We think they would better revise their history books. Let`s start from the name. “Tubo”, the word referring to the area of present-day Tibet, belonged to the Tang dynasty, founded by the Tubo King Songtsan Gampo (who united the local tribes) and his wife, Chinese Princess Wen Cheng, a niece of the powerful Emperor Taizong of Tang. Wen Cheng left her homeland not alone, she took dozens of artists and craftsmen with her to lay the foundation of numerous sciences and crafts in future Tibet. Some expert say that even Buddhism, so popular during the Tang dynasty, was imported to Tibet from China.
One of the major sightseeing spots, the Potala Palace, was built mainly by the Chinese people in order to greet the marriage1 between Wen Cheng and Songtsan Gampo. In the 13th century, under the ruling of the Yuan dynasty, Emperor Hubilai Khan united Tibet and China. Since then the Chinese emperors ruled over the territory, at first-by appointing Dalai Lamas, the supreme clerical leaders of Tibetan Buddhists.2
Some time passed. After Europe invaded India and began its Opium Wars against China, it demonstrated interest in Tibet. When at the end of the 19th century the British government learned that the Buryat Lama Dorjiyev (the closest aide to the 13th Lama) had held talks with Saint Petersburg (by the way, Beijing did not opposed the talks), they were very disappointed and immediately demanded a trade freedom between India and Tibet. Of course, Beijing and Lhasa turned down the demand. So Europe was quite predictable and sent its intervention corps. In December, 1903, a Colonel Francis Younghusban with a military force of 1000 soldiers and a howitzer battery, laid siege to the Gyatso fortress (southern gates to Tibet), apparently trying to prevent China`s “humanitarian oppression” of the Tibetans. The southern wall of the Gyatso fortress still has the traces of those “humanitarian” shells. The fortress (with three cannons and the Tibetan garrison) withstood the siege during a month. After seizing it, the forefathers of the present day members of the European Parliament advanced further. In August 1904 they arrived in Lhasa thus making the Dalai Lama flee to Mongolia.
Having deployed his artillery in front of the Potala Palace, the British Colonel Younghusban demanded that an agreement on free access to Tibet be signed the next morning. Otherwise, he threatened to destroy the Palace.
We all know that Tibet won`t surrender to the British army. Colonel Younghusban saw a prophetic dream, suddenly stopped the expedition and devoted the rest of his life to charity (V. Ovshinnikov, a prominent expert in Tibet, who knows personally the 14th Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama since 19553, describes the event in his book in full).
In 1907 in Saint Petersburg there was signed a treaty between Russia and Great Britain. The sides agreed to respect Tibet`s territorial integrity and launch cooperation with Lhasa only through the mediation of Beijing.
Here is another historical episode. Soon after the Singhai democratic and anti-monarchist revolution, Great Britain, at the end of 1912, supported by the pro-British Dalai Lama XIII and his closest allies, brought a 3-thousand detachment to Tibet. The many Chinese officials were executed in Tibet, while the remaining soldiers of the garrison left the territory via India.
However, China retained its sovereignty over Tibet. This fact was verified in numerous deals with other states. During the conference in Simla (India), which took place in 1913-1914, Tibet was not granted an independent status since China strictly opposed it4. In 1913 the Dalai Lama wrote a letter to the Russian Emperor Nicolas II, asking him to recognize Tibet`s independence, but the proposal was not accepted by the Russian side. Never in the 20th century had China lost its sovereignty over Tibet.
But control over the vast and thinly populated territory was another thing. It was difficult to rule Tibet because of constant inner confrontations and aggression from within. In fact, in the first half of the 20th century Tibet was controlled by various local feudal-technocratic groups and even by some Buddhist monasteries. Many of them were provided with arms from England and practically looked more like paramilitary units. In 1917-1918 the Dalai Lama launched a successful military operation against China in eastern Tibet.
But still China managed to exercise control over the region. They taught specialists in Chinese universities, provided the most authoritative people of Tibet (including the Panchen Lama) with seats in the national legislative and executive bodies. After the triumph of the Guomindang in 1927 and the establishment of the Nanking government in 1928, China`s central authorities managed to strengthen their positions in Tibet. Quite often, because the Dalai Lama won`t agree on compromise, they had to launch new military operation against the Tibetan armed groups. After the death of the Dalai Lama XIII in 1933, Nanking opened its representative office in Lhasa and prepared the return of the Panchen Lama IX, who backed Guomindang`s position on the country’s unity. On his way to Lhasa in 1937 the Panchen Lama died.
