The Dalai Lama’s recent Taiwan visit was comforting to its typhoon-ravaged people. But it infuriated China. An official spokesman in Beijing commented: “Under the pretext of religion, he has all along been engaged in separatist activities,” adding: “Obviously, this is not for the sake of disaster relief. It’s an attempt to sabotage the hard-earned good situation in cross-strait relations.”
Considering that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been bending over backward to please China, he made some hard political calculations when allowing the Dalai Lama’s visit.
Ma was losing political ground to the Democratic Progressive Party from the torrent of criticism in the country over his administration’s tardy response to the devastating tragedy of Typhoon Morakot.
And knowing how close the Ma administration is to China, it must have explained to Beijing its need to contain political damage that might worsen if the Dalai Lama was refused the opportunity to visit Taiwan in his role of imparting spiritual solace. Beijing might not have found it satisfactory but the thought of another DPP comeback at some point must be sobering.
Morakot killed more than 700 people, destroyed property and dislocated communities.
In the midst of all this destruction, the government seemed unsure how best to respond, as if the gravity of the situation had not sunk in.
On such occasions, when Nature’s wrath strikes and the government is woefully incompetent and inadequate, people’s minds turn to spiritual nourishment. The local leaders were more responsive to their people’s need for some sort of spiritual comfort at a time of tremendous grief, which led them to invite the Dalai Lama to serve that need.
Whether or not they were politically motivated is not the issue here. The issue is that they spotted the dire need for spiritual solace and decided that the Dalai Lama was the one to fit that role. And he played that role with great aplomb and sincerity, judging from the people’s enthusiasm at his meetings.
Indeed, China too, in its present state of obsessive greed and consequent moral-spiritual void, could use the Dalai Lama in such a role for the good of its people. China’s ruling oligarchy, however, has so demonized him that they refuse to see any role for him. For them he is a separatist, a political monk and a traitor, at worst.
And what has he done to deserve these epithets? Simply seek autonomy for Tibet as part of China, which translates into an autonomous Tibet being able to deal with its regional affairs, while the central government in Beijing controls its defense, foreign dealings and currency.
With such sovereign control over Tibet, is it possible to imagine that it would pose a threat to China’s territorial integrity? In a country of 1.3 billion people, an autonomous Tibet’s population of about 6 million will be a tiny minority.
If Beijing can be paranoid on this score, then there is something seriously wrong about the polity and psychology of such a state.
Indeed, judging by the Dalai Lama’s public pronouncements, he comes out as a very pragmatic man. For instance, he is always hosing down the hotheads in the Tibetan Youth Congress who advocate independence for Tibet.
The Dalai Lama has reportedly said: “But I always ask them: How are you going to attain independence? Where are you going to get the weapons? How are you going to pay for them? How are you going to send them into Tibet? They have no answer.”
RSS