| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 中國大陸研究所碩士在職專班 === 98 === The Tibetan issue is both sensitive and sophisticated. After years of confrontation, the Chinese and Tibetan governments have reached an impasse. The occupation by the Liberation Army began in 1950 and in 1959 there was the Tibetan Uprising in Lhasa, when the Dalai Lama escaped to India and formed the Tibetan Government in exile, struggling for the identification of Tibet and challenging the legitimacy of Chinese rule. Under the leadership of the Dalai Lama, the government in exile has changed from promoting “Tibetan independence” to promoting a “high degree of autonomy”; that is, it has changed from promoting a self-determined and uncompromised attitude toward a “middle way”, putting benefits for Tibetans first. As a result, the Dalai Lama and his government in exile have adjusted and corrected their political attitude based on political objectivity and reality following the Tibetan policy change and increasing the synergic power of the Chinese government, international reality, mediation and negotiation and other factors.
In Tibetan policy, the leftist tendency and misjudgment of the Chinese Government in the beginning of Tibetan rule and the Cultural Revolution have created various opportunities and pretexts for the Tibetan Government in exile to promote Tibetan independence. On the other hand, the ameliorating performance and advantages in Tibetan rule after the economic reform of China have added pressure and created difficulties for the government in exile and foreshadowed the political attitude change of the latter.
In international reality, although the Dalai Lama is good at propagating the Tibetan issue with his charisma and international situations, and successfully internationalized the Tibetan issue during the 1980s and 1990s to push the Chinese Government to initiate contacts and negotiations with him, international reality has changed as time goes by. As the power of China has increased since the turn of the century and it has more need for economic chips at hand, countries around the world began to reduce their support for the Tibetan issue as a result of national benefits and political reality. Further, the full-scaled “modernization” and massive transfusion-like economic aid for Tibet to significantly improve the living standards in the Tibetan autonomous area have made the claims of the Tibetan Government in exile weaker, giving it fewer reasons to make their claims. Facing unfavorable external situations and the ignorance and decline of negotiations over time, the Dalai Lama and his government in exile have gradually changed their political attitude. Therefore, the Dalai Lama finally gave up on independence in 1980 and began promoting the “middle way” in order to seek a “high degree of autonomy,” advocating the Sino-Tibetan dialogs to seek “non-violent” solutions to the Tibetan issue.
However, the Chinese Government shows no mercy to such political attitude change, considering that the “high degree of autonomy” urged by Dalai Lama is merely “a cover for Tibetan independence”. As a result, efforts to promote a Sino-Tibetan summit have been in vain over the past 30 years or so due to the huge conceptual and cognitive gap between both parties and the Tibetan issue remains an open case. While time for Dalai Lama is limited and there is no sign that the Chinese Government will moderate its intransigent attitude, the political attitude of the government in exile has become an even more open question.
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