Asia2025: Welcome to Asia2025.

I’m Maryann Keady.

Audio: The pro-Tibet crowd swelled late Tuesday with thousands of demonstrators rallying in downtown San Francisco.

Protestors are using the torch’s only North American stop to shine a light on China’s crackdown on Tibet.

Among the high profile speakers condemning China’s human rights record, actor Richard Gere.

RGere: This torch is going through China, through the world, coopting the idea of harmony to push a political position which is the abuse of not only the Chinese themselves obviously, but the Tibetan people.

Audio: The split is wide open. French President Nicholas Sarkozy said in meetings with his Chinese counterpart, that France will not rule out pulling out of the Olympics if China doesn’t open up dialogue with Tibet.

Audio: The French ultimatum coming after China has refused to relent, turning down all the peaceful dialogue with the Dalai Lama, vowing to smash anti-China forces in Tibet....the fiercest and bloodiest crackdown seen in the recent past.

Asia2025: In this program we look at the unrest in Tibet.

Is this an attempt to pressure China on the eve of the Olympics? And what to make of Chinese claims that the West is behind the violence?

Bennett: It is the soft underbelly of China. It is the one place that probably the Americans feel that they can ... provide a lever against the Chinese government because if you’re seeing this in a strategic context, China is a major global economic threat to the United States.

It’s also a growing military one.

And there are very few areas of real weakness with China at the moment except in some of the western provinces where there is a degree of Muslim resistance and in Tibet which is the one place that the Americans have experience of, the one place that they have connections with, and it’s the one place that the Chinese are distinctly uncomfortable about.

Asia2025: All this and more this week on Asia2025.

Asia2025: The protests in Tibet have certainly changed the celebratory tone of the Beijing Olympics.

Commentary is now focused on China’s human rights record.

We’ve had the Olympic torch procession marred by demonstrations and calls from some countries for a boycott of the games.

But in the strategic scheme of things, is this less about human rights and more about pressuring China in the lead up to the Olympics? Could this lead to more violence on China’s periphery and other separatist activities that could provide a nightmare for the Beijing leadership?

Some of you may not be aware of the historical involvement of the CIA in Tibet or with the Free Tibet movement, but this is a rather well documented relationship. I suggest you pick up John Kenneth Knaus’ Orphans of the Cold War or The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet by Kenneth Conroy and James Morrison, for the historical background to this.

We’re going to look at whether the CIA may have been involved in the recent unrest which may explain some of China’s feverish denunciations of the Dalai Lama and outside forces. And we’re going to talk about what is in it strategically for both China and the West.

So sit back and listen to another side to the Tibet tale currently making the rounds in the mainstream media, here on Asis2025.

RB: The present format of the Free Tibet movement sort of sprang up in the 1980s. It was largely kick-started through covert funding by the CIA using organisations such like ... such as the National Endowment for Democracy. This was established about 1984 by President Regan and has actually admitted receiving funds directly from the CIA. It’s financed the work of the International Campaign for Tibet, the Tibet Fund and the Tibetan Information Network. All three of these are leading anti-Chinese organisations.

Asia2025: Richard Bennett is a UK defence consultant who recently wrote an article for the Asia Times titled ‘Tibet: the Great Game and the CIA’, detailing recent and past links between the CIA and the Free Tibet movement. His article was hardly earth shattering.

Other detailed accounts of this relationship can be seen in books such as Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival by John Kenneth Knaus, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who spent 44 years in the CIA, seven of those years helping direct a Tibetan guerrilla campaign against the Chinese.

The strategic importance of Tibet for China and the West today is an obvious by-product of the new US-China tension. Richard Bennett explains something about the earlier campaigns of the 1950s and ‘60s.

RB: It tended to go on to names like ST Circus and ST Barnham which were CIA codenames. But they trained Tibetans including members of the Dalai Lama’s family in bases in the United States and it was a major campaign.

The Chinese had considerable difficulty in suppressing it and had to use tens of thousands of troops and they lost a large number of soldiers. It was a major attempt to destabilise China at the time.

Don’t forget seeing it in the context, remember Vietnam was starting, the Korean War had just ended. There were lots of reasons why the Americans saw China as a threat to its interest in South-East Asia at the time and in Central Asia. There was a war between India and China, which certainly increased tensions on the Nepalese-Tibetan border.

