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The Dalai Lama, who attracted large crowds in New York this week and is set to be in Central Park this Sunday, is extraordinarily popular in America. The political and spiritual leader of Tibet gets far greater access to the people of America and the corridors of power than the president of Taiwan. While in Washington, the Dalai Lama met President Bush and members of Congress, while Taiwan's president is barely allowed into America. Paradoxically, this disparity in treatment at least in part is due to Taiwan's strength as a distinct society and sovereign Chinese democracy. Tibet, which China invaded in 1950 and has repressed ever since, increasingly depends on its exiles abroad to preserve its religion, culture, and nationhood, and to maintain a democratic government-in-exile. World leaders who care what Beijing's leaders think feel much freer to receive the Dalai Lama, knowing that while China reviles the Dalai Lama, Beijing is confident of its subjugation of Tibet. China's confidence likely also explains Beijing's willingness to receive representatives of the Dalai Lama. True, America has upgraded its policy toward Tibet over the past few years. A special post within the State Department, created initially as an informal deal between Congress and the Clinton administration, was eventually codified in a law on Tibet policy. The Bush administration appointed the highest official yet to the post, Undersecretary Paula Dobriansky. She has even traveled with Mr. Bush to China, while previous holders of the job were barred from the country. China has not allowed any of these officials to visit Tibet itself. Unfortunately, Tibet's improved status within the America-China relationship is mainly cosmetic. American policy has not progressed beyond a carefully worded expression of concern devoid of concrete policy goals. According to a White House spokesman, America is committed to the preservation of Tibet's unique religious, cultural, and linguistic identity, and the protection of the human rights of all Tibetans and to "dialogue" between China and the Dalai Lama. This dialogue, into which Chinese officials have entered with representatives of the Dalai Lama, has few prospects so long as America fails to endorse political rights for Tibet's people - even within the framework of autonomy that the Dalai Lama accepts - in order to guarantee Tibet's survival. Beijing's transfer of ethnic Chinese to Tibet will make Tibetans a minority inside Tibet, if it hasn't already. Reliable statistics are a rarity under Chinese rule. A new railroad connecting Tibet to China's interior will accelerate the process of population transfer and other aspects of China's control. Despite America's stated support for the survival of Tibetan culture and religion, if not their political rights, Mr. Bush did not bring up Tibet when he met the general secretary of the Communist Party and President Hu Jintao in May. China's Tibet policy, in other words, has concrete aims and results, while those who claim to support the Tibetan people have nebulous goals that soon may be lost irrevocably. But there is at least one area where China does not have the upper hand: public relations. Beijing launched a propaganda war "against the Dalai clique and hostile Western forces" at a high-level conference of PRC Tibet experts and propagandists in 2000. New Yorkers may remember being targeted by the ineffectual campaign. A cultural road show called "A Closer Look at China" appeared at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in May 2000 in connection with the former general secretary and President Jiang Zemin's visit to America. The exhibit featured a clumsy effort to show off the very culture Beijing plans to quash. A photograph of the Potala Palace, traditionally the seat of Tibetan government and home of the Dalai Lama, was projected onto a screen while models wearing oddly modified traditional Tibetan clothes strode up and down a runway. Other minorities, like the Uighurs of Xinjiang, also targets of a resettlement campaign and other development initiatives designed to dilute their numbers and cohesion, got similar treatment in the show. Fortunately, Tibet's advocates have more to show for their efforts. Tremendous pressure, lobbying, and publicity brought about American opposition to a World Bank loan that would have paid for the relocation of 58,000 ethnic Chinese farmers to a Tibetan region. There is no reason that with continued activism, and better American leadership, other aspects of China's policy to destroy Tibet cannot be derailed. American policy must move beyond its cramped, unconvincing emphasis on "dialogue" and "identity" to support Tibetans' ability to rule themselves, protect their civilization, and reverse the most corrosive aspects of Chinese rule. The Dalai Lama might just be able to get over being refused a visit to the White House.
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