GermanForeignPolicy.com
[See also Strate­gies of Attri­tion (II) and Strate­gies of Attri­tion (III).]

BEIJING/LHASA/BERLIN
(Own report) — The Ger­man chan­cel­lor is rein­forc­ing Berlin’s spe­cial rela­tion­ships to Chi­nese sep­a­ratists, in spite of Beijing’s mas­sive protests. The Dalai Lama had talks in the Ger­man Chan­cellery, for the first time, Sun­day, Sept. 23. He is the leader of a self-proclaimed Tibetan exile gov­ern­ment, with its head­quar­ters in India, which is call­ing for the seces­sion of Tibet from the Peo­ples Repub­lic of China or at least spe­cial rights in accor­dance with the Ger­man model of “auton­omy.” The Dalai Lama is a west­ern ally, help­ing to weaken Bei­jing and ham­per its rise to the sta­tus of world power. For decades he has been enjoy­ing the cross-party sym­pa­thy in Ger­many and is receiv­ing sup­port from con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­als and Greens alike. Still his meet­ing with Angela Merkel has been met with crit­i­cism, because busi­ness cir­cles fear retal­ia­tory actions on the part of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment will have a neg­a­tive effect on their busi­ness. Ger­man strate­gies of attri­tion against Bei­jing, their his­tor­i­cal pre­cur­sors in the first half of the 20th cen­tury and the scenes of cur­rent mea­sures, are the themes of a series of arti­cles that german-foreign-policy.com began Mon­day Sept. 24.

With his visit to the Ger­man Chan­cel­lor, the Dalai Lama crowned his sev­eral weeks of tour­ing Europe. Sub­se­quent to his stops in Spain and Por­tu­gal, the self-ordained Tibetan Exile ruler met with the chan­cel­lor of Aus­tria. Over the past few days he has toured sev­eral of the Ger­man fed­eral states. In Mun­ster (North Rhein West­phalia) he was awarded the hon­orary doc­tor title of the Uni­ver­sity. In Hesse he met with the state’s prime min­is­ter, Roland Koch. As with his pre­vi­ous vis­its — the last being in July in Ham­burg — the Dalai Lama was greeted with cross-party expres­sions of sym­pa­thy. He is expected to return to Ger­many for sev­eral major events in May 2008.

Sup­port
Indi­cat­ing the effects of Ger­man behav­ior, Bei­jing has responded to the trip of the Dalai Lama, and par­tic­u­larly to his audi­ence with Chan­cel­lor Merkel. The Tibetan dig­ni­tary leads an exile gov­ern­ment, based in Dharam­sala (India) and lays claim to con­trol over Chi­nese ter­ri­tory (“Greater Tibet”). Even though orig­i­nally the demand was for Tibetan national sov­er­eignty, the Dalai Lama, in the mean­time, claims to also be sat­is­fied with com­pre­hen­sive rights of auton­omy. “These Tibetan demands for reli­gious and cul­tural auton­omy are sup­ported by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment” con­firmed Thomas Steg last Friday.[1] Bei­jing points to its rights of sov­er­eignty and reserves for itself — in accor­dance to its own dis­cre­tion and with­out the inter­fer­ence of for­mer colo­nial pow­ers — the grant­ing of auton­omy for minori­ties within its borders.

Ger­man Model
The role model for the rights of auton­omy, that the Dalai Lama is demand­ing from Bei­jing, is pat­terned on the Ger­man eth­nic model “Volks­grup­pen­rechte” (the rights of eth­nic minor­ity groups). In the North­ern Ital­ian autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige (South Tyrol) this is in force and has done noth­ing toward end­ing efforts toward seces­sion. Already in 1993 an assis­tant of the Euro­pean Acad­emy Bozen, in Alto Adige, con­tacted the “for­eign min­is­ter” of the Tibetan exile government.[2] This acad­emy, that has an ad hoc “Volks­grup­pen­recht”, Insti­tute was founded with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the for­eign min­istry of Germany.[3] The Dalai Lama per­son­ally vis­ited Bolzano in 1997. Still dur­ing the 90s, the Tibetan exile gov­ern­ment began con­sul­ta­tions with the Euro­pean Acad­emy on the ques­tion of “Volks­grup­pen­recht”. “South Tyrol has def­i­nitely the char­ac­ter of a role model for Tibet” explained the Tibetan exile ruler dur­ing his sec­ond visit to Bolzano in 2005.[4]

National Flag
The Dalai Lama, whose demands for auton­omy and seces­sion could per­ma­nently weaken the People’s Repub­lic of China, is enjoy­ing cross-party sup­port in Ger­many. The Green Party was among the first to take up the Tibetan cause in the polit­i­cal arena. It was the first to put pres­sure on Bei­jing with a res­o­lu­tion on “human rights vio­la­tions in Tibet” in the Ger­man national par­lia­ment (Bun­destag) (Octo­ber 15, 1987). Two years later, on April 20 to 21, 1989, the Greens orga­nized an inter­na­tional hear­ing on “Tibet and Human Rights” that was held in the SPD con­fer­ence room in Bonn and received wide atten­tion. Roland Koch (CDU), who, today, is the prime min­is­ter of Hesse has also been engaged in the cause for Tibet since the mid 1980’s. In 1995, he orga­nized the Dalai Lama’s first appear­ance in the Hesse par­lia­ment. Ten years later, as the Tibetan dig­ni­tary received the Hesse Peace Prize, the Tibetan national flag, which is not rec­og­nized, was fly­ing at the fed­eral state chan­cellery in Wiesbaden.[5]