So there were a lot of reasons why the CIA were very, very, very much involved in the area.

Asia2025: However as Orphans of the Cold War explains, things changed when US President Richard Nixon decided that China was a useful ally against the old Cold War enemy, Russia. So the US embarked upon a new American foreign policy of accommodating China seen in Nixon’s widely publicised visit to the country in 1972.

As a result, assistance to the Tibetan resistance groups was scaled back and abandoned. But now, as often is the case in real politic and geopolitics, things have changed.

It may well be that the CIA is back in Tibet.

RB: When they actually suspended aid to Tibet and the Tibetan movement in the ‘70s, there were reasons for it. There was rapprochement with China, Kissinger and Nixon had been to China and China was being very useful to the Americans. They allowed the CIA to open two signals monitoring bases in China.

But things have changed. Times move on and China is more of a threat to the United States than it was 30 years ago. There’s been the collapse of communism, so old plans get dusted off and Tibet is beginning to be a very useful soft underbelly of Chinese power in Central Asia.

Asia2025: Strategically the area is important for both China and the West. For China it is vulnerable territory that can be used by the West to conduct anti-China activities.

Dibyesh Anand from the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster explains.

DA: If you look at Tibet’s map closely, it lies between mainland China and India, south Asia. Now strategically that is a very crucial because geographically it’s easier or it has been historically easier to go from India or Indian side into Tibet than from mainland China into Tibet.

So strategically since early 20th Century, China started seeing and viewing Tibet as a weak link within China State, Chinese State. And the reason for that is very clear, that before 1904, like in 1904 there was first time a British invasion of Tibet.

Before 1903 and 1904, China or Sino-centric empires did not see Tibet as strategically important geographically. It’s only after the invasion that they imagined or they realised that Tibet is strategically crucial.

So what we have to be very clear that there’s nothing inherent in Tibet’s geographical location that makes it strategically important for China, but the historical experience of being invaded by the British in 1903/1904 that made China aware of the strategic importance of Tibet.

And since then of course and since the formation of PRC in 1945, ’49, sorry, 1949, we realise that Tibet is seen as strategically crucial because it borders with India and China fears that potentially in the future, there might be anti-China activities through the southern site.

Asia2025: But what about the West? How does it help the West project power?

Dibyesh again.

DA: The wait is fairly crucial for the West is not so much in terms of geographical territory but in terms of potentially away, and this is where you have to recognise it, the difference between support for Tibetan cause in the West and what the policy of Western governments are.

The Western governments often focus on human rights, remember that, they focus on the human rights, but if you look at the US foreign policy very closely in 1950s, ‘60s and until early 1970s, the only concern they had in Tibet was how to basically attack PRC.

So the strategic importance of Tibet was in terms of one of the ways in which PRC could be made weak.

Now in, let’s say as China is becoming a great power, potentially maybe some people in the West can see Tibet as a weak link within the rising China. And Tibet is potentially a cause through which China can be weakened.

Asia2025: Richard Bennett.

RB: Well, partly because it is the soft underbelly of China. It is the one place that probably the Americans feel that they can lever the ... provide a lever against the Chinese government because if you’re seeing this in a strategic context, China is a major global economic threat to the United States. It’s also a growing military one.

And there are very few areas of real weakness for China at the moment except in some of the western provinces where there is a degree of Muslim resistance and in Tibet which is the one place that the Americans have experience of, it’s the one place that they have connections with, and it’s the one place that the Chinese are distinctly uncomfortable about.

Asia2025: You’re listening to Asia2025 and we’re looking at the strategic importance of Tibet.

Tibet also has important copper, uranium and water resources. Uranium, of course, is important for China’s military modernisation and nuclear power.

Suisheng Zhao, Director of the East Asian Institute at Denver University explains.

SZ: In terms of water it’s the origin of many peak rivers in China, the Yangtze River and some other rivers, are all originated from Tibetan plateau and so if they lost Tibet, these water resources will be in threat, not only China but also India, the other part of the Himalaya. And so for China, the water resources, Tibet is very, very crucial. In terms of uranium, as you said, those kind of resources, they are definitely from Tibet. So for Chinese nuclear program, Chinese military modernisation program, Tibet is very, very important.

