Regarding the situation in Tibet.
Apr. 12th, 2008 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusRegarding the situation in Tibet.
I was asked to do a post on Tibet. I'm glad you asked.
A friend of mine works for Radio Free Asia and they received cell phone calls from Tibetans in Lhasa that haven't made the news. As an Asian studies major I'm also in contact with students who specialize in China who've recently returned from western China. I've also taken a bit of ancient Chinese history, and I'm in the process of researching a paper on Tibetan history.
This itself is not a scholarly paper, merely an outline, so I do not have footnotes. If you're interested for the source for any particular fact, just let me know. I should probably at least provide a bibliography and will do so on request. Later. For right now I'm electing to work on Out Of Bounds instead.
This is a lot of information, so I've broken it into four sections:
- The history of the relationship between China and Tibet, 2nd century to 20th century
- The invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the Lhasa uprising on March 10th, 1959
- The current situation in Tibet leading up to the protests and riots this month
- The protests and riots that began March 10, 2008
This is gleaned from western scholarship on the region, western scholarship on China, and from the Tibetans themselves. In China students are taught a very different picture. Chinese scholars are accused by Japanese, Korean, and western scholars of agressively cherry-picking and "renovating" Chinese history, directly serving the political purposes of the PRC. I've been reading the Beijing Review. Information is presented to the Chinese "pre-chewed." There are blanket statements backed by decontextualized cherry-picked facts.
The history of the relationship between China and Tibet, 2nd century to 20th century
- China claims that Tibet has been part of China for hundreds of years. Some Chinese assume this goes back to the earliest foundation of the Chinese Han dynasty, the 2nd century B.C. China's rewriting the history of Asia to suit itself has been a problem, angering Korean and Japanese scholars with self-serving inaccuracies.
- The classical Confucian Han dynasty did not extend to Tibet, which was far too remote a region, although China did have Taoist legends of Chinese goddesses living in the Himalayas.
- After China's Han dynasty fell apart in 220 C.E., China's next major dynasty was the Buddhist T'ang Dynasty in the 7th century. The T'ang dynasty was at war with the Tibetan empire as well as with Korea, the Turks, and various northern steppe tribes. The Tibetan empire seized Chang'an, the capital of China, but couldn't hold it.
- The Tibetan empire fell apart 200 years later in 842. The king of Tibet was assassinated by his older brother at the same time the northern Uigur tribes were conquered, causing a massive influx of refugees Tibet couldn't handle. Tibet divided into several states until 1247, none of which had anything to do with China. China, after the collapse of the T'ang was broken into "Ten Kingdoms and Five Dynasties," and then the smaller but finally centralized again in the Song dynasty of China. The very thorough Chinese histories have virtually no mention of Tibet.
- Then the Mongols came. The Mongols conquered both China and Tibet.
- In 1247 the Mongols conquered Tibet, while in 1276 they conquered China. The Mongols left local governmental systems intact, but the Tibetan government was still broken into several states. So the Mongols elevated a Tibetan Lama as the only central authority they could locate. No, not the Dalai Lama; the Sakya Lama. But this began the centering of religious and political authority in one person. Originally Tibet and China were assigned to two different Mongol leaders, but the Mongol leader of Tibet died, and so Kublai Khan was left in charge of both.
- When China fell, Mongols began the Yuan dynasty. The Mongols imported outsiders to help run China's government because they didn't trust the Chinese, hiring Marco Polo at one point and bringing in Tibetans. Chinese now say that Tibet was part of China at this time. It's more accurate to say that China and Tibet were part of Mongolia. The Mongols were eventually "sinefied" becoming indistinguishable from Chinese. Tibetans believe that they converted the Mongols to Buddhism.
- In China, the Mongol Yuan dynasty was overthrown by a popular revolt leading to China's Ming dynasty in the 14th century. Meanwhile, control of Tibet by the Mongols simply faded as they were too involved in trying to keep their prized China and didn't seem to care much about Tibet. After the overthrow of the Yuan, Tibet kept up a nominal relationship with the Mongol leaders in Mongolia. It was a Mongol leader who supported the first of the Dalai Lamas.
- The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) pretty much had nothing to do with Tibet, which went its own way for the next 300 years. Chinese histories barely mention Tibet.
- The Manchurian Qing dynasty (1644-1911) under emperor Kangxi attempted to incorporate Tibet into China by installing a pro-China Dalai Lama as the head of the state in 1720, leaving a garrison and a Chinese resident. The Tibetans viewed this as