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China upset at America hosting the Dalai Lama
Putin's visit to Iran isn't the only diplomatic move causing an uproar. The Dalai Lama has a meeting with Bush today, marking the first time a sitting U.S. president will speak to the Dalai Lama in public. Bush will be awarding the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award. Needless to say - China isn't happy.
Chinese officials in Tibet expressed fury at the announcement of the Congressional award.
Tibet's Communist Party Secretary of Tibet, Zhang Qingli, lambasted the exiled spiritual leader for trying to "split the motherland".
"We are furious," he said. "If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world." BBC
The absurd view of Zhang Qingli is standard in the Chinese government. The rest of the world views the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader promoting peace - the Chinese government sees him as a tyrant whose sole purpose is to split the nation of China.
Tibet has been under Beijing's rule since 1951, when troops from the newly formed Communist government moved in and ended a period of self-rule that had flourished while the rest of China was in turmoil. The Dalai Lama, a temporal as well as spiritual leader, led resistance to the imposition of Chinese authority, with assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency, until he was forced to flee over the Himalayas to India in 1959. WP
I can't help but remember the Final Jeopardy! question that asked for one of the two landlocked countries in the Himalayas, and the man who responded with the largest and most famous: Tibet. He was marked wrong after Jeopardy! explained that Tibet was not -technically - a country. What they wanted was either Bhutan or Nepal. In that moment Jeopardy! was taking a safe political position, and many people were outraged over the acceptance of the Chinese occupation. But as Jeopardy! pointed out - it was just sticking with U.S. policy.
Aside from Jeopardy! and the occasional documentary, the Tibetan question has slipped out the limelight. However, with the recent uprisings in Myanmar against the Junta there is refreshed interest in the Tibetan struggle. America isn't the first major nation to honor the Dalai Lama, but it is still an important moment where the US chooses peace over power - for once.
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