Prime Minister John Howard says he will meet the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism when they meet in Sydney today. China, though, has reacted as if he will meet the Dalai Lama as a political leader and threatened economic retaliation, so Mr Howard may as well have gone the whole way. China sees the Dalai Lama as a political activist who has being trying to split China ever since he fled Tibet after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule there in 1959. On this reasoning, the Chinese argue, that if the Australian government received him and Australian leaders meet him, it would be an interference in China’s internal affairs. China has threatened to hit Australia where it hurts: by curtailing financial-sector access to China.
It typifies the conduct of both domestic and foreign policy by the Chinese since the communist take-over in 1949. That conduct has been a single-minded centralism. It demands the subservience of every Chinese citizen to central government on pain of retribution. It demands that foreign governments do not undertake symbolic actions that countermine China’s all-or-nothing demand that nations recognise the Beijing regime as the legitimate ruler of the whole of greater China (including Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong (from 1997) and Macao.
China’s position is a complete non sequitur. It asserts territory as its own and then replies that any suggestion that the territory is not China’s is an interference in Chinese internal affairs.
As a general principle leaders of governments usually do not meet leaders of movements that seek to overthrow governments it recognises. But there are exceptions, according to political circumstance rather principle, and they are couched by giving the leader another hat, in this case “”religious leader” or “”spiritual leader”, in other cases “”pro-democracy leader”, or whatever. In this instance Mr Howard is balancing the domestic necessity of not snubbing the Dalai Lama against the need to retain an harmonious relationship with China because it is a whopping big market for Australia.
For some reason the Dalai Lama has touched a chord in many Australians’ hearts and minds. In a time when many have spurned religion, the local interpretation of the Dalai Lama’s version of Buddhism has particular appeal: just be nice to others and recognise that there is some inner spiritual meaning to life, without having to actually formalise it. Of more import, there is a more substantial body of Australian opinion that thinks what China has done in Tibet is appalling; if not genocide, then certainly a concerted attempt to wipe out a culture and religion and to suppress human rights among a people who have legitimate claims to independent nationhood, through violence and an active program of ethnic Chinese settlement designed to dilute Tibetan identity.
The Chinese Government is obviously aware of Mr Howard’s difficulty and is hitting him where it hurts: trade.
Central to Mr Howard’s difficulty is the nature of “”recognition” of a foreign government. Is it merely recognition that a government controls a certain land mass or must it convey some recognition that that control is legitimate?
Since 1949 China has played a clever hand. It has demanded that the former embrace the latter. It has asserted that a diplomatic presence in Beijing, with the trade advantages that flow from it, can only take place if foreign governments acknowledge the Beijing regime’s “”legitimate” sovereignty over Taiwan and Tibet. This position is contrary to the position of many nations which accept, from both sides, positions of recognition of governments without recognition of those governments’ claims to some disputed territory. Indonesia and East Timor, Australia and Antarctica, Argentina and the Falklands, and Israel and the Golan are examples. These nations accept recognition by other governments without demanding that they accept all the territorial claim.
The intransigent Chinese position … throwing its trade weight around in order to get political mileage … has worked to a limited extent in the medium term. Many nations forsook Taiwan. But now Taiwan has had democratic elections that position is becoming increasingly untenable.
The trouble is that individual nations get picked off one by one with threats and trade bullying if ever human rights are mentioned or key figures from Tibet or Taiwan entertained. Germany one month, Australia the next.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that Australia allows trade to dominate other diplomatic relationships, to the extent that we can hardly complain if others use it to influence theirs.
That said, Mr Howard is right to meet the Dalai Lama. The pity is that the Australian Government, and others, do not go further and start pressuring for an act of self-determination in Tibet. If enough did it, China’s retaliatory weapons would be weakened. The trouble with Mr Howard’s stand that he is meeting the Dalai Lama only in his religious capacity is that it gives some credence to the Chinese view that to meet him in a political capacity would be not quite diplomatically correct, otherwise why not do it.
Australia has been intimidated. Worse, Mr Howard has been intimidated into a conditional meeting of the Dalai Lama copping all of the pain of Chinese economic retaliation and none of the gain of a principled stand on Tibet.
How well both China and Australia’s diplomatic posturing contrast with the Dalai Lama’s quiet dignity of just meeting people … with no terms or spins.