What Is Beijing’s Next Move On Tibet?
The protesters have caught up the Olympics torch and getting more media exposure than Beijing would hope for. What is Beijing doing? Do they want to take some initiative back? What is their Tibet plan?
No government would intentionally turn its land into another Gaza. Every story has its ending. Does China know how it wants this story to end?
China is known to make decision based on long time-horizon. Since a US president has 4 years in a term and at 8 years at most, US presidents expect returns of their political actions in a much shorter time frame. Just consider Bush 2: Bush is still thinking of Israel and Palestine although he has 10 months left. EU has a longer time perspective becasue they have a larger public servant work force, fewer political appointments and therefore career beaucrats can afford to wait for the comings and goings of politicians. China is known to make decisions that can bear fruits a few decades from their decision points. So, does China have a grand game-plan for Tibet?
No country plans to split a part of its land to become an independent country, unless it realizes it can no longer keep the land in question. China is no different. China is just waiting.
China is waiting for Dalai Lama to recarnate so that the younger generation of Tibetans will get themselves marginalized. The youthful Tibetans, the generation of Tibetans born in India, will either 1) get assimulated into India and its Tibetan identity gets disintegrated slowly or 2) become marginalized and ridiculed by the main stream society of India as a liability over time.
The Tibetan political movement (even gets a state sponsor, and guess who) can only become more radical, once Dalai Lama recarnate, in order to strengthen its bargaining power against Beijing. And this is when Beijing can convenient label this movement as a terrorist group.
After all, all the Tibetan causes are united by a Dalai Lama. An absence of Dalai Lama for 15, 20 years will disintegrate all these causes into different directions. And no single force can unite them again. What will remain true to itself is the religious movement. However, when the language and all the cultural elements reside in China, the interpretation of fundementals of Tibetan Bhuddism rests in the hands of China.
With the forseeable future of a splitered groups among the Tibetan causes, a more militant Tibetan group destined to be marginalized with or without other state sponsors, a weakening Dalai Lama due to age, China decides to wait for a decade or more to wear out all these movements.
Here is the update from CNN just now and Associated Press at 0918 EST:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/04/08/olympic.torch.ap/index.html#cnnSTCText
