the politics of reincarnation

Explananda Chris says:

I suspect that China is not faced with a choice, as many protesters seem to imply, between being a China that oppresses Tibet and being a China that doesn’t oppress Tibet. Rather, to put it too dramatically, I suspect that China is faced with a choice between being a China that oppresses Tibet and there not being a China for very long afterwards.

The hard geopolitics of the Tibet issue are simple enough. Western China is a high plateau ending in a series of mountain ranges. So you put your border at the mountains, if you have that physical capability. Where on the mountains you put the border - who sits on top and who has to run up the slopes – is the subject of China’s ongoing border dispute with India. Likewise, Indian support for exiled Tibetans puts a marker down that the Chinese side can’t rely on secure rear areas.

So it would seem that any progress towards genuine Tibetan self rule depends partly on the state of Sino-Indian relations. From this point of view, the way that India has moved to restrain Tibetan exiles on its territories is a hopeful sign. There’s zero chance of any movement if India is hostile to China. It’s also a reminder of who’s really in charge of the Indo-Tibetan relationship.

In fact, there’s zero chance anyway. The Dalai Lama has scaled down demands for independence to pleas for autonomy. He’s called for the Olympics to go ahead, and his office has said that the demonstrations around the torch serve no useful purpose. But his own followers have ignored him and the Chinese have demonized him as the black hand behind the whole uprising.

They’re clearly waiting him out in the hope that when he dies, whoever is nominated to follow him won’t have the same moral authority. Aside from his status as living Buddha, the 14th Dalai’s whole life has been set against the backdrop of the CPC’s occupation of Tibet and the resistance to it: he's central to the temporal as well as spiritual issue.

China moved first when it kidnapped the original candidate for the Panchen Lama, part of whose role is to choose the next Dalai. The Dalai responded to that by saying that his next incarnation would be born outside Chinese controlled Tibet. China responded in turn by forbidding monks to reincarnate without official permission.

Amusing, but dumb. As I’ve said, the Dalai’s own followers ignore him when it suits them. His purpose is to provide moral unity for the Tibetan cause as a whole. There’s supposed to be a picture of the Dalai in every Tibetan home. I don’t know how anyone has managed to check this, but the ideal thing for China would be to have pictures of lots of different Dalais in every Tibetan home, to work on differences in the exile movement to get each to nominate its own candidate, to encourage every monk it can to reincarnate, and to generally use religion as leverage to encourage the exiles to turn on each other.

But in official ideology, China is one big, happy, multiethnic family whose Tibetan component is happy to swear loyalty to the state under the moral suasion of its very own living Buddha. This isn’t just Communist Party propaganda. It’s the basic way in which China conceives itself. So the Chinese will find their Dalai, who in turn will act as a kind of negative rallying point for the Tibetans. And everything will go on as before until the 15th incarnation of Blood & Treasure, the true avatar of the living blogger.

Comments

[Chris]

That seems very plausible to me. Do you think that I overestimated the worry about other minorities getting big ideas if China actually does what people protesting Tibet want it to do?

[jamie]

Well in practice, "other minorities" really means the Uighur in Xinjiang: the Koreans aren't going to want enosis with Pyongyang and the Yi, Mao, etc are too small and don't really have a "national" consciousness. Maybe the Mongolians, but there just aren't enough of them. The Uighurs are hostile to Chinese control but they have very little external support, no figure comoparable to the Dalai and no agreed programme, so I don't think they could mount a serious rebellion.

[W Dean]

Er, how does one actually get official permission to reincarnate, anyhow?

[Chris]

Huh. That'll teach me to bloviate.

[jamie]

This is good on Xinjiang:

http://www.thenewdominion.net/123/following-protest-xinjiang-suddenly-makes-international-news/

[alle]

The Uighurs are hostile to Chinese control but they have very little external support, no figure comoparable to the Dalai and no agreed programme, so I don't think they could mount a serious rebellion.

They do make awesome powerpoint slides, though. I sat in on an Uighur independence show with some rather prominent figures from there -- or so I was told -- a few years ago. Lots of gory pictures of Chinese repression, long rows of dead independence heros in battle dress, plus the occasional local carpet pattern and long-necked guitar. All of it somehow added up in the end to a convincing argument that East Turkestan must rise again.

While on minorities, what about Koreans? If relations some day turn sour with North Korea, is there a border diaspora that Dear Leader could activate there? And what about Chinese minorities abroad -- except for those out scuffling with Olympic protestors, are there any serious communities abroad that could (potentially) stir up border issues or other stuff with Beijing? Apart from Taiwan.

[Nick L]

Re: Chinese diaspora, isn't the treatment of the Chinese minority in Indonesia a rather big issue for Han nationalists? Given that tension between the two largest Pacific nations is a definite possibility as China rises, if I would be worried if I were a politburo member about the potential for the issue to turn ugly and difficult to control. I guess it all depends on how easy it is for the CCP to control nationalist sentiment.

[jamie]

"While on minorities, what about Koreans? If relations some day turn sour with North Korea, is there a border diaspora that Dear Leader could activate there?"

Interesting.I dunno though: Koreans trying to get out of NK often go via Chinese Korean communities, so I'm not sure that there's much latent Pyongyanginess. It's not like japan. You've just got to look over the Yalu to see how things are.

" Chinese diaspora, isn't the treatment of the Chinese minority in Indonesia a rather big issue for Han nationalists? " Yeah, but it tends to feed into a more general view of the Chinese alone in a hostile world. I think it would certainly be a factor if there was any tenstion between China and Indonesia.

Interestingly, there is quite a lot of pro-Israeli sentiment in China...