heard a least expected comment at a least expected moment in a least expected situation. Last weekend, I went to a museum’s director’s seminar about Foreign Cultures in the Ming Dynasty. The speaker streamed the topic into territorial conflicts, commercial as well as religious influences that Ming China faced. Everything was normal and pretty much within expectation: first about the territorial conflicts with the non-Hans that the Chinese government had been facing since the time of Qin (though it should be before Qin because the First Emperor of Qin merely jointed the walls of the various Warring States to “create” the Great Wall), then the first political tour to “the West” led by Zhang Qian had resulted in the formation of the Silk Road, and how in return through this very same route China saw the arrival of Indian Buddhism etc, etc. However, while talking about China’s first world map, drawn by the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci, the speaker made – in his own words – “an off-the-topic comment”, he raised the point that Tibet was shown on the map, thus the Europeans believed that Tibet was not part of China. Then, here comes his comment, “this is a European-Chinese conceptual difference about the identity of Tibet with at least a few hundred years of age. How can we possibly believe that it is possible to reconcile this difference now, in a short period of time? It is clear that for the Europeans, Tibet has never been part of China – it was clearly marked on the map! They did not understand that Tibet was a tributary state of China!” When I heard that, I was amazed. Amazed at the speaker’s reasoning. I do not want to discuss whether Tibet should be part of China today, it is a very complicated topic which is an entanglement of not only political, geographical and political issues but also socio-developmental and cultural ones. However, I do want to comment on the idea of “European-Chinese conceptual difference” and “Tibet being part of China because it was a tributary state”. First the European-Chinese difference – I have two questions in mind, first, is it proper to draw the conclusion that it is a European-Chinese conceptual difference just because the name “Tibet” was shown on the map next to China? I mean you could see also Korea, or Even Guangzhou! The first was a tributary state just like Tibet, while the latter, we all know, was clearly part of the Ming Territory under the rule of Emperor Wanli. Second, I think it could simply be possible that for the Europeans at that time that Tibet was 1) a large enough territory on its own to be given a name (if one wanted to argue against this point by referring to Mongolia, my idea is, it didn’t exist yet – that area was still composed of many tribes that were having fun sometimes being rivals and sometimes alliance among themselves) , 2) a place with it’s population’s way of living/cultural/religious heritage were different enough from the Ming Chinese that it deserved a name on its own. Both of which, I believe, were not strong enough to conclude the “conceptual difference” that Europeans believed Tibet was independent of China while China thought Tibet was a part of its territory. It could really be that Europeans at that time really did not consider Tibet was not part of China, but I do not think the conclusion should be drawn from the map alone. Secondly, about “Tibet being part of China because it was a tributary state”, maybe it is my ignorance, but I sincerely would not consider a tributary state part of China, at least not just because the tributary state recognized the Ming Emperors as their figure-head, that they had to make their tributes twice a year, or that should the Indians were to attack Tibet the Ming troops might help the Tibetans to defend IF they had the money and the dynastic energy. However all that were not enough, at least for me, to call this “part of China”. If I was not wrong, the tributary states “paid” tributary money to the Ming Emperor, but they did not pay tax. Put it this way, if the Ming Emperor did not even have the right to require the Tibetans to pay him taxes, could I say that he had the ruling right over them? The tributary states paid taxes and tributes to the Emperor but in return they also received plenty of gifts – that was in essence a “noble” way of conducting commercial activities. Besides, if a tributary state should one day feel strong enough and refused to pay tributes (like Japan), the Ming Dynasty might or might not react, in a military manner or not, depending on the dynastic strength. If the tributary state could refuse the tributary status and might or might not get attacked, could I conclude that “it was part of Ming China”? I believe these are points that should be taken into consideration when drawing such conclusion as “because it was a tributary state, it was part of China”. Through the years I have heard many comments from the educated elite about Tibet and whether or not it should be part of the PRC, they never really scared me because they were simply comments made out of defence of China’s interests. Agree or not they do not scare me because “interests” are after all an all-time first priority, in front of which, there is no right and wrong. This comments by the director however really scared me. It scared me because it was made by someone well-educated, by an elite. It scared me because it implied the rise of nationalism among Chinese, even among the well-educated. What it basically said was “since it was a tributary state then, it is legitimately part of China now”. But if we were use this as the definition of “national boundary”, today’s China should include not only Tibet, but also Korea, Vietnam and entire Mongolia, if we were to use the Ming territory; or including Kazakhstan or other inner Asia states if we were to use the Yuan territory; or even Japan if we were to use the Tang territory. And THAT is scary. Though I think most, if not 99.999% of Chinese are against war or expansionism. However, the rise of nationalism has made some of us, even the educated, to lose sight and become blind (for example, the director even commented that “think of Buddhism, it was almost lost in its own country of origin but it flourished in China!”). This tendency has even alarmed the Communist leaders who commented, during the major congressional meeting last week, that China is a country of vast territory, with most of its population still living in poverty; in order to achieve modernization, it would take another 50 or even 100 years. I think that they meant we should not get hot-headed about our newly-found richness, otherwise, we would fall back to the periodical loop that we have been through the past 2000 years – as Prof. Ray Wang said, once the wealth accumulated to a certain level, the ruling party would start to lose grip because the excess wealth created tensions and unbalances that weakened the rule. I think that is also why the leaders put emphases on the check on corruption and resources distribution imbalances. I hope that not only we Chinese could, but also the world could listen just this once to the leaders – they have a point, China has a rich superficial that concealed enormous problems beneath. Non of our previous Emperors managed to overcome this problem, I hope that with this new awareness, it would be resolvable this time, otherwise it would bring massive destructions to ourselves as well as to the entire world. I hope this kind of least expected comments would always remain unexpected.
By Pelen Yip ( Hong Kong )
