Who rules Tibet?
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It is generally agreed that China and Tibet were independent prior to the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), and that Tibet has been ruled by the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 1959. The nature of Tibet's relationship with China in the intervening period is a matter of debate. The PRC claims that Tibet has been a part of China since the Yuan dynasty. The Republic of China (ROC) claimed that "Tibet was placed under the sovereignty of China" when the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) ended the brief Nepalese rule (1788-1792) from parts of Tibet in c. 1793. The Tibetan Government in Exile claims that Tibet was an independent state until the PRC invaded Tibet in 1949/50. Some Western scholars claim that Tibet and China were ruled by the Mongols during the Yuan dynasty, that Tibet was independent during the Chinese Ming dynasty (1368–1644). and that Tibet was ruled by China or at the very least subordinate to the Qing during much of the Qing dynasty. Some Western scholars also claim that Tibet was independent from c. 1912 to 1950, although it had extremely limited international recognition.
Tibetan sovereignty debate
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The history of Tibet from 1950 to the present started with the Chinese People's Liberation Army Invading Tibet in 1950. Before then, Tibet had declared independence from China in 1913. In 1951, the Tibetans signed a seventeen-point agreement reaffirming China's sovereignty over Tibet and providing an autonomous administration led by Dalai Lama. In 1959 the 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet to northern India under cover where he established the Central Tibetan Administration. The Tibet Autonomous Region within China was officially established in 1965.
History of Tibet (1950–present)
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In 1951, representatives of Tibetan authority, with the Dalai Lama's authorization, participated in negotiations with the PRC government in Beijing. This resulted in a "Seventeen Point Agreement" which established PRC's sovereignty over Tibet, and it thereby gave the PRC power to rule. The agreement was ratified in Lhasa a few months later. According to the Tibetan government-in-exile, some members of the Tibetan Cabinet (Kashag), for example, Tibetan Prime Minister Lukhangwa, never accepted the agreement. But the National Assembly of Tibet, "while recognizing the extenuating circumstances under which the delegates had to sign the 'agreement', asked the government to accept the 'agreement'...the Kashag told Zhang Jingwu that it would radio its acceptance of the 'agreement'."
Tibetan exile sources generally consider it invalid, as having been reluctantly or unwillingly signed under duress. On the path that was leading him into exile in India, the 14th Dalai Lama arrived March 26, 1959 at Lhuntse Dzong where he repudiated the "17-point Agreement" as having been "thrust upon Tibetan Government and people by the threat of arms" and reaffirmed his government as the only legitimate representative of Tibet. According to the Seventeen Point Agreement, the Dalai Lama-ruled Tibetan area was supposed to be a highly autonomous area of China. From the beginning, it was obvious that incorporating Tibet into Communist PRC would bring two opposite social systems face-to-face. In western Tibet, however, the Chinese Communists opted not to make social reform an immediate priority. On the contrary, from 1951 to 1959, traditional Tibetan society with its lords and manorial estates continued to function unchanged and were subsidized by the central government. Despite the presence of twenty thousand PLA troops in Central Tibet, the Dalai Lama's government was permitted to maintain important symbols from its "de facto" independence period. The first national census in all of the People's Republic of China was held in 1954, counting 2,770,000 ethnic Tibetans in China, including 1,270,000 in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The Chinese built highways that reached Lhasa, and then extended them to the Indian, Nepalese and Pakistani borders.
History of Tibet (1950–present)
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The region retained a degree of political autonomy under the Sakya lama, who was the "de jure" head of Tibet and a spiritual leader of the Mongol Empire. However, administrative and military rule of Tibet remained under the auspices of the Yuan government agency known as the Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs, or Xuanzheng Yuan, a top-level administrative department separate from the provinces of Song China, but still under the administration of the Yuan dynasty. Tibet retained nominal power over religious and political affairs, while the Mongols managed a structural and administrative rule over the region, reinforced by the rare military intervention. This existed as a "diarchic structure" under the Yuan emperor, with power primarily in favor of the Mongols. One of the department's purposes was to select a dpon-chen, usually appointed by the lama and confirmed by the Mongol emperor in Beijing.
Tibet under Yuan rule
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The Chinese side seeks to persuade international perception as to the appropriate nature and justifiability of Chinese rule in Tibet. Their position is that Tibet truly and historically belongs to China, that affairs of Tibet are internal matters, and Tibetans seek to internationalize their cause, in part by convincing readers that Tibet was independent. Concentrating as it does on questions of national sovereignty, the official position of the Tibetan Government in Exile is more moderate in tone than that of some of its more extreme supporters who conflate the rule of the lamas with Tibetan Buddhist ideals, seeking to promote a Buddhist dogma that competes with the Marxist dogma of "feudal serfdom" by portraying Tibet under the lamas as, in Robert Thurman's words: "a mandala of the peaceful, perfected universe".
