CTA President: Beijing’s “One China Policy has nothing to do with Tibet”
By Tsering Choephel
DHARAMSALA, 4 Aug: The President of the Central Tibetan Administration(CTA) Penpa Tsering has called Beijing’s ‘One China Policy’ a widely misunderstood policy that has no relevance to Tibet.
“One China policy or One China principle has nothing to do with Tibet and for Tibet; you will have to look at it from a totally different prism or historical perspective,” President Tsering said during his keynote deliverance at “Weaponisation of the One China Policy” conference in Delhi on Monday, reports Tibet.net, the CTA’s official website.
The two-day seminar organised by Foundation for Non-violent Alternatives (FNVA) was attended by several Veratan diplomats and prominent experts from various institutions to discuss various aspects of the ‘One China Policy.’
To illustrate the Chinese Communist Party’s(CCP) contrived application of the ‘One China policy’ to its occupied nation of Tibet, Penpa Tsering quoted an extract from a memoir of one the most well-known Tibetan diplomat, the late Gyari Lodi who served as a lead envoy during a series of dialogues with China.
Despite the fact that the ‘One China policy’ began with the US getting in bed with the CCP in the 1970s while maintaining its relations with Taiwan, “the PRC government vigorously pursues efforts to extend the application of ‘one-China’ to Tibet and, in recent years, it has misled a number of governments into believing not only that the ‘one-China’ policy applies to Tibet, but that it restricts the extent to which their government officials can interact with Tibetan leaders in exile, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” Penpa Tsering read of the excerpt.
Additionally, Sikyong spoke about the 17th-point agreement Tibetan delegates signed with China under duress in 1951 and how in subsequent years, in spite of the Tibetan government led by the 14th Dalai Lama’s effort to comply with the agreement, CCP rendered the terms and conditions obsolete leading to then escape and exile of Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans.
Former Indian Ambassador Lakhan Lal Mehrotra spoke about China’s relations with the US and India and its constant changes at the penal discussion, adding that “The rise of China has created a new situation in which established global equations are breaking apart,” which he says poses challenges throughout the international community.
