NEW DELHI: With the formal nod of the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee the current bill is bound to be passed by the Senate and signed by President Biden to make it a law in near future.
As China’s military and economic might has started eating into and challenging the status and powers of United States of America as the sole unchallengeable super power of the world, the resolve of US policy and strategy makers at the Capitol Hill in Washington too seems to have started shifting gears. Abandoning the US’ approach of cooperative and profit sharing accommodation with Beijing it has started not only standing up to President Xi Jinping’s bullying but also hitting his communist regime where it hurts most. On 16 April the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee put its stamp of approval on a Tibet related bipartisan Bill (HR-533) which was passed two months ago on 15 February by the House of Representatives with a near unanimous and thunderous majority (392 to 28).
This approval of the Committee practically removes the last legislative hurdle towards passage of the bill into a Constitution-backed law that is going to prove the last step towards America and its allies’ formal rejection of and challenge to the “One China Policy” on which President Xi’s aggression and arrogance rests. A similar series of bills and resolutions on Xinjiang, another colony which China occupied two years before Tibet in 1949 and renamed it from “East Turkistan” to “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” (XUAR), too reflects USA’s new approach towards challenging Xi’s bullying and his “One China Policy”. The current Tibet related bill further strengthens and sharpens the US Congress’ earlier “Tibetan Policy Act of 2002” (TPA-2002) which was later revised in January 2020. Some major changes and additions in the latest avatar of TPA-2002 mark a watershed point on the US’ approach on Tibet and China.
This bill makes a deep diplomatic surgical strike at President Xi and China’s six-decade-long aggressive campaign which is focused at redefining and limiting the geography of “Tibet” to just one third of its original size in the form of “Tibet Autonomous Region” (TAR), which Mao had created by reorganizing occupied Tibet in 1965. In the “Definition” part (Section-622) of this bill the US Congress has removed whatever ambiguity was left by previous US governments on formally defining what constitutes the real Tibet. In the two parts of this section, the Bill makes it clear that the term “Tibet” refers not merely to TAR, but also includes all those parts of the Tibetan provinces of Kham and Amdo which were scooped out of Tibet and were distributed to the adjoining Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai. It is worth nothing that the dialogue process between the exiled Dalai Lama and Beijing has remained stalled since the late 1970s simply because China has been consistently insisting that only TAR means Tibet, whereas Dalai Lama and his representatives have been insisting on including Kham and Amdo in the negotiations as integral parts of Tibet. This new US assertion will not only add to the moral strength of Dalai Lama but will also irritate President Xi and his negotiators further.
To understand the levels of ambiguity and the half-heartedness of many previous US governments on their championship of the Tibetan cause, just two examples should be enough. One is the oft repeated statement of many US Presidents and other US leaders whenever they were confronted by their Chinese counterparts on the issue of Tibet. The stock US response used to be that, “No policy of the US administration is based on the assumption that Tibet is not a part of China.” The other example is the funny, rather timid act of President Barack Obama on 19 February 2010, when, just to avoid the media cameras and the subsequent annoyance of the Chinese government, he walked the visiting Dalai Lama to the back door through the dirty laundry of the White House.
But in sharp contrast to the previous ambiguity the present bill and its larger form of “Tibet Policy Act 2002” (amended and passed in 2020 and also known as HR-4313) demonstrate a three pronged change in the US policy towards China on the issue of Tibet. First and the most dramatic of these changes is the reaffirmation that “Tibet is an occupied country under the established principles of international law.” Second is the US government’s decision to openly support the Dalai Lama; the “Gaden Phodrang”, the national trust which acts as the supreme repository of Dalai Lama’s authority; and Dalai Lama’s representatives as the final authority to decide about Dalai Lama’s next reincarnation. In the amended 2020 form of its bill the US Congress has also added the “democratically elected leaders” of the Tibetan diaspora to this list. This change not only gives the elected Sikyong (President) of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) the authority to participate in the installation of the next Dalai Lama but also to hold dialogue with the Chinese government about the future of Tibet. In practical terms this gives de-facto recognition to CTA as the “Government in Exile” of Tibet. And the third is that these bills make it statutorily binding on all future US Presidents and US Administrations to take active action against China’s objectionable acts like imposing a Dalai Lama of its own choice on the people of Tibet.
The current bill reiterates the US position both on the reincarnation of Dalai Lama as well as on the settlement of Tibetan issue between Dalai Lama and Beijing through dialogue as expressed in the last HR-4331 which has already become a law of the US following its bipartisan passage in both houses of the US Congress and signing by President Donald Trump. The current bills take it a step further by adding that China should start the dialogue without any pre-conditions. The earlier dialogue process remains log jammed since 2010 because Dalai Lama refuses to accept China’s condition to admit that Tibet has been a part of China since ancient times.
Another part of this bill, which marks a decisive shift in the US policy on Tibet and towards China, is the US Congress’ new resolve and enthusiasm to counter Chinese propaganda regarding Tibet. The bill commands and authorizes the US government and its agencies, which deal with China, to fight the disinformation and propaganda of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party about the history of Tibet, the Tibetan people, and Tibetan institutions including that of the Dalai Lama.
With the formal nod of the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee the current bill is bound to be passed by the Senate and signed by President Biden to make it a law in near future. This will irritate and provoke President Xi who has always demanded the world should accept that Tibet and Xinjiang are the “core” and non-negotiable issues for him, the Chinese Communist Party and China. More than anything else, this is going to be the first time for the supreme dictator of PRC for his idea of One China Policy to be challenged so openly and aggressively. The issue has the potential of exploding into an international tsunami.
Vijay Kranti is a senior journalist, Tibetologist and China watcher. He is Chairman, centre for Himalayan Asia Studies and Engagement (Chase).