In an interview on China

Let’s go on to Tibet, Tibet by Patrick French. He says he met the Dalai Lama at age 16 and that’s what got him interested in the place. It’s part travel memoir, part political history. But he’s pretty critical all around, even of the Dalai Lama…

Patrick French is an interesting storyteller about Tibet, in part because it’s very hard to figure out whether he is a dissident or the loyal opposition or a total partisan, or what. At some moments he’s very admiring of Tibetan culture and the Tibetan people, and obviously at a certain point in his life it really drew him in. At other moments he is very critical, for instance, of the leadership of the exiled Tibetan community. He is critical of the way the Dalai Lama has allowed his image and his name to be used in a whole range of books that have very little to do with Tibet and with the political issues at hand. In some ways reading this book is a bit like travelling through a Tibetan area with a particularly long-winded and knowledgeable and acerbic friend. In Tibet literature, it’s rare that you run into a voice like that: it tends to be that people are either hugely and entirely admiring or they are really critical and angry. It’s rare that you get a voice that depicts both, so I found it to be among the most interesting books written on Tibet.

Tibet is, after all, a very big issue in China, not just for the Tibetans, but for the Chinese. This is an area the size of Europe we are talking about, and of enormous importance to the Chinese sense of self and to what the Chinese government imagines is the future of the country. China regards Tibet and the territorial sanctity of Tibet as absolutely vital to China’s integrity, so it’s an important issue to study.

I’m never exactly sure why it’s so important to them, though.

I think they’ve decided that the collapse of the Soviet Union fundamentally hinged on the failure of Gorbachev to prevent ethnic separatism from taking off. It is true that when you look back the 1980s, he took a relatively tolerant attitude towards separatism and I think that’s why the Chinese go berserk about it.

Isn’t French pretty critical about the celebrity interest in Tibet as well? Doesn’t he argue that it’s superficial, that people campaigning for Tibet are often quite detached from reality?

He can be harsh on all sides. But I don’t doubt the motives of people who feel spiritually and emotionally connected to Tibet. I think by and large their motives are positive and the most prominent ones, who are deeply and politically involved in this issue, do not call for Tibetan secession – just as the Dalai Lama isn’t calling for a Tibetan secession. When I’ve encountered people overseas who are involved in the Tibet issue I’ve been struck by the fact that, in many cases, the ones who are most actively involved are hugely knowledgeable. I interviewed Richard Gere, for instance, and I was expecting a movie star who is casually involved in the issue. That is not at all the case.

What about travel to Tibet? Can you?

A foreign journalist cannot travel to Tibet without special permission.

What about normal foreigners?

Yes, a normal foreigner can certainly go to Tibet.

On this new railway that goes all the way to Lhasa, the ‘rocket to the rooftop of the world’?

Yes, you can go on the speedy train, and that’s probably worth doing. Also, if you don’t go to the Tibet Autonomous Region for whatever reason, there are huge cultural Tibetan areas in Sichuan and Qinghai and Yunnan provinces, that are worth visiting. In fact, many of us feel that that the experience there feels a bit more ‘authentically’ Tibetan, to use an imperfect phrase, than some parts of the Tibet Autonomous Region, simply because these areas have not been developed as fast as Lhasa and the surrounding region. So there’s a lot to be said for going to remote parts of those provinces, to get a taste of Tibetan culture as well.