Robert Barnett
An unexpected development has taken place in the seven-decades-long dispute between the Tibetan exile leadership and China’s government. In early July, for the first time since 2010, Chinese authorities reportedly held direct talks with the exile Tibetan political leadership, based in Dharamsala, India. The meeting in July followed a year or more of back-channel contacts of some kind.
These talks are at only a very preliminary stage and may not last. Beijing has not confirmed that it has had contact with the exiles, and the exile leaders have downplayed any prospect of substantive outcomes, professing interest only in long-term developments. But behind these reports are signs of a larger and more intriguing shift. This is indicated, according to the exile leadership, by the fact that it was China that initiated the resumption of talks. They “are reaching out to us, it’s not us reaching out to them,” as the exiles’ Sikyong, or political leader, Penpa Tsering, has put it. Beijing, the exiles argue, now finds itself under pressure to reach a deal with the exiled Tibetan religious leader, the 89-year-old Dalai Lama, before his health declines further. If so, this would be a 180-degree reversal from the previous dynamics of the dispute, when it was the exiles who were urgently, even desperately, seeking a settlement before time runs out.
The exiles’ new assessment of China’s diplomatic calculus seems ambitious, given that it implies a significant weakening in China’s bargaining power on Tibet. But there is some evidence to support this view. It follows from a fundamental shift in the exiles’ strategy from a focus on human rights violations to a focus on flaws within China’s claim to sovereignty over Tibet.
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