It’s not hard to understand China’s angry reaction to President Obama’s meeting yesterday with the Dalai Lama. Beijing claims that Tibet’s spiritual leader is a “separatist,” but he has never demanded independence. Instead, the Dalai Lama has become a living symbol of ideals that China, for all its burgeoning strength, deeply fears: human rights, free expression, religious liberty and democracy.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is unquestionably a thorn in Beijing’s side. Since being forced into exile in 1959, he has been a gentle but relentless opponent of China’s attempts to suppress Tibetan cultural and spiritual identity. The “simple Buddhist monk,” as he calls himself, won the Nobel Peace Prize for espousing nonviolence in the struggle for Tibetan autonomy within China.
The Dalai Lama is cut from the same mold as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., great moral leaders who rose to prominence by fusing the spiritual and the political. But where Gandhi and King couched their demands for justice in values honored (if in the breach) by their oppressors, the Dalai Lama confronts a Chinese regime that rejects liberal ideals as exclusively Western. On the contrary, it vaunts the superiority of “Asian values” of order, social harmony, and deference to authority.
Of course, the Dalai Lama’s rejection of violence, his refusal to foment ethnic hatred, and his calls for dialogue with Beijing, are prudent as well as grounded in the values of Tibetan Buddhism. After all, there are only six million Tibetans living in close proximity to over a billion Han Chinese. But as Carl Gershman noted today at a packed ceremony at the Library of Congress, the Dalai Lama’s approach also has “preserved the moral integrity” of the Tibetan cause and left open the door to a future reconciliation with a less insecure, more tolerant Chinese government.
Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, presented the Dalai Lama with NED’s Democracy Service Medal. The award is intended to highlight what Gershman called an underappreciated dimension of the Dalai Lama’s work – his staunch support for democracy. Over the years, Tibetan exiles in India have developed representative institutions and held elections to select political leaders. Such efforts, of course, only aggravate China more by giving the lie to its claims that democracy isn’t for Asians. In this sense, Gershman noted, Tibet is not a mere sideshow; its fate is linked to that of China’s intrepid dissidents and democracy activists.
They too deserve recognition and moral support from U.S. political leaders, even if that too chafes China’s ruling elites.
