Former US presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all met with the Dalai Lama. The only recent former president who never met him is Donald Trump.
Tibetans living in exile in India are divided into two main groups — the Central Tibetan Administration headed by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Youth Congress, which seeks Tibetan independence. There is also a group so fully integrated into India that it serves as a special operations unit called the Special Frontier Force, which cannot wait to get its hands on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
An important thing to know about the Dalai Lama is that he does not call for Tibetan independence. He seeks a high degree of autonomy for Tibet under Chinese rule.
Furthermore, the Dalai Lama calls for unification between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait — as long as it happens under the values of democracy and human rights. This view is different from India’s “one China” policy. India does not recognize Taiwan and Tibet as belonging to China, and if China does not recognize “one India,” India will not recognize “one China.”
In the past few years, whenever the Dalai Lama spoke about visiting Taiwan, the media here only reported that he would like to visit.
However, Indian reporting says that the Dalai Lama has a precondition for visiting Taiwan, namely that he first wants to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing.
In other words, he would visit Taiwan under the premise of “one China,” but India would never agree to that.
The strategy of India’s foreign affairs departments regarding the Dalai Lama is to prevent him from visiting either side of the Taiwan Strait. They would prefer that he stayed in India, so they often refuse to grant him visas.
When dealing with the Tibetan issue, Taiwan, the US and Japan have to consider the role India plays.
The US did not have any problem with India’s role during Trump’s presidency, because Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have similar ideologies and attach more value to the security of their respective nations than to human rights issues.
An Indian security official recounted a preparatory meeting between US and Indian national security and diplomatic officials before Trump’s 2020 visit to India. US officials mimicked the Indian officials’ accents, which is something that diplomats should never do, but the Indian officials were not offended and the two sides continued making fun of each other.
This incident shows how cordial the two countries’ relations were at that time.
During the November 2020 US presidential election, Indian military leaders were said to have stayed up all night to watch the results, and when it became clear that Joe Biden had enough electoral college votes to assure him of the presidency, the generals all looked disappointed.
There is no meeting of minds between Biden and Modi as there was with Trump.
However, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken seems to be largely continuing the foreign policies of Mike Pompeo, his predecessor in the Trump administration.
Compared with the Tibetan government-in-exile, India can do more to effectively constrain China, so the exiled government would be useless without India’s support.
However, India’s approach to the Tibetan question does not correspond with US policies. For Tibetans themselves, the Tibet question is about human rights, life, property and religious freedom, but for India it is more about geopolitics.
Consequently, India might support Tibetan independence more than the Dalai Lama. This is because, from India’s point of view, if Tibet were to become independent, it would almost certainly lean toward India, and form a buffer zone between it and China, making it more difficult for Beijing to interfere in South Asia.
For these reasons, India’s attitude is to use the Dalai Lama as a figurehead.
The Dalai Lama himself has said that his reincarnation — the next Dalai Lama — might be born in India or Mongolia.
If the 15th Dalai Lama is indeed born in India, he might have different policies regarding Tibet than the 14th.
Wang Wen-sheng is a doctoral student at Jindal University in India.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday last week met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at an APEC summit in Thailand. The meeting made front-page news in Japan the following day. Three years ago, when then-Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe visited Beijing to meet with Xi, no one questioned Abe’s attitude toward China, as the conservative parties in Japan had been spearheaded by Abe. However, Kishida could easily be labeled as pro-China, as he hails from Hiroshima — a place known for its anti-war, anti-nuclear movements — and was once the director of the Japan-China Friendship Association of Hiroshima.
Superman’s latest flight took him halfway across the world. After an uncertain free agency, superstar former NBA center Dwight Howard finally and surprisingly settled on Taiwan’s T1 League, where the Taoyuan Leopards have welcomed him with open arms and plenty of photographs. In the two weeks since the team announced their latest addition, Taiwanese media and fans have barely been able to contain their excitement. A livestreamed video of Howard visiting a Taoyuan night market and trying chicken butt on a stick (“This is some good-ass chicken!”) not only got thousands of views and extensive media coverage in Taiwan, but
It is quite the irony when former British prime minister Boris Johnson — a buffoon who for far too long was taken seriously — is branded a buffoon for saying something deadly serious. Following Johnson’s withering criticism of China at a business forum in Singapore on Wednesday last week, the event’s organizer, Michael Bloomberg, apologized to attendees, saying that Johnson was “trying to be amusing rather than informative and serious.” However, Johnson’s characterization of China as a “coercive autocracy” that had showed “a candid disregard for the rule of international law” was spot-on. His comments evoked the wisdom of the Austrian-British philosopher
As campaign fever for tomorrow’s local elections turns white hot, supporters of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) have been going head to head on social media. The latest row was triggered by a Facebook post on Nov. 13 by songwriter and KMT supporter Liu Chia-chang (劉家昌), who rebuked United Microelectronics Corp founder Robert Tsao (曹興誠) for advocating independence. “Although you regained your ROC [Republic of China] citizenship after returning from Singapore, you continue to help the green independents by guarding their flank,” Liu wrote, adding that it was an “insult to the nation.” “When [KMT
RSS