在去年的西藏事件和最近的新疆事件之后，中国的民族政策已经证明失败。因此，中国主流学者与异见学者，这一回在这个问题上非常难得地取得了共识，即一致 地、亡羊补牢似地谏言当局，中国的民族区域自治法到了应该放弃的时候。他们隔靴搔痒地认为，问题就出在这个民族区域自治法上。
看上去中国 的民族政策有了转变的迹象，尽管放弃民族区域自治法委实不是一件容易的事情，其障碍显然已经不是中国的主流或异见学者，也不一定是中共权力层，反而会是一 大批吃“反分裂”饭的各级各族官员（包括汉族）。君不见，那位努尔·白巧克力已经忙不迭地说了，中国的民族政策是最成功的……
然而，流亡西藏应该对此有足够的重视。藏学家史伯岭先生的这篇文章，乃一记重锤。
图为去年西藏事件期间，在安多阿坝街头贴的民族团结宣传画。
艾略特·史伯岭:自治？请三思！
原文发表于《印度时报》2009年7月20日
台湾悬钩子/译
如 果还需要进一步的证据以说明中国在许多地方比达赖喇嘛与他的流亡政府高明老练，最近发生的事件已经让此一局势非常明显了。去年十一月，藏人向中国提出了一 份备忘录，旨在显示达赖喇嘛对于西藏自治的立场，完全符合中国既存的法律与民族区域自治法。那份备忘录被中国官员强力地拒绝，而两边的商谈过程戛然而止。
六 月二十二日，新闻报导说流亡政府的官员举行了会议，正在起草一份可以澄清他们立场的声明，而且希望能够打破目前的僵局。这份新的声明，意图显示藏人希望能 在中国民族区域自治法的基础上与中国达成协议。不幸的是，流亡政府在处理对中国问题的蒙眛无知，现在已经令人尴尬地充分显示出来。
达赖喇 嘛的主要协商官员，格桑坚赞与嘉日‧洛珠坚赞，已经与其他的官员晤面，以讨论一个他们幻想可以让中国感到兴趣的立场出来，而哈佛训练出来的专家，洛桑森 盖，也一直以他自己对该法律的分析见解，来强化与支持流亡政府的看法。但摆在眼前的事实是，他们忙了半天，却不知道中国民族区域自治法的诠释，以中文写成 的文章与专书，在中国内部已经汗牛充栋，也对这些著作一字不识。而这一点，达赖喇嘛的官员在对中国政策的主要议题盲人摸象时，似乎从未让他们感到忧心如 焚。
自从2008年春天以来，中国已经响应了外界对它所作的自古以来拥有西藏主权的批评，那就是干脆废除它过去一贯的说法，亦即十三世纪 蒙古征服者将西藏变成中国一部份的说法，而代之更强烈、无情又不留余地的立场，亦即西藏“自从人类活动以来”即是中国的一部分。这个例子充分显示了对中国 而言，历史根本不是一个可以拿来衡量中国主权主张的客观标准，更有甚者，中国内部已展开了一个新的辩论，说明了民族区域自治法也不被认为是一种固定不变、 可以拿来挑战政府的标准。完全相反，它们只是政府与党的工具，假如无法达成想要的政治目的，即可弃之如蔽屣。
达赖喇嘛的政府似乎一无所知 的是，在四月，常常发表有关少数民族研究与少数民族人口问题的学者马戎，提出了一个相当激烈的主张，近似中国当局已经对历史所采取的办法：干脆废弃整套民 族区域自治法。根据马戎的看法，目前的真正问题，在于中国的民族区域自治法乃是来自斯大林主义的遗产（过去在苏联，少数民族有分离和独立的权利），中国仿 效的结果拖累了中国，实行了一套让少数民族对于自己属于中华民族大家庭的概念感到疏离与隔阂的制度。现在，神秘的机缘下，新疆最近发生了骚动，刚好印证他 的看法。
马戎的看法是，民族区域自治法鼓励了少数民族将其他人排除于自己居住区域之外，以自己的语言为优先，要求发展自己经济的权利，还 维持与强化了使他们有别于其他民族的历史意识、宗教信仰与风俗习惯，而这些都符合斯大林对“民族”所作出的的定义。马戎认为，问题的症结点在于，目前的系 统让少数民族无法意识到他们就是中国人。他又提出，只有其他三个国家曾经实施类似的制度，将特殊的行政区域划给少数民族，那就是苏联、南斯拉夫与捷克斯洛 伐克。自不待言，这些国家的历史纪录并不良好。
对比之下，印度与美国提供了有效的反证。他特别举出尼赫鲁的例子，说他给不同的群体灌输了 他们都属于“印度国家”的一部分的观念，并在同时，消弥了他们之间种族与民族的冲突。而美国总统奥巴马之所以当选，被马戎呈现为，就是因为他的政治口号以 利益全体美国人为号召，没有任何种族利益的色彩。而这两个国家都没有少数民族区域自治的架构。
马戎四月时在中国内部开启的辩论，对于中国 的西藏政策可以说至为重要。但是达兰萨拉似乎没有人注意到。达赖喇嘛在五月时决定要捐款十万美金给佛罗里达国际大学，以支持该学校的宗教课程，而不是把资 金集中起来，购买一套让他们能够读取各式中文材料的在线数据库。在美国学习佛法的学生，绝非濒临绝种的生物，然而这就是达兰萨拉的首要之务。
达赖喇嘛政府的信息与国际关系部的秘书，索南‧扎波（Sonam Dagpo）在六月底时告诉一家新闻社的记者，藏人“希望双方在中国宪法、法律、民族区域自治的框架下解决这个问题。”谨祝好运！
本文作者艾略特‧史伯岭教授是美国印第安纳大学中亚研究系的藏学研究主任。
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Top Article: Autonomy? Think Again
Elliot Sperling
20 July 2009, 12:00am IST
As if any further evidence were needed of the ways in which China has been running rings around the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile, recent events have made the situation abundantly clear. Last November the Tibetans presented a memorandum to China, meant to demonstrate that the Dalai Lama's position on Tibetan autonomy was wholly compatible with China's existing laws on regional nationality autonomy. The memorandum was vehemently rejected and the dialogue process between the two sides screeched to a halt.
