From: pcalvert@nyx.cs.du.edu (P. Calvert)
Subject: Bringing Down The Great Wall (part I)
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 92 21:18:06 GMT



BRINGING DOWN THE GREAT WALL (part I)
----------------------------
     by Thubten Samphel
 
(Reprinted, with permission, from "Snow Lion Newsletter & Catalog,
 1992 Summer Supplement")
 
China built the Great Wall to keep the barbarians out.  But the barbarians
kept breaking through the wall and setting up camp in the imperial capital,
some for centuries.  Even the Tibetans, in their warlike days, managed to
install a puppet on the imperial throne in the Tang capital of Chang'an,
present-day Xian. Tibetans named their puppet Tashi. He ruled Tang China
for about fifteen days.  A re-organized Chinese imperial army thundered
back and chased the Tibetans out of the capital and beyond the Great Wall
into barbarian-land.
 
Besides serving as an ineffectual defense system, the Great Wall
constituted China's true and effective borders. Throughout the centuries
whenever the barbarians looked to China it was always the expanse of land
beyond the Great Wall.
 
Today, encouraged by the peaceful collapse of the former Soviet Union, both
barbarians and Chinese are cheerfully chipping away under the wall of their
common suffering.  The barbarians are chipping away to re-define what
passes for "China" and the Chinese to re-define "the mandate of heaven"
from which the rulers of China traditionally received their legitimacy to
rule the most populous nation on earth.
 
According to some observers, the common effort to bring down the "Great
Wall" of totalitarian China has the potential of turning into a loose
collaboration between Tibetan exiles and pro-democracy Chinese. The
prospects of Tibetans and Chinese cobbling together a "united front" have
dangerous implications for the old men in Beijing, said Michael van Walt, a
lawyer by profession and the author of "Status of Tibet: History, Rights,
and Prospects in International Law."
 
Given the bad habit these days of the former Soviet Union to keep breaking
into ever smaller independent republics, this is one issue on which
pro-democracy Chinese are putting a lot of thought. In a different context
of the possibility of democracy sweeping China, Haipei Xue said, "If Big
Brother can change, so will smaller brother."
 
However, to establish their democratic credentials to the outside world,
pro-democracy Chinese do not wish to alienate their mass constituency back
in China by supporting Tibetan independence.
 
"Many Chinese students are not for Tibetan independence," said Haipei Xue,
director of the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars, a
human rights organization based in Washington, D.C.
 
"We definitely know how the Tibetan people feel about the status of Tibet.
However, many Chinese students are not aware of the complexity of the
Tibetan situation. They know nothing about Tibet."
 
Haipei Xue is a Tibet hand of sorts.  In 1984 and 1985, he took foreign
tour groups to Tibet.  He said he trained Tibetans in hotel management.
 
On the issue of Tibetan independence, he went to great lengths to
distinguish his personal feeling from that of his organization. "My bottom
line is that we should respect the choice of the Tibetan people.  However,
I often say--half jokingly, half seriously--that I would like Tibet to
remain a part of China because then the spiritual breeze blowing from the
high Tibetan plateau will be good for China. We need the spiritual goodness
and the moral capacity of the Dalai Lama."
 
Though this might be a disingenuously diplomatic comment on the status of
their embattled homeland, Tibetan officials consider the frequent contacts
between Tibetan exiles and pro-democracy Chinese important. "The fact that
the Chinese students are pro-democracy is a positive development,
potentially good for China and Tibet," said Tenzin Namgyal Tethong,
minister for home and economic affairs of the Tibetan government based in
Dharamsala.
 
"Tibetan officials, members of organizations and individuals have been
meeting Chinese scholars and students for a number of years," Tenzin
Tethong said.  This was done at the suggestion of His Holiness the Dalai
Lama.  "His Holiness believes that by talking and having open
communications, not only can we have good understanding but the truth of
the Tibetan issue will change the minds of the Chinese people," Tenzin
Tethong said.
 
The first of these open communications was held last October at New York's
Columbia University.  It was organized by Robert Thurman of Columbia
University's religion department.  The glitz of the Year of Tibet
commemorations overshadowed the significance of this meeting, but the
two-day Chinese-Tibetan relations conference attracted an impressive group
of American, Tibetan and Chinese scholars, including Fang Lizhi, China's
foremost dissident.
--end of part I--