(TibetanReview.net, Nov16’24) –The Chinese government is reported to have sent a team of its own breed of “Tibetologists” to spread Chinese propaganda in European countries in an apparent effort to counter the visits of leaders from the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), the de facto exile Tibetan government. China has admitted in the past that its expensive efforts have been a failure.
China’s state-sponsored Tibetologists are Tibet-specialists with the difference that their role is to construct narratives that justify the Communist Party of China (CPC) -government’s claim that Tibet has been part of China since ancient times, that it liberated the territory from imperialism, and that the Tibetan people never had it so good since coming under its rule over half a century ago.
Organized by the Chinese State Council Information Office (SCIO), a group of “Tibetologists” visited Latvia from Nov 7 to 10 and Estonia from Nov 10 to 13, 2024, said Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) Nov 15, citing Chinese state media report.
The group was stated to have spoken about the “development achievements of Tibet in China in the new era, and the development results of education, medical care, ecological environment protection and other developments shared by the people of all ethnic groups in Tibet.”
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ICT feels that the Chinese government is likely perturbed by visits to these countries by delegations of the Tibetan Parliament in (TPiE) members under a Europe Tibet Advocacy campaign and the continuing support for Tibet among the Baltic countries.
It sees it as no coincidence that the visit by the group from China overlapped with the visit to Latvia and Estonia by a delegation of TPiE members from Dharamshala to these countries. It pointed out that TPiE members Geshe Lharampa Gowo Lobsang Phende and Wangdue Dorjee had visited Latvia during which they met the Speaker of the Latvian Parliament, Daiga Mieriņa, as well as MPs on Nov 13, 2024.
The executive head, Sikyong Penpa Tsering of the CTA had also earlier visited Latvia and on Jan 29, 2024 strategized with the Latvian Parliamentary Support Group for Tibet.
Besides, Estonian parliamentary delegations had visited the Tibetan exile leadership in Dharamshala as a visible symbol of their support, ICT said on its savetibet.org website. These included visits to participate in the 64th anniversary of Tibetan Democracy Day on Sep 2, 2024, and in the commemoration of the 35th birthday of the 11th Panchen Lama recognized by the Dalai Lama (and disappeared by China since 1995) on Apr 25, 2024.
Referring to the sponsor of the visit of the Chinese “Tibetologists”, ICT said: “SCIO has remained consistently engaged in propagating the Chinese narrative on Tibet. It orchestrated a series of ‘Forums on the Development of Tibet,’ with the first event in the series held in the Austrian capital of Vienna in 2007. The second was held in the Italian capital Rome in 2009, and the third was held in the Greek capital of Athens in 2011. Since the fourth forum, which was held in the Tibetan capital Lhasa in 2014 (the fifth and sixth were also in Lhasa in 2016 and 2019, the seventh in Beijing in 2023), the Tibet Autonomous Region has also been named as a co-organizer.”
ICT noted that China also sent similar “Tibetologists” groups to France and Norway at the end of Sep 2024. It sees the visit to France by Chinese officials as certainly connected to the meeting that Sikyong Penpa Tsering had with French President Emmanuel Macron on May 1, 2024.
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Such visits have continued despite the “Tibetologists” having themselves expressed frustration as far back as Jul 2008 that they were not being believed in the West where Western colleagues and politicians consider their comments to be propaganda.
“In our conversations, our efforts were often being taken as propaganda even when we resorted to our personal experiences to make a point,” the communist party mouthpiece People’s Daily Online Jun 27, 2008, quoted Ciwang Junmei, former president of the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences, as saying. Ciwang had spoken of having got this impression from German press reports of his group’s activities in Germany.
The report also noted that in a meeting with members of the European Parliament on Jun 26 morning, the Tibetologists were asked why the Dalai Lama was still being branded as a separatist while he had repeatedly said he was seeking autonomy of Tibet, not independence.
The report cited Ma Lin, a Tibetologist from Qinghai province, as accusing media reports in the West of creating a sympathy for the Dalai Lama and his government in exile.
Also, a commentary in China’s official Global Times newspaper Dec 28, 2014 said the country had sought to improve what it said were largely negative mainstream foreign opinion about its record on Tibet through multiplicity of public relations exercises, including by sending delegations on expensive trips to hold and give talks. However, the campaign has been a failure, the commentary, authored by one Huang Jingjing, admitted, while calling for more such efforts.