Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (97 page)

Despite the seriousness of the problems revealed during the visits of the three delegations, Deng still endeavored to bridge the gap with the Tibetans. He continued the policy of repairing Tibetan temples and other cultural objects. Deng directed Hu Yaobang, the newly appointed general secretary, and his deputy, Wan Li, to lead a major delegation to Tibet to try to restore better relations between the Han and the Tibetans.

After a few months of preparation, Hu and his delegation of eight hundred people arrived in Tibet on May 22, 1980, ready to celebrate on the next day the twenty-ninth anniversary of the signing of the seventeen-point agreement that had launched Mao's moderate policy toward Tibet in 1951. After spending a week observing conditions and talking with local officials, Hu Yaobang gave a dramatic speech in front of five thousand mostly Tibetan local officials. In his speech, “Strive to Build a United, Prosperous and Civilized New Tibet,” Hu said, “Our party has let the Tibetan people down. We feel very bad . . . the life of the Tibetan people has not notably improved. Are we not to blame?” Hu then spelled out six tasks: (1) let Tibetans be the masters of their own lives, (2) relieve and reduce their economic burdens, exempting Tibetans from agricultural and livestock taxes for three to five years, (3) contract responsibility for agricultural production down to the small group, (4)
make great efforts to develop agriculture and animal husbandry, (5) promote education and begin planning for a university in Tibet, and (6) strengthen the unity of the Tibetan and Han people by sending most of the Han officials in Tibet to other parts of China and by cultivating more local Tibetan officials.
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Hu's speech represented a bold effort to change the relationship between Beijing and Tibetans. After Hu's speech, there were rounds of enthusiastic applause for Tibet's new hero, Hu Yaobang. Hu was obviously sincere: he was honest about the damages done to Tibet, he accepted responsibility on behalf of the party for the suffering inflicted on Tibetans, and he outlined ways to do better in the future. Until he was dismissed in 1987, Hu continued to believe in a conciliatory policy toward Tibet.

Before Hu Yaobang's trip, PLA factories, located in several provinces where Tibetans lived, held a monopoly on producing felt hats, leather boots, and other goods prized by Tibetans. In the years after Hu Yaobang's 1980 trip, the PLA monopoly was broken and local civilian companies under Tibetan leadership were allowed to make these products. Some progress was also made in promoting Tibetan officials and in improving the lives of the Tibetan people. In 1978, 44.5 percent of the officials in Tibet were Tibetan; in 1981, the figure reached 54.4 percent; and in 1986, 60.3 percent.
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Monasteries were permitted to recruit small numbers of monks, the Tibetan language was formally permitted, and opposition to religious prayers, pilgrimages, and ceremonies was dropped.

Within a year after Hu Yaobang's yeoman attempts to resolve the Tibetan issue, however, his efforts ended in failure. They failed because Hu Yaobang aroused the resistance of Han officials both in Tibet and in Beijing and because his efforts were still not enough to satisfy the Tibetans. Deng, constrained by Han officials, and the Dalai Lama, constrained by the militant community of exiles in Dharamsala, could not bridge the gap.

To the Han officials trying to keep order in Tibet, Hu Yaobang's policies were seen as an attack on them for being too severe with the Tibetans. Some Han officials were reassigned to other locations to make way for local Tibetan officials, and the Han who remained mostly objected to Hu Yaobang's policies; when they were ordered not only to learn the Tibetan language but also to listen to the views of the Tibetan people, they had difficulty maintaining the authority to keep political order. Han officials in Tibet responsible for security remained especially concerned about the Tibetan monasteries, which, with their newly increased freedoms, became hotbeds of Tibetan nationalism
and centers for organizing Tibetan resistance. (According to figures in the late 1950s there were some 150,000 monks among a population of over two million in Tibet proper.) Wary officials in Beijing—like the Han officials in Tibet—were outspokenly critical of Hu for not recognizing the dangers of the Tibetan “separatists” who were supported by foreigners.
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Adding to the strain, the Tibetan exiles in Dharamsala were making demands for a level of autonomy that would be even greater than that Taiwan was being offered. They demanded a different political system in Tibet from that in the rest of China. They also asked for the creation of a “Greater Tibet,” which would bring all Tibetan areas in China into one new political autonomous region. These demands went far beyond what even the more lenient officials in Beijing considered reasonable; thus the talks led nowhere.

