In the old days, the handful of foreign journalists in Beijing would scour People's Daily and other such fonts of wisdom for clues as to what was really going on. Historians are still working out the extent to which my predecessors got it right.
China is happy to welcome the Dalai Lama back as a religious leader
The key was not to look at the headline or the first few paragraphs. It was Zhou Enlai, I read once, who told a western journalist that the real story would be in the few sentences towards the end that didn't chime with the rest of the upbeat, ra-ra news story. (One curious feature about those times is that though China was much more closed than it is now, its leaders were much more open. Zhou, who had been educated in Paris after all, would happily chat to journalists in the Great Hall of the People in Chinese - or English or French).
That sort of China-watching has gone out of fasion, and maybe for good reason. We can travel and see things on the ground, after all, which is much more interesting than whether some politburo member is up or down in the rankings.
On the other hand, the world is entitled to know something about what's going on in the minds of the leadership about Tibet, I think.
So here, following my allegation the other day of a possible master plan, is how it might work, if we scrutinise some of the state media.
Take the Xinhua story I mentioned yesterday. Actually, I misled you - it's more important than a Xinhua story, it's a People's Daily commentary picked up and highlighted.
Once again, it insists that the issue in Tibet is not religion. (You will remember that I previously pointed out how Hu Jintao said this, contradicting his ambassador to London, who had said in the Sunday Telegraph that there was a religious element to the protests which complicated matters).
The piece then goes on to describe all the wonderful religious developments in Tibet over the years, yadda yadda. So we know all that already. But it concludes:
"The above facts have showed explicitly the Tibet issue was not about religion but only a card played by the Dalai clique to woo sympathy from others, the commentary said. The essence of the Tibet issue was a scheme for "Tibet independence" and this couldn't be disguised as a religious problem, it stressed."
Sounds bad - but what it means is, the issue here is politics, we don't care about the religion, thus reiterating by absence the longstanding position that they have no problem with the Dalai Lama as a purely religious figurehead (their attitude to the Pope, of course).
Today, we have a long story, appearing out of nowhere, on page 5 of China Daily. We normally take what China Daily says with a pinch of salt but it is still used by the Chinese government to send a message to foreign embassies and journalists.
It says "Tibet 'government' a theocratic power", and is based on an interview with a Chinese Tibetologist analysing the set-up of the Tibetan government-in-exile and the Dalai Lama's role in it.
Its central thesis is that while the institutions of government seem to be functional and observe a division of powers, the role of the Dalai Lama, a religious figure, and his relatives is central.
So what? Well, the first two things to notice are that the state media don't normally pay a lot of attention to the Tibet government-in-exile, which after all is recognised by virtually no-one.
The second is that throughout the Dalai Lama is referred to respectfully as "the Dalai Lama" - not "the Dalai clique" or, which Tibetans also find insulting, just "Dalai".
In an accompanying note reporting the foreign ministry spokesman's demand that the Dalai Lama will be constructive in forthcoming talks, again the reference is to the "Dalai side", not the Dalai clique.
So why this emphasis on religion, and where it does and shouldn't play a role? The answer to me is pretty obvious (if there is a genuine question at all, and I accept I may be making all of this up).
This is the outline of what the Chinese are offering as their basis for talks: China is happy to welcome the Dalai Lama back as a religious leader, but as a religious leader, he has no role in politics in a modern society.
This may not be too surprising. The Chinese would always have been happy if the Dalai Lama had stuck to his palace and his monasteries, letting the Chinese government and its Lhasa representatives get on with running the country properly. (But then, if Mao had been running Tibet properly, 1959 might never have happened either...)
But it clearly raises the question of whether the government really is going to be insisting on pre-vetting reincarnation and all that, in any talks on the future.
Is it workable as a basis for talks? The Dalai Lama's demand for cultural autonomy goes well beyond just allowing the monasteries to do what they like, but I wonder how much he would demand a role in the actual day-to-day government of Tibet were he ever to be allowed to return. There is clearly a gap to be narrowed, but the gap is now identifiable.
The big issue, it seems to me, apart from the guarantees that would be required on either side, is exactly what CCT was hinting at in his comment to my post the other day. It is a question of ordinary Tibetans versus the current local leadership (I would say that includes ethnic Han leaders as well as ethnic Tibetan ones, but I agree in general terms).
It is the local leaders who have most to lose in any settlement, yet I cannot see how many hostile local lay-people, to say nothing of the radical exiles, many of whom have never lived under Chinese rule, would accept any settlement that forces them to live under the same power structure as now. At least in India they have freedom of speech.
But there's the starting position, in my view. Any takers on how others will read it?
One final little point. Students of China-Iran relations, and I am not really one of them, sometimes ask how well the two actually get on, underneath all the oil deals. The hostile description of the Dalai Lama's role in the Tibet government-in-exile rather exactly matches the set-up of the Iranian government - the form of a modern state, but with a religous leader and his unelected fellows having the final say in everything.
I wonder how Beijing's friends in Teheran view the description of theocratic power as "medieval" and "ridiculous".
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