Hongkong
...
Xinjiang
Xinjiang Autonomous Region will undoubtedly seek independence from China at the first opportunity, as no bonds of trust with Beijing can exist given the intense repression and discrimination it has suffered under CCP rule. Several well-organized Uyghur diaspora organizations advocate for a peaceful democratic transition. They express pride in the Turkic ethnic groups' long history on the steppe of Central Asia, their millennia-old culture, and their Muslim religion.200 The United States should support Xinjiang in the determination of its future status.
The region spans one-sixth of China's landmass, and some Uyghurs refer to it as East Turkestan because of its distinct cultural identity as a Turkic Muslim homeland. Nearly half of its 26 million people are Turkic Muslims; the majority are Uyghurs but there are Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Tajiks, while 42 percent of the overall population is Han Chinese.231 Though underdeveloped,it has economic potential, being rich in mineral deposits and natural resources and located along ancient trade routes and the Silk Road.
Under its forced assimilation program, the CCP has targeted the Turkic ethnic groups for genocide, as then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in a determination in 2021 that Secretary of State Antony Blinken endorsed in the successive administration. The CCP regime has taken extreme measures to diminish their demographics through forced sterilization, deportations for forced labor, and efforts to eradicate their culture by destroying mosques and traditional architecture. Since 2017, it has detained over a million Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang in camps to undergo Communist indoctrination and torture.
It has also forced the mass transfer of nearly 900,000 Uyghur Muslim children from their families into government-approved boarding schools and orphanages as part of Beijing's ruthless policy to destroy their identity and annihilate them as a distinct community.232
For multiple decades beginning in the 1990s, Xinjiang has seen periodic violence connected with independence movements and Islamist extremism. Beijing blamed the militant Uyghur separatist group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, though in 2020 the US government stated there was no credible evidence that they had been operating over the prior decade and removed them from its terror list.233 The CCP crushed all civic protests against forced assimilation in Xinjiang.
The CCP forced the region's incorporation into China. A short-lived East Turkestan Republic ended with a takeover by the PLA in October 1949. Signifying its tenuous link, China named the region Xinjiang, meaning "New Frontier," a name the Qing dynasty had first used after its conquest in the late nineteenth century.
Due to the CCP's harsh treatment, the Uyghurs and other Turkic people in Xinjiang have gained sympathy and support in the United States and other Western countries. This should translate into support for their independence in the wake of a CCP regime collapse. Beijing, however, views control of Xinjiang as a strategic imperative for its Belt and Road Initiative and has justified its oppression of the Uyghurs mainly as a counter terrorism measure. Whether a post-CCP Chinese government will continue to hold this position and oppose any declaration of Xinjiang independence remains to be seen.
Hudson Institute scholar Nury Turkel writes in his book about the Uyghur genocide, No Escape, "when the Chinese people learn what is being done in their name to millions of innocent people, will they still silently watch their video clips on TikTok and refuse to speak up? It is unlikely."234 A hint that Turkel's answer may be right came with the spontaneous mass protests against Xi's zero-COVID policy on the streets of dozens of Chinese mega-cities and scores of university campuses in late 2022. Those protests were a reaction to news reports that 10 Uyghur family members burned to death in a strict COVID lockdown in a Uyghur neighborhood in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi.235 That many ordinary Chinese people risked their freedom to light candles and show support for the Uyghur victims indicates a remarkable degree of empathy for a community that CCP propaganda has indoctrinated the Chinese people to hate.
While Xinjiang would have numerous reasons for optimism as a free nation, it will have to overcome formidable challenges.
These include its lack of democratic experience; ethnic divisions; resentment against its large Han minority, some of whom the CCP specifically sent there to oppress them; and a serious threat of Islamist terror and extremism spreading from neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will need strong assistance from the United States and its allies in these areas.
The diaspora organizations from Xinjiang in the United States and other Western nations will be a valuable resource. They and others can support referendums, elections, and democratic nation building. American policymakers should refrain from sending in as unelected rulers those who claim to be the "government in exile," as the US government once attempted to do in Iraq. To alleviate resentment and help avert retribution, human rights reforms should receive priority attention. Such measures are discussed later in this chapter. The United States should expect Xinjiang to declare sovereign independence, and if this happens it should be prepared to support it, consistent with the US guidelines.
Tibet
The Autonomous Province of Tibet is home to the ethnic Tibetan Buddhist community. Ethnic Tibetan communities also live in Tibetan autonomous prefectures and counties in Sichuan, Qinghai, Yunnan, and Gansu Provinces. Small, defenseless, relatively poor, and severely oppressed, Tibet will face two choices with the collapse of the CCP regime: to pursue independent sovereignty or to remain as part of China with greater autonomy.