In the 1980s, the Communists granted Tibetans far more autonomy than in the 1950s. Local people were permitted to use their local language, local dress, and send substantial numbers of delegates to people's congresses. The Communists allowed local people to have more children than the Han majority. Locals could enter high schools and universities with a lower cutoff score than that required of the Han majority. But real power over important decisions was placed in the hands of Han Communist officials in Lhasa, who received their directions from Beijing.

The second irreconcilable difference stemmed from the Tibetan demand that the boundaries of Tibet be extended to include the Tibetan minority areas in other provinces. In the seventh century, Tibetans had controlled an area almost as large as China, and ever since there had been small communities of Tibetans in the provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu, and Yunnan. Even the most lenient Chinese refused to consider yielding such a large expanse of territory to the Tibetans.

On March 23, 1981, the Dalai Lama, after reviewing reports by his three groups of emissaries who had observed the conditions of Tibetans in China and after the Hu Yaobang visit, wrote a cordial letter to Deng, saying, “We must try to develop friendship between Tibetans and Chinese in the future through better understanding.” But he also observed, “In reality, over 90 percent of the Tibetans are suffering both mentally and physically, and are living in deep sorrow. These sad conditions have not been brought about by natural disasters, but by human actions.”
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It took some time for Beijing to decide how to respond.

Beijing officials waited some four months, until July 27, 1981, when Hu Yaobang met with Gyalo Thondup in Beijing to convey Beijing's response
to the Dalai Lama's March letter. In his 1980 mission to Tibet, Hu Yaobang had been allowed considerable leeway in trying to win the goodwill of Tibetans. But this meeting was different: he was under instructions to convey China's new policy that would put a tighter lid on Tibetan separatist activities. Hu specified to Gyalo Thondup the conditions under which the Dalai Lama would be welcomed to Beijing: The Dalai Lama could enjoy the same political status and living conditions as before 1959. He would live in Beijing, not Tibet, but he could visit Tibet. He would be made a vice chairman of the NPC and of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

The Tibetans understood that accepting this offer would give the Dalai Lama honor and some religious freedom, but that political power would still be firmly in the hands of the Chinese—so they rejected it. The Dalai Lama chose not to return to China. Deng's effort to form a closer, more positive relationship on both sides had failed. But neither Deng nor the Dalai Lama wanted to create a sharp break in relations. In October 1981, the Dalai Lama sent a negotiating team for further discussions. It too was unable to bridge the gap, but it avoided an open break between the Dalai Lama and Chinese leaders.
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After the failure to bridge the gap in 1981–1982, Deng put the Tibetan issue on the back burner until 1984, when expanded support for markets in the nation suggested a new vision for dealing with Tibetan problems: economic growth and increased linkages, including market linkages, between Tibet and other provinces. From February 27 to March 6, 1984, four years after the First Tibet Work Forum (and on the heels of Deng's announcement in Guangdong about the correctness of the special economic zone policies), Beijing held the Second Tibet Work Forum, which affirmed the further opening of Tibet. Until then, there had been only a trickle of tourists and outside merchants allowed into Tibet, but after the forum, merchants were allowed to go into Tibet and market their wares, with few constraints. Deng hoped that by linking Tibetans to the national economy and accelerating the growth rate in Tibet, support for the government would increase, just as it had elsewhere. In fact, Deng made Tibetan economic development high on the list of national priorities. Richer provinces were encouraged to send financial assistance, and officials knowledgeable about the economy were sent to help promote Tibetan development, thereby strengthening the links between Tibet and other provincial governments.

