Dalai Lama may return to Tibet

Press, 16 July 1980, Page 13

Dalai Lama may return to Tibet

By

DENNIS BLOOD.

WORTH

in Singapore

The Dalai Lama /may be back in Lhasa within two years if his emissaries now touring Tibet find that Peking i effectively implementing new • ‘‘liber-/ ;•!” policies which promise to turn the most fettered region of China into ■ the most free.; < Peasants are to be allowed to own more. land and cattle and “several dozen” Sheep,' to / grow their own traditional crops, to profit from handicrafts ahd.other. sidelines, and to sell •* ffieir products for what'.they can get by bargaining. . Some Party officials are already beginning to cut the size of collective “production teams” and to bargain with individual households, whether they are parcelling out land or purchasing grain for the State. Radical reforms outlined earlier this month will give “full play” to selfgovernment in ' Tibet, and all regulations imposed by the Chinese that are unsuited to local conditions will be modified or thrown out.. More than two-thirds of government officials must m future be drawn from among the Tibetans themselves, who will be permitted to formulate laws to protect their special interests and characteristics. \To raise their wretched living standard? and promote profitable farming and animal husbandry, the Tibetans wilh be -granted more funds and excused from .selling fixed ..quotas of their produce to the Chinese State for several years. ■ . f . The changes, which also provide for an “energetic” revival of Tibetan education and culture, are designed to give Tibet a social facelift within two to three years, and will also apply to the vast neighbouring Chinese province of Qinghai. They are the upshot of a recent tour of inspection by Hu Yaobang, the pragmatic secretary-general of the Chinese Communist' Party, and Vice-Premier Wan Li. These .outraged dignitaries were able to make a convincing break with the miseries of the recent; past by putting the ■ blame for all Tibet’s ills on? the blunders" of . the deplorable Gang of Four and their ultra-Leftist henclimahf

The Party boss in Lhasa was pointedly sacked in favour of a Tibetan-speak-ing Chinese with 20 years’ experience of the region. Backsliders among some 60,000 full-time ? Chinese ,

cadres administering fewer than two million Tibetans (with the aid of about 150,000 troops) have been castigated for abusing their privileges and promoting their favourites, wasting public money on lavish gifts , and banquets, and • disdaining even to learn Tibetan (which will now be obligatory). In future cadres will be “fewer but better.” < 7

Hu is not the Only official to pry into poverty and persecution in Tibet,, and it is no coincidence that these moves to allay Tibetan discontent will coinf ’e with prolonged tours of the region by three Tibetan missions sent by the Dalai Lama. The Chinese have been trying to tempt the wary 44-year-old pontiff back to Lhasa since 1977, and they may now succeed if they can persuade him he?, is witnessing a miracle, not a mirage. ' ?

Exiled since 1959, the Dalai Lama originally demanded nothing less than the freedom of Tibet, but he has since learned . the hard way that the immovable Chinese regard his country as an inalienable part of China and will not surrender it.

By 1978, & therefore, he was ready to settle for the chaplain-and-ruler relationship that had linked sacred Lhasa to profane Peking in the days of the Manchu empire. He would be prepared to return to Tibet, he said, once he. was convinced that most Tibetans were truly con-, tent with a measure of autonomy under Chinese. Communist rule. >/■

Although his more stiffs necked aides still deny he is thinking of going back, or that his. secret exchanges with Pekipg have been . mutiplying- since then, he is sending scouts ahead in significant num-, bers?

The first delegation from his Government-in-exile in India reported back to him last December after spending five months in China and Tibet. Their message was that Tibet was a slave society in which the local people had only a small and timorous voice, but that the Chinese were ready to allow exiled Tibetan teachers to return, and would accord the Dalai Lama limited spiritual powers if he would come back himself.

The god-king adopted a . wait-and-see attitude, but today his missions to Tibet are treading on each other’s heels. A second team of officials went for a three-month tour early in May. A third flew to Peking on route for Tibet on June 1 and will stay for four months, preparing the ground for exiled teachers to return. The Dalai Lama now appears to be persuaded that Peking means well. But what of religion? Few of the 300-odd monasteries in Tibet remain, but 200 artists and craftsmen, subsidised with $1 million by Peking, are restoring the most splendid — including the one from which the Dalai Lama ruled. While a thousand of the devout may flock into the main temple of" Lhasa, however, it is open only three days a week to approved believers, it seems, and piety- among the young is sternly discouraged. There are few monks, and the former ‘‘living Buddhas” r till to be found in Tibet survive not as defenders of the faith, but as token Tibetans in tame front organisations dedicated to “socialist construction.” Is this what the Chinese mean when the; .offer the god-king “limited spiritual nower” That is the Dalai’s dilemma. — Copyright London Observer Service.