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Tibet Leadership in Exile and the Indo-Pacific Strategy | 1 POLICY BRIEF 20-001 Tibet Leadership in Exile and the Indo- Pacific Strategy By: Ellen Bork he Trump administration is overhauling Historically, U.S. policymakers subordinated the United States’ policy toward the Tibet to China—first as governed by the T People’s Republic of China (PRC, China). Republic of China (ROC), which exerted no Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo has authority there, and afterward to the communist rejected decades of an approach that PRC which invaded and occupied Tibet in the “accommodated and encouraged China’s rise … 1950s. America’s approach to Tibet is even when that rise was at the expense of inconsistent with the principled stances American values, Western democracy, and Washington took against communist aggression security and good common sense.”1 Among the in Europe during the Cold War, as well as the misguided positions Secretary Pompeo emphasis the United States’ free and open Indo- identified: downgrading relations with the Pacific strategy places on democracy. Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan), minimizing Washington’s establishment of a relationship the PRC’s Marxist-Leninist system and human with the PRC in the 1970s led the U.S. to treat rights abuses, and enabling Beijing to join Tibet and the Dalai Lama as liabilities in its international organizations that it now relations with China, even after the Tibetan undermines from within. “The list,” he says, leader democratized the theocratic government- “goes on.”2 in-exile. Tibet deserves to be on the list of policies set for While the U.S. has tried to minimize Tibet as a revision. Indeed, the Trump administration has point of contention in relations with the PRC, the started pushing for greater access to Tibet for conquest of Tibet in the 1950s had—and travelers, journalists, and diplomats. On continues to have—underappreciated September 2, 2020, Secretary Pompeo called for geopolitical consequences of great significance unconditional dialogue between the Dalai Lama to the United States and the liberal world order. and the PRC.3 The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been able to pursue an ambitious and corrosive These are useful steps. However, in order to be agenda on Tibet and the Dalai Lama in foreign effective, Washington must examine the capitals and international institutions, laying a historical basis for its Tibet policy and the cornerstone for its projection of power and strategic assumptions that underlie it. influence in its periphery and beyond. The U.S. has not been able to respond effectively to the Ellen Bork is a Visiting Fellow at the Project 2049 Institute. She writes about democracy and human rights as a priority in American foreign policy. Her articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and The American Interest, where she is a contributing editor. She has worked at the U.S. State Department, on Capitol Hill, and for Freedom House and the International Republican Institute. 1 Michael R. Pompeo, “The China Challenge,” The 3 Michael J. Pompeo, “Secretary Michael R. Pomeo at a Hudson Institute’s New York Gala, October 30, 2019, at Press Availability,” U.S. Departmetn of State, September https://www.state.gov/the-china-challenge/. 2, 2020, at https://www.state.gov/secretary-michael-r- 2 Ibid. pompeo-at-a-press-availability-12/. Tibet Leadership in Exile and the Indo-Pacific Strategy | 1 POLICY BRIEF 20-001 CCP’s insidious Tibet agenda due to a policy visit to Kathmandu may lead to the deportation based not on the facts of history or international of Tibetan refugees and authorize intervention law, but on an outdated perception of America’s by Chinese security forces inside Nepal.5 Nepal strategic interest. is also a target of the CCP’s use of investment and infrastructure projects to appropriate The CCP’s Strategic Approach Inside Tibet Buddhist sites and to sow disloyalty to the Dalai and Beyond Lama. The PRC is challenging the U.S. for leadership Tibet is also a major factor in the CCP’s rivalry in the Indo-Pacific, diminishing the importance with India. Beijing has built up forces on the it once gave its bilateral relations with Tibetan plateau and stages incursions across the Washington, and building influence in its lengthy Sino-Indian border, including periphery. Tibet used to be on China’s cultivating Indian herders to undermine Delhi’s periphery. Until the People’s Liberation Army authority. Chinese officials have begun to speak (PLA) invasion in 1950, Tibet was a vast buffer of their claims to a large part of northeastern between China and its South Asian neighbors. India, as “Southern Tibet.” The area includes a The PRC cloaked its invasion of Tibet in the major monastery affiliated with the Dalai language of Marxist liberation, but its main Lama's Gelug sect in the district of Tawang. objective was strategic. “Although Tibet’s Indian strategists anticipate greater pressure on population is small,” Mao said in 1949, “its the border in connection with the Dalai Lama’s international position is extremely important death and reincarnation. In the spring of 2020, and