Tibetans say China stance won't change

BEIJING — Exiled Tibetans have agreed to continue with the Dalai Lama's accommodating approach toward China despite years of failed talks, their self-declared government said Saturday.

The so-called "middle way" stance that Tibetans have followed for the past two decades acknowledges Chinese sovereignty over their homeland amid hopes Beijing will grant greater autonomy over religious and cultural affairs. Recently, however, there have been growing calls to take a harder line, with many Tibetans advocating independence.

The Chinese military marched into Tibet in 1951 shortly after the Communists gained control of China. Since then, Beijing has maintained tight control over the ethnic Tibetan areas, seen most recently in the crackdown after widespread riots in March.

The decision to maintain the status quo capped six days of talks in which more than 500 exiles from around the world met in the mountainous Indian town of Dharmsala to confront a central dilemma facing the group.

Exiled leader

The Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader, is 73 and slowing down, as seen by a recent hospital stay for a gallstone operation. China, meanwhile, is getting stronger as its military, political and economic clout continue to expand at home and abroad.

"Aside from the decision to continue with the middle-way approach, in a lot of other ways we suggested how to be less conciliatory toward the Chinese government," Tenzin Dorjee said from Dharmsala.

"It's a wake-up moment, realizing that we can't afford to continue waiting for conciliatory dialogue," added Dorjee, the New York-based deputy director of the Students for a Free Tibet and a delegate to the meeting. "Although the results are anticlimactic, it's significant that we'll continue the middle way for a defined amount of time, maybe two or three years."

Although the Dalai Lama said all points of view would be considered when he called the meeting, analysts and delegates said the outcome was almost a foregone conclusion, with the meeting aimed more at reaffirming support than finding a new direction.

At the same time, even those closest to the leader acknowledge growing frustration, with some seeing this meeting as the beginning of a course correction.

Amid the endorsement of the Dalai Lama and the middle-way strategy, the meeting sent a strong message to the Chinese, said Kate Saunders, communications director with the International Campaign for Tibet.

Anger at China

In particular, she said, many people expressed anger at China's long-standing attempts to drive a wedge between Tibetans and their leader. "So the approach by China, to undermine the Dalai Lama, is having the opposite effect," she said. "It's clear the Tibetan people are extremely angry about that, and the specter of independence is very much there."

Whether China cares is another question. Some Chinese acknowledge quietly that they've failed to win over many Tibetans despite a massive, decades-long spending campaign on roads, schools, railroads and other infrastructure and untold hours of so-called "patriotic education" sessions designed to bind people to Beijing. But that's difficult to say openly given the current mantra to be tough.

"The China side is hobbled by internal contradictions," said Robbie Barnett, professor at Columbia University. "More reasonable voices are sidelined because of the riots, bringing to the fore the hard-line view that if you give them an inch, they riot, so we must control them."

Longer-term, however, the hard-line tactics might be unsustainable, he said. Keeping nearly one-third of your country's landmass under intensive restrictions isn't exactly consistent with an emerging global player. "It would be as if all of Texas and most of the (U.S.) South were off-limits," Barnett said. "You can't make it on the international stage with that sort of arrangement."