Asia2025: Right, and so of course then, important for it militarily?

SZ: Yeah, of course, militarily. Not only because of that, is also buffer between China and India. These two Asian giants and also future rivals in the great power game of Asia and also in the world in the 21st Century. So Tibet is between these two big powers. From military perspective, Tibet is also very important for the Chinese military.

Asia2025: The sensitivity of the Tibet issue for the Chinese also lies with a possible domino effect that could lead to other provinces breaking away from China with serious political and economic repercussions for the central government.

SZ: It is very important for Chinese government from a political, economic and strategic perspective. Politically, China has maintained its multi-ethnic nation state. It’s a family of 56 nationalities and the Communist Party of China, although is a communist party, but it has based upon ... its legitimacy upon the nationalist credentials to maintain the territorial integrity of the Chinese nation and to maintain the family of 56 nationalities.

Tibet is the largest what they called ethnic minority in the so-called family of the multi-ethnic nationalities. So if they let Tibet go, that legitimacy of the Communist Party, the integrity of the Chinese nation will be in question. And from Chinese perspective, that would have a domino effect. If Tibet is gone, then Mongolia, then how about Xinjiang which has a large Muslim population.

So the legitimacy of the Communist Party, the Chinese government would be in question politically. Chinese population of Han majority is big, but the natural resources and the advancement are all in the ethnic minority areas. In fact, according to the Chinese statistics, you can see that the ethnic minority areas occupies about 64% of the Chinese territory, although they have only about 9% of the population.

So the majority, 91, 92% of the Han Chinese inhabit only 36% of the Chinese land. So from economic and strategic perspective, it’s not possible for the Chinese government to let Tibet and other ethnic minority areas to become independent.

Asia2025: China has lashed out at the Dalai Lama and accused the West of being behind the unrest in Tibet.

There are historical reasons for Chinese suspicion. The Chinese refer to their hundred years of humiliation, a period in Chinese history dating from the first Opium War when European and American forces controlled parts of China and forced unequal treaties on the Chinese including the Protocol of 1901.

This period of Western domination in China is inextricably linked to modern Chinese nationalism and the issue of Tibet today.

Dibyesh Anand explains.

DA: Modern Chinese nationalism emerged in late 19th Century, emerged from this idea of humiliation, that the Han Chinese had a great civilisation for the last 2000 years but they were greatly humiliated by the Western powers, especially the French and the British, and they had to recover from that humiliation.

The treaty signed by the British with Tibet in 1904 was seen as one of the unequal treaties in order to humiliate Chinese psyche. So for modern Chinese nationalism, Tibetans have always been part of it.

And one example you could see from a person, the great person of Sun Yat-sen, Dr Sun Yat-sen, for him, Chinese nationals were essentially five fingers. The five fingers included the Han Chinese, it included the Manchus, the Huis, Hui is a general term they use for the Muslims, the Mongols and the Tibetans. So from the very start of the 20th Century, the conception of Chinese nationalism included Tibetans as part of it. So any attack or any consideration of potentially right to self-determination for Tibetan people, is seen as an attack on Chinese nationalism.

So it’s not only an attack on Chinese State but also on Chinese nationalism. And this is the way they be concerned for that, especially in this year when it’s an Olympic year, when for many Chinese people and not only those who follow the Party very closely, you see for many non-Communist Chinese people also it’s one of the ways in which they can show to the rest of the world that they have become the great power once again, what they were before the Westerners humiliated them in 19th Century.

And the Free Tibet issue as one of the ways in which West might potentially take them back to the early era of humiliation.

Asia2025: But back to the idea that the West may have sponsored this latest unrest and Tibet be part of a pressure strategy to unnerve the peer competitor.

Is it possible and how? Richard Bennett again.

RB: As many people, including local experts like B Ramen, the former Indian Intelligence Officer pointed out, these demonstrations were extremely well organised. And the Chinese Security Services who have a reputation for very, very close surveillance of anything that happens in Tibet, were caught ... well they were caught with their pants down, to put it crudely.

And there is only one way that that would happen, if the planning was done outside of Tibet. Now it’s interesting that a senior Chinese security official only yesterday has indeed claimed that the Tibetan organisations worked these plans out for the unrest in the United States only last year.