Most of Tibet's population of about 3.6 million people no longer speak Tibetan, and many of them are Han Chinese transplanted there under the CCP's forced assimilation policy.296 The party is continuously introducing new, extreme measures in pursuit of the policy. In 2023, several United Nations experts felt compelled to call on China to stop "what appears to be a policy of forced assimilation" of Tibetans into China's majority Han culture, citing reports that authorities had removed as many as 1 million Tibetan children from their families and placed them in state-run boarding schools to indoctrinate them against their religious and ethnic Tibetan identity.297 It is precisely these and other repressive policies that some Tibetan groups in exile say make imperative Tibetan self-determination and a "homeland,free from China's occupation"-one they hope would include the autonomous prefects of ethnic Tibetans.238
The Dalai Lama has been an important voice of peace, stability,and democracy for Tibetans, and his role will be critical to the success of the region as it goes forward. After fleeing a failed uprising of the local Tibet army against China in 1959, the Dalai Lama currently lives in exile in Dharamshala, India, along with nearly 150,000 Tibetan Buddhists in exile across India and Nepal.239 Beijing considers him a dangerous "separatist" who aims to sever Tibet from China. The CCP treats him as an enemy,pressuring Tibetans in government positions to criticize him and pressuring both locals and foreigners, including even American universities, to shun him.
However, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate publicly declares that he rejects independence for Tibet and instead seeks meaningful autonomy, espousing a "middle way" policy. For example, he unequivocally stated publicly in 2010 that Tibetans "are not seeking independence." He further explained, "That's why we [are called] middle way. We complain [about] the presence of policy in Tibet. It is actually very much damaging... . . But [on the] other hand, we also do not want separation from China because . . . Tibet [is a] landlocked country, materially backward.
Every Tibetan want modernized Tibet, so for that reason, [we] remain within the People's Republic of China."240
Whether the nonagenarian or his successor would continue to hold this view in the absence of the CCP remains to be seen.
The Dalai Lama would likely have significant influence on the future status of Tibet, though its entire population, including the exile community, should have the opportunity to democratically determine this. As well as being the Tibetan Buddhist religious authority, the current Fourteenth Dalai Lama followed the group's custom of assuming temporal leadership of his community until 2011, when he retired from his political office and ended the Tibetan Buddhist practice of merging the two roles. As the Dalai Lama's website declares, he established democratic governance for the Tibetan government in exile: "On 29 May 2011 His Holiness signed the document formally transferring his temporal authority to the democratically elected leader. In so doing he formally put an end to the 368-year-old tradition of the Dalai Lamas functioning as both the spiritual and temporal head of Tibet."241
A last, important consideration for Tibet's prospects as an independent democratic nation is its borders. This dispute with China will require skillful American diplomacy to resolve-di-diplomacy even more complex than in the German reunification.
Diplomats will also need to resolve whether and how to include the autonomous Tibetan prefectures and counties within four of China's provinces. China's ongoing conflict on Tibet's border with India, however, presents a significantly more difficult diplomatic challenge. Despite a recent agreement between China and India to ease border tensions, they intensified days later, in August 2023, when China issued the new edition of its standardized map showing Aksai Chin and the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh (which China calls southern Tibet) within Chinese territory.242 To ensure Tibet's stability, its border issues will require resolution.
The case of declaring sovereignty in South Sudan, which in 2011 became the world's newest country with a population of 10 million, offers a cautionary tale.243 Like Tibet, its borders were unresolved, and it suffered from internal ethnic tensions.
But South Sudan went ahead with independence after enduring genocidal levels of ethno-religious repression. It gained sovereignty according to an internationally backed road map, based on the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement on Sudan that ended its two-decade war with its aggressor, Khartoum. Successfully conducting a referendum process with American and international assistance, it decisively determined its population's desire for independence from Sudan, which in turn accepted this process.
These positive outcomes resulted largely from the pressure and deep engagement of the United States government, which had bipartisan support in Congress, and efforts by the African Union and a committed core group of African and European states.
The alliance of "friends" of Sudan supported the referendum,ascertained balloting integrity, enabled balloting for its large refugee population around the world, and negotiated Khartoum's acceptance of the result.
Despite the unresolved issues, American leaders across the political spectrum celebrated South Sudan's declaration of independence in 2011. President Barack Obama asserted, "We know that southern Sudanese have claimed their sovereignty,and shown that neither their dignity nor their dream of self-determination can be denied."244 Yet, within two years, South Sudan devolved into an ethnic civil war (distinct from the Islamist extremism of the original north-south conflict) and has suffered from Sudan's violent aggression over an unresolved border dispute. Millions of South Sudanese citizens have fled the fledgling nation, escaping hunger and violence.245 A decade later, the United States remained South Sudan's largest single donor of aid, as 60 percent of the devastated country faced food insecurity and many world leaders view it as a failed state. 246
Border disputes, particularly regarding the China-India border,pose a serious impediment to Tibetan independence. With pragmatic urgency, the United States and its allies should work to facilitate the resolution of these disputes before Tibet pursues sovereignty. They should be prepared to expend even greater diplomatic effort than German reunification required.
