Andreas Fuchs and Nils-Hendrik Klann report:
The Chinese government frequently threatens that meetings between its trading partners’ officials and the Dalai Lama will be met with animosity and ultimately harm trade ties with China. We run a gravity model of exports to China from 159 partner countries between 1991 and 2008 to test to which extent bilateral tensions affect trade with autocratic China. In order to account for the potential endogeneity of meetings with the Dalai Lama, the number of Tibet Support Groups and the travel pattern of the Tibetan leader are used as instruments. Our empirical results support the idea that countries officially receiving the Dalai Lama at the highest political level are punished through a reduction of their exports to China. However, this ‘Dalai Lama Effect’ is only observed for the Hu Jintao era and not for earlier periods. Furthermore, we find that this effect is mainly driven by reduced exports of machinery and transport equipment and that it disappears two years after a meeting took place.
For the pointer I thank The Browser.
Anyone else think we should have listened to MacArthur?
What's a "gravity model"?
At least two thirds of that scenario seems unlikely to happen, considering that Britain would've probably released HK back to RoC sovereignty, not independence, had the PRC been dissolved, and that the RoC (even today) claims Tibet as sovereign territory (its lack of de facto control doesn't really mean all that much when you consider that the central RoC government, Beiyang or Kuomintang, never really had full control over its entire sovereignty claim during the Republican era in any case).
The Soviets wouldn't risk nuclear war. Not recognizing that simple fact is the greatest historical failing in American foreign policy. We could have (and should have) immediately landed troops in Cuba in 1959 and not a damn thing would have happened.
Communism must be eradicated, full force, before it spreads out like a cancer. Look at Latin America today- it started with a few incompetent populist socialists springing up, and now there's a whole crop of them: Morales, Lula, etc. Chavez was just the start. Communism is a cancer and should be destroyed like cancer.
Frankly I think Pat Robertson was right- assassinate Chavez.
"The Soviets wouldn't risk nuclear war."
Stalin would, especially if he thought he could win.
Fortunately for everyone involved–including the Tibetans–we didn't get a Third World War, allowing for the development of a world where the welfare of the Tibetans had the space to become a priority.
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