LOBSANG SANGAY AND THE ISSUE OF OVERSEAS CHINESE VISAS by JAMYANG NORBU

Kalon Tripa candidate Lobsang Sangay, when answering a question about whether he had traveled to China on an Overseas Chinese (OC) visa, stated in his defense that I (Jamyang Norbu), and others, had also traveled to Tibet on such a document. I want to make it absolutely clear that I have never traveled to Tibet on such a Chinese document. In 1980 I received an official invitation from Lhasa (via our TGIE Security Office, Desung Leykhung) to return to Tibet but I refused the offer point blank. I would have loved to visit Tibet but one of the reasons I did not was because I would have to travel on OC papers.

Lobsang Sangay in his reply emphasized repeatedly that Overseas Chinese papers do not make you a Chinese national. That point, of course, needs no explanation at all. If you were a Chinese national then you would have a Chinese passport and would not need any kind of visa, even an OC visa, to visit China.

But although the Overseas Chinese visa does not make you a citizen of the PRC, it clearly makes you of Chinese birth or descent (or partial Chinese ancestry) living outside the PRC, and resident or citizen of another country. I do not blame Tibetans, desperate to meet long lost relatives, traveling to Tibet on an OC visa, if that is all they can get at the moment. But to travel to China, to Beijing, on an OC visa for something as unimportant as meeting some run-of-the mill Chinese academics (not “great scholars” khelwang) clearly demonstrates that the person has no problem being regarded as Chinese.