Conflicting accounts of history complicate understanding of Dalai Lama’s relationship with China

Some Chinese students and faculty members raised objections to the portrayal of the relationship between Tibet and China in an article in the March 2 issue of the Northern Iowan.

The article, “Dalai Lama may bring more than just words of peace to UNI,” states that China removed the University of Calgary in Canada from a list of accredited universities and refused to recognize degrees from the university after it awarded an honorary law degree to the 14th Dalai Lama.

However, according to associate communication studies professor Joyce Chen, this is not the case. Chen stated that China merely removed the U of C from a list of recommended universities and that degrees from U of C will still be recognized in China.

The Gauntlet, the U of C’s student newspaper, states that the legitimacy of students’ degrees will not be affected by the university’s removal from the recommendation list.

While some may believe that the Chinese government’s response to the Dalai Lama’s visit was unreasonable, Jeffrey Nie, assistant professor of industrial technology and faculty advisor for the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, believes that the reaction is understandable.

“I think it’s kind of a reasonable response,” Nie said. “For example, you have a neighbor who invites your enemy to visit his house. Would you still encourage your kid to visit your neighbor? So I think that’s a reasonable reaction.”

Nie and the CSSA are not against the Dalai Lama’s visit provided that it remains an academic issue, but fear it will become a political issue and a threat to Chinese students and faculty.

“It’s not easy to keep it purely academic,” Nie said. “Because this issue’s already there, it’s very easy (for it) to become a political issue. So it’s not easy to control.”

According to CSSA President Nan Liang, Chinese students struggle with a language barrier and biases from both American students and educators, biases that typically intensify at universities after visits from the Dalai Lama.

“We face many biases, not only from American students but from teachers,” Liang said. “We actually felt a pressure — there is a negative talk or image to our home country. So we (feel uncomfortable) on that. It’s often happened after Dalai Lama’s coming that the negative image gets stronger.”

According to Nie, this alleged negative bias against China stems from a misunderstanding of Chinese history and an anti-China bias inherent in the media.

“If the majority of people have a very solid understanding of an issue, no matter how the media writes an article, it will not generate a misunderstanding. But if an issue, the majority of people have no solid understanding of it, it will cause a misunderstanding,” Nie said.

According to Chen, the Northern Iowan article reflected several such misunderstandings that dominate the media. For example, the article states that China invaded Tibet in 1950, but Chen argued that Tibet was already a part of China and so could not be invaded.

“No government recognized Tibet was an independent country,” she said. “So there is no invasion. ‘Invaded’ — this verb, you can’t use.”

“Some people want to just cut history,” said Liang. “They just mention (that) in 1959 China takes over or invades Tibet; they say that before that Tibet was an independent country, but it’s not true. It’s not true. Tibet had been a part of China for a long, long time.”

According to Chen, the Dalai Lama was not forced into exile, but rather chose to leave after a failed Tibetan uprising in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, in 1959.

According to www.dalailama.com, however, China invaded Tibet in 1949 and the 14th Dalai Lama was “forced to escape into exile” in 1959. Furthermore, Tibetan officials hold that Tibet has traditionally been an independent country, while Chinese officials state that Tibet has been a part of China since the 13th century.

A full understanding of the issue requires examining the history of Tibet and its relationship to China from the formation of the former to the 14th Dalai Lama’s exile in 1959.

Two Histories of Tibet
According to Melvyn Goldstein’s book, “The Snow Lion and the Dragon,” Tibet came into being during the 7th century, when it was clearly a separate political entity from China. The two came under one power in the early 13th century when conquered by the Mongols under the rule of Genghis Khan.

This moment is the first historical point of dissension between contemporary Chinese scholars, who consider this the period when Tibet first became a part of China, and nationalistic Tibetans, who argued that both Tibet and China were separate powers that were subjugated by the Mongols.

The next several centuries in Tibet were marked by military strife between China and the Mongols, ultimately resulting in China’s control of Tibet during the Qing Dynasty’s rule in the 18th century. During this time, Tibet was generally ruled by a lay aristocratic family as a Qing dependency, but Chinese rulers made no attempt to absorb Tibet as a province, according to Goldstein.

During the 18th century, Dalai Lamas were selected through a lottery conducted in a golden urn, with the aim being to prevent the selection of incarnations being manipulated to fall in politically powerful lay families. That status of ambans, or Manchu imperial residents, was also elevated to equal political authority with the Dalai Lama for major administrative issues.

Throughout the 19th century, however, the Qing Dynasty experienced threats that resulted in the waning power of the ambans, and the 13th Dalai Lama was selected without the golden urn lottery. At this point, Goldstein argues, Qing Dynasty hegemony over Tibet was more symbolic than real.

Britain complicated things when it conquered Tibet in 1904 and began trading with Tibet like it was an independent nation while refusing to officially recognize it as one after the Anglo-Tibetan Convention of 1904. Britain instead reaffirmed China’s authority over Tibet during the Anglo-Chinese Convention in 1906 and in the 1907 Anglo-Russian agreement.

The 13th Dalai Lama organized a military force from exile in India and regained power in Tibet after the Qing Dynasty fell in 1912. This period resulted in another point of disagreement between Tibetan and Chinese scholars: the new Chinese government, which sought unity, believed that Tibet was still its territory and gave it seats at the Chinese National Assembly. The 13th Dalai Lama, however, stated that he “intended to exercise both temporal and ecclesiastic rule in Tibet,” according to Goldstein, a statement that has been interpreted by some as a declaration of independence for Tibet.

According to Goldstein, Tibet experienced a period of de facto independence from the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 to the death of the 13th Dalai Lama in 1933, when there were no Chinese officials or troops in Tibet. Goldstein argues that there was a double standard in the West during this time when countries such as the United States and Britain dealt directly with Tibet, but refused to recognize it as an independent nation.

In 1950, the People’s Republic of China sent its People’s Liberation Army into Tibet with the intention of liberating it from serfdom after asking the latter to peacefully accept Chinese sovereignty. PRC leader Mao Zedong did not have the PLA conquer the Tibetan capital, but instead entered negotiations with the Tibetan people. The resulting “17-Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” was signed on May 23, 1951, marking the first time that Tibet acknowledged Chinese sovereignty.

The agreement allowed Tibet to keep its traditional political-economic system intact until Tibetans desired reform and kept the Dalai Lama in power. The 14th Dalai Lama chose to accept the terms of the agreement.

According to Goldstein, Mao Zedong pursued a policy of moderation and gradualism toward reform in Tibet and respected its feudal system after the agreement. The Dalai Lama himself was not opposed to social reform, but was either unable or unwilling to control anti-Chinese nationalists in his government, and an uprising broke out in Lhasa in March 1959 with help from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

The uprising failed and the Dalai Lama fled into exile, renounced the 17-point Agreement and began seeking support for Tibet’s independence and self-determination. At this time, China also renounced the agreement, terminated the traditional government and reformed Tibet, installing a new communist governmental structure.

According to Goldstein, this started a competition between the two peoples to legitimize their respective representations of history and current events that still continues today. On one hand, China states that it liberated its province Tibet from extreme cruelty and the abuses of the old feudal system and serfdom. Tibet, on the other hand, states that China committed several cultural and human rights violations, including genocide.

These differing accounts lead to the differing views of the Dalai Lama as a peaceful liberator by some and as a theocratic, elite separatist by others. Liang and Nie encouraged students to research both points of view so that they may have a complete and accurate understanding of the issue and make their own informed judgment.

“We think that misunderstandings can be solved by doing the research on both sides,” Liang said.