This is a pointedly blunt, provocative book, the premise of which is that the ideological gaps between China's position on Tibet and that of the Dalai Lama and his exile government are unbridgeable. Warren W. Smith, Jr., provides a short chapter covering the broad historical background to Sino-Tibetan relations, and longer chapters on Chinese rule over Tibet in the 1950s, the period of democratic reforms following the 1959 uprising, the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, Tibet policy following liberalization under Deng Xiaoping, and the course of contacts between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. A final chapter encapsulates Smith's case for the unrealistic nature of the Dalai Lama's “Middle Way” approach—that is, his acceptance of Tibet as a part of China in return for “genuine autonomy” for Tibet. Ultimately, Smith concludes, China cannot allow Tibet any genuine form of autonomy, as that would jeopardize some of the fundamentals supporting the political and ideological structures of the People's Republic of China.
A reader will find within the chapters very useful summary accounts of a number of topics, such as the intermittent formal discussions between the two parties. However, China's Tibet? does read at times more like a polemic than a scholarly monograph. There is a shortage of footnotes in places where documentation is called for: when Tibetans are said to have been impressed by the lifelike images at the Wrath of the Serfs exhibit (p. 136) or to have resented the fact that the Chinese kept the best of the valuables confiscated in the aftermath of the 1959 uprising (p. 57), for example, or when we are told that Tibetans hold as an article of faith that the Chinese know the truth about Tibet but will not admit it (p. 111). It is not that such statements cannot necessarily be supported; it is that they simply are not.
Elsewhere, there are other statements and opinions (some of which are repeated several times in the book) that, at a minimum, call for nuanced explanation. There are certainly coercive measures applied to Tibetan cultural expression, up to and including censorship and arrest; the de facto marginalization of the Tibetan language in business, commerce, and government is a very serious fact of life in modern Tibet. But to say that China allows only the most superficial aspects of Tibetan culture, such as song and dance (p. 191), is to grievously ignore some of the vital cultural activity that is going on in art and literature inside Tibet. Similarly, it is a vast oversimplification to see China's contemporary relations with the non-Chinese peoples within its borders as just the continuation of a multimillennium assimilation project. Frontier relations have varied over centuries of dynastic rule, and strategies and policies have not been uniform by any means.
Nevertheless, China's Tibet? should be read by anyone who is trying to understand why discussions between the Dalai Lama's representatives and the Chinese government have reached a dead end. Smith gets an awful lot right where others, particularly policy makers, do not. This book was completed before the widespread Tibetan demonstrations in the spring of 2008, and it was in print before the failure that marked the last discussions between the two sides in early November. But at the outset (p. xx), Smith states that China cannot allow autonomy (as the term is understood outside the People's Republic) and describes China's participation in the dialogue process as calculatedly insincere. What has transpired since the publication of China's Tibet? has pretty much borne out his assessment. Indeed, while proponents of the dialogue process were wont to tout their approach as “realistic,” Smith's appraisal now seems the more sober view.
This may rankle some readers, as may the attention Smith gives to Chinese propaganda about Tibet from earlier decades. He devotes a number of pages to the film Serf and the exhibit Wrath of the Serfs. These may seem like unnecessary detours into a now irrelevant past, but Smith has a serious point: The hell-on-earth image that China constructed for pre-1950 Tibet is still what informs the views of many Chinese people, who sincerely see themselves as liberators of Tibet. Hence the hostile and resentful reaction of many Chinese, within China and overseas, to the Tibetan protests of 2008 and the subsequent foreign condemnation of China's repressive policies in Tibet. Censorship and the suppression of dissent continue to help maintain this image. Smith notes the release of a new edition (2005) of the exhibition book Wrath of the Serfs (p. 147), but China's Tibet? was published too early to take account of China's recent establishment of “Serf Emancipation Day,” to be officially commemorated yearly in Tibet.
Smith's study should prove a bracing read for those who want to know why China is now pinning its Tibet strategy not on dialogue, but on the ultimate demise of the present Dalai Lama.
