Asiaweek - Hong Kong, April 4, 1997

Journey to Controversy

By Alejandro Reyes and Laurence Eyton / Taipei

WHILE BEIJING'S LEADERS WERE busy keeping U.S. Vice President Al Gore entertained last week, they must surely have had the corners of their eyes trained on another traveler on a historic journey. The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, arrived in Taiwan's southern city of Kaohsiung on March 22 for a six- day visit billed as a private religious event. Chinese officials denounced the trip as a political crusade to split the motherland. Before the Nobel Peace Prize laureate had even left the island, which Beijing regards as a renegade province, one report later denied claimed China was planning military exercises similar to maneuvers held soon after Taiwan Presi-dent Lee Teng-hui visited the U.S. in 1995. The mainland did threaten to shelve direct shipping links between China and Taiwan expected to get under way this month.

Beijing has long been concerned about the independence movement in Taiwan, accusing Lee of being a closet secessionist. The president's high-wire balancing act, pursuing a wider international profile for Taiwan while insisting he remains firmly committed to eventual reunification with the mainland, has given cross-strait ties a case of vertigo. As with Lee, Beijing has never hesitated to demonize the Dalai Lama, branding him a counter-revolutionary and a threat to China's sovereignty over Tibet. The revelation by Master Ching Hsin, leader of Taiwan's Buddhist Association, that the government asked him to arrange the Dalai Lama's visit has aggravated matters. Apparently, the idea originated with Lee himself.

Still, the Dalai Lama, his hosts and the Taiwan authorities were sticking to the line that the holy man was purely on a private mission. At a press conference soon after landing, the Tibetan leader told organizers that he did not want his visit to embarrass anybody. But while he turned down an invitation to address Taiwan's legislature, the Dalai Lama had brief meetings with Premier Lien Chan and Interior Minister Lin Feng-cheng and was expected to sit down with Lee supposedly to discuss only spiritual issues on March 27, before returning to his exile home in India.

Ironically, both Taiwan and the mainland share the same general official position on Tibet. To bolster its claim to be the legitimate government of all of China, Taipei continues to maintain the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commis-sion, an ultra-conservative cabinet-level body that is supposed to be administering both territories. The Commission has been bitterly opposed to what it regards as the Dalai Lama's pro-Tibetan independence policies and even finances dissident anti-Dalai movements among Tibetan exiles. Its hardline position had previously made it impossible for the Tibetan leader to visit. Clearly, Lee's decision to allow the trip is a measure of how easily the island's first native-born leader and directly elected president rides roughshod over conservatives who object to his mainland policy.

But Lee may have gone too far by Beijing's reckoning. Cross-strait ties had appeared to be warming with the recent conclusion of an agreement on limited direct shipping links and the decision by China to return to Taiwan a journalist who recently hijacked a plane to the mainland. Last week, Tang Shubei of the China's semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait said that cross-strait talks suspended after Lee's 1995 U.S. trip would not resume until Taipei ceased its promotion of independence. It must first abandon its splittist activities before dialogue can begin. Li Ching-ping of Taiwan's Straits Ex-change Foundation countered that Taipei had never conducted separatist activities. We have insisted on the one-China principle, but reunification will not be reached under the rule of the People's Republic.

For his part, the Dalai Lama was trying his own hand at diplomacy, offering again to hold talks with China without pre-conditions. All he wanted for Tibet, he said, was a "one-country, two-systems" style of autonomy similar to the concept under which Hong Kong will be administered from July 1 this year. But Beijing isn't biting. "The Dalai Lama says he doesn't want independence, but he continues his separatist threats," says Foreign Ministry official Cui Tiankai. "He lacks sincerity." With Beijing riled, the question is whether cross-strait ties are heading for a chill and perhaps another round of mainland missile testing.