If there is no resolution to the Tibetan border problem, the United States should weigh measures to reinforce Tibet's autonomy instead of supporting independence. The Tibetan Policy and Support Act, which President Trump signed into US law in 2020, lays some groundwork that the United States can build on.247 It establishes as official US policy the right of the Tibetan Buddhist community to select and venerate its own religious leaders, including the Dalai Lama, and specifies sanctions for Chinese officials who interfere in the selection of his successor. This is critical in light of China's ongoing measures to select the religion's spiritual leaders,such as in the disappearance of the six-year-old Panchen Lama in 1995, three days after his recognition by the Dalai Lama. In addition, the act requires the secretary of state to seek to establish a consulate in Lhasa, which he should do as soon as events allow by appointing a consul general and a full staff.
Regarding the risk of ethnic strife and efforts to avert retribution within Tibet, the region has a valuable asset in the Dalai Lama, a spiritual leader whom people respect and recognize worldwide for his advocacy and actions to promote peaceful coexistence.
Additional priority human rights reforms to alleviate these tensions are proposed at the end of this section.
Inner Mongolia
The Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia will face three choices: gaining independence, remaining as an autonomous part of China, or uniting with the neighboring Republic of Mongolia.
Though unification may at first seem reasonable, a closer look indicates it is not likely, and the United States should support its sovereign independence instead.
Inner Mongolia borders the Republic of Mongolia, which is one of the world's most sparsely populated countries with just 3.3 million people and ranks among the free nations of the world. 248
Once part of the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, Mongols on both sides of the border share a common language and continue contact with cross-border trade and travel. Some 95 percent of the residents of the Republic of Mongolia are ethnically Mongol,and many of them, like many within Inner Mongolia's ethnic Mongolian community, are Buddhist.249 Tibetan Buddhism arrived there in the sixteenth century, and four centuries later, reportedly a third of the Republic of Mongolia's adult males were Buddhist monks. In 2016, the Dalai Lama discovered a boy there whom he considers the reincarnation of a high spiritual leader.250
Inner Mongolia, though, has been the target of accelerating forced assimilation measures in recent years, by which the CCP aims to abolish the Mongolian language in schools and in media. In 2020, large crowds protested these measures in several cities, and parents extracted their children from schools, stating that this was an attempt to erase their identity. "Our language is Mongolian, and our homeland is Mongolia forever! Our mother tongue is Mongolian, and we will die for our mother tongue!"
students shouted during a protest. Defying Chinese government threats against those criticizing the new language policy,251 some Inner Mongolians sent videos and messages of their protests to the Republic of Mongolia, where others reposted them on Facebook and Twitter.252
In addition, demographic manipulation by the CCP has had a large impact on Inner Mongolia. Any proposal to unity Inner Mongolia and the Republic of Mongolia is likely to be unacceptable to Ulaanbaatar, whose people would become an ethnic minority in their own country overnight in such an arrangement. The Chinese-speaking Han ethnic population now constitutes the over whelming majority within Inner Mongolia's population of 24 million,vastly outnumbering its 5 million ethnic Mongolians and the republic's entire population of 3.3 million.253 The Republic of Mongolia may also fear that the sudden influx of a much larger population
with no tradition of democracy would jeopardize its form of government. German reunification, by contrast, entailed the absorption of a proportionately smaller population of East Germans into West German democracy, and both were largely German ethnics.
That said, the Republic of Mongolia could consider some accommodation of citizenship for the Mongolians of Inner Mongolia and even for Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet, along the lines of the birthright citizenship policies of Israel for Jews and of Armenia for ethnic Armenians. Controlled immigration could benefit the republic and offer a steam valve for tensions within the native minority communities of both Inner Mongolia and Tibet. This is an idea that the United States should explore.
The United States should expect Inner Mongolia to declare sovereign independence, and if this happens, it should be prepared to support it, consistent with the US guidelines.
Ningxia
China formed the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region for the ethnic Hui people in 1958. The Hui are mostly Muslims who constitute 38 percent of Ningxia's population of 7 million, while the Han are the other 62 percent. The Hui have assimilated into the Chinese culture and speak Mandarin, and 10.5 million of them are spread over several other provinces.256 Recent religious repression against them has resulted in an assertion of their religious identity and may spur Hui interest in independence from China.
Since 2018, the Hui Musims have engaged in rare protests against the demolition of their mosques' domes, minarets, and displays of Arabic script under the CCP's Sinicization policy.
