6 - Tibet and the Dalai Lama Visits

Summary

Chapter 6 turns to Chinese coercion regarding foreign leaders’ reception of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader. China did not use coercion against European states over the Dalai Lama visits in the pre-2002 period, despite a high need to establish a reputation for resolve in the 1996–2002 period. The cost-balancing theory would have predicted China would use coercion in this period because Tibet is a core-interest issue. This slight deviance from the theory suggests that China’s economic costs with respect to the United States and Europe, in general, trumped other factors in China’s coercion calculus prior to 2002. Except for during the 1996–2002 period, the patterns of Chinese coercion are in line with the theory’s predictions. Furthermore, China did not coerce all the states that receive the Dalai Lama in the post-2006 period. Instead, it focused on major European countries because the need to establish a reputation for resolve was high in major European countries, whereas the economic cost had lowered. This chapter indicates that the cost-balancing theory does not apply only to security issues but can also generalize to political issues, such as visits with the Dalai Lama.