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Scholar: Dalai Lama 'Great Tibet' remarks against Chinese laws

People's Daily Online

A Chinese scholar named Hao Shiyuan pointed out on 24 March that the Dalai Lama has violated relevant Chinese laws including the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Regional National Autonomy, by claiming that “other regions where Tibetans live should be annexed to Tibet.”

Hao Shiyuan, deputy secretary general of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and director of the Institute of Ethnic Group Studies, communicated with Chinese and foreign journalists around the theme of “the practice of the regional autonomy system for ethnic groups” at a tea party organised by the All China Journalists’ Association on 24 March. Journalists from the US, France, Britain, Italy and Japan, as well as press officers from the Indian and Czech embassies in China attended the tea party.

In response to a question on why China associates the Dalai Lama’s remarks relating to the “Greater Tibet” with “Tibet independence” in a disguised form, Hao stated that the monk once said that he had never created the concept of a “Greater Tibet,” and instead, only said that all regions where Tibetans live should be annexed to Tibet. Exploiting the concept of “regional autonomy for ethnic groups,” the Dalai Lama had first planned the “Greater Tibet” and then resorted to “regional autonomy in Greater Tibet.” This reflects the nature of the Dalai Lama’s plan.

Hao added that the Dalai Lama’s plan is against relevant Chinese laws despite the fact that he repeatedly stated that he follows “the middle path,” does not seek “Tibet independence” and wants to solve relevant problems in line with the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Regional National Autonomy.

Hao highlighted that there has never been a concept of a “Greater Tibet” in history.

Hao, a Mongolian expert on ethnic theories and history, said that when the Tubo Dynasty fell, many tribes departed Tibet for Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. There they interacted with the local peoples, and cultivated certain cultural and linguistic characteristics different from those in today’s Tibet.

Hao added that past Chinese governments adopted different systems when ruling Tibet and the surrounding Tibetan-populated areas. For example, Tibet was ruled by a theocratic system, while Sichuan province and other Tibetan-populated areas had a chieftain system in the late Qing Dynasty. The Qing government once tried to abolish the chieftain system, but only in the Tibetan-populated areas. Later, the Republic of China, which was established in the early 20th century, divided China into 18 provinces without absorbing the surrounding Tibetan-populated areas into Tibet.

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