What is the nature of the "question of Tibet"?

Answers vary. But for Xu Mingxu, author of What Happens at the Foot of the Snow-capped Mountain - The Whole Story of Tibet Riots, it is a conflict between the Dalai Lama with his clique, and the Chinese government. The Dalai Lama wants to split the Tibet autonomous region from the motherland, and the government will not allow that to happen.

Having worked as an editor in Tibet for more than three years, the author has not just traveled widely in the region, but also has had a lot of contact with Tibetans since most of them speak very good Putonghua. But to his surprise, what he read about Tibet in the United States was totally different from what he had actually seen and experienced in the region - as different as black is from white.

What surprised him further was that most of the people writing about Tibet had never been to the region, and some had just interviewed a few people while visiting Tibet as tourists. And none of them had worked there as long as Xu.

He found it weird that most of the reports and comments on Tibet trumpeted the words of the Dalai Lama, who, along with his followers, has lied even about the basic facts of the region.

For example, they said that Tibet had been an independent country since ancient times, the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) official stationed in Tibet was just a diplomat, Han Chinese had plans to massacre Tibetans, the Communist Party of China had killed 1.2 million Tibetans and China had been destroying Tibetan culture and religion.

The author, through his personal experience in Tibet, has found all these allegations of the Dalai Lama and repeated by some Western politicians and media to be baseless.

To ensure that his judgment was right, he started reading accounts on Tibet, written by Westerners and writers from different countries in different periods.

Xu found that the Dalai Lama had contradicted himself on many occasions. On Sept 21, 1987, the Dalai Lama told the human rights commission of the US Congress that Tibet was an independent country since it had remained united for more than 1,000 years until the middle of last century. On June 15, 1988, he told the EU parliament that Tibet had been independent for more than 2,000 years and had never surrendered its "sovereignty" to any country since 127 BC.

This is sheer nonsense. In his telegraph to Chairman Mao Zedong on Oct 24, 1951, the Dalai Lama said the Tibet local government and religious and non-religious people, under the leadership of Chairman Mao and central people's government, support the People's Liberation Army in its efforts to consolidate national defense, drive Western powers out of Tibet and safeguard the unity of the motherland.

The author, after reading historical documents, has found enough evidence to prove that Tibet became part of China during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). He has refuted the ridiculous claim of some Westerners that Mongolians rather than Han Chinese were the rulers during the Yuan Dynasty, so even if Tibet was made part of the country then it could hardly be said to be a part of China since that time. It is preposterous for Westerners to rule out the Yuan and the Qing dynasties as state powers of China simply to justify the legitimacy of their claim that Tibet is an "independent country".

What is unique about Xu's book is that he has exposed why some Western politicians and media turn a blind eye to facts and support the Dalai Lama, who keeps telling lies to realize his dream of making Tibet an "independent country".

Tibet is a card some Western powers have been playing to contain China, the author has found during the course of his comprehensive study. After the Dalai Lama fled Tibet following a failed rebellion in 1959, Western powers lashed out at China on the question of Tibet because they considered China to be a member of the Communist alliance led by the erstwhile Soviet Union.

Major Western powers manipulated the proceedings of the UN General Assembly and forced it to pass resolutions condemning China for "violations of fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people" in 1959, 1961 and 1965. But their cacophony almost petered out and their support for the Dalai Lama waned after 1972, when China became a card the US played against the Soviet Union.

When the Dalai Lama visited the US for the first time in September 1979 with a tourist visa, none of the US government officials, congressmen or senators met with him. And he talked nothing but religion, peace and benevolence during that visit.

Yet in the 1980s, when China's importance diminished as the Western powers' card against the Soviet Union, some Western politicians started attaching more importance to the Tibet question. The US Congress adopted a resolution in 1987 condemning China's "invasion" of Tibet. Western hardliners make a fuss about the Tibet question now because China has made tremendous progress in its modernization drive and, according to them, could pose a threat to the West.

On the question of Tibet, Western powers do not have any standards or sense of justice. This is what Xu has found during the course of his scholarly study.

zhuyuan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/16/2010 page4)