Ottawa, Nov. 1 (CNA) A Canadian expert on Tibet said Saturday he is hopeful that the Tibet issue will be settled in the long run because "fundamentally [mainland] China itself has to change."

Ronald Schwartz, professor of sociology at the Memorial University in Newfoundland, said the hybrid system the Chinese Communists are attempting to practice now will eventually be found to be "unworkable."

He was referring to the system that on the one hand allows greater economic freedom but on the other hand tries to control the society through the apparatus of a Stalinist totalitarian state.

During an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., he was asked "What is it going to take for [mainland] China to ease up on Tibet?" The CBC said mainland Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States and several movies on Tibet have aroused great interest in Tibet.

Schwartz, who has written a book titled "Circle of Protest: Political Ritual in the Tibetan Uprising," observed that the Chinese Communist's political system will have to change.

"The [mainland] Chinese government will have to address the concerns of its own people for greater freedom, for greater political rights. And in the long run, Tibet likewise will benefit from that," he predicted.

"That's where I see the real hope lies in the future," the professor said. But in the short run, he said it is "absolutely essential that one maintain a kind of concern and focus on issues like Tibet, trying to accomplish as much as possible, trying to constantly remind the [Communist] Chinese that this is a problem that needs to be addressed."

Most important of all, the world should try "to ensure that Tibetan culture, Tibetan way of life and even the Tibetan language can survive until the time when the situation is more agreeable," he stressed.

Will the Clinton administration's appointment of a coordinator to oversee the Tibetan issue make a difference? "Well, yes and no," replied Schwartz with a smile.

The coordinator was named actually in response to congressional legislation expressing grave concern over the general situation of human rights in Tibet and in the mainland as well, he said, noting that there is a great deal of support for Tibet in the US Congress and throughout the Western world.

On the other hand, he pointed out that the Clinton government's position on human rights has not really changed over the past few years. "If anything, Clinton has accelerated the kinds of deal-making that has been going on with the [mainland] Chinese, obviously to promote US business interests," he remarked.

In comparison with this kind of deal-making, issues of human rights "of course always take second place," he said.

The professor told of an incident in December 1988, when he and several other Western scholars were visiting Tibet. He witnessed a demonstration in Lhasa:

"In fact, it was International Human Rights Day. A group of monks and nuns and lay people had organized an entirely peaceful demonstration in the center of Lhasa. As they marched out into the square, they were met by a platoon of Chinese People's Armed Police who had been flown in, in fact, from Sichuan province.

"The military simply opened fire on this group of demonstrators, and several were killed and a number were injured and everyone was quite literally running for their lives."

The reaction of about a couple dozen of Westerners in the crowd who witnessed it, "I think was the same as my reaction: This was horrendous. And all of us felt like we had an obligation to tell the world about what we had seen," he said. (By S. C. Chang)