In 1985, as part of a related effort intended to reduce the risk of separatism, about four thousand very bright Tibetan middle-school students were sent to other provinces to take advantage of greater educational opportunities
and to become more connected to the rest of the country. In 1984, talks were held between Beijing and the Tibetan exile community but they made no progress.

With the failure of these talks, the Dalai Lama tried to break the stalemate with Beijing by appealing for support in the West, which would put pressure on Beijing. He sent responsible young Tibetans abroad to make the case for Tibet. Lodi Gyari, for example, was sent to Washington where he was to spend several decades promoting the Tibetan cause. But none of these young emissaries compared in influence with the Dalai Lama himself. The Dalai Lama had learned English and could inspire a Western audience with his deep spirituality, a quality that many Westerners felt was missing from their own materialistic daily lives. They saw him as a man of peace fighting for the freedom of his people against oppressive Chinese. No other Asian leader had developed such a dedicated following of Westerners. The Dalai Lama's prominence enabled Tibetans, who constituted only 0.3 percent of the total population of China, to attract great attention from the Western world, far more than any other minority group in China, including those far more numerous. But despite widespread foreign support for the Dalai Lama, no foreign government formally recognized Tibet. Meanwhile, the Chinese regarded him as someone who made occasional high-sounding promises about being ready to accept Chinese sovereignty but was unwilling to make agreements that he would follow. They came to believe he had no negotiating room, given the constraints of the unruly extremist band of 80,000 exiles in India. The Han Chinese public, informed about Tibet through the Communist propaganda apparatus, believed that the Tibetans were ungrateful despite generous financial assistance from the Chinese government. As tensions grew and Han officials in Tibet tightened controls, Tibetans regarded the Han as oppressive and anti-Tibetan.

Monks in Tibet, buoyed by the Dalai Lama's success in gaining support from Europeans, members of the U.S. Congress, human rights activists, and foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), were emboldened to press for greater autonomy. On September 27, 1987, less than one week after the Dalai Lama's first speech to the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus on September 21, a demonstration of monks in Lhasa turned into a riot. Many Tibetans had become overly optimistic that, with Western support, they could force the Chinese government to back down. On the contrary, Beijing officials tightened their controls. In June 1988, in a speech to the European Parliament at Strasbourg, the Dalai Lama repeated his view that
Tibetans should be able to decide on all affairs relating to Tibet—within months, in December 1988, another serious riot occurred in Lhasa. And the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 to the Dalai Lama emboldened monks within Tibet to revive their resistance activities, which again led Communist Party leaders to tighten their controls.

Chinese leaders, frustrated by the growing resistance of Tibetan monks as a result of the Dalai Lama's success abroad, have used whatever leverage they have with foreign groups to isolate the Dalai Lama. Some foreigners have yielded to Chinese pressures, but overall, Chinese efforts have increased foreign attention to the Dalai Lama and strengthened foreign criticism of China. In Tibet, the growing resistance of monks caused Chinese officials to fortify their security forces and to exercise stricter control over monasteries.

Chinese officials have complained that foreign assistance from human rights groups is motivated by a desire to weaken China. And when foreigners criticize the Chinese for failing to give the Tibetans more autonomy, some Chinese officials snap back that their policies have been more humane than those the United States used in assimilating and destroying its own Native American communities.

Both Deng and the Dalai Lama, while unable to resolve their differences, tried to avoid all-out conflict. In early 1988 Beijing released several monks who were being held for their political activities. And in April 1988, China announced that if the Dalai Lama were willing to give up his efforts to achieve independence, he could live in Tibet. The Dalai Lama continued to say that he accepted Chinese sovereignty and that he wanted a peaceful solution that gave Tibetans more freedom.

In January 1989, Deng sent to Tibet a new provincial party secretary, Hu Jintao, to try to control the unrest. Hu talked with various Tibetan leaders, but his basic goals echoed Deng's: support economic growth, expand education in Mandarin, strengthen outside linkages, co-opt some Tibetans, and keep tight control over separatist activities. Riots again broke out in Tibet in the spring of 1989 at the same time that students were demonstrating in Beijing; in response, Hu Jintao declared martial law.