Then the central government moved to Chuntsyn as Japan launched its aggression. The relations with Tibet improved. At the beginning of the 1949, in accordance with the old emperor tradition, a high-ranking Chinese official attended the ceremony of enthronement of a 4-year old Dalai Lama XIV in Potala. A bit later, a regional office of the Chinese Committee on Mongolia and Tibet opened in Lhasa. There also appeared an elementary school, a telegraph, a radio station, a hospital and a meteorological station.
In 1945 Tibet, represented by the self-proclaimed government, tried to raise a question about its international status but again Tibet was not granted sovereignty. Great Britain thought “the presence of a Tibetan representative at the peaceful conference impossible since Tibet did not take part in the war”.
The 1947 Constitution of the Chinese republic, adopted at the National Assembly, featuring some members of the Tibetan government, fixed Tibet’s location within China as autonomy.
Soon Tibet again became the center of intestine wars. In April 1947 the Radrang monastery (the patrimony of the former chanter Djampal Yeshe) rose in rebellion. They were annoyed at the interference into the monastery’s financial affairs by a new chanter Takr. They also opposed the opening of a secular school with English classes and students` probation in England. Britain helped China to suppress the riots. Hundreds of monks were killed. The opposition leader Djampal Yeshe was reported to have “suddenly died” in prison before a sentence was passed upon him.
Not long before, the Tibetan government made its debut in the international arena. Its members took part in the conference of the Indian national congress in March, 1947, and had talks with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. At the opening ceremony in the hall of council meetings Tibet was marked on the map of Asia as an independent state. Only after the Chinese Foreign Ministry appealed against, the Tibetan flag was removed and the region was again annexed to China5.
Having received the dominion status from Britain in August 1947, India inherited the British representation office in Lhasa (although it remained under control of a British politician H. Richardson). For the Tibetan leaders it was a kind of an impulse and the region again attempted to receive the international recognition. The delegation, headed by Shakabpa and Surkhang, paid visits to Delhi, Nanking, Washington and London. But none of the cities approve their claims of independence. The U.S. Secretary of State Marshall told Shakabpa that Washington saw Tibet as part of the Chinese Republic.
The following withdrawal of the British troops from India, the Guomindang defeat and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 made the Chinese authorities bring the troops in Tibet to liberate the region from the Guomindang rule6. On 23 May, 1951, in Beijing there was signed an “Agreement on Peaceful Liberation of Tibet”, thus granting the Tibetan territories a regional autonomy. So, is there anything worthy of further discussion?
Afterwards, China’s policy in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) (they launched careful de-feudalisation of the territories and provided the local poor population with land, cattle and an opportunity to receive education), provoked resentment from the clerical bosses and caused an anti-governmental rebellion in 1959 which gained support abroad. It was possible to avoid such violent clashes if the Buddhist monasteries had not received weapons from abroad through CIA channels. After the rebellion was suppressed, the Dalai Lama XIV was forced to leave the country and settle in India, where in Dharansala (in the Himalayas) he formed the “Tibetan government- in- exile”.
But let us focus on present days. In the modern world, the independence of a state is not only a political but also a technical issue. To exercise control over huge but thinly populated territories, to protect it, to develop infrastructure, the system of education and health care-is a too difficult task even for the present-day regional authorities, to say nothing of the obscure Buddhist theocracy of the 1940-50s7. Even with a significant financial support from China (by the way, not all are happy about this, the Tibet Autonomous Region will long remain a retarded8 (although rapidly developing) region. Its geographical position and climate turn the construction of new roads into a very complicated process. And it would be unwise to build there large industrial plants and vast export zones. The nature created this land for tourism and relaxation. This fact was taken into consideration by the authors of special programs aimed at Tibet’s development. Its ecological, geographical and ethnographical components play a crucial role in the region’s development. The international tourism (and even to a greater extent- tourism within the country) is dominating all sectors of Tibet’s economy. Herds of yaks and sheep are not growing thinner (10 heads of cattle per capita). The Tibetans live slowly, in unity with nature, protecting their way of life from any unnecessary innovations. Nowadays the people in Tibet have more freedoms than ever: they can cultivate their land or become cattle-breeders or vets. Those who have elementary education can become monks9 or enter one of the four universities. The people of Tibet have enough job opportunities in the sphere of public transportation, tourist agencies or ecological services. There are no more serfs in Tibet, and the Buddhist monasteries have lost any interest in robbing people as they get enough money from tourists, develop traditional crafts and enjoying subsidies from the regional and central authorities10.
To the credit of the Dalai Lama XIV (who supported the 2008 Olympiad in Beijing) be it said that he has a balanced approach to Tibet issue and is aware of the whole complexity of problems the region is facing amid ongoing changes in global policies. The Dalai Lama does not support Tibet’s independence from China. However, the leader of the Tibetan Buddhists falls under the influence of the “government-in-exile”11 and of the numerous Tibet diaspora, which settled in India after leaving their homeland and now receiving little support from the Indian population.
