan, abandoning his dish of yak ears and noodles to flee with his friends.

Local Chinese feared a terrorist attack. Cars entering the quarter were searched for explosives. “We’ve got orders to stand here as long as the government tells us,” said a young soldier, gripping his assault rifle.

Western military attachés say there is no question that Generals Tong and Zhang can impose what China calls “stability” in short order. Yet the uprising has led some to sense that China’s empire is fraying at the edges. A bank clerk based in Lhasa told how his financial firm had ordered all staff to stay out of Tibet. A Chengdu entrepreneur said the city’s business people went to make money in Tibet but would never buy a home there.

Such insecurity stands in telling contrast to the strident proclamations of national unity that have accompanied a stream of increasingly coarse propaganda from Beijing.

Yesterday the foreign ministry was reduced to issuing a list of nations that had supported the crackdown – Russia, Syria, North Korea, Vietnam, Belarus, Benin and, perhaps for the sake of variety, Fiji.

Last night the people of the self-governing democracy of Taiwan elected Ma Yingjeou of the Nationalist party as their president in a contest that has been so dominated by China’s conduct in Tibet that the new leader has to take a firm line in defence of the island’s freedom.

In Beijing a noted Tibetan writer, Tsering Woeser, and her Chinese husband have been put under house arrest after speaking to reporters.

In Hong Kong, the former British colony enjoying 50 years of “a high degree of autonomy” from China, an editorial in the South China Morning Post pointed to the degree of unease among its senior editors, who have good relations with mainland officials. “The central government’s policy towards Tibet has clearly failed,” it said.