China’s Dangerous Game

China now risks similarly alienating Tibetans, making any future settlement that much harder to achieve. The last time serious Tibetan protests erupted was in early 1989; they sparked the pro-democracy marches that began in Chinese cities a few months later. But inside Tibet, clashes were limited to the Lhasa area, making them easier to suppress. This time, by contrast, several remote Tibetan communities outside the Tibet Autonomous Region also erupted (see map)—suggesting that China's discriminatory policies and its antagonistic, racist rhetoric—in mid-March, Tibet party boss Zhang Qingli called the Dalai Lama "an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast"—have managed to do something even the ancient court of Tibet couldn't manage: to unite Tibetans everywhere.

Tibetans' anger has many sources. One multilingual Lhasa resident, who insisted on anonymity for safety reasons, says Han Chinese discriminate against educated Tibetan jobseekers, and "push [them] away" because their loyalties are considered suspect. Rural Tibetans face even greater pressures. The rich-poor income gap is higher in Tibet than in any other Chinese province, and Beijing's economic modernization policies—which include the urbanization of Tibet, nomad resettlement and the construction of contemporary housing projects—have forced many nomadic herders and farmers into sterile "new towns" where jobs are few. (In 2006 alone, a quarter of a million Tibetans were moved as part of the housing scheme.) When they can't find jobs near home, displaced Tibetans head to Lhasa, where they wind up trying to compete against Han "who are better qualified and more skilled. So you get an underclass hanging around in the towns," says Robbie Barnett, a Tibet expert at Columbia University.

If Tibetans' anger at the Han is easy to understand, the reciprocal sentiment is less so, especially given that in recent years many Chinese yuppies and nouveau riche had started embracing "Tibet chic." Tibetan Buddhism had spread throughout the country and Tibetan turquoise jewelry and clothing had become the rage. No more. A Tibetan woman who sells earrings and trinkets in a Beijing subway station says no one buys her jewelry any longer because no Han "wants to be mistaken for a Tibetan." Then she added, "No one wants to be seen [even] speaking with Tibetans." She says Chinese commuters have cursed her every day since the protests turned bloody out west. She and her friends didn't dare venture outdoors for several days after March 14, fearing an anti-Tibetan backlash. "We heard [Chinese] were throwing stones and beer bottles at our women and trying to beat our children," says the vendor, who requested anonymity because she lives in Beijing illegally.

All this anger will reduce Beijing's chance of ever reaching a negotiated settlement with the Tibetans, since such a move could further inflame the now-roused Han majority. The Dalai Lama says that since the violence began, he's received expressions of sympathy from a conciliatory camp within the Chinese leadership, one that's willing to cut through the hateful rhetoric and talk rationally. But Beijing's done such a good job stirring mass hatred for his people that none of these moderates has dared to publicly stick out their necks and endorse negotiations. Even the relatively moderate Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has taken an uncharacteristically harsh line on Tibet, probably recognizing that any other approach would now be just too risky.

The only direct expression of ethnic-Chinese opposition to the crackdown has come from among the 29 intellectuals and writers who signed a March 22 public petition calling for an end to the media's one-sided propaganda campaign. But many of these figures were fairly marginal, due in part to their reputations as having been sympathizers of the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. It's worth noting that protests demanding human rights and religious freedoms actually started in Lhasa in March of that year, just two months before pro-democracy demonstrations erupted in Beijing and elsewhere in China. Such a process is almost impossible to imagine now, so toxic is the atmosphere Beijing has concocted.

With Mary Hennock in Beijing and bureau reports

© 2008