A Chinese government official has said Barack Obama should understand China’s opposition to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan independence because he is a black president who lauded Abraham Lincoln’s role in America abolishing slavery.
Qin Gang, a foreign ministry spokesperson, likened slavery in America to Tibetan society under the Dalai Lama, and Lincoln’s opposition to the secession of southern states to China’s opposition to Tibetan independence.
Tibetan groups were quick to respond by claiming the mantle of Lincoln for their own cause.
The comments came four days before Obama arrives in China during his first tour of the Asia-Pacific region. He has been under domestic pressure for declining to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington last month, but has said he will meet the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader in the future.
Beijing accuses the Buddhist leader of “splittism” and says that prior to Communist party rule Tibetans lived as serfs. The Dalai Lama says he seeks only meaningful autonomy for the region and would not return to the feudal system, which Tibetan campaign groups say cannot in any case be likened to slavery.
Speaking at a regular press briefing, Qin said Obama had observed that he could not have become president without the efforts of his 19th century predecessor.
“He is a black president and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln’s major significance for that movement. Lincoln played an incomparable role in protecting the national unity and territorial integrity of the United States.”
Qin said China hoped that “more than any other foreign leader” Obama would grasp China’s stance on national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In a briefing on the trip this week, Jeffrey Bader, the senior director for East Asian affairs at the US national security council, said he had “every reason to expect that the issue of Tibet will come up”.
“The president has made clear that he is prepared to meet with the Dalai Lama in the future at the appropriate time. He met with him in the past when he was a senator and he will meet with him again.”
Qin said Beijing opposed any meetings between the Dalai Lama and foreign leaders and that the issue was among China’s core concerns.
Matt Whitticase of the Free Tibet campaign said Beijing’s claims would backfire. “By trying to be clever China has underlined its inability to see what true freedom looks like,” he said. “As a democratically elected president Abraham Lincoln would have instinctively opposed China’s enslavement of the Tibetan people and supported the Dalai Lama as the legitimate leader of the Tibetan people.
“Tibetans constantly called for the Dalai Lama’s return last year during their protests. President Obama is smart enough to realise this and is well aware the US Congress has passed a law which states Tibet’s true representatives are the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile, as recognised by the Chinese people.”
This year, China declared a new Tibetan holiday called serfs’ emancipation day to mark the 50th anniversary of China’s defeat of a pro-independence uprising. Melvyn Goldstein, the author of A History of Modern Tibet, said at the time that a system similar to Europe’s manorial one had existed in Tibet before the 1950s. Bonded peasants worked on land owned by nobles or monasteries without wages, living on what they grew on tenement land.
“The Dalai Lama says the system was not good and he was happy to get rid of it,” Goldstein said. “[But] it was not like serfdom in Russia, selling people here and there.” – guardian.co.uk