At least 11 monks and nuns have set themselves on fire this year such is their desperation and condemnation of China’s repressive policies in their homeland. 
Is it an effective form of protest? Will China change its policies?
Not likely, without clear and consistent pressure on the international stage, argues Professor Robert Barnett, director of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University.
“We are not seeing strong signals coming from the major Western powers. We need to find a way to articulate these issues without seeming to impose on China,” Barnett said.
GlobalPost talked with Barnett about which countries are better at dealing with China, why changes China does make don’t necessarily get noticed, and whether focusing on what’s going on inside Tibet could actually be doing some harm.
What can, or should, other countries do about Tibet?
Basically, China assumes that it should push its objectives until it meets resistance. Because it sees itself as growing and recovering a lost historic role in a hostile environment, its underlying strategy is to pursue its strategic objectives up to the point where its competitors prevent it from going further — a mode that is typical of a nation at this point in its arc of growth.
This means that other countries need to maintain exceptionally clear definitions of what they will accommodate in terms of their interests, and that includes issues of rights and responsibilities. That’s easy when it comes to external affairs, where the Chinese recognize that we all have a role and interest, but we all have to find skillful and effective ways to explain why there should be limitations to Chinese action too, when it comes to affairs that they are convinced are internal, like Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, even sometimes the South China Seas. But it’s difficult, because these issues are very sensitive and complex when international players are involved.
We also have to think how diplomatic language is understood by China. For example, symbolic and ceremonial aspects of diplomacy are seen in Beijing as much more important than they are in the West. China knows that whether a US president meets the Dalai Lama, and whether he does so in a public or a private room, could conceal a larger strategic shift.
More importantly, Chinese diplomats carefully read the signs of diplomatic attention. Silence is very vocal — if you raise an issue and then don’t mention it again, it is taken as a concession. If you even slightly moderate the language you use to refer to it, it’s seen as a major concession. Backing off is a major signal, so Westerners have to learn that on some issues they have to learn to maintain a practice of repeated, consistent restatements of a principled position. Dull but important.
China is a major world power, but it still seems very sensitive to world perceptions of its policies. This doesn’t mean that other countries should be insulting or aggressive toward China. It does mean that Western governments need to be much clearer and more consistent in stating what their concerns are, and explaining why they have any right or interests to speak on internal issues.
Are you seeing Western governments that are doing this? 
There has been more or less a complete collapse on policy consistency across the Western block in terms of knowing how to respond to assertive modern Chinese diplomatic skill. In western Europe, it’s a total write-off. They are easily divided, since they are numerous, and so are terrified of upsetting China. They’ve had years of China saying “If you criticize me, I won’t buy your next Airbus” and have failed to work out a way to deal with that strategy. It’s like watching someone throw dollar bills — or, rather, euro notes — into a crowd.
America has been more consistent, actually. They do try to maintain a clearer line and a more skillful sense of how to respond to various maneuvers. And America has said consistently on Tibet that China should change its policies there because they’re counterproductive, which is useful language since it appeals to their interests, not just ours.
But the most interesting gestures have come from countries in Scandinavia and eastern Europe, the latter presumably because they understand Leninist traditions of diplomacy.
We are not seeing strong signals coming from the major Western powers. We need to find a way to articulate these issues without seeming to impose on China.
Can you see anything shifting in the near future?
Actually the Chinese have made some micro-changes to their policies in Tibet as a result of pressure from both outside and inside, but they are so small that most specialists don’t even mention them.
For example, the new party secretary in Lhasa arranged last month for almost all Tibetan university graduates to have jobs. This week he said that all monks — of course he only means the few recognized officially — will have pensions and minimum allowances. They are certainly pouring more money into the area now, especially the villages, and though the effects of this are very much disputed, it shows a certain urgency of response.
We can be skeptical, and we should be to some extent — the methods of Chinese modernization in Tibet and elsewhere are rushed, manipulative, top-down and so on. That’s our responsibility in a situation where a people is not allowed to speak out.
