Obama's Public Encounter with the Dalai Lama Riles China

On Thursday at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama greeted the Dalai Lama for the first time in public. China has warned the White House not to give the Dalai Lama a public audience, so President Obama has met with him a few times in private but never in public before. This enraged China because they saw it as an intentional undermining of their authority, but President Obama humanized the interaction, calling the Dalai Lama a "good friend." This interaction has many different implications for the relationship between China and the US. Firstly, it shows that the US will not cooperate in China's attempts at silencing the Tibetan leader, but also shows that we won't give him an official platform either. Tibet has been calling for independence from China for decades now, after the 1950 invasion that killed hundreds of thousands of Tibetans. And Tibet is not the only state trying to win freedom from China: Taiwan and Hong Kong have been at odd with the global power as well, with little resolution. This article quotes a speech by Obama in which he described the exiled Buddhist leader as a "'powerful example of what it means to practice compassion,' one 'who inspired us to speak up for the freedom and dignity of all human beings.'" Xinhua, the state-run Chinese news group, described the encounter as "driving a nail" into the hearts of the Chinese, but do other nations see it this way? Is it really a stab in the back by the US when the Dalai Lama has been an advocate for autonomy? Going back to Obama's statement about the Dalai Lama, I think it was the right decision of the US to acknowledge him rather than conform to the Communist Party agenda of silencing the spiritual leader, especially in the wake of the Hong Kong protests for democracy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/world/asia/obamas-public-encounter-with-the-dalai-lama-riles-china.html?ref=world

Allie Grossmann