It is easy to get depressed about the trauma of Tibet. It is. almost half a century since the Dalai Lama fled his country. He has never been able to return and recent events make it highly unlikely that he will in the foreseeable future. Over that half century the Soviet Union has collapsed. apartheid has been defeated. colonial empires have disappeared, and the US could be about to elect its first black president. But Tibet and the Tibetans remain under the iron hand of Beijing.A solution is already available that would not only meet Tibetan aspirations but would do so in a way. acceptable to China. China. invented the concept of two systems in one country. the people of Hong Kong have been able to continue to live as a Western, capitalist enclave within the Chinese body politic. Although there are clear limits to its freedom and democratic rights, Hong Kong enjoys real autonomy, a functioning rule of law and a liberal press and media that have no equivalent in most of China. If China is. able to live with genuine autonomy and cultural freedom in Hong Kong and Macao, and if it would be only too happy to concede it to Taiwan, why can a similar offer not be made to the. Tibetan people? The answer is that, until now, the Chinese have not considered it necessary. [But] far from marginalising the Dalai Lama, they have seen him transformed into an Asian Nelson Mandela, fêted around the world and revered by his people. Young Tibetans have become radicalised as people do. wherever the denial of freedom is. combined with foreign occupation. Tibet looks likely to become a cause célèbre for protest movements around the world. An autonomous, self-governing Tibet within China should not be that difficult for the Chinese to accept. The Chinese, for their part, would find that their reputation in the world as a whole was transformed. The internet and the mobile phone have made it impossible for them to seal off Tibet from the outside world. Increased repression or political and cultural reform are the only choices left available to them and the price they would pay if they opt for repression will be high and will grow.Excerpted from Malcolm Rifkind’s ‘Tibet: try the Hong Kong solution’ in The Times, London, March 21