But these moves are proofs of principle: they indicate that pressure works. That does not mean that all kinds of pressure work of course, and inside pressure is much more important than outside pressure. But it suggests that a skillful balance of the two does sometimes get noticed.
Could there be significant changes? 
Perhaps the way Tibet is run by the Chinese could be changed, at least to some extent. The question is whether the changes that will come will be enough. It’s very doubtful, given the extreme conservatism of the current leadership. Still, when you live under an autocracy, sometimes small changes can make a much bigger difference than expected to the people living there. And you never know what they might lead to — which is also why the Chinese are so scared of making them. I don’t mean independence, but a broader civil society.
But there are shifts taking place of a more troubling variety. While people are focused on terrible tragedies in Tibet, a lot is being done in Nepal to the exiled Tibetan community there. It is now apparently illegal for them even to have certain private prayer ceremonies. Police raided a Tibetan cultural show in Kathmandu, a classical opera performance, recently. Thousands of Tibetans have been refused exit permits to come to the US, even though the US has prepared to issue visas. It’s incredible, inconceivable within what is supposedly a democratic society.
There’s no real dispute that this is all done directly at the demand of China. So Nepal, on this issue, is being run internally by its neighbor. I experienced this when I was last there a few years ago. I was surrounded and escorted at one point for a few hours by un-uniformed Chinese police when I was in a border area. They didn’t realize I could understand what they were saying.
And last week, there were news reports from India of a major Bollywood film being ordered by a government agency there to cut a scene that featured a “Free Tibet” flag. These are clearly challenges to democractic principles in those countries. They are fundamental shifts, but they are not discussed — and they are always done without public debate. In those neighboring areas, Chinese policy is happening all around us.
So, the focus inside Tibet is a distraction?
It is making us look in one direction while a lot is going on in other directions. Things are changing, just not in the direction we might like to see. We shouldn’t be alarmist about it, it’s all part of the normal chess game that the big political players are involved in, adjustments to regional balance and spheres of influence, but it requires attention and alertness.
Self-immolations are in the news. Besides reports today of a Chinese man who set himself on fire in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, China is also facing a wave of self-immolations in eastern Tibet.
At least 11 monks and nuns have set themselves on fire this year in protest of China’s grip on their homeland. Last week, the Dalai came forward and blamed China for the spate of tragic acts, saying its approach in Tibet amounts to “cultural genocide.”
For some, it was a welcome message from a figure who, inevitably, is at the center of any news out of Tibet. For others, it began the well-worn cycle that starts with the Dalai Lama condemning China, moves to China condemning the Dalai Lama, and ends without much changed.
“It’s hard to see new ways to describe the situation. But we have to keep on trying to describe it,” said Robbie Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies program at Columbia University.
What should the Dalai Lama do? 
GlobalPost spoke with Barnett about the likelihood that China will make some changes, what the Dalai Lama can really do, and why no one is an idle commentator on this issue.
The majority of Tibetans who have self-immolated this year have died. It’s clear these deaths are the result of more than a decade of repressive policies in Tibet. What is a helpful frame to make sense of this in the West?
Professor Robbie Barnett: We would have to imagine a government here treating universities as, let’s say, mafia centers or criminal cults that have to be repeatedly invaded by police. That’s roughly how the major Tibetan monasteries are being viewed now in China.
Local officials in the areas where these self-immolations have occurred, mostly around Kirti monastery in Ngaba, seem to have decided to go further with security policies than other areas. They are using techniques that had been used before only after major incidents, such as blockading a monastery, and cutting off food and water, sometimes for weeks, in response to a single-person protest.
So it looks like the area around Kirti has been used as laboratory for ways to manage the Tibetan population. It is an understatement to say that the experiment has not been successful.
What are the chances China will change its harsh policies?
In one sense the chances are higher than we think: The policies that are most provocative are not that difficult to reverse. Some Chinese officials also think them excessive — most Tibetans do — and it’s in China’s interest to reverse them. But there is no sign of the political will to do so.
