Dalai Lama Meeting China? What Can They Accomplish?
China wants to meet Dalai Lama’s representatives. Why is it announcement now? What can this meeting accomplish?
Beijing made the announcement today because EU trade delegation arrived Beijing. Currency exchange rate is a big topic, trade barrier is of course another. Some of it is very logistics, such as business visa issuance. In any event, having a nice announcement today can delay and defuse some tensions.
CNN reports the story here. Similar to other media outlets, CNN has already put sandbags on this meeting: don’t expect much because this meeting could be a PR ploy to defuse all the possible upcoming Tibetan activists may stage. And even if Dalai Lama is fully convinced that this meeting is unproductive, Dalai Lama will still send his representatives to meet China.
Why will Dalai Lama still want to meet China for an unproductive meeting?
If he does not, he will be blamed as spoiler. However, China probably wants this meet bad enough that they must have relaxed the conditions of meeting. After all, Dalai Lama already said both sides have been in contact since early April. So they are already in talks for weeks to set up a talk. The announcement from the Beijing is an indication that at least Dalai Lama is comfortable with the agenda, even if that agenda may have unproductive outcome.
There are a few things we can observe. If we see a series of talks stretching out, then please do not celebrate that as an indication of progress. That only means to stall the protests word wide and divert political pressure of the foreign governments from their domestic constituency asking for do-something.
The place is likely to be within Mainland China, to symbolize that it is an internal affairs. If it were in a third party, China would be afraid that the meeting has evolved into a nation-to-nation meeting. However, the question remains: where will it take place, in China? The location would be an indication how serious Beijing takes this meeting.
Will this be a publicized or secretive meeting? The press of course would not get invited during the talk. But will there be photo op announced to the press in advance? Will there be joint announcement? If there will be joint announcement, then this will be a meeting of substance.
Even if Beijing is not intent to just stage another stall tactics and meant well to accomplish something, it is still practically difficult. Positions of both sides are clear since they already spent a few decades to sort out the differences. Beijing hates to be seen as to giving concessions to separatists. Beijing waited for 8 years for President Chen of Taiwan to retire from office and waited a few decades on the issue of Dalai Lama. Holding off another 5 or 10 years does not bear additional political costs, both domestically and internationally.
Beijing simply is stretched at this moment to have a serious talk. All resources are diverted to Olympics. And Beijing sees that it is much easier to accomplish something from the Taiwan problem. Therefore, for whatever remaining energy and resources from the top leadership will be dedicated to Taiwan. For Dalai Lama, the meeting has to be measured against the level of civil servants Taiwan enjoys.
