Tibet and China’s imperialism

Canada’s Globe & Mail carried an interesting piece, looking at how China’s rule in Tibet is an anacronistic throwback to imperialism even as Beijing tries to present a more modern face to the world:

The struggle in Tibet is a reminder that China is not just a nation but an empire, and a communist empire at that. [...]  All of this tends to be overlooked in the glittering reflection of Shanghai’s skyscrapers. We have been so dazzled by China’s amazing rise as a modern economic power that we forget what a throwback it is. [...]

It has been clear for many years that China is pursuing what is essentially an imperial policy in Tibet, encouraging Han Chinese to colonize the region and dilute the native Tibetan majority, building railways, airports and other links to bind Tibet to the metropolitan power, using its secret police and other coercive powers to crush any dissent. All of these techniques were familiar to empires of the past, from the British to the Portuguese to the Russian. Empires always fear the untamed people on their distant edges, and Beijing’s attitude to the Tibetans and the Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang has been like Rome’s to the Gauls. [...]

Like other empires, the modern Chinese empire is held together through force.  Ultimately, however, China’s rule over Tibet is unstable because the Tibetan people, like other colonized peoples, will not accept foreign occupation.  The Chinese government is on the wrong side of history if it thinks it can hold on to Tibet forever:

All this was known before last month’s protests in Lhasa and beyond, but China’s reaction – defensive, paranoiac, often laughable in its Orwellian denial of the facts – brought home that, for all its modern airs, this is still at root an imperial, communist power.

Denouncing “the Dalai Lama clique” – opponents of communists seem always to gather in “cliques” – the Communist Party chief in Tibet, Zhang Qingli, called Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader “a wolf in monk’s robes, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast.” Last year, he said “the Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need. The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans.” Yes, and Stalin was the benevolent father of the Soviet minorities.

China hopes that, if it folds its minorities into the paternal embrace of the state, they will end their futile attempts at independence and come to see themselves as Chinese just like everyone else. History suggests this kind of consent can rarely be coerced. The fraternal brotherhood of the Soviet peoples dissolved the moment Soviet power did. Yugoslavia, too, flew apart after the demise of communism.