The Chinese media appears to be toning down its strident anti-India rhetoric after it failed to thwart the Dalai Lama's currently underway visit to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. Photo Credit: PRNewsfotoNovember 09, 2009, (Sawf News) - The Chinese media appears to be toning down its strident anti-India rhetoric after it failed to thwart the Dalai Lama's currently underway visit to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh.
A recent unsigned article on Sino-Indian relations in the Party-owned "People's Daily" has adopted a positive tone.
Here is an extract from the article, the full text of which can be seen at B Raman's blog.
"Generally speaking, Sino-Indian relations witnessed smooth development over the past decades, but some pending issues and unnecessary misunderstanding have plagued bilateral ties. It is of vital importance to combat various pressures and challenges through collaboration. Media from both countries should play a constructive role, creating a healthy environment to facilitate public opinion. China and India, the two neighbors with the world's largest population, are forging ahead towards peace and development, which is the common wish of both leaders and people."
The Dalai Lama arrived in Arunachal Pradesh on November 8 on a four day visit, his fifth to the state in the past fifty years, after a concerted Chinese media and diplomatic campaign designed to unnerve New Delhi into stopping the visit failed to yield results. (The Chinese refer to Dalai Lama as a splittist, which sounds funny enough to be taken as a joke.)
Upon arrival, the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people referred to the Chinese opposition to his visit to Arunachal Pradesh, scoring a devastating political point by insisting his visit to the world's largest Buddhist monastery outside of Lhasa was non-political.
"It's usual for China to oppose my visit. It's baseless to say my trip is anti-China. My visit is not political at all," the 74-year-old leader said after prayers at the famed Tawang monastery.
"Wherever I go, I have two objectives: To promote human values, and promote harmony," he added.
His Holiness, who fled Tibet also referred to past Chinese attempts to woo him and have him return to Tibet.
According to him, the Chinese first contacted with him in 1980, outlining five conditions if he wished to return to Tibet. "They offered to send an envoy to Delhi to take me back, but I turned them down."
"The issue is not my going back (to Tibet). It is the well-being of six million Tibetans," he said soon after his arrival.
Beijing re-established contact in 1993, and again in 2002. "They made me a fresh offer to return," the Dalai Lama said. "But my reply was the same."
The Dalai Lama is also scheduled to visit the monastery town of Bomdila and the state capital, Itanagar.
The Dalai Lama last visited Tawang in 2003.
Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh. Photo Credit: UT AustinTawang
Tawang lies at the heart of India's border dispute with China in the eastern sector which stems from Chinese claim to sovereignty over of Tibet which it forcibly occupied of the country in 1951.
India recognizes Tibet as an autonomous region of China which in the past exercised suzerainty over the Himalayan kingdom.
The Tawang monastery, built in 1681, is located 550 km northeast of Guwahati, at a height of 8,750 feet.
China is just 23 miles away; Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, 316 miles; and Beijing, 2,676 miles.
Tawang is a thickly forested area of white stupas and steep, terraced hillsides that is home to the Monpa people, who practice Tibetan Buddhism, speak a language similar to Tibetan and once paid tribute to rulers in Lhasa.
The Sixth Dalai Lama was born here in the 17th century. The current Dalai Lama stopped in Tawang when he fled Tibet in 1959.
Following its occupation of Tibet, China refused to recognize a 1914 border settlement inked in Simla between the erstwhile Tibet government and the British who then ruled India.
A Chinese delegation, led Chen I-fan, initially participated in the negotiations leading toe the Simla Accord. Chen I-fan even initialed a draft accord and a map laying down the McMahon line which acknowledged Chinese suzerainty over Tibet. Later, the Chinese pulled out of the negotiations and the British and Tibetan delegations signed a bilateral accorded with a note denying the Chinese any privileges under the accord.
Effectively, Britain and China de-recognized Chinese suzerainty over Tibet.
The border delineated under the Simla Accord was referred to as the McMahon Line, after Sir Henry McMahon, foreign secretary of British India and the chief negotiator of the convention.
The 550 miles (890 km) McMahon Line, extending from Bhutan in the west to 160 miles (260 km) east of the great bend of the Brahmaputra River in the east, marks the watershed and runs along the crest of the Himalayas.
Under the watershed principal Arunachal Pradesh and Tawang came to India.
China contends that most of Arunachal Pradesh, including Tawang, has historically been a part of Tibet. The Tibetan government that signed the Shimla Accord was not sovereign and as such the McMahon line has no legal validity.
China refers to the 56,000 square miles (150,000 square km) of the territory south of the line as part of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
China's dilemma is that if it recognizes the McMahon line as its border with India it de facto recognizes the legality of the Tibetan government-in-exile headed by his Holiness the Dalai Lama, which signed the Shimla Accord in 1914. It also recognizes the Dalai Lama as Tibet's sovereign.
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