Strate­gies
The Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation, closely affil­i­ated to the Ger­man lib­eral FDP party, began its exten­sive Tibet activ­i­ties in the early 1990’s. Since 1991 it has been coun­sel­ing the Tibetan exile gov­ern­ment “on all ques­tions of polit­i­cal education”.[6] Together with the exile gov­ern­ment, whose head­quar­ters is in India, the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation orga­nizes inter­na­tional con­fer­ences on Tibet. The sec­ond con­fer­ence, held in Bonn in 1996, led to diplo­matic fall­out, cul­mi­nat­ing in the clos­ing of the foundation’s Bei­jing office. It has yet to be reopened. The last con­fer­ence took place in Brus­sels last Mai. At the invi­ta­tion of the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation, more than 300 par­tic­i­pants, arriv­ing from over 50 coun­tries, dis­cussed “human rights” and “strate­gies of Tibetan exiles’”.[7] Accord­ing to the foun­da­tion, it was “the most polit­i­cal” con­fer­ence on Tibet ever: “This was also due to the oppor­tu­ni­ties that the Olympic Games, to be held next year in China, open to the Tibetans and which were also exam­ined in Brussels.”

Risky
The Ger­man Chancellor’s offer to hold talks with the Dalai Lama is obvi­ously one such “oppor­tu­nity”. This invi­ta­tion caused hefty dis­cus­sions in the For­eign Min­istry and pro­voked resent­ment in busi­ness cir­cles. Ger­man busi­ness­men fear a loss of busi­ness, because of China’s self-assured retal­i­a­tion. As an ini­tial reac­tion, Bei­jing called off nego­ti­a­tions on patent pro­tec­tion for Ger­man goods. Other retal­ia­tory mea­sures are expected. Accord­ing to the Direc­tor of Research for the Ger­man Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions (DGAP), Chan­cel­lor Merkel’s meet­ing with the Dalai Lama is a “seri­ous for­eign pol­icy faux-pas in a sub­or­di­nate conflict”.[8] In Berlin it was a rule that the chan­cel­lor vis­its Bei­jing with busi­ness del­e­ga­tions, and con­tacts to Tibet are main­tained below the high­est polit­i­cal lev­els. Chan­cel­lor Kohl’s visit to Tibet, in 1987, is exem­plary. He defied “human rights” demands and fol­lowed the course of Ger­man export inter­ests. Accom­pa­nied by numer­ous busi­ness­men, he met the Chi­nese gov­er­nor in Lhasa — only a few weeks after the US-Congress had passed a strongly worded Tibet res­o­lu­tion and amid strong protest of an anti-China public.

Pow­der Keg
In meet­ing the Dalai Lama, the Chan­cellery is tak­ing a major risk. As one hears in Berlin, Bei­jing is prob­a­bly avoid­ing any con­flict with Ger­many and Ger­man firms, imme­di­ately pre­ced­ing the Olympic Games. The oppor­tu­nity for inten­si­fy­ing sup­port for Tibetan sep­a­ratism with­out risks are there­fore grow­ing. And this, it is said, is quite desir­able. As Roland Koch, the prime min­is­ter of Hesse, is said to have learned dur­ing his
trip to Tibet last July, the chances are grow­ing to inten­sify the pres­sure on the People’s Repub­lic of China and Bei­jing is wor­ried that if the Tibetan dig­ni­tary (72) dies, rebel­lions could break out in Tibet and in other national minor­ity areas. Accord­ing to Koch, Chi­nese gov­ern­ment cir­cles are speak­ing of the dan­ger of Tibet becom­ing a “pow­der keg” [9] with seri­ous con­se­quences. “If it doesn’t work out good there (in Tibet, the author) it could have reper­cus­sions in Xin­jiang and Inner Mon­go­lia” rejoices the Dalai Lama with the two other poten­tial seces­sion­ist regions in mind: “after all, these three autonomous regions stretch over half of the Chi­nese territory”.[10]
In the fol­low­ing issues, german-foreign-policy.com will report on how Ger­man for­eign pol­icy, in 1930’s and 1940’s, through evok­ing so-called rights of auton­omy and other means of pres­sure, sought to cre­ate a Tibetan-Mongolian fed­er­a­tion, under Ger­man Japan­ese hegemony.

[1] Regierung­s­pressekon­ferenz vom 21. September

[2] Endzeit am Dach der Welt; ff. Südtiroler Wochen­magazin 28.07.2005

[3] see also Minderheitenrechte

[4] Dalai Lama in Bozen: “Südtirol als Autonomie-Modell”; www.stol.it 31.07.2005

[5] see also Reise­fieber and Druck ausüben

[6] see also Die Tibetfrage

[7] Dalai Lama sagt ab — Ger­hardt kri­tisiert Bel­gien; www.fnst-freiheit.org

[8] Krise zwis­chen Peking und Berlin; Süd­deutsche Zeitung 21.09.2007

[9] Roland Koch rech­net mit Gesprächen zwis­chen der chi­ne­sis­chen Regierung und dem Dalai
Lama; Focus 22.07.2007

[10] “China mis­cht sich auch in Deutsch­lands Angele­gen­heiten ein”; Süd­deutsche Zeitung 21.09.2007