Some western politicians tried to become “holier than the Pope” and linked politics to the forthcoming Olympiad in Beijing, calling for boycotting the games. Among them are: the Prince of Wales, “The Reporters Without Borders”, the Carnegie Fund12 and Hollywood glamour stars- Richard Gere, Steven Sigal and Sharon Stone. The Chairman of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering even announced that “boycotting of the Games in Beijing was very possible”. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier share his opinion. The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was even cynical while commenting on the situation in Tibet and was later called by the Xinhua agency “a defender of robbers, instigators and killers”. Indeed, before delivering her speech, Ms. Pelosi could have remembered the results of the U.S. invasion in Iraq in 2003 and the number of victims among the Iraqi civilians.
It is clear that the recent unrest in Tibet was directed from abroad. It also was not by chance that the U.S. President George W. Bush had talks with the Dalai Lama in days of the XVII congress of the Chinese Communist Party, and the March riots were organized exactly during the first session of the All-China Assembly of People's Representatives and ahead of the elections in Taiwan.
But all these political performances had never brought any positive results and caused only annoyance among those who had at least a rough idea of the real state of affairs. It is worth mentioning that to worsen relations with contemporary China means to have serious economic problems in future as Beijing may cancel contracts with its European partners on the Airbus deliveries or something of the kind. If it happens, Europe will have to thank nobody else but its political figures- Pottering, Sarkozy and others. You know, gentlemen, times have changed.
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1 In 17th century, under the Dalai Lama V, the Potala Palace was almost totally destroyed. Soon the main sightseeing spot of Lhasa was restored, again with the help of China, in accordance with the remaining frescoes. The Palace was give its present-day look more than 350 years ago. It outlived the Summer Palace in Beijing, which was destroyed by the English and French troops in 1850. In troublesome times of the “culture revolution” the army protected the palace and some other objects in Tibet from attacks of the local “hunweibins”.
2 Only because emperors paid special attention to dalai lamas, they were considered to be the highest hierarchs (they had residence in Lhasa), but under the Tibetan laws the Panchen-Lama (with his residence in Shigatse) was equal to the Dalai-Lama.
3 To better understand the Tibet realia we recommend that you read an outstanding book by Vsevolod Ovchinnikov “Road to Shambala”/ Moscow, “Dovgyan” publishing house, 1997
4 Though China did not signed such an unclear convention, during the exchange of diplomatic notes all the sides wrote that Tibet belonged to China.
5 From the point of view of geopolitics, India has always fancied the idea of Tibet as a “buffer state”. The idea is still alive so China should keep a close eye on the opinion of their Indian colleagues. In 1959 Indian army took active part in anti-governmental riots in Tibet.
6 Before the People`s Republic of China was established on September, 2, 1949, the Xinhua news agency announced: “The People`s Liberation Army of China will liberate the whole territory, including Tibet, Sikan, the Hainan island and Formosa. It won`t leave the Chinese land without the power of the PLA”
7 One of the Tibet traditions was to bury a boy-lama alive under the foundation stone of a religious building if he is reported to have telepathic abilities. Some experts believe that the polyandry tradition in Tibet is closely linked with massive postnatal killing of girls. So, we should be very careful with the words while talking about the human rights in Tibet when people lacked even the notion of human rights not so long ago.
8 It was retarded from the Chinese perspective, but if compared to its neighbors in South Asia, Tibet was quite a developed region. In comparison with India, Tibet has higher life-expectancy rates, income per capita and its people, especially women, are more educated.
9 Now in Tibet (with population over 2 million) there are 35,000 monks (in 1955 there were only 120,000 of them). The rumors about Chinese dominance in the region are exaggerated. At least 80,000 people working in Tibet are from other regions of the country.
10 The authorities started providing financial support to Tibet after the Falungun sect was banned in 2000.
11 These “governments-in-exile” and other dissidents rarely like anything happening in their lost homeland. Even the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which is the example of the most qualified labor of engineers, aimed at preserving the unique landscape of the region, annoyed the spokesman of the exiled Tibetan government Thubten Samphel, who has recently spread a false report about 80 people killed in Tibet.
12 Kagan is a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In one of his regular articles in “The Washington Times” he called modern Chinese leaders “peoples of the 19th century”. But to what era belongs the Tibetan practice to chain the legs of three fugitive serfs with one shackle (a widespread practice in mid 1950s), Mr. Kagan failed to explain.
