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China top paper blames Tibet trouble on West

By Chris Buckley | Reuters

The Dalai Lama during a teaching session before he wraps his ten-day Bylakuppe tour on 1 March 2009. Chiina’s official newspaper says troubles in Tibet have been inflamed by Western forces seeking to divide and weaken the emerging power.File photo/Tibet Sun/Lobsang Wangyal/India

China’s troubles in Tibet have been inflamed by Western forces seeking to divide and weaken the emerging power and distract voters from their own economic woes, the country’s top official newspaper said on Monday.

Beijing faces a volatile month of anniversaries in restive Tibet, where 12 months ago monk-led protests against Chinese rule in the regional capital, Lhasa, gave way to bloody street riots that killed 19 people and ignited protests across many ethnic Tibetan areas.

Fifty years ago, in March too, Tibet’s Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, fled into exile after a failed revolt against China.

The People’s Daily, the paper of the China’s ruling Communist Party, said contention over the future of the remote mountain region was spurred by Western governments and groups seeking to contain the country’s rise.

“Although the so-called ‘Tibet issue’ is increasingly dressed up as an ethnic, religious, human rights or environmental issue, in fact in essence it is a challenge to Chinese sovereignty,” said a commentary on the frontpage of the paper, which is often a weathervane for policy and ideological shifts.

With this commentary, already widely circulating on official media Web sites, the Party appears determined to cast friction over Tibet as a concerted conspiracy against Beijing — at a time when rich nations are looking for China to help pull them out of an economic slump.

“In recent years, China’s overall strength has constantly grown…and this has aroused the anxiety and disquiet of some Westerners. The provocative actions around the so-called ‘Tibet issue’ in 2008 were by no means a coincidence.”

The commentary did not detail which groups or politicians China sees as behind this alleged campaign. But over the past year, the government has vented anger over the Dalai Lama’s meetings with Western leaders, especially French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who met him late last year.

The paper claimed that Western politicians have plainly declared that “to control Tibet is to control China.”

Beijing has reviled the exiled Dalai Lama as a separatist whose “clique” instigated the unrest last year.

The Dalai Lama has said many times that he wants real autonomy, but not outright independence for his homeland, and has also said he rejects violence.

The Chinese paper’s editorial appears to mark a shift in strategy: focusing official anger on Western targets cast as puppet-masters of the Dalai Lama’s cause.

Embattled Western politicians and governments were using Tibet to distract their electorates from their own failings, said the paper.

“(They) believe that in this way, they can achieve their ambitions of oppressing and containing China and that deliberately fixing on this topic can divert the attention of their own publics,” said the paper.

Copyright © 2009 Reuters

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