On June 22, there were reports that exiled Tibetan officials were meeting to draft a statement clarifying their stand and, it was hoped, would open a way out of the impasse. The new statement is intended to demonstrate that the Tibetans want to reach an accord with China on the basis of Chinese autonomy laws. Unfortunately, the ignorance with which the authorities in exile deal with China is now on display in embarrassing detail.
The Dalai Lama's chief negotiators, Kelsang Gyaltsen and Lodi Gyari, have met with other officials to hammer out a position that they fantasise will interest China, and Lobsang Sangay, a Harvard-trained expert, has been reinforcing the exiled government's views with his own analysis of the law. But the fact is that all of these people are functionally illiterate in the hundreds of articles and books all in Chinese that constitute the body of interpretive literature on regional nationality autonomy in China. That never seems to have perturbed the Dalai Lama's people as they wander quite blindly around major issues of Chinese policy.
Since the spring of 2008, China has responded to criticism of its historical claims to Tibet by scrapping its common line, that 13th-century Mongol conquerors made Tibet part of China, with the more forceful, take-no-prisoners position that Tibet has been a part of China "since human activity began". Much as this exemplifies the attitude that history is not an objective measure against which to weigh Chinese claims, so too a new debate has opened in China that demonstrates that the laws on autonomy are not to be considered fixed standards against which the government can be challenged. To the contrary, they are tools of the government and party, dispensable when they are not serving the desired political ends.
In April, seemingly unbeknownst to the Dalai Lama's authorities, Ma Rong, a scholar who often writes on minority demographic and population issues, proposed a drastic measure, akin to what was done in the area of history: scrap the regime of regional nationality autonomy laws. The real problem, according to Ma Rong, is that China's autonomy laws derive from a Stalinist heritage (which, in the Soviet Union, included rights to secession and independence), saddling China with a system that alienates minorities from the notion that they are part of the larger Chinese nationality. Now, with uncanny timing, the recent unrest in Xinjiang has underscored his contention.
As Ma Rong puts it, the nationality laws encourage minorities to exclude others from their regions, privilege their own language, assert economic rights of their own and maintain and strengthen the historical consciousness, religions and practices that differentiate them from others, all in accord with Stalin's definition of "nationality". For Ma Rong, this is the crux of the problem: the current system leaves minorities with little or no sense that they are Chinese. Only three other countries, he notes, ever implemented a similar system with specific geographical regions for minority nationalities: the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. It goes without saying that the historical track record is not good.
In contrast, India and the United States provide useful counter-examples. Jawaharlal Nehru in particular is cited for imbuing the members of various groups with the sense of being part of "the Indian nation", while at the same time dulling the areas of ethno-national conflict between them. In the US, the election of Barack Obama is presented precisely because his platform was directed at the benefit of all Americans, with no taint of racial interest. Neither country has regional minority nationality autonomous structures.
The debate that Ma Rong opened up in April is of critical importance to China's Tibet policy. But no one in Dharamsala seems to have noticed. Rather than devote resources to acquiring the databases that would allow them to access the wide range of Chinese materials available online, the Dalai Lama decided in May to send $1,00,000 to Florida International University to support its religious studies programme. Though American dharma students are hardly an endangered species, such are Dharamsala's priorities.
Sonam Dagpo, of the Dalai Lama's Department of Information and International Relations, told a news agency towards the end of June that the Tibetans "want to settle the issue mutually and within the framework of the Chinese constitution, law and national regional autonomy". Best of luck with that one, guys.
The writer directs the Tibetan Studies programme in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, US.
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