Times have changed but are no longer strange. Beijing just upped the ante and called the pro democracy protesters terrorist. Hong Kong is a hair closer to becoming the next Tiananmen massacre as China warns of playing with fire and hints at military intervention. United States led by Trump has vowed to escalate trade war with China and as of now both are bleeding sea of red and flirtatious volatility in their major indexes. More so, China’s economy has slowed the most in twenty six years as a direct result of the trade war. The party’s legitimacy is hanging on the slowing economy, waning job growth and the emergence of many ghost towns and the pain of crushed dreams of many migrant workers returning back to their poverty stricken villages.
Even Taiwan is defying China by giving political asylum to students fleeing from Hong Kong. The world and the international community are outraged as of late over the treatment of one million Uighurs and of the Orwellian surveillance state China has become. Universities after universities in the Western Hemisphere are denouncing the Confucius institutes and bursting their balloon of soft power. Countries after countries are finally awakened by China’s predatory loans and their evil design belted around the silk route initiative except for Nepal, one of the poorest country on the face of the earth. Given all of this dynamics, China is certainly in a huge pressure both at home and from outside. But despite all of this, adhering to their ancient Art of War, they are playing their favorite long-wait game to weather out the storm until the US presidential election next year, crossing fingers for Trump to get booted, a scenario very unlikely because the historical nature of the incumbent winning re-election and of the flawed electoral system that’s working for Trump campaigns.
China is also playing their wicked wait game with the issue of Tibet and are eagerly waiting for the aging Dalai Lama to die and along with it suffocate the issue of Tibet once and for all. Many would argue that the issue of Tibet is bigger than the Dalai Lama and I am not debating.
Now when everything seems to be racked up against China, why are the Tibetan and I am shy to call it our “seasonal movement” so quiet. Only noise I hear are the noises of the endless parties and joyful mirth. Are we waiting for March tenth to coincide with the changing dynamics of the world order or are we just waiting for another self painful self immolation to rattle our slumber. It’s a question every Tibetan must ask to themselves. I do and I am doing my part to write something to wake us up. Albeit passive activism but at least I am not sleeping upon a prayer.
China has a twenty year plan, thirty year plan and fifty year plan to propel China’s growth. We and our democratic government in exile, a government of the people but not necessarily chosen by the people strive for fifty year plan on mere sustainability and resilience. Our vision parallels theirs although the only big difference being that in the next fifty years, we will all have become extinct like dinosaurs and found in some fossilized remains.
Time is of the essence here and we are running out of it. Fifty years later Tibetan as an identity will remain, Tibetan Buddhism will flourish just like Guru Rinpoche prophesied when Tibetan will have spread around the world like a broken rosary but the concept of Tibet that is fast eroding, Tibet as a nation that is still visible on some rare maps will be long evaporated before we even realize, pretty much like the destroyed sand mandala which can be built again though but not this mandala of the home of the Tibetan people.
What we need is a plan now. A plan that has no room for compromise because we have compromised enough for decades now. We need a plan to retract on the right path, a path that will be led by our collective conscience and not superseded by religious beliefs, a plan that will keep China alerted on their knees, a plan that will restore our claim for full sovereignty, a plan that will have all the three provinces as one Tibet, a plan to change our political path. A plan to make the Chinese fearful of Tibet’s dominance in the past.
We can not plan only on preserving our cultures and tradition alone all the time. That should be the primary objective on our secondary plan. The Native American still have their cultures intact after hundreds of years. Our main primary goal should be to achieve and reclaim our independence. By the way, why are the victims of a stolen home so afraid to even talk about claiming it back.
We need a plan to connect with the real aspirations and sentiments of the Tibetans inside Tibet and I don’t think just the retracing of footsteps by His Holiness back to Potala palace can bring about a closure to our cause. Indeed it will bring a spiritual Hollywood text book end to a story but the pain will always remain deep and rooted.
What we need is a plan to seek more than the assurances from the United States. A plan more than the candy aids we receive from the USAID to put us into eternal cyclical help and in the meantime under the cover of their financial help, the real issue of Tibet is buried under their political rug. We need more than issue of Human Rights to be synonymous to the Tibetan cause.
We need the leading nations of the world to restore their historical legitimacy of once acknowledging Tibet as an independent country on congressional and parliamentarians ground. We need a plan to make and restore confidence in nations of the world that once recognized Tibet as an independent country to reinstate their past recognition.
We need the US to engage more than their covert mission of helping the Tibetan guerrilla fighters and leaving them in the middle of nowhere through the sixties. We need a plan to engage the US led United Nations members in reframing the whole construction of the Security Council and make laws to negate and oust rogue nations like China to take the United Nations hostage with their veto powers.
We need a plan, a greater plan and I know that sixty years of His Holiness sowing seeds a vision of creating infrastructure for education in the hopes of newer generation with brighter minds and stronger leadership can step up to carry the mantle and not list in their own pursuit of success and ferry this ship that’s bound to sink, unless we steer on a new course, new direction.
The Chinese are playing their wait game. They love to do that. That’s their Art of War. We need to play our game and not flow like river over their designed landscape.
We need courage, solitude and bravery displayed by the students of Hong Kong. We need courage of our pawos to inflame our fire trappped inside. The fear to live like subjugated Tibetans, the fear to live like the oppressed Ughuirs is what the students in Hong Kong are fighting against.
I know a lot of you are itching to write comments. If my conscience do not align to yours this article is not for you. I respect all paths, all ideology. But please on this article do not rebuttal on the failed ideology. It’s too much going to and forth. Just mere saber rattling and nothing conducive. We have all tried this for decades now and I will let decades of failures speak for itself.
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