News

Rebirth of the lama kingdom

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-05-23 10:36

"TIBET INDEPENDENCE" MYTH    

While Mao Zedong claimed the 1951 liberation of Tibet prevented the territory from being reduced to a colony of the aggressive  super powers, including Britain and Russia, the Dalai Lama and his followers criticized the move as an "invasion," saying Tibet had  been an independent state.    

Chinese historians insist that Tibet came under the direct rule of the Chinese central government in the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th  century. In 1288, the Yuan regime formalized a ministry-level  agency to administer the entire Tibetan region.    

During the Qing Dynasty, all the Dalai Lama reincarnations  required approval from Beijing. "In other words, the Dalai Lama  was only as good as a local governor, appointed by the central  government," said Prof. Huo Wei, a specialist on Tibetan studies  with Sichuan University in Chengdu.    

After the Republic of China was founded in 1911, it reaffirmed  the central government's authority over Tibet in the republic's  first constitution. Tibet elected 20 delegates to the national  congress in 1913.  

 The 13th Dalai Lama and the 9th Panchen Lama both sent  representatives to the national leadership conference of the  Republic of China in 1931.  

 In 1940, the national government set up its Lhasa branch of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission. "These all indicated the Tibetans were heavily involved in the country's political life and Tibet was an inseparable part of China," said Li Decheng, a  scholar with China Tibetology Research Center.    

The "Tibet independence" claim, which evolved during the late  19th century, was actually a product of imperialist invasions,  with the British invaders in Tibet as the culprits, said Zhang Yun, head of the center's history institute.  

 In 1888 and 1904 British troops invaded Tibet twice and were  resisted by local Tibetan people. In the 1904 war, British troops, led by colonel Francis Younghusband, occupied Lhasa after killing  about 4,000 Tibetans. Further, they forced the local government to sign the Lhasa Treaty to include Tibet into the sphere of the  British Empire.    

"At least four times during the Kuomintang's rule, the British  offered military supplies to Tibet's local government to instigate uprisings,"  Zhang said.  

Representatives of Great Britain and China met in 1914 to  negotiate a treaty marking out the boundary lines between India  and its northern neighbors.  

 The Simla Convention granted China secular control over "Inner  Tibet," while recognizing the autonomy of "Outer Tibet" under the  Dalai Lama's rule. The Chinese government refused to sign the  agreement and declared the document null and void.    Behind the back of the Chinese delegates, the British, headed  by Henry McMahon, clinched an agreement with Tibetan  representative Xazha in which Tibet was to cede 90,000 square  kilometers of Chinese territory to Britain in return for further  British pressure on China to allow Tibet to become independent.    

The "McMahon Line" was created against this backdrop, but it  was never agreed to by the Chinese government.   From 1923 to 1924, the British set up a school for army  officers in Gyangze, Xigaze Prefecture. The young pro-British  officers proposed to overthrow the theological rule of the 13th  Dalai Lama and plotted a coup, hoping to forcibly introduce a  British-style political system. Their plot, however, was reported  to the 13th Dalai Lama and stopped before it could be carried out.    

The attempted coup warned the Dalai Lama of the imminent  possibility of Britain poking its nose into Tibet's internal  affairs and potential threat to his ruling position. He closed the British schools in Gyangze and banned Tibetan officials and  civilians from wearing Western clothing. He also ordered the  dismantling of a Western-style villa the British built for him at  Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama's summer residence. Meanwhile, he  sought to improve ties with the Chinese central government.  

The British also supplied arms during the Tibetan army's  eastward campaign in 1931-32, said Zhang.    In 1951, British spies helped the Tibetan local army to prevent the PLA from entering Tibet.   Foreign intervention continued after Tibet's liberation in 1951.    

According to Zhang Yun, the CIA provided arms and financial  aids to  "Four Rivers and Six Ranges," a group of pro-independence Tibetan rebels. The CIA also trained members of the group at its  guerrilla training base in Colorado and air-dropped the guerrillas and weapons to Tibetan regions for sabotage activities.  

Following a failed uprising by the rebels in 1959, the 14th  Dalai Lama went into exile in India. But the U.S. aid to the group, based in Mustang of northern Nepal, continued until after  Sino-U.S. ties began to improve in 1972.  Two years later, the Nepalese government wiped out the rebels.