In 2018, the international press reported that hundreds of Hui Muslims staged a sit-in to block the destruction of their newly constructed Grand Mosque in Weizhou, for which they had permits. In 2019, an NPR investigation found that the "same restrictions that preceded the Xinjiang crackdown on Uyghur Muslims are now appearing in Hui-dominated regions." NPR learned that since 2018, "Hui mosques have been forcibly renovated or shuttered, schools demolished, and religious community leaders imprisoned. Hui who have traveled internationally are increasingly detained or sent to reeducation facilities in Xinjiang."257 The magazine Bitter Winter reported that on May 27, 2023, thousands of protesting Hui Muslims gathered and clashed with hundreds of riot police at Najiaying Mosque in Yunnan. Reinforcement police and military came the next day to complete the job; they arrested some of the protesters and shut down the area's internet. 258
Hui Muslims have indicated in interviews with the international media that they are aware of the massive repression against the Uyghurs and Tibetan Buddhists and expressed their fears that the CCP could also target them. They are among the growing number of communities in China who have lost trust in Beijing due to its denial of fundamental freedoms.
The United States cannot know whether Hui Muslims support independence until they have the opportunity to determine their political future in a free and fair referendum. They are a minority in Ningxia, but a vote for independence could prevail there as a vote in 1991 for Ukrainian independence once did in Crimea, then a Russian ethnic majority region in Ukraine. The United States should expect Ningxia to declare sovereign independence and be prepared to evaluate, in particular, whether it could be a viable independent republic were it to be landlocked within a newly reconfigured greater China, as well as the other US guidelines.
Guangxi
Guangxi's formal name is the Zhuang Autonomous Region of Guangxi. Its largest ethnic minority, constituting up to a third of its population of over 50 million, is the Zhuang, who have lived there for some 2,500 years, speak their own language and dialects, and practice local folk religions.254 For millennia, Guangxi's Zhuang people have lived alongside the Han, who now comprise nearly two-thirds of the region's population. Populations in its eastern and southern parts speak Cantonese together with the Zhuang language. In recent decades, Guangxi has developed light industry, forestry, and mining while continuing traditional fishing and agriculture. According to scholars, the Han population has largely assimilated the Zhuang: "Because the minorities in Guangxi possess neither a unified organization nor support by fraternal groups, their assimilation by the Chinese is far more advanced than in the other autonomous regions."255
It is impossible to know the Guangxi population's views on separating from China without a free and fair referendum. Policy-makers should remember that even the most Stalinist countries of the Soviet empire at the time of its breakup chose sovereignty when they had the chance. The United States should expect Guangxi to declare sovereign independence, and if this happens, it should be prepared to support it, consistent with the US guidelines.
Guangdong and Fujian
Guangdong Province borders both Hong Kong and Macau and,like Hong Kong, speaks Cantonese and is an economic powerhouse. Some commentators suggest it should break away from China and join Hong Kong in a single sovereign republic or opt for independence on its own. Both suggestions would be ill-advised.
Guangdong's people share much with Hong Kong. In fact,Hong Kong's most prominent champion of free speech and democracy is the aforementioned Jimmy Lai, who escaped from Guangdong at age 12 to seek freedom in Hong Kong. However,Guangdong would overwhelm Hong Kong, given the former's large population of 127 million and lack of democratic experience.259 For these reasons, unification would not likely serve Hong Kong's interests.
If Guangdong or any other province without autonomous status declared independence, it could embolden other areas and provinces to do so as well, fracturing China. For example,Fujian Province, with a population of 42 million and a border on the Taiwan Strait, might also seek unification with the Republic of China (Taiwan, population 24 million) or independent sovereignty.
In short, the secession of any Chinese province that lacks a legal status of autonomy would risk a violent response by China and set a precedent that could lead other provinces to race for the exits. Such scenarios would be certain to plunge greater Asia into destabilizing political and economic crises.
Stabilizing Human Rights Measures
Under CCP rule, China has been and continues to be among the world's harshest regimes. Its human rights abuses are egregious and widespread, and the US government considers its actions against the ethno-religious minorities in Xinjiang genocide. In many cases, these abuses warrant immediate remediation after a CCP collapse, and the United States should prioritize such efforts rather than postpone them until a new government is fully in place. This would both serve justice and mitigate frustration and suffering among the population that, left unaddressed, could lead to violent retribution.
An extensive list of China's abuses appears in reports by the US State Department on human rights and religious freedom, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the Executive and Congressional Commission on China and in the accounts of a large array of diaspora and international human rights groups.
A few examples of immediate action that a new Chinese government should take to stop egregious human rights abuses follow:
Empty and shut all detention centers where people are held without due process or fair trial. Demolish Xinjiang's large detention complex for Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims,which has held over a million persons to force religious, ethnic, and political assimilation.
Throughout China, free the thousands of political and religious detainees and prisoners, including those in unofficial detention places, or "black jails," and psychiatric institutes.
Stop forced sterilizations and forced abortions of Uyghur and Turkic women in Xinjiang and of any other victims of such practices in China.
In both Xinjiang and Tibet, release the combined estimate of 2 million children whom the CCP has forced into state boarding schools and reunite them with their families.
Shut down all forced labor camps adjacent to prisons and detention centers throughout China. Secure the freedom of all Uyghurs and others pressed into forced labor.
...
