China Seeks Tibetan Returnees to Help Strengthen the “Overseas Patriotic Force”

Chen Quanguo, CCP secretary in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, urged the Tibetans who have returned from abroad and their family members to support China’s overseas interests. At the first Federation of Returned Overseas Compatriots meeting in Lhasa on June 8, Mr. Chen said that the returnees should use their connections with overseas Tibetans to help strengthen the “patriotic force of overseas compatriots” with their “maximum” capacity, according to Tibet Radio. Chen had said that the patriotic returnees and overseas compatriots should contribute towards the long term stability in Tibet. According to the online news called bestnew.us, the chairman of China Federation of Overseas Compatriot, Lin Jun said that the Tibetan compatriots at home and abroad should patriotically serve the country and support the overseas Chinese in carrying out various oppositions to the separatists. “What this means is that they want to use anyone who opposes the Tibetan government in exile,” says Kunga Tashi, the Chinese Coordinator of Office of Tibet, New Work. “When they say they want to bring opponents of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan government in exile to their side, what does it say about their goal?” The Chinese government sees people who does not have a good relationship with the Tibetan government in exile as a potential counter force that they can use, says Bapa Kalsang Gyaltsen, China analyst and a member of Tibetan Parliament. In the recent years, a number of Chinese embassies in US and Europe have reportedly invited Tibetan exiles to the Chinese new-year’s celebrations. Some Tibetan officials in the exile government, including Kunga Tashi, see the move as an attempt to break the unity of the Tibetan community in exile. The Dalai Lama, who is widely recognized as the source of Tibetan people’s unity and hope, has transferred his political power to the elected Tibetan leader in India. However, Mr. Kunga Tashi believes that the Tibetans inside and outside Tibet have showed their solidarity to remain united under the new political leadership Sikyong Lobsang Sangay. The Chinese government accuses the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile of  influencing the destabilization in the Tibetan areas. Many Tibetans argue that the cause of Tibetan people’s dissatisfaction in Tibet is China’s “hardline” policy on the Tibetan people.