Whether in Hong Kong or Europe, museums that showcase exhibitions related to China sometimes succumb to Xi Jinping’s warning for the arts to foster “correct” viewpoints of history and culture. The latest example of these tensions took place in Paris, France, where two museums employed the CCP’s new Sinicized terminology for describing the region of Tibet: “Xizang.” The Tibetan Review reported that one of the museums, the Quai Branly, backtracked last week after various Tibetan groups signed an open letter and protested the museum’s years-long use of “Xizang” over “Tibet”:
The museum expressed sincere apologies and fully acknowledged the oversight in its recent exhibit. It recognizes the strong political implications of the issues currently unfolding in Tibet and deeply regrets any misstepts that may have occurred, said a press release from the six Tibet and Tibetan groups after their representatives’ meeting with the museum’s representative Mr Clemens Tougeron.
Tougeron, who is the international affairs advisor to the museum’s president, has said visitors can expect to see these changes implemented in the museum within three weeks.
The museum has also assured the protest representatives that it values open dialogue with communities and will continue working closely with Tibetan associations to ensure respectful and accurate representation in all its exhibits. [Source]
The other one, the Guimet Museum, has so far refused to alter its course. Earlier this year, the museum renamed certain rooms of an exhibition from “Nepal-Tibet” to “Himalayan World,” claiming that the decision was meant to highlight cultural, not geographical, similarities in that region. According to anonymous sources from Le Monde, however, the museum was subjected to sustained pressure from Chinese authorities earlier this year. In a Le Monde article by Bruno Philip, Tibetan specialists criticized the museum’s reasoning:
[T]he Guimet president’s statements haven’t convinced Tibet experts: “Tibetans don’t consider themselves to be of Himalayan culture!” said linguist Nicolas Tournadre, a leading specialist in Tibetan languages. “The term ‘Himalaya’ is a denomination that provides a cheap way of sidestepping referring to the once powerful Tibetan state. Indeed, the northern slopes of the Himalayan range only form the southern border of Tibet, which, additionally, also has several other ranges, which reach over 7,000 meters high, crossing it from east to west. On the other hand, certain populations south of the Himalayas have adopted many elements of Tibetan culture, such as the Ladakhi [in India], the Sherpa [in Nepal] or the Sikkimese [in India]: They are often referred to as ‘Bhoti,’ derived from the word ‘Bod’ – ‘Tibet’ [in Tibetan].”
“Since the Musée Guimet has no problem talking about Tibetan Buddhism, it would be strange to reduce it to Himalayan Buddhism alone!” said Tibet specialist Fernand Meyer, a former holder of the Science and Civilization of the Tibetan World chair at the Practical School of Advanced Studies (EPHE). For him, contrary to what Lintz thinks, “the ‘Himalayan world’ is not a culturally definable entity as such. Rather, it is a zone where the cultural areas of India and Tibet meet. To reduce the latter to its southern, geographically Himalayan fringe, therefore, does not do justice to the history and extension of a specifically Tibetan culture.” [Source]
“It’s not a trivial term. It’s a colonial denomination imposed by China against Tibetan culture, people, and history,” Tenam, a Tibetan refugee and member of Students for a Free Tibet, told Libération regarding the significance of “Xizang.” In November 2023, China’s State Council published a white paper on Tibet which for the first time replaced the word “Tibet” with “Xizang,” and official state-media reports subsequently followed suit. The Chinese government has also on numerous occasions renamed dozens of locations in the region that India claims as Arunachal Pradesh and that China claims as Southern Tibet. Similar Sinicization campaigns have targeted ethnic minorities across China, including the renaming of Uyghur villages in Xinjiang to erase Uyghur history and culture.
This year, France celebrates its 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations with China and has marked the occasion by increasing Sino-French cultural exchanges in the arts. As Le Monde explained, “For the French stakeholders, the high-wire act involves accommodating an increasingly authoritarian [Chinese] government without giving the impression of selling one’s soul. It’s a doctrine – the ‘art of evasion’ – that [President Emmanuel] Macron theorized in November 2019, at the inauguration of the Centre Pompidou x West Bund, in Shanghai, when several works had to be withdrawn from the exhibition in order not to offend local sensibilities.”
In a previous incident in the French city of Nantes, a museum attempting to present an exhibition on Mongolia stated that CCP authorities pressured the museum at the last minute to remove the words “Genghis Khan,” “empire,” and “Mongol” from the entire show, and later demanded “control of the exhibition’s production,” which included providing a new exhibition synopsis written by the National Administration of Cultural Heritage in Beijing. The museum refused to give in and, after months of failed negotiations, decided to present the exhibition without partnering with Chinese authorities. Reporting on these incidents, Franceinfo highlighted another recent example of Chinese influence at the l’Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) in Paris:
[A]t the Arab World Institute [IMA], a seasoned exhibition curator agreed to give his testimony. Claude Mollard, a special advisor to IMA President Jack Lang, has been working since 2017 to tell the story of the Silk Road, based on objects loaned by Beijing. China offered to finance the entire project, but also asked to review the chronology. “It’s true they sometimes tend to start the world with China,” smiles Claude Mollard. “So you have to know how to push back.” In the absence of an agreement, he tried a plan B, which he knew was diplomatically risky. “Since we couldn’t reach an agreement with the mainland Chinese, could we reach an agreement with Taiwan? But then, well, the Quai d’Orsay [foreign ministry], or others, immediately told us: ‘Be careful: that’s digging up the hatchet!’” says the exhibition curator. “We’re independent, we’re free, but we’re still obliged to take into account the existing diplomatic relations.” [French]
Commenting under the Franceinfo video feature that included Mollard’s quote, one French netizen wrote: “If the presentation of historical truth (in the scientific sense) depends on diplomacy or political interest, what should we expect next?” Meanwhile, the Chinese Embassy in France pointedly tagged Info France 2 (a news channel that republished Franceinfo’s video feature) and punched back on X, “It seems to us that some media outlets still lack knowledge of politics, diplomacy, and geography. Otherwise, how could they consider #Xizang as a country?”
