No place for Tibet in Rudd's 'New Sinology'?

Reading through Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s recent speech at the Australian National University it is hard not to be impressed once again by his knowledge of China.

Furthermore, there is much to be commended in the Prime Minister’s “New Sinology”, with its promises of a “deeper, textured understanding of the China of the 21st century” and a pragmatic, considered approach to our evolving relationship. There were indeed many echoes of his landmark speech at Peking University two years ago, including another appeal to the concept of Zhengyou - “a partner who sees beyond immediate benefit to the broader and firm basis for continuing, profound and sincere friendship” - this time to lay out the mission of ANU’s new Australian Centre on China and the World.

What is astonishing however is Rudd’s ability to give a speech of nearly 7,000 words on “Australia, China in the World” without mentioning Tibet, a subject never far from the minds of ANU’s many eminent sinologists and which, today, Beijing itself regards as a “core issue” in both its domestic politics and international relations.

To be fair, this was a broad-based speech designed to set the tone and agenda of our future engagement with China, not an occasion to be getting bogged in specifics. Nonetheless, from pointing out China’s continued association with renegade regimes from the Sudan to Burma, to its lack of co-operation on global security challenges including Afghanistan and Iran, to its dubious contribution to last year’s critical UN Climate Summit, for the most part the PM balanced his due positive reflections on re-emergent China with appropriate reminders of how far things still have to go.

In short, the lack of any mention of Tibet was striking and no doubt deliberate.

Why is this so? Sadly it is not due to any significant improvements in the ground realities facing the six million Tibetans since the PM’s last major speech on China. Nor is it down to an extraordinary effort by the Chinese Government through its well-oiled propaganda machine and armies of diplomats and “Tibetologists” to reframe international perceptions of Tibet, though this has no doubt played a part.

Talk to officials at DFAT and it is clear that the Australian Government remains acutely aware of the enduring problems in Tibet. Talk to the handful of parliamentarians with more than a passing interest in foreign affairs and almost all, irrespective of their political persuasion, share this concern. And while many have reluctantly come to believe that Australia, indeed the international community more generally, is powerless to bring improvements for Tibetans, others have become positively exasperated at the government’s reluctance to say more.

In public the Prime Minister has reassured us that the government will not let its growing economic relationship with China prevent it from raising concerns over Tibet and other contentious issues.

Look closely and the picture is a little different. While Australia may have given China the odd prod through such things as the annual confidential Australia-China Human Rights Dialogue and the UN Human Rights Council, publicly the government has been almost silent on Tibet since mid 2008 - a period which has seen the collapse of the Tibet-China dialogue and ever more severe curbs on Tibetans’ freedoms of speech, religion, association and movement.

In answering a question from Hon Peter Slipper MP last October as to whether China had placed non-interference on Tibet as a condition for co-operation on other issues, the Foreign Minister replied that “China’s view, as put to Australia, is that both countries should respect and accommodate each other’s core interests and major concerns so as to safeguard the overall interests of bilateral co-operation. The Tibet issue is one such concern for China.” Read: “If you want to maximise our shared economic interests then you’re going to have to keep quiet over Tibet.”

Two months later and shortly before President Barack Obama received the Dalai Lama in the White House, the Rudd Government relegated its reception of the Dalai Lama to a hushed meeting with Environment Minister Peter Garrett in a back room of Melbourne Airport.

Reading last Friday’s speech more closely there are more than a few statements designed to allay any lingering fears following Rudd’s mentioning of the “T” word in Beijing two years ago. “We appreciate fully the core interests of the People’s Republic of China,” said Mr. Rudd, adding “in particular with regard to its territorial integrity”.

The reference to territorial integrity is almost certainly a disguised reference to Tibet, which Beijing continues to regard as fundamentally an issue of sovereignty. While the Dalai Lama and Tibetan people have long since ceded the demand for independence and sought a solution within the framework of the PRC, it has served Beijing’s interests well to paint the Tibetans as separatists. Very reasonable statements of concern by foreign governments over such things as media freedom, religious oppression and arbitrary arrest are consistently, and to the exasperation of Tibetans and Tibet supporters, slammed as support for “splitting the motherland”.

Today even a casual observer has no problem recognising the dilemmas and challenges inherent in our relationship with China. Innumerable column inches have been spent debating how to balance our very real concerns over Tibet, East Turkestan, civil and political rights, media freedom and rule of law with the undeniable need to maintain a working, co-operative relationship with the dominant power in our region.

On the one hand, given Beijing’s steadfast refusal to address constructively the situation in Tibet and the over-the-top rebuke that even relatively low-level meetings between the Dalai Lama and foreign officials tend to invoke, we can easily rationalise the government’s decision to keep quiet.

Yes, this is a tragedy for Tibet. More broadly, this is a tragedy for the wider cause of non-violence, of justice and of truth over power. But as Brian Rudman, a columnist for the New Zealand Herald stated last November while chiming into the discussion over whether Prime Minister John Key should meet the Dalai Lama: “Cheeking a non-ally like China over an issue as esoteric as Tibet seems suicidal.”

Whether China has in fact exacted any real toll on those countries that have a pushed a little harder on Tibet is debatable. But far more important is the misapprehension of Tibet as an esoteric issue.

Tibet is as large as Western Europe. Wedged between India and China it is an area of immense geopolitical significance, for centuries a buffer between the two rising giants of Asia. It also lies at the centre of a nuclear-weapons triangle formed by China, India and Pakistan.

The Tibetan Plateau is the source of almost all Asia’s great rivers. The Mekong, Yangtze, Yellow, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Salween, Indus and Irriwaddy Rivers: the lifeblood of China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and South-East Asia all begin their life in Tibet. This vast island of ice in the sky is also the main engine of the Asian monsoon, drawing moist air in from the oceans to bring rain and sustenance to hundreds of millions.

In short, what happens in Tibet, and whether we see Tibet further subsumed into China’s military-industrial complex, has implications far beyond Tibet and China’s borders. Decades of unregulated colonisation have seen not only the decimation of Tibet’s traditional rural economy but also drastic environmental disturbances that threaten the livelihoods of millions downstream. Tibet’s nomads, who for centuries maintained the fragile grasslands of the high plateau, are today being forcibly removed and resettled. China’s catastrophic policy failures in Tibet, which have fanned ethnic tensions and led to the widest rich-poor divide of anywhere in the PRC, remain a constant threat to social stability.

It is, clearly, in China’s own interest to face the facts and take a fresh look at its problems in Tibet. By proxy it is strongly in our own interests too. A China destabilised by internal unrest would damage our Australian economy. The impact on those downstream of another half century of disastrous environmental mismanagement of the Tibetan Plateau does not bear contemplating.

With the events of 2008 still fresh in the mind of China’s leaders, no other issue prompts quite the same knee-jerk defiance as Tibet. And through sheer force and diplomatic dexterity, both in multilateral forums and in its bilateral relations, China has shown a unique ability to evade criticism when it wishes.

To bring Tibet into Australia’s “New Sinology” may mean creating several more bumps in the near future. To continue ignoring the “yak in the room” will create a far greater tragedy down the line.