Sad anniversaries in Tibet

THE AUTHORITIES in Beijing are nervous today, fearful that remembrance of things past will incite new disorder. They have good reason: On this date two tragic anniversaries are commemorated. First, of the massacres Chinese troops perpetrated 50 years ago, killing 86,000 Tibetans, to crush a Tibetan revolt against harsh Chinese rule. And March 10 is also the one-year anniversary of China's violent crackdown on Tibetans protesting for cultural and religious freedom.

China's attempts to expunge Tibet's separate identity cast doubt on Beijing's claim to be a rising power with benign intentions. There is a whiff of colonialism in China's treatment of Tibet and Tibetans.

Chinese policymakers are not content to deny Tibet's distinct identity. They demean the ethical and spiritual values of Tibetan Buddhism, and they refuse to grant Tibetans even the limited autonomy proposed by their leader-in-exile, the Dalai Lama. The core objective of Beijing's Tibet policy is to submerge the Tibetan population under waves of Han Chinese migrants who receive special incentives to settle in Tibetan areas.

Given China's efforts toward a demographic smothering of Tibetans in their homeland, it is no wonder that Chinese officials feel compelled to lie, brazenly, about the temperate program for reconciliation proposed by the Dalai Lama. In talks last fall with Chinese representatives, the Dalai Lama's envoys presented 11 proposals for limited Tibetan autonomy. The Chinese refused to discuss a single one of the 11 ideas, pretending that all 11 were thinly disguised demands for independence.

Beijing takes this rigid position - repeating the transparent falsehood that the Dalai Lama really wants political independence for Tibet - because Chinese policy is to make no concessions to the Tibetan government-in-exile and instead to wait for the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists to die. The flawed premise of this policy is that Tibetan resistance to Chinese dominance will evaporate after the Dalai Lama is gone. But as the clashes last March in Tibetan regions demonstrated, younger Tibetans are likely to be less patient, and less devoted to nonviolence, than the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India.

China's rulers are fortunate to have the chance to come to terms with the Dalai Lama on Tibetan autonomy within China. Few other governments confronting oppressed ethnic or religious groups have been so lucky.

President Obama should appoint a special envoy for Tibet, someone who can help China's leaders see that it is in their own interest to give Tibetans the cultural and religious autonomy the Dalai Lama has proposed.