Pico Iyer has a long piece on the Dalai Lama’s work for Tibet and current thinking about Sino-Tibetan relations in The New York Review of Books. It’s a sober account that deals extensively with the Dalai Lama’s recent move towards recognizing that the Chinese government are not good faith negotiating partners and that the Middle Path — pursuing autonomy over independence — has not brought him any closer to a resolution to the Tibet question. Of note, Iyer starts his essay with these hard-hitting quotes from the Dalai Lama:

“The situation inside Tibet is almost like a military occupation,” I heard the Dalai Lama tell an interviewer last November, when I spent a week traveling with him across Japan. “Everywhere. Everywhere, fear, terror. I cannot remain indifferent.” Just moments before, with equal directness and urgency, he had said, “I have to accept failure. In terms of the Chinese government becoming more lenient [in Chinese-occupied Tibet], my policy has failed. We have to accept reality.”

This isn’t exactly a revelation – this understanding from the Dalai Lama is what precipitated last year’s Special Meeting in Dharmsala –  but it certainly is powerful to see these words come from a man who has practiced such great forebearance in the pursuit of a peaceful resolution to China’s military occupation of Tibet.

Shockingly the Chinese government continues its quixotic campaign to alienate and stigmatize the Dalai Lama. Just today we learn that they have succeeded in getting South Africa’s government to deny him a visa to participate in an international peace conference. Nobel laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu and FW De Klerk have announced that they will now boycott the conference as a result.

There’s a fine balance between the natural, selfish desire to protect land and resources under their control. I can at least intellectually understand the Chinese government’s desire to maintain their military occupation of Tibet at any cost. They don’t want to lose face internally and externally; the lose of control in Tibet could reasonably spell the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power throughout China. But to actively campaign against a man of peace, known worldwide for his high-minded commitment to nonviolence and dialogue despite the fact that he publicly admits that Tibet is “dying,” makes no sense to me. Their persistent efforts to smear the Dalai Lama only show the Chinese government to be unreasonable, petty children who are incapable of any criticism or critique from the global community. Such a stance surely is an obstacle to China actually being a respected superpower.

By continuing to wage a public smear campaign against the Dalai Lama, the Chinese government risks blowing their last, best opportunity to bring resolution to the Tibet question in a manner that allows them to retain any form of control over Tibet. I believe the Dalai Lama can still usher forward meaningful autonomy for Tibet. But if this has not happened during his lifetime, I do not think autonomy will remain on the table. It will be independence or continued occupation. Obviously the Chinese government thinks occupation is a tenable long-term outcome. I think they will be hard-pressed to find another historical example where, on a long time line, the military occupation and colonization of another nation goes uninterrupted in perpetuity.