Actually Raj, what the Chinese can do is start squeezing the British financial industry–market access and cooperation opportunities with Chinese banks are critical to recapitalizing Britain’s battered banks, and given the flexibility of the Chinese finance rulebook, they can make life very, very difficult if they so chose to do so.

E.g. lets say a British bank wanted to sell a stake in a Chinese bank for a capital gain–the ministry could impose a windfall tax of up to 75% of the net capital gains at its sole discretion. Alternatively, it could make it illegal or administratively difficult for Chinese citizens to move their wealth into the UK as opposed to the US, Australia, or Canada, or even focus it more tightly on barring wealth management firms from the UK from participating in capital transfers. Given how much The City contributes to the UK election cycle, such actions would undoubtedly have an effect on Whitehall/10 Downing.

Also, saying that the Dalai Lama was born outside of Tibet is pretty disingenuous- he was born outside of what is called Tibet on Chinese maps, but inside what Tibetans (bod’pa) call Tibet (bod). If I were to invade China and partition a tiny section of it off and call it China, would the rest of the Chinese populace be outside of China? Say I chose Hubei and Hunan as China, for example, and made up other names for the rest of it- are Beijingers and Shanghaiers now not Chinese? Were they now born outside of China?

The simple fact is that Tibetans understand Tibet to have three regions- Amdo, U-Tsang, and Kham, which are all Tibet. The lines by which these regions are now divided have been imposed by China for political reasons, and frankly a lot of Khampas and Amdowas would be extremely offended if you said they aren’t Tibetan or that they haven’t been to Tibet by virtue of not having visited the Xizang zizhiqu (which, by the way, doesn’t have a name in Tibetan). Regional identities are still really important, but saying that the Dalai Lama wasn’t born in Tibet is simply false, unless you specifically refer to the Tibet Autonomous Region, a separate entity than Tibet.

As for whether or not the CTA should be in charge of Tibet- they themselves proposed that Tibetans be allowed to decide that. They aren’t calling for themselves to be reinstated in Lhasa as a weird successor state to the Ganden Phodrang, but rather for a democratic Tibet in which Tibetans make the call themselves. The text of their proposals to Beijing makes this very clear, and any other understanding is a misinterpretation which Beijing has worked very hard to propagate.

It would also fit in with the CCP’s factional culture: a suitably liberal and reform-oriented faction could establish relationships with well-meaning, amateur journalists and offer them enough protection to get into places officially closed to mainstream media. Let them take the Dalai Lama’s side often enough that they occasionally get into trouble: this would give them credibility. Low-level officials could be kept in the dark so that they can still do their usual harrassment. There would be no need to directly rebut or criticise the Dalai Lama: just present enough complexity and “nuance” to muddy the waters and encourage reasonable people to take a middle-ground stance rather than siding with him by default.

Most bloggers aren’t paid to write, and it probably wouldn’t even cost much money to implement a strategy like this. In the worst case scenario, it would be no more ineffective than their other soft-power strategies.

I believe that as long as Tibet, just as the rest of China, is under a totalitarian dictatorship, a counter-public abroad should be taken at least as seriously as the “public” within the PRC. It’s bad that it can’t exist within China, but it is good that it does exist at all.

His last paragraph has some merit. After this many years in exile, it is a reasonable question to ask whether the TGIE or the Dalai Lama are the proper surrogates for Tibetan self-expression. That question should most appropriately be put to the Tibetan people. I imagine any time the CCP wants to put that to the test would be just fine. That said, there is also no reason to exclude the Dalai lama from such a role simply based on his birthplace. If you want Tibetans to decide who should speak on their behalf, then you have to accept their decision. If they choose someone not born in Tibet and who hasn’t lived there for 60 years, well, that’s their call.

Mr Lindsay was not, Mr Grundy, claiming that Japan was majority-Buddhist. He claimed only that Japanese history demonstrated that Buddhism was prone to violence, which is true. The Nichiren and Zen Buddhist sects in Japan were notorious for their warlordism and their fortified monasteries, and were in fact some of the last outposts to be subdued by the Shogunate. In the end, Buddhist doctrines were deftly woven by the Shogunate and the Imperial government into Shinto emperor-devotions to service violent, state-driven ends.

http://www.sangam.org/articles/view/?id=118

As to the Pope – both Popes, actually, John Paul II and Benedict XVI – both of them explicitly condemned the Iraq War as incompatible with Christian Just War theory. The Queen of England is not a religious figure and it is constitutionally inappropriate for her to comment on controversial matters of public policy, but the man who speaks for her on matters spiritual, her appointed Archbishop of Canterbury (and the head of my own church) Rowan Williams, decried the Iraq War as a ‘murderous folly’. Really, what was stopping the Dalai Lama from doing the same, given the sway he seems to have amongst Western political leaders?