Taiwan says yes to Dalai visit, China seethes

HONG KONG: The president of Taiwan said on Thursday that he would allow the Dalai Lama to visit the island next week, a move that China opposes
and one that threatens to jeopardize rapidly improving relations between Taipei and Beijing.

“No matter under what form or identity Dalai uses to enter Taiwan, we resolutely oppose this,” the China’s Taiwan Affairs Bureau said.

The Tibetan spiritual leader is expected to arrive on Monday for a six-day tour of southern Taiwan, which was ravaged by a typhoon three weeks ago that left at least 650 dead.

The invitation to the Dalai Lama was extended by several local government leaders in the south and was seen by analysts in Taiwan as a political maneuver aimed to embarrass President Ma Ying-jeou, whose approval ratings have plummeted over the slow response to the devastating typhoon.

Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan, to which the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek fled after the Communist victory in the civil war in 1949. Political unrest in Tibet is a highly sensitive topic for Beijing, and the Chinese government has sharply criticized the Dalai Lama, whom it accuses of fomenting independence for the region.

The Dalai Lama, whose government in exile has been based in India since a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, insists that he only wants genuine autonomy for Tibet.

The Dalai Lama’s visits to other countries typically draw strong rebukes from China. Beijing withdrew from a EU summit meeting last December when the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and other EU leaders said they planned to meet with the Dalai Lama.

George Tsai, a political analyst and professor at Chinese Culture University in Taipei, said on Thursday the invitation was “purely politically motivated, aiming to harass both Ma and China.”