Xinjiang
Xinjiang Autonomous Region will undoubtedly seek independence from China at the first opportunity, as no bonds of trust with Beijing can exist given the intense repression and discrimination it has suffered under CCP rule. Several well-organized Uyghur diaspora organizations advocate for a peaceful democratic transition. They express pride in the Turkic ethnic groups' long history on the steppe of Central Asia, their millennia-old culture, and their Muslim religion.200 The United States should support Xinjiang in the determination of its future status.
The region spans one-sixth of China's landmass, and some Uyghurs refer to it as East Turkestan because of its distinct cultural identity as a Turkic Muslim homeland. Nearly half of its 26 million people are Turkic Muslims; the majority are Uyghurs but there are Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and Tajiks, while 42 percent of the overall population is Han Chinese.231 Though underdeveloped,it has economic potential, being rich in mineral deposits and natural resources and located along ancient trade routes and the Silk Road.
Under its forced assimilation program, the CCP has targeted the Turkic ethnic groups for genocide, as then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in a determination in 2021 that Secretary of State Antony Blinken endorsed in the successive administration. The CCP regime has taken extreme measures to diminish their demographics through forced sterilization, deportations for forced labor, and efforts to eradicate their culture by destroying mosques and traditional architecture. Since 2017, it has detained over a million Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang in camps to undergo Communist indoctrination and torture.
It has also forced the mass transfer of nearly 900,000 Uyghur Muslim children from their families into government-approved boarding schools and orphanages as part of Beijing's ruthless policy to destroy their identity and annihilate them as a distinct community.232
For multiple decades beginning in the 1990s, Xinjiang has seen periodic violence connected with independence movements and Islamist extremism. Beijing blamed the militant Uyghur separatist group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, though in 2020 the US government stated there was no credible evidence that they had been operating over the prior decade and removed them from its terror list.233 The CCP crushed all civic protests against forced assimilation in Xinjiang.
The CCP forced the region's incorporation into China. A short-lived East Turkestan Republic ended with a takeover by the PLA in October 1949. Signifying its tenuous link, China named the region Xinjiang, meaning "New Frontier," a name the Qing dynasty had first used after its conquest in the late nineteenth century.
Due to the CCP's harsh treatment, the Uyghurs and other Turkic people in Xinjiang have gained sympathy and support in the United States and other Western countries. This should translate into support for their independence in the wake of a CCP regime collapse. Beijing, however, views control of Xinjiang as a strategic imperative for its Belt and Road Initiative and has justified its oppression of the Uyghurs mainly as a counter terrorism measure. Whether a post-CCP Chinese government will continue to hold this position and oppose any declaration of Xinjiang independence remains to be seen.
Hudson Institute scholar Nury Turkel writes in his book about the Uyghur genocide, No Escape, "when the Chinese people learn what is being done in their name to millions of innocent people, will they still silently watch their video clips on TikTok and refuse to speak up? It is unlikely."234 A hint that Turkel's answer may be right came with the spontaneous mass protests against Xi's zero-COVID policy on the streets of dozens of Chinese mega-cities and scores of university campuses in late 2022. Those protests were a reaction to news reports that 10 Uyghur family members burned to death in a strict COVID lockdown in a Uyghur neighborhood in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi.235 That many ordinary Chinese people risked their freedom to light candles and show support for the Uyghur victims indicates a remarkable degree of empathy for a community that CCP propaganda has indoctrinated the Chinese people to hate.
While Xinjiang would have numerous reasons for optimism as a free nation, it will have to overcome formidable challenges.
These include its lack of democratic experience; ethnic divisions; resentment against its large Han minority, some of whom the CCP specifically sent there to oppress them; and a serious threat of Islamist terror and extremism spreading from neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will need strong assistance from the United States and its allies in these areas.
The diaspora organizations from Xinjiang in the United States and other Western nations will be a valuable resource. They and others can support referendums, elections, and democratic nation building. American policymakers should refrain from sending in as unelected rulers those who claim to be the "government in exile," as the US government once attempted to do in Iraq. To alleviate resentment and help avert retribution, human rights reforms should receive priority attention. Such measures are discussed later in this chapter. The United States should expect Xinjiang to declare sovereign independence, and if this happens it should be prepared to support it, consistent with the US guidelines.
Tibet
The Autonomous Province of Tibet is home to the ethnic Tibetan Buddhist community. Ethnic Tibetan communities also live in Tibetan autonomous prefectures and counties in Sichuan, Qinghai, Yunnan, and Gansu Provinces. Small, defenseless, relatively poor, and severely oppressed, Tibet will face two choices with the collapse of the CCP regime: to pursue independent sovereignty or to remain as part of China with greater autonomy.
