China's Far West provinces (inc. Tibet)

[Ray]

tequila,

It is in China's strategic interest to develop Tibet and Xinjiang.

It may also interest all that Urumchi has a Han population that is more than the Uighurs, who are the locals.

The Chinese have not given up their claims on Outer Mongolia or Vladivostok and its neighbourhood.

Their mentality is expansionist, to quote Communist terminology.

Economic development alone does not satiate sub nationalism or religious freedom. The stomach must also have an equal satisfaction as the mind. Crass commercialism alone is not happiness.

Unlike other religions, Tibetan Buddhism is very ingraned in the Tibetan mind. Ridiculous as it may seem,but they do consider the Dalai Lama as a God. Insult to the Dalai Lama is as dangerous as insulting God.

The Tibetans having lived a rough life in the harsh area of Tibet are people who know struggle is a part of existence and they are not soft in mind and soul as others,

Therefore, the issue is not that simple for solution.

The Chinese may claim that it is a conspiracy of the US, India and the West instigating the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans, but the truth is that they require no instigation! They sincerely are serious about the issue!

[tequila]

I agree with most of what you said, except about the PRC's supposed claims to Vladivostok and Outer Mongolia. I'd like to see official PRC government statements about that one - I happen to know that the PRC has signed treaties resolving all territorial claim issues with Mongolia, the latest I believe in 1994.

Regarding Tibet, unfortunately I don't think it's going to matter. China views Tibet as a defining issue of national sovereignty without the complications of Taiwan, and there is absolutely no national desire to compromise on the issue. Like India and Kashmir, this one will likely be unresolved for decades to come.

[Ray]

Here is something that a Chinese scholar has to say.

Tibet wasn’t ours, says Chinese scholar

HONG KONG: A leading Chinese historian and a veteran of the committee that advises on official Chinese history textbooks has broken step with the official Chinese line on historical sovereignty over Tibet and said that to claim that the ancient Buddhist kingdom “has always been a part of China” would be a “defiance of history”.

Read more at:
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1081523

And here is a brief history of Tibet

BRIEF HISTORY OF TIBET

A brief account of Tibet, its origin, how it grew into a great military power and carved for itself a huge empire in Central Asia, then how it renounced the use of arms to practise the teachings of the Buddha and the tragic conseguences that it suffers today as a result of the brutal onslaught of the Communist Chinese forces is given in the following passages.

http://www.friends-of-tibet.org.nz/tibet.html