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Fifty years on

By Thierry Dodin | Tibet Sun

Thierry Dodin was a former board member and an executive director of Tibet Information Network. He is the founder and the director of TibetInfoNet and works as an academic researcher at the university of Bonn in Germany. Thierry Dodin/UK

Fifty years after the failed uprising of 1959, China maintains that it has brought Tibet from backwardness into modernity. A few facts and common sense tell us another story.

There is no doubt that the Tibet of the late 1940’s was politically archaic. The broad reform programme that was the 13th Dalai Lama’s legacy had to, a large extent, been rolled back successfully by conservatives, mainly clerics. There is however, no reason to believe that a free Tibet would have not finally opened up, for, despite all resistance, this was the direction in which the country was moving. Reforms were openly championed by laypeople in particular, who oriented themselves towards British, but also, as in many other parts of Asia, towards Japanese models. But they also found support among monks, at least outside the Lhasa establishment. The influence of these circles was apparent even during the setbacks of the conservative interregnum between the 13th and the 14th Dalai Lamas. Not least, the young 14th Dalai Lama himself was a keen reformer. Yet his efforts were to be inhibited by the arrival of the Chinese state, most probably because the Communist Party wanted to profile itself as the spearhead of any reforms and shape these after its own needs.

As for economic development, Tibet before 1951 was perhaps archaic, but it wasn’t actually poor. Academic research indicates that there was a well-functioning financial sector. Trade was blooming and the markets of Lhasa and other cities often offered more goods than would be available at most places in China or India, for instance. There was an appreciable and continuingly growing accumulation of capital and the readiness to invest, which, had Tibet remained self-ruling, could have offered the basis for development in the modern sense.

A crucial point that is omitted in Chinese analysis of old Tibet, is that there were indeed many Tibetans in the 1950’s who were just waiting for an opportunity to advance Tibet politically and materially, and for that reason cooperated with China or even became members of the Communist Party. But, after 1959, the genuine and capable reformers among them were branded ‘Tibetan Nationalists’ and persecuted by the Party. Tibetan opportunists, however, who threw in their lot with the Party, made life-long successful careers, with some of them still in positions of authority now.

The period between 1959 and the 1970s, were not only catastrophic at a politically and humanitarian level, but also in terms of material development, and Tibet was left poorer than ever. Any progress that was made, for instance, in access to medical supplies, remained available only for the few. Things started to improve from the 1980’s onwards, albeit very slowly. Real development took place only in the 1990’s but the growth rates it generated were only spectacular because they started from a zero base point, and in any case only benefited Tibetans very conditionally.

To a very large extent, growth in Tibet is fuelled solely by subsidies from Beijing. These make official statistic look good, but they are primarily directed towards projects that serve only to extend Beijing’s long arm ever further, as is the case with the railway. The extensive network of good roads that now links China to South Asia and is used to transport Chinese goods, also belongs in that category. Trade, however, is organised in China by ethnic Chinese and Chinese Muslims and in direct contact with Indian and Nepali players. As a result, hardly a Yuan falls into Tibetan hands.

Projects are mostly planned, realised and used by non-Tibetans. Even the construction of surveillance systems, Party buildings, police posts in monasteries etc. show up in the statistics and is used to demonstrate Tibet’s progress. To a large extent, subsidies for Tibet mean that the Chinese state and the state Party subsidise themselves in Tibet, not that they satisfy Tibetan needs.

Despite all this, there is no doubt that Tibetans in recent years have achieved some success in developing their country. But where they have been successful, it has mainly been by skilfully exploiting niches, and hence not due to state policies but at their margins. A perfect example of this is the yartsa gunbu business; the harvesting of a valuable highland fungus, which is in high demand for medical purpose. In parts of eastern Tibet, this Tibetan-dominated business has recently allowed for previously unheard of wealth and managed to do in a few years what decades of Beijing-drafted development policies have failed to do.

Tibet also has quiet but lively local NGOs. Many educated Tibetans try their best to develop their land, and whereas material development is a priority, it is also their endeavour to protect and develop their culture and traditions instead of relinquishing this function to the Party. This is a thin line, because the system is built on mutual surveillance and on an upper class of Tibetans loyal to Beijing, whose trustworthiness is bought with privileges and, increasingly, with direct economic support.

For instance, in recent years, innumerable house construction programmes were set up, either in order to settle nomads or to re-build whole villages. The deceptive statistical growth that this created is being financed partly through subsidies and partly by the debt that the concerned people were forced to take on. The only clear winners from the Tibetan side are the building developers whose family clans are closely intertwined with the state administration and have to be considered, at present, to be the most loyal supporters of the regime. Thus, everything serves directly or indirectly the aims of the Communist Party.

Despite everything, Tibetan culture is alive, paradoxically because Tibetans and Tibetan culture are superfluous to the Party. The only thing that really matters to the Party is that dissent is curbed and absolute loyalty is expected at all times. Today’s Tibet is still marked by lively religiosity, (although religious erudition tends to stagnate at a relatively low level), and a cultural life that is vibrant. Today’s most creative Tibetan writers or painters, for instance, hail from Tibet. As far as popular culture is concerned, there is a lively music scene throughout the whole plateau, which proudly showcases Tibetanness. Music festivals offer the most popular platform for Tibetans to present their culture, celebrate their differences to Chinese culture and demonstrate the will to live on as a nation of their own.

Problems occur because the political upper class, which the state relies on, identifies the twilight area between Tibetan culture and Tibetan nationalism as a threat. They know that the enormous majority of Tibetans are loyal to their own community and the Dalai Lama in the first instance, and not to the Chinese state. Their best-case scenario would be to transform Tibet into some sort of open-air museum in which to orchestrate daily a soulless Tibetan culture pageant that people would have lost any emotional link to and hence are not prepared to support politically any longer. And so conflicts are inevitable as long as state and Party rely on unconditional obedience rather than on democratic participation and the rule of law. This touches the core problem; the Chinese state cannot afford any liberalisation experiments in Tibet because the power holders know only too well how unpopular they are there. It is clear, therefore, that China is unlikely to start any process of power devolution in Tibet, and so there is little chance for a better Tibet before a better China emerges.

At the moment, ‘China’s Tibet’ is being sexed up to celebrate the ‘Serf Emancipation Day’, but, ironically, the two hot spots of the 2008 unrest were Lhasa with its poor rural migrants and the regions where the booming yartsa gunbu businesses are based. In other words, it was a combination of Tibet’s underclass and its newly wealthy who were spearheading Tibetan dissatisfaction. There could be no better illustration of the Party’s failure to live up to its own claims that it represents the poor and those who have recently made their way out of poverty.

Lacking the crucial surprise effect and with a formidable security force still in Tibet, any repetition of the mass movement of 2008 could almost certainly be brought under control within a short time. This is probably the reason why the Dalai Lama underlines the seriousness of the current situation, while strongly discouraging any protests. His aim is to bring relief to Tibetans, not to stir up any confrontations which would inevitably bring more suffering, but offer little hope for any redemption.

Copyright © 2009 Thierry Dodin