Most of Tibet's population of about 3.6 million people no longer speak Tibetan, and many of them are Han Chinese transplanted there under the CCP's forced assimilation policy.296 The party is continuously introducing new, extreme measures in pursuit of the policy. In 2023, several United Nations experts felt compelled to call on China to stop "what appears to be a policy of forced assimilation" of Tibetans into China's majority Han culture, citing reports that authorities had removed as many as 1 million Tibetan children from their families and placed them in state-run boarding schools to indoctrinate them against their religious and ethnic Tibetan identity.297 It is precisely these and other repressive policies that some Tibetan groups in exile say make imperative Tibetan self-determination and a "homeland,free from China's occupation"-one they hope would include the autonomous prefects of ethnic Tibetans.238
The Dalai Lama has been an important voice of peace, stability,and democracy for Tibetans, and his role will be critical to the success of the region as it goes forward. After fleeing a failed uprising of the local Tibet army against China in 1959, the Dalai Lama currently lives in exile in Dharamshala, India, along with nearly 150,000 Tibetan Buddhists in exile across India and Nepal.239 Beijing considers him a dangerous "separatist" who aims to sever Tibet from China. The CCP treats him as an enemy,pressuring Tibetans in government positions to criticize him and pressuring both locals and foreigners, including even American universities, to shun him.
However, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate publicly declares that he rejects independence for Tibet and instead seeks meaningful autonomy, espousing a "middle way" policy. For example, he unequivocally stated publicly in 2010 that Tibetans "are not seeking independence." He further explained, "That's why we [are called] middle way. We complain [about] the presence of policy in Tibet. It is actually very much damaging... . . But [on the] other hand, we also do not want separation from China because . . . Tibet [is a] landlocked country, materially backward.
Every Tibetan want modernized Tibet, so for that reason, [we] remain within the People's Republic of China."240
Whether the nonagenarian or his successor would continue to hold this view in the absence of the CCP remains to be seen.
The Dalai Lama would likely have significant influence on the future status of Tibet, though its entire population, including the exile community, should have the opportunity to democratically determine this. As well as being the Tibetan Buddhist religious authority, the current Fourteenth Dalai Lama followed the group's custom of assuming temporal leadership of his community until 2011, when he retired from his political office and ended the Tibetan Buddhist practice of merging the two roles. As the Dalai Lama's website declares, he established democratic governance for the Tibetan government in exile: "On 29 May 2011 His Holiness signed the document formally transferring his temporal authority to the democratically elected leader. In so doing he formally put an end to the 368-year-old tradition of the Dalai Lamas functioning as both the spiritual and temporal head of Tibet."241
A last, important consideration for Tibet's prospects as an independent democratic nation is its borders. This dispute with China will require skillful American diplomacy to resolve-di-diplomacy even more complex than in the German reunification.
Diplomats will also need to resolve whether and how to include the autonomous Tibetan prefectures and counties within four of China's provinces. China's ongoing conflict on Tibet's border with India, however, presents a significantly more difficult diplomatic challenge. Despite a recent agreement between China and India to ease border tensions, they intensified days later, in August 2023, when China issued the new edition of its standardized map showing Aksai Chin and the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh (which China calls southern Tibet) within Chinese territory.242 To ensure Tibet's stability, its border issues will require resolution.
The case of declaring sovereignty in South Sudan, which in 2011 became the world's newest country with a population of 10 million, offers a cautionary tale.243 Like Tibet, its borders were unresolved, and it suffered from internal ethnic tensions.
But South Sudan went ahead with independence after enduring genocidal levels of ethno-religious repression. It gained sovereignty according to an internationally backed road map, based on the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement on Sudan that ended its two-decade war with its aggressor, Khartoum. Successfully conducting a referendum process with American and international assistance, it decisively determined its population's desire for independence from Sudan, which in turn accepted this process.
These positive outcomes resulted largely from the pressure and deep engagement of the United States government, which had bipartisan support in Congress, and efforts by the African Union and a committed core group of African and European states.
The alliance of "friends" of Sudan supported the referendum,ascertained balloting integrity, enabled balloting for its large refugee population around the world, and negotiated Khartoum's acceptance of the result.
Despite the unresolved issues, American leaders across the political spectrum celebrated South Sudan's declaration of independence in 2011. President Barack Obama asserted, "We know that southern Sudanese have claimed their sovereignty,and shown that neither their dignity nor their dream of self-determination can be denied."244 Yet, within two years, South Sudan devolved into an ethnic civil war (distinct from the Islamist extremism of the original north-south conflict) and has suffered from Sudan's violent aggression over an unresolved border dispute. Millions of South Sudanese citizens have fled the fledgling nation, escaping hunger and violence.245 A decade later, the United States remained South Sudan's largest single donor of aid, as 60 percent of the devastated country faced food insecurity and many world leaders view it as a failed state. 246
Border disputes, particularly regarding the China-India border,pose a serious impediment to Tibetan independence. With pragmatic urgency, the United States and its allies should work to facilitate the resolution of these disputes before Tibet pursues sovereignty. They should be prepared to expend even greater diplomatic effort than German reunification required.
