Is there a Secret Master Plan?

I've been a bit of a lazy blogger of late, but as others have noted there are only so many musings about Tibet a brain can come up with from a distance of a thousand miles or so.

The government may moderate its policies to the Dalai Lama

I have, however, a new theory about the response to it all in Beijing, and what lies behind the government's decision to talk to the Dalai Lama announced on Friday.

I am sure it is possible to be cynical, and say it's just playing for time: keep the foreign governments happy, ensure they'll come to the Games ceremonies, fob everyone off with a new round of meaningless talks, and in the meantime keep up the patriotic education in Tibet itself in the vain hope that that'll see the situation all right.

There's a good chance - what, 80, 90 per cent? - that that's exactly what will happen.

But I have been thinking some more about nationalism, and the unity of the Chinese people in the face of western attacks on Beijing over Tibet and on the Olympic torch. As I wrote before, this unity of feeling has led some to say that the pro-Tibet protests backfired.

But as I did then, I wonder.

People have compared the current wave of anti-French (and anti-foreign media) activism to the anti-Japanese protests in 2005: in the same way, the government then seemed to encourage, then cool down, the nationalistic sentiments.

But note: in Japan's case this was followed by a warming of ties. This was helped by a new Japanese prime minister, but it was also fed by Beijing, where the politburo went from being very uptight, cancelling visits, to being bosom buddies of Tokyo (well, almost) in a few months.

I have a pop psychology explanation for the political machinations at work here.

The CCP has a long history of hitting with the right before hitting with the left (or vice versa) - it will feint one way, to satisfy one wing of the party, before actually enacting policies that lean the other way.

You might have thought this would be dangerous when it came to nationalism - what if the nationalist feelings get out of hand, and prevent you putting your moderation of policy into action? But this is not a democracy: the government knows the extent to which it can control, rather than be controlled by, popular opinion.

More to the point, the Party knows that the danger of feinting to the right before tilting to the left is that it emphasises division: and the truly dangerous periods in recent history (perhaps not-so-recent too) have come when the government and people have been divided among themselves - 1989, the start of the Cultural Revolution, etc.

To my mind, the sudden outburst of nationalism as regards Japan was not particularly dictated by outside events, but was a reflection of the Party wanting to engender a sense of national unity among the people before it led out a new policy. No matter that the new policy seemed to contradict the spirit of the people, the point was that once they had this feeling of solidarity, the people could be sold a new idea by a government behind which they had united.

I do not know if the same thinking is at work here: indeed, the whole idea may be very fanciful. Yet I feel the government is now well set to moderate its policies to the Dalai Lama, and to the Tibetan people more generally, should it choose to do so. It has stirred up some considerable support for itself, as the legitimate embodiment of the Chinese people, along with a sense of "something must be done". Controversially, I would say it has also provoked (and perhaps even this might be a little bit deliberate, at least among some of the more reform-minded people) a genuine sense among many thinking people that beneath the rhetoric previous policies must be admitted to have failed, and that there is more to the Tibet situation than previously met the eye.

The Party is now in a position where it can, if it chooses, move to offer genuine compromise while appearing to be magnanimous.

All very speculative, I know. But I also have another precedent: a few years ago I talked to nationalist-minded young Chinese, at around the time the "anti-secession law" went into effect, who were demanding that the PLA invade Taiwan before the Olympics, and sod the cost. Taiwan was another area where, it was said, the government was hamstrung by popular nationalist opinion.

But then there was a deliberate toning down of Beijing's rhetoric towards Taipei, and now the government seems to have put off the idea of reunification altogether for the indefinite future, with just the fig-leaf compensation of a KMT president in Taiwan. Is there a wink of trouble from the angry youth? There is not.