The Dalai Lama delivers an address about world peace in Kolkata, India. (Hindustan Times / Getty)
The annual prayer breakfast being held in Washington D.C. on Thursday has sparked a stern warning from China after confirming the Dalai Lama as an honored guest. The February 5 event will mark President Obama’s first public meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader-in-exile, whom China has long lambasted as an anti-Beijing separatist. China’s foreign ministry spokesman implored the U.S. to consider its relationship with China and “appropriately handle the issue on the basis of the overall condition of bilateral relations.”
Controversy over the status of the semi-autonomous Tibet has long plagued Beijing. The ethnically, religiously and culturally distinct region asserts a history markedly separate from the rest of the country, whereas China counters that Tibet has been under its purview for centuries. The Tibetan Dalai Lama fled to India following a failed anti-government uprising in 1959, and has been in exile ever since. Many Chinese officials thus regard the Dalai Lama as a cudgel of Indian power as well as a symbol of China’s historic vulnerability to ethnic separatism: minority populations like the Uyghur Muslims and Mongols have also challenged Beijing authority.
While China maintains a predictably hard line on Tibet, it’s unclear whether they continue to take the threat of secession seriously. Radical Tibetans openly support outright independence, but the Dalai Lama has consistently campaigned only for the autonomy he claims his people are denied in practice. This situation seems to be livable for China, who has engaged with the Dalai Lama in private talks. For its part, Tibet seems happier to be part of China in recent years, since stepped-up investments have had an undeniable blossoming effect on the local economy. Furthermore, one significant geopolitical threat that made Tibet so crucial has changed: China’s warming relationship with India has made a defensive foothold in Tibet’s Himalayan mountains seem less strategically urgent. Long regarded as a buffer between China and India, Tibet may now be thought of as more of a bridge. China is still a long way from accepting the idea of a sovereign Tibet — but India is highly unlikely to risk a $20 billion investment pledge from China by stoking the flames of ethnic conflict.
If China’s ire about the prayer breakfast seems unrelated to tension with Tibet or India, it may boil down to geopolitical rivalry with the U.S. The two powers are uneasy allies, and have much to distrust in each other. It seems likely that the statement about Tibet is intended as a thinly veiled way of calling out the U.S. This indirect criticism mirrors that which China leveled at Obama during his meetings last week with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi: tellingly, Chinese press coverage of India reverted quickly to praise after Obama’s departure.
The public show of friendship between Obama and the Dalai Lama is certainly an embarrassment to China, if not a matter of strategic urgency. But in an unspoken competition for global dominants, these affronts don’t go ignored.
