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China's Tibet pique

Wall Street Journal

Much ado has been made about President Obama’s chat with the Dalai Lama last week and the response from Beijing. “The US act grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs . . . and seriously damaged the Sino-US ties,” said a Chinese government spokesman, but the barrage reveals more about China than it does about US policy toward Tibet.

Beijing believes it can browbeat other nations into ignoring its human-rights violations in Tibet, regularly retaliating after European leaders meet with the Dalai Lama. It has cancelled a 2008 trade summit because of a planned meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy and turned away US warships from Hong Kong after the Dalai Lama received the Congressional gold medal.

The fist-shaking has yielded short-term benefits for Beijing. Mr Obama postponed his meeting with the Tibetan leader until after his November trip to China, and his Administration has dealt with Chinese human-rights abuses in whispers. Leaders in Australia, New Zealand and other democracies have also declined to meet the Dalai Lama in recent years. All this has given China a freer hand to pursue its crackdown on Tibetan dissent, which started in earnest after the 2008 Lhasa riots.

Yet China’s tough stance will only draw more attention to the Tibetan cause. “Free Tibet” groups abound in France, Britain and other free nations. In the US last week, the Dalai Lama was awarded a medal from the National Endowment for Democracy. He will spend the rest of this week addressing audiences at sold-out talks.

Much of the reason Tibet touches such a raw nerve in Beijing is that the unrest there goes to the heart of the Communist Party’s lack of democratic legitimacy. The more the Party attempts to impose its will—on Lhasa and on those who dare to meet with its most famous son—the less legitimate its rule will seem, and the more support the Dalai Lama will receive around the world.

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Published in The Wall Street Journal