Tibet and "Reform and Opening Up" in the Post-Mao PRC
Never feared the ultimate fate.
Now that the country has become Red,
Who will be its guardians?
Our mission, unfinished, may take a thousand years;
The struggle tires us, and our hair is gray.
You and I, old friend,
Can we just watch our efforts being washed away?
(Mao Zedong, poem to Zhou Enlai in 1975, months before both died)
Dec. 1978 The dominance of Deng Xiaoping is confirmed at the 3rd plenum of 11th Central Committee. Deng introduces new pragmatic economic reforms-- initiated the decollectivization of agriculture, the beginning of the "household responsibility system", and declared an "open door" to foreign investment. Advocates polices for "4 modernizations".
1979 Deng invites delegations from the Dalai Lama's government to tour Tibetan regions. Han officials believe they will be impressed. Instead, the tour members are mobbed by sobbing crowds in Qinghai, Gansu and Lhasa. Tibetan tour members are shocked by the level of poverty and cultural devastation among Tibetans. Begin series of failed negotiations with the exiled govt.
1980 Hu Yaobang, CCP General Secretary, sent to the Tibetan Autonomous Region. He is shocked, likens 20 years of CCP rule to "colonialism" and calls for 6-point reform program aimed at modernizing the economy and promoting respect for Tibetan culture.
1981-87 Period of optimistic reform and recovery in China and Tibet. Rural industry booms, incomes and standards of living increase. Official corruption increases, major gaps in income emerge. Massive state investment in TAR. Tibetan culture revives, monasteries reopen. Exiles allowed to visit. Foreign tourism begins. Influx of Han and Hui migrants begins.
1987 Dalai Lama and exiled govt. launch international campaign. Dalai Lama addresses U.S. congress. Congress passes resolution condemning China for human rights abuses in Tibet.
1987-1989 Monks' demonstration in Lhasa after Dalai Lama speech begins series of protests and riots led by monks and nuns in Central Tibet. Chinese security forces violently repress, imprison activists. Hu Yaobang is purged. Unexpected death of the Panchen Lama.
Mar 1989 Beijing declares martial law in Lhasa. Foreigners expelled. Suspected dissidents arrested, tortured. Hardliners blame liberal ethnic policies for the unrest.
Spring 1989 Student/worker protests and massacre in Tiananmen square. Deng Xiaoping calls in PLA troops to crackdown on massive student and worker protests in Beijing demanding democracy, end to official corruption.
1990's Period in which the state continues rapid economic development but cracks down on political dissent, strengthens security apparatuses, tightens control on school curricula. Tibetan monasteries more tightly regulated or closed in a "Patriotic Education" campaign. Tighter restrictions on public, especially religious gatherings
1999 President Jiang Zemin launches the "Develop the West" Campaign.
Feb/Mar 2008 During the run-up to the Beijing Olympics (August 2008), Tibetan monks and laity participate in unprecedently widespread unrest to protest deepening socioeconomic inequality across 4 provinces in China’s far west. A military crackdown ensues, along with de facto martial law.
March 2009 First self-immolation by fire protest by a young monk in Sichuan province, commemorating the protests and crackdown a year earlier. In 2011, more self-immolations by Tibetans begin an unprecedented series of such protests (159 by spring 2022, a few in the diaspora, the vast majority in the PRC).
2013 Rise to power of president Xi Jinping in the PRC and beginning of new era of increasingly authoritarian policies, as well as a renewed emphasis on cultural and political assimilation over constitutionally guaranteed minority region autonomous governance as the ideal strategy for dealing with restive minorities out west.