In China, there is in general a cynical view of protests by Tibetans and other nationalities. Because there are some positive discrimination policies in place in China for Tibetans, many Chinese think that any protests by them are just attempts to get more funding and more privileges from Beijing.
They view Tibetan complaints as being all about the economy and about getting access to more economic goods. In that view, culture and religion are seen as secondary to economics, and a community that gets richer because of the state is expected to be satisfied with that.
There is also the fear of the internal domino effect. China is afraid that if it shows any flexibility to Tibetans, that will lead to more demands, which will ultimately lead to a heightened sense of Tibetan nationalism and demands for independence, which in turn will trigger demands for independence from other nationalities in China — and the areas inhabited by those nationalities cover some 60 percent of China’s landmass. 
It’s not that China does not want Tibetans or others to have distinctive identities — people there enjoy superficial cultural exoticism and variety as much as Westerners do. But they want these to be ethnic identities, not national ones. They want them to see themselves as “ethnic groups” or “cultures” and not as “nationalities.” This seems to be why Chinese officials ordered in about 1995 that only the English word “ethnic” should be used to describe them, not the former official term, “nationality.”
So, the problems that stop them changing their policies in Tibet are political rather than practical; this is a very conservative leadership. There are many things they could do, practically speaking. They could limit the migration of non-Tibetans to these areas. They could appoint culturally-literate Tibetans as local leaders and create social partnerships with monasteries in terms of education and other issues. They could have true bilingual education policies, and they could stop the demonization of the monks and the practice of insulting the Dalai Lama.
If the Dalai Lama took a strong stand against the self-immolations, would they stop?
That’s a reasonable question that’s being asked by a lot of people. But it’s more complex than it seems if one considers the history and the context. The Dalai Lama has asked protesters to stop on many similar occasions in the past — when Tibetans have staged hunger strikes in India, for example. He has said that suicides for political reasons shouldn’t be encouraged. His government has said repeatedly that it does not encourage self-immolations.
But in the past when the Chinese have asked him to say something to calm the situation inside Tibet, and when he has done it, the Chinese officials have then demanded that he say something else that they want, as opposed to making a concession in return. This hugely damages trust, I think. That’s what happened in 2008: A major crisis was used as a bargaining opportunity to get the Dalai Lama to help. He tried to do that, and they then made more demands and more outrageous ones, while doing nothing on their side to calm the situation.
When we ask this question, we are imagining a diplomatic situation in which the Chinese side and the Tibetan side are working together to solve a problem. But that is not the situation, unfortunately.
Each opportunity is being used to try to humiliate the other side, at least by the Chinese officials in charge of talks. It’s not quite the same on the Tibetan side. In academic terms, the Tibetan negotiating moves are “communicative,” basically trying to persuade the other side or to appeal to emotion, while the Chinese manuevers are “strategic,” trying to cripple or weaken the other party. This is typical of asymmetrical negotiations.
What is needed is a new approach from both sides. The Tibetan side has been asking for talks for over a year, and they are waiting for the Chinese side to set up a mechanism for talks. So, it’s not that the Dalai Lama should be saying something, but it’s the two sides that should be coming together for talks, or have a mechanism for dealing with crises. 
One thing that is obvious here, is that there needs to be a hotline for emergencies. A point of contact between the two sides for when the situation gets really dire.
But what can, or should, the Dalai Lama do?
His government has said it does not encourage these acts but understands the reasons for them. I think that’s a useful articulation of the issues.
The Dalai Lama is now saying strong things, like his most recent comments on China committing “cultural genocide” in Tibet. He seems to feel it is his role to criticize China in strong terms. It’s hardly surprising that he would feel frustrated, but is it the right thing for him to use such terms?
We have to remember that we’re all pawns in a larger situation, where each side is trying to get each of us to criticize the other. That’s very strong objective in China’s policies, and for Tibetans too. So I’m not sure it’s for me to tell the Dalai Lama what to do. We are not just idle commentators.
Everything is electric on this issue.
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