Monday 4 August 2008

A mission to nowhere

This article just caught my eye in the Oz:

ONE of the Dalai Lama's top envoys says Tibetan negotiators will present Chinese negotiators with a detailed autonomy plan at their next meeting in October.

"During the eighth round (of negotiations held since 2002), it is almost about all or nothing,'' Kelsang Gyaltsen told German news magazine Der Spiegel today.

"We will present a detailed plan of how we foresee autonomy in Tibet. If the Chinese side reacts positively, one could propose specific preliminary steps, for example a pilgrimage of the Dalai Lama to China.

"Such a development could lead to a meeting between His Holiness and the Chinese president and provide decisive momentum.''

Mr Gyaltsen said he had reason to believe Beijing was ready to resolve the dispute over Tibet in negotiations.

Now, I don’t want to sound cynical or nuffin’, but how on God’s green earth is the CCP going to get away with making a pact with the man they have portrayed as the devil’s spawn for almost six decades? The hate for the Dalai Lama held by vast sections of Han Chinese is so palpable you can almost smell it. After spending decades of whipping up a cult of Lama loathing among their citizens, an agreement which sees the CCP invite the malodorous monk to the motherland is going to be a miracle on a par with the second coming.

I wish the DL's envoys the best of luck. But I think the CCP have invested too much effort in creating an imagined enemy in the form of exiled Tibetans to allow them the space to do a U-turn now. And even if in some divine act they can come to an accommodation, how are the fen qing (nationalist youth) and other Han Chinese going to take it? It might just start a revolution....

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