Tomorrow Tibetans around the world are to mark the 60th anniversary of National Uprising Day, commemorating the day when hundreds of thousands of Tibetans surrounded Norbulinka Palace in Lhasa to protect the Dalai Lama against a possible Chinese kidnapping attempt: It was a peaceful protest against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule over Tibet and its harsh occupation by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Tibetans had grown increasingly restive since the PLA’s invasion in October 1950, and while the 1951 peace treaty between the Dalai Lama’s government and Beijing was supposed to ensure his control over his nation’s domestic affairs, and protect Tibetan culture, the reality was far different.
Resistance to Chinese rule had built up to the point that by the end of 1958 the PLA was threatening to bomb Lhasa, but it was the PLA’s invitation to the Dalai Lama to attend a performance and tea at its Lhasa headquarters — without bodyguards or Tibetan officials — that led Tibetans to surround Norbulinka.
While March 10 ended peacefully, the crowds around the palace refused to leave and over the next few days the PLA moved artillery into place, trained on the palace, so on March 17 the Dalai Lama was smuggled out to begin his escape to India.
Less than eight years after signing a peace treaty with Lhasa, Beijing had reneged on its promises, unhappy that Tibetans were not conforming to the CCP’s demands.
The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration that led to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong stipulated that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region would have executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including final adjudication, and the current social and economic system — including the rights and freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, travel, movement and religious belief. It guaranteed Hong Kong full autonomy except for foreign affairs and defense.
However, despite Beijing’s trumpeting of its “one country, two systems” model, its promises on Hong Kong began to crumble within a decade.
The erosion has steadily increased since Xi Jinping (習近平) became CCP secretary-general in November 2012 and president of the People’s Republic of China the following March, a reflection of his widespread repression of China’s nascent civil society.
It is worth remembering just what Beijing’s promises and treaties are worth, given a drumbeat in the pan-blue camp for a cross-strait peace treaty if the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is returned to the Presidential Office next year.
While KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) has not formally announced his candidacy, Sun Yat-sen School president Chang Ya-chung (張亞中) has, and both have talked about seeking such a pact.
If treaties signed in 1951 and 1984 were so easily trampled by Beijing, Taiwanese should be under no illusions about whether the democracy they fought so hard for would survive in the face of a “peace treaty.” If the “one country, two systems” model imposed on Hong Kong — along with its risible shadow that somehow it would help bring democracy to China — was unpalatable to Taiwanese in 1997, it is even more so now as China under Xi marches steadily backward, despite its economic advances.
Beijing’s new “social credit” system aimed at ensuring “trustworthy” citizens has already led to millions of people being barred from taking flights, buying train tickets, using public transportation, and buying insurance or real estate.
If Taiwan’s White Terror era was bad, technological advances have made the CCP’s repressive tactics more Orwellian than the KMT authoritarian state ever dreamed of.
Anyone who thinks a cross-strait treaty would benefit Taiwan is simply deluding themselves.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS