Eric's Beijing Diary

Very interesting post by a Chinese blogger about the recent French President Sarkozy's decision to meet with the Dalai Lama. Although the Chinese government didn't say directly that they were going boycott French goods, they reported that many Chinese people had threatened to boycott French goods.

I have a very simple solution for this problem. The Chinese government objects strenuously when any national leader meets with the Dalai Lama, but all their protestations actually give him more attention than I think is warranted. The Dalai Lama is not a political leader. He is a religious leader. The only reason he has been able to maintain the status he has is because the overwhelming majority of Tibet is Buddhist. If the government would allow lots and lots of Korean missionaries into Tibet, the situation would change drastically. South Korea has been profoundly influenced by Christianity. There is no way a troublesome Buddhist monk could ever position himself as the leader of the Korean people. South Korea is led by a democratically elected Christian president. If Tibet became even twenty-five per cent Christian, the whole scene would change. The Dalai Lama would then speak for no more than half to three quarters of the Tibetan people, and more and more Tibetans would begin to speak for themselves, which is the way it should be.

Don't get me wrong. There are issues. There definitely are issues, and they need to be addressed. The Han Chinese have not always properly understood the Tibetan people, or paid proper attention to their needs. But the people of Tibet should not have, as their only recourse, an exiled monk with a less than admirable human rights record when he himself was actually in power.