we must occupy it.”4 Once inside Tibet, the tensions renewed as Chinese and Indian troops PRC built roads and railways to secure control, engaged in the deadliest cross border violence settling an ethnic Han Chinese population, since the 1960s. extracting natural resources, and militarizing the Tibetan plateau. Since 1950, the Chinese Since 1950, the Chinese Communist Party Communist Party has repressed Tibetan national has repressed Tibetan national identity, identity, language, culture, and religion, trying language, culture, and religion, trying especially to destroy loyalty to the Dalai Lama. especially to destroy loyalty to the Dalai Lama. From early on, CCP leaders approached Tibet expansively. They pursued policies beyond Tibet’s territory to achieve their objectives by China’s Global Tibet Agenda shaping the surrounding environment. In the The CCP’s Tibet agenda extends beyond its 1960s, Beijing made concessions in border immediate neighbors. Beijing considers Tibet, negotiations with Nepal in exchange for access as well as Taiwan and Xinjiang, “core interests,” to remote areas to eliminate the remnants of meaning they are non-negotiable matters, the Tibetan rebels. Since then, Beijing has amassed defense of which might justify the use of force.6 influence in Nepal to limit the country’s role as Initially, the CCP’s assertion of a core interest a way station for fleeing Tibetans. New was defensive, intended to rebuff criticism of agreements signed during Xi Jinping’s 2019 repression and preempt (non-existent) 4 M. Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, 11, 2020, at https://savetibet.org/new-china-nepal- (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 70. agreements-could-deny-tibetans-freedom/. 5 “New China-Nepal Agreements could deny Tibetans 6Michael Swaine, “China’s Assertive Behavior,” Freedom,” International Campaign for Tibet, February Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 21, 2010. Tibet Leadership in Exile and the Indo-Pacific Strategy | 2 POLICY BRIEF 20-001 challenges to CCP rule. As the Party grew more Chinese Communist Party” during a trip to powerful, Beijing added new “core interests,” Thailand.8 such as the South China Sea, and broadened the concept so that it might include other territorial The Dalai Lama has said a decision on his interests, norms, and policies. reincarnation may come by the time he is 90. He rejects any Chinese role in his reincarnation, The CCP’s demands for deference on Tibet and noting: the Dalai Lama are linked to aid, investment, and diplomacy around the world. In one “It is particularly inappropriate for example, Beijing manipulated proceedings at Chinese communists, who explicitly the United Nations Human Rights Commission reject even the idea of past and future by blocking Tibetan and Chinese witnesses and lives … to meddle in the system of motions of censure. Thus, Tibet became both a reincarnation and especially the means and an end in China’s assault on liberal reincarnations of the Dalai Lamas and democratic norms. the Panchen Lamas … Such brazen meddling contradicts their own political All of this helps lay the groundwork for the ideology and reveals their double Party’s ultimate goal of installing an impostor standards.”9 Dalai Lama when the current Tibetan spiritual leader, born in 1935, dies. Beijing’s plan to The Dalai Lama has allowed for the possibility interfere in the Dalai Lama’s succession is part that he may emanate in one or more living of the CCP’s attempt to recover the grandeur and adults. This scenario, which is consistent with territorial reach of past imperial regimes. To Buddhist teachings, would obviate the achieve this, Beijing has revived a ritual used by instability that often accompanies the period the Qing emperor to intercede in the between the identification of a reincarnation in a reincarnation process. In 1995, Beijing used the young child and his assumption of power at the ritual (which involves drawing a name from a time of his maturity. golden urn) to install an impostor Panchen Lama, the second most prominent lama of the …Washington overlooks yet another Dalai Lama’s Gelug order. That same year, just powerful asset in the toolkit of strategic days after being named by the Dalai Lama, CCP competition with Beijing: the agents seized the authentic Panchen—a young democratization of Tibet’s government-in- boy—who has not been seen since. 7 The exile. impostor, rejected by Tibetans as the “Chinese” or “fake” Panchen, is being groomed to play a China’s plans for installing an impostor Dalai role in promoting the Party’s international Lama—and getting the world to acquiesce to Tibetan Buddhist agenda. In 2019, Chinese state it—are well developed. Despite this, American media reported that the Chinese Panchen praised officials have yet to appreciate the Dalai Lama’s the “greatness of the Motherland and the reincarnation as a matter of strategic 7 “China urged to release Panchen Lama after 20 years,” 9 Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the Issue BBC, May 17, 2015, at of His Reincarnation, September 24, 2011, at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-32771242.
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