Asia2025: What capability has the US or any other ... or the CIA, have to organise such protests in the capital? I mean, how would it do this and does it have major bases nearby, I guess.

RB: Yes, it does. I mean it has full cooperation with certain security organisations both in Nepal and India, but it has a massive infrastructure in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in some of the Central Asian states. Oh, it has the capability alright.

Asia2025: Right. So, I mean it has the capability to come in and organise this. How would that be done? Through radio, through mobile? I mean ...

RB: It would be done by external sources. It would be done by people crossing the border. There’s loads of different ways of doing it. I mean, the United States, the CIA is a very proficient organisation whatever people say, and you’d expect them to be involved, to be honest, I mean it’s in an area that is of supreme importance to the United States. So you will expect them not to be sitting around twiddling their thumbs doing nothing.

Asia2025: But even in the aftermath of the Lhasa riots, it seems the Chinese are not going to budge on the Tibet issue.

While governments in the West call for negotiations with the Dalai Lama over the status of Tibet, the Chinese government has embarked on a fierce campaign to discredit the movement and the Dalai Lama. It’s strengthened its hold on the province and arrested over 900 people.

But can the Chinese military and leadership retain its claim on Tibet?

One thing helping China is a new railway between the Tibetan capital Lhasa and the north-western province of Qinghai.

Richard Bennett explains again.

RB: See it’s part of a dual policy: one, they built an awful lot of airfields so that they could move rapid reaction forces very quickly to any given area, but the one thing that they really had, even though they’d built some roads into the area, is that Tibet is mountainous, but there are some plateau areas.

Now, one of the things that they couldn’t do quickly was to move large quantities of troops with anything like heavy equipment onto the plateau or to Lhasa. With this railway line they can do that, they can actually load tanks up, load armoured vehicles up, load artillery up and actually deploy a substantial heavily armed force rather than rapid reaction forces, rather than paratroopers, rather than more likely armed forces. They can actually move, well I won’t say heavily armoured, but certainly heavily armed units into Tibet at relatively short notice.

Asia2025: Suisheng Zhao.

SZ: So far they have been controlled by the stick and carrot. The Tibetan independence movement has taken advantage of the Olympics, this opportunity, to make some unrest, some kind of riots in this time and Chinese government has taken very, very decisive measures to stop that. At this moment I think at least in surface, they have maintained their control of the Tibet. And I think that’s what they try to do or try to continue before the Olympics.

Asia2025: Dibyesh Anand.

DA: And to Olympics, the government would provide a very solid, a unified self and argue that there’s no genuine grievance here, there’s no genuine problem. The only issue here is they’re backed by some outside forces. They don’t name the West, remember they always say outside forces, encouraging. What would happen beyond Olympics is of course different. I think what we see as changes within Tibet are the changes within Tibet could have meant that greater negotiations with the Dalai Lama, recognising that there are different ways in which we can deal with the Tibetan problem and a genuine solution there.

But my feeling and the fear is that that would require the Communist Party to go back on its own word. Remember that for so long, especially since last 20 years, the Chinese leadership has, under Hu Jintao especially, have gone for demonising the Dalai Lama. Because they have demonised him so much it would almost be a loss of face for them to then negotiate with the Dalai Lama.

And so, we might therefore see the simply reassertion of old kind of policies, making sure that Tibetans are re-educated in the patriotic system. One of the main things which they’re doing it and you might be aware is that Tibetan students who go into Beijing and other parts of China have to sign a declaration and I think it has three aspects. One, they have to say that they have to give their stance to whether they’re likely, basically say that look, how you are unhappy with the Dalai Lama. Second, you have to give the ID details and give the address of your parent. So the idea is that they would be I think re-education, that’s the term they use, a greater patriotic education to make sure that Tibetans somehow forget about the Dalai Lama.

Now of course any scholar of China and Tibet would recognise that these kind of policies ultimately are not going to work.

Asia2025: Well, let’s see what emerges in the next few months as the strategic battle between China and the West heats up.

And that’s it for the program. Next week an interview with Richard Baum, Professor of Political Science at UCLA on the Chinese response to human rights pressure and US-China relations in the lead up to the Olympics.

I’m Maryann Keady.

You’ve been listening to Asia2025.

Thanks for listening.

Have a great week.