Serfdom in Tibet controversy
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The Tibetan Government in Exile views current PRC rule in Tibet, including neighboring provinces outside Tibet Autonomous Region, as colonial and illegitimate, motivated solely by the natural resources and strategic value of Tibet, and in gross violation of both Tibet's historical status as an independent country and the right of Tibetan people to self-determination. It also points to PRC's autocratic policies, divide-and-rule policies, and what it contends are assimilationist policies, and regard those as an example of ongoing imperialism aimed at destroying Tibet's distinct ethnic makeup, culture, and identity, thereby cementing it as an indivisible part of China. That said, the Dalai Lama stated in 2008 that he wishes only for Tibetan autonomy, and not separation from China, under certain conditions, like freedom of speech and expression, genuine self-rule, and control over ethnic makeup and migration in all areas claimed as historical Tibet.
Tibetan sovereignty debate
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Journalist and author Thomas Laird, in his book "The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama", writes that Wang and Nyima present the government viewpoint of the People's Republic of China in their "Historical Status of China's Tibet", and fail to realize that China was "absorbed into a larger, non-Chinese political unit" during the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which Wang and Nyima paint as a characteristic Chinese dynasty succeeded by the Ming. Laird asserts that the ruling Mongol khans never administered Tibet as part of China and instead ruled them as separate territories, comparing the Mongols with the British who colonized India and New Zealand, yet stating this does not make India part of New Zealand as a consequence. Of later Mongol and Tibetan accounts interpreting the Mongol conquest of Tibet, Laird asserts that "they, like all non-Chinese historical narratives, never portray the Mongol subjugation of Tibet as a Chinese one."
Sino-Tibetan relations during the Ming dynasty
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Following the establishment of the new Republic, China's provisional President Yuan Shikai sent a telegram to the 13th Dalai Lama, restoring his earlier titles. The Dalai Lama spurned these titles, replying that he "intended to exercise both temporal and ecclesiastical rule in Tibet." In 1913, the Dalai Lama, who had fled to India when the Qing sent a military expedition to establish direct Chinese rule over Tibet in 1910, returned to Lhasa and issued a proclamation that stated that the relationship between the Chinese emperor and Tibet "had been that of patron and priest and had not been based on the subordination of one to the other." "We are a small, religious, and independent nation," the proclamation stated.
Tibet (1912–1951)
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Tibet under Qing rule refers to the Qing dynasty's rule over Tibet from 1720 to 1912. During the Qing rule of Tibet, the region was controlled by the Qing dynasty established by the Manchus in China. In the history of Tibet, Qing administrative rule was established after a Qing army defeated the Dzungars who occupied Tibet in 1720, and lasted until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912, although the region retained a degree of political autonomy under the Dalai Lamas. The Qing emperors appointed imperial residents known as the Ambans to Tibet, who commanded over 2,000 troops stationed in Lhasa and reported to the Lifan Yuan, a Qing government body that oversaw the empire's frontier regions.
Tibet under Qing rule
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Tibet established a Foreign Office in 1942, and in 1946 it sent congratulatory missions to China and India (related to the end of World War II). The mission to China was given a letter addressed to Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek which states that, "We shall continue to maintain the independence of Tibet as a nation ruled by the successive Dalai Lamas through an authentic religious-political rule." The mission agreed to attend a Chinese constitutional assembly in Nanjing as observers.
Tibet (1912–1951)
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Western authors' writings on Tibetan history are sometimes controversial. For example, whilst Hugh Richardson, who lived in Lhasa in the 1930s and 1940s, before the takeover by the PRC in 1951, writes in "Tibet and Its History" that Chinese versions of Tibetan history are contemptible and he considers the Chinese rule brutal and illegal, Israel Epstein, a naturalized Chinese citizen born in Poland who similarly claims the authority of first-hand knowledge, although following the Chinese takeover, supports Chinese rule. There are few academic assessments of the recent history of Tibet. Anthropologist and historian Melvyn Goldstein, who is fluent in Tibetan and has done considerable fieldwork with Tibetans in exile and in Tibet, considers pre-1950 Tibet to have been a feudal theocracy impaired by corrupt and incompetent leaders. It was "de facto" independent of China from 1911 to 1949, but not recognised as "de jure" independent of China by any nation, including its protective power Great Britain.
Serfdom in Tibet controversy
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Before the Invasion of Tibet in 1951, Tibet was ruled by a theocracy and had a caste-like social hierarchy. Official crackdowns in the region generally center on “the three evils of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism,” which give pretext for abuses.
Human rights in Tibet