If there is no resolution to the Tibetan border problem, the United States should weigh measures to reinforce Tibet's autonomy instead of supporting independence. The Tibetan Policy and Support Act, which President Trump signed into US law in 2020, lays some groundwork that the United States can build on.247 It establishes as official US policy the right of the Tibetan Buddhist community to select and venerate its own religious leaders, including the Dalai Lama, and specifies sanctions for Chinese officials who interfere in the selection of his successor. This is critical in light of China's ongoing measures to select the religion's spiritual leaders,such as in the disappearance of the six-year-old Panchen Lama in 1995, three days after his recognition by the Dalai Lama. In addition, the act requires the secretary of state to seek to establish a consulate in Lhasa, which he should do as soon as events allow by appointing a consul general and a full staff.
Regarding the risk of ethnic strife and efforts to avert retribution within Tibet, the region has a valuable asset in the Dalai Lama, a spiritual leader whom people respect and recognize worldwide for his advocacy and actions to promote peaceful coexistence.
Additional priority human rights reforms to alleviate these tensions are proposed at the end of this section.
Inner Mongolia
The Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia will face three choices: gaining independence, remaining as an autonomous part of China, or uniting with the neighboring Republic of Mongolia.
Though unification may at first seem reasonable, a closer look indicates it is not likely, and the United States should support its sovereign independence instead.
Inner Mongolia borders the Republic of Mongolia, which is one of the world's most sparsely populated countries with just 3.3 million people and ranks among the free nations of the world. 248
Once part of the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, Mongols on both sides of the border share a common language and continue contact with cross-border trade and travel. Some 95 percent of the residents of the Republic of Mongolia are ethnically Mongol,and many of them, like many within Inner Mongolia's ethnic Mongolian community, are Buddhist.249 Tibetan Buddhism arrived there in the sixteenth century, and four centuries later, reportedly a third of the Republic of Mongolia's adult males were Buddhist monks. In 2016, the Dalai Lama discovered a boy there whom he considers the reincarnation of a high spiritual leader.250
Inner Mongolia, though, has been the target of accelerating forced assimilation measures in recent years, by which the CCP aims to abolish the Mongolian language in schools and in media. In 2020, large crowds protested these measures in several cities, and parents extracted their children from schools, stating that this was an attempt to erase their identity. "Our language is Mongolian, and our homeland is Mongolia forever! Our mother tongue is Mongolian, and we will die for our mother tongue!"
students shouted during a protest. Defying Chinese government threats against those criticizing the new language policy,251 some Inner Mongolians sent videos and messages of their protests to the Republic of Mongolia, where others reposted them on Facebook and Twitter.252
In addition, demographic manipulation by the CCP has had a large impact on Inner Mongolia. Any proposal to unity Inner Mongolia and the Republic of Mongolia is likely to be unacceptable to Ulaanbaatar, whose people would become an ethnic minority in their own country overnight in such an arrangement. The Chinese-speaking Han ethnic population now constitutes the over whelming majority within Inner Mongolia's population of 24 million,vastly outnumbering its 5 million ethnic Mongolians and the republic's entire population of 3.3 million.253 The Republic of Mongolia may also fear that the sudden influx of a much larger population
with no tradition of democracy would jeopardize its form of government. German reunification, by contrast, entailed the absorption of a proportionately smaller population of East Germans into West German democracy, and both were largely German ethnics.
That said, the Republic of Mongolia could consider some accommodation of citizenship for the Mongolians of Inner Mongolia and even for Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet, along the lines of the birthright citizenship policies of Israel for Jews and of Armenia for ethnic Armenians. Controlled immigration could benefit the republic and offer a steam valve for tensions within the native minority communities of both Inner Mongolia and Tibet. This is an idea that the United States should explore.
The United States should expect Inner Mongolia to declare sovereign independence, and if this happens, it should be prepared to support it, consistent with the US guidelines.
Ningxia
China formed the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region for the ethnic Hui people in 1958. The Hui are mostly Muslims who constitute 38 percent of Ningxia's population of 7 million, while the Han are the other 62 percent. The Hui have assimilated into the Chinese culture and speak Mandarin, and 10.5 million of them are spread over several other provinces.256 Recent religious repression against them has resulted in an assertion of their religious identity and may spur Hui interest in independence from China.
Since 2018, the Hui Musims have engaged in rare protests against the demolition of their mosques' domes, minarets, and displays of Arabic script under the CCP's Sinicization policy.
In 2018, the international press reported that hundreds of Hui Muslims staged a sit-in to block the destruction of their newly constructed Grand Mosque in Weizhou, for which they had permits. In 2019, an NPR investigation found that the "same restrictions that preceded the Xinjiang crackdown on Uyghur Muslims are now appearing in Hui-dominated regions." NPR learned that since 2018, "Hui mosques have been forcibly renovated or shuttered, schools demolished, and religious community leaders imprisoned. Hui who have traveled internationally are increasingly detained or sent to reeducation facilities in Xinjiang."257 The magazine Bitter Winter reported that on May 27, 2023, thousands of protesting Hui Muslims gathered and clashed with hundreds of riot police at Najiaying Mosque in Yunnan. Reinforcement police and military came the next day to complete the job; they arrested some of the protesters and shut down the area's internet. 258
Hui Muslims have indicated in interviews with the international media that they are aware of the massive repression against the Uyghurs and Tibetan Buddhists and expressed their fears that the CCP could also target them. They are among the growing number of communities in China who have lost trust in Beijing due to its denial of fundamental freedoms.
The United States cannot know whether Hui Muslims support independence until they have the opportunity to determine their political future in a free and fair referendum. They are a minority in Ningxia, but a vote for independence could prevail there as a vote in 1991 for Ukrainian independence once did in Crimea, then a Russian ethnic majority region in Ukraine. The United States should expect Ningxia to declare sovereign independence and be prepared to evaluate, in particular, whether it could be a viable independent republic were it to be landlocked within a newly reconfigured greater China, as well as the other US guidelines.
Guangxi
Guangxi's formal name is the Zhuang Autonomous Region of Guangxi. Its largest ethnic minority, constituting up to a third of its population of over 50 million, is the Zhuang, who have lived there for some 2,500 years, speak their own language and dialects, and practice local folk religions.254 For millennia, Guangxi's Zhuang people have lived alongside the Han, who now comprise nearly two-thirds of the region's population. Populations in its eastern and southern parts speak Cantonese together with the Zhuang language. In recent decades, Guangxi has developed light industry, forestry, and mining while continuing traditional fishing and agriculture. According to scholars, the Han population has largely assimilated the Zhuang: "Because the minorities in Guangxi possess neither a unified organization nor support by fraternal groups, their assimilation by the Chinese is far more advanced than in the other autonomous regions."255
It is impossible to know the Guangxi population's views on separating from China without a free and fair referendum. Policy-makers should remember that even the most Stalinist countries of the Soviet empire at the time of its breakup chose sovereignty when they had the chance. The United States should expect Guangxi to declare sovereign independence, and if this happens, it should be prepared to support it, consistent with the US guidelines.
Guangdong and Fujian
Guangdong Province borders both Hong Kong and Macau and,like Hong Kong, speaks Cantonese and is an economic powerhouse. Some commentators suggest it should break away from China and join Hong Kong in a single sovereign republic or opt for independence on its own. Both suggestions would be ill-advised.
Guangdong's people share much with Hong Kong. In fact,Hong Kong's most prominent champion of free speech and democracy is the aforementioned Jimmy Lai, who escaped from Guangdong at age 12 to seek freedom in Hong Kong. However,Guangdong would overwhelm Hong Kong, given the former's large population of 127 million and lack of democratic experience.259 For these reasons, unification would not likely serve Hong Kong's interests.
If Guangdong or any other province without autonomous status declared independence, it could embolden other areas and provinces to do so as well, fracturing China. For example,Fujian Province, with a population of 42 million and a border on the Taiwan Strait, might also seek unification with the Republic of China (Taiwan, population 24 million) or independent sovereignty.
In short, the secession of any Chinese province that lacks a legal status of autonomy would risk a violent response by China and set a precedent that could lead other provinces to race for the exits. Such scenarios would be certain to plunge greater Asia into destabilizing political and economic crises.
Stabilizing Human Rights Measures
Under CCP rule, China has been and continues to be among the world's harshest regimes. Its human rights abuses are egregious and widespread, and the US government considers its actions against the ethno-religious minorities in Xinjiang genocide. In many cases, these abuses warrant immediate remediation after a CCP collapse, and the United States should prioritize such efforts rather than postpone them until a new government is fully in place. This would both serve justice and mitigate frustration and suffering among the population that, left unaddressed, could lead to violent retribution.
An extensive list of China's abuses appears in reports by the US State Department on human rights and religious freedom, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the Executive and Congressional Commission on China and in the accounts of a large array of diaspora and international human rights groups.
A few examples of immediate action that a new Chinese government should take to stop egregious human rights abuses follow:
Empty and shut all detention centers where people are held without due process or fair trial. Demolish Xinjiang's large detention complex for Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims,which has held over a million persons to force religious, ethnic, and political assimilation.
Throughout China, free the thousands of political and religious detainees and prisoners, including those in unofficial detention places, or "black jails," and psychiatric institutes.
Stop forced sterilizations and forced abortions of Uyghur and Turkic women in Xinjiang and of any other victims of such practices in China.
In both Xinjiang and Tibet, release the combined estimate of 2 million children whom the CCP has forced into state boarding schools and reunite them with their families.
Shut down all forced labor camps adjacent to prisons and detention centers throughout China. Secure the freedom of all Uyghurs and others pressed into forced labor.
���༭ʱ��: 2025-07-23 02:32:24
