Tibet-‘One Country, Two Systems’?

Chow Chung-yan

Some 25 years before Deng Xiaoping first proposed “one country, two systems” as a creative political solution to facilitate Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau’s return to China, Mao Zedong tasked him with finding an answer to the Tibet issue.

It was 1957; six years after Beijing and Lhasa signed the Seventeen-Point Agreement that confirmed Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China and its autonomous status.

Tensions started to flare between the two sides shortly afterwards. The central leadership blamed this partly on some Communist officials’ radical move to change Tibet’s social and political systems.

Mao sent Deng, one of his most capable lieutenants, to take charge of the situation and find a long-term solution. Between February and March 1957, Deng held rounds of meetings with other senior officials. Xi Zhongxun, father of the future president, Xi Jinping, was among the attendees.

Deng and his colleagues studied ancient documents for inspiration. The most important one was the Twenty-Nine Article Ordinance for the More Effective Governance of Tibet, an imperial decree issued by the Qianlong emperor of the Qing dynasty in 1793.

For centuries, Tibet was China’s Gordian knot. Its extreme climate, high altitude, and unique sociopolitical conditions made administration arduous. Yet, it is critical to China’s stability and security.

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Various emperors tried to adopt the so-called patron-priest approach, providing material and military support to Lhasa in exchange for its loyalty and religious influence. However, at the turn of the 18th century, continuous internal strife in the region and the threat of Nepalese invasions forced Beijing’s hand.

The Qianlong emperor ordered a reorganisation of the Tibetan administration and codified it into the imperial decree. It formalised the selection of top lamas like the Dalai Lama and the Panchen through a lottery in a golden urn under the supervision of Qing officials. This was a symbolic gesture to position Beijing as the final arbiter of power succession in Tibet.

The ordinance also elevated ambans–equivalent to the central government’s liaison office directors today–to the same level of political authority as the Dalai Lama. Beijing would control Tibet’s foreign and military affairs but otherwise allow the region to maintain its unique social, religious, and political systems. It required Tibet to reform its systems gradually without stipulating deadlines. Tibet was not absorbed into China as another province, but it was also not a simple tributary state like Vietnam.

The Seventeen-Point Agreement Mao offered to the 14th Dalai Lama is essentially a modern version of the Twenty-Nine Article Ordinance. Even at the height of the Communist Party’s triumph, Mao and Deng were mindful of the vast differences between Tibet and Inner China. While they were adamant that Tibet must be part of China, they were also willing to be flexible and patient with its peculiar systems.

On September 4, 1956, Beijing decided to pause socialist reforms in Tibet for “six years”. However, similar programmes continued in other Tibetan-populated regions in Sichuan, Yunnan and Qinghai. Deng argued that conditions on the ground were not ripe for introducing radical changes. Even though the priest-god political system and the social reality of serfdom in Tibet were an affront to the Communists’ atheist doctrines, Mao and Deng were willing to wait.

The meeting minutes of the secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party at the time showed that the leaders had even discussed letting Tibet keep its systems unchanged for “50 years”.

At the Politburo meeting on May 14, 1957, vice-chairman Liu Shaoqi signalled that Beijing was ready to take a “long-term” view of Tibet’s reforms but also warned that it would not be afraid to resort to force if war was forced on China. Considering that China was then at the zenith of its revolutionary fever–the Great Leap Forward would be launched a year later–the restraint shown by the leadership over Tibet was remarkable.

Yet, the Tibetan elite rejected the olive branch and decided that time was not on their side. Tensions escalated and culminated in an armed revolt in Lhasa in 1959. Suspecting involvement from the United States, Chinese leaders quickly set aside their waiting strategy and responded with swift military action, resulting in the exile of the 14th Dalai Lama to this day.

No documents show how that experience might have influenced Deng when he entered negotiations with the British 25 years later for the peaceful return of Hong Kong. But with hindsight, the one country, two systems framework bears a certain resemblance to the Twenty-Nine Article Ordinance.

Both underscore a political tradition running from imperial to modern China. Chinese rulers place great importance on national unity and security, from which they derive their governing mandate and legitimacy. The ambition to acquire more territory or wealth is rare and often frowned upon. A good sovereign power is the ultimate guarantor of law and order, upholding national unity and promoting Chinese culture.

As long as the bottom line is not challenged, the Chinese leadership can be extremely pragmatic and flexible. Throughout China’s long history, major wars triggered by religious or ideological differences have been rare–unlike in the West.

China never launched any crusade or witnessed anything like the brutal religious struggles in Europe during the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries.

A rare exception was the 10 years of anarchy during the Cultural Revolution that marred Mao’s legacy and almost wrecked Deng’s career. When Deng returned to politics at the end of the turmoil, he was more determined than ever to stick to pragmatism, setting aside ideological debates in favour of achieving results.

It was against such a background that the idea of “one country, two systems” was hatched. Today, China is trying to reconnect with its historical past more than ever. In Xi’s speeches, he cites ancient political philosophers like Xunzi, Guan Zhong and Han Fei extensively.

For people from the English-speaking world, it is tempting to view other countries purely from a Western-centric perspective. And people tend to forget that many modern concepts, such as narrowly defined territorial sovereignty, statehood, or self-determination, came into existence only after the Treaty of Westphalia at the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648.

There is a tendency to force everything into the Procrustean bed of the Western narrative, while ignoring the political traditions, priorities, and philosophies of other civilisations. This Western-centric perspective, combined with crusading zeal, is often the root cause of conflict in today’s increasingly multipolar world.

[Chow Chung-yan is the Post’s executive editor. Source: SCMP]

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Frontier
Vol 58, No. 6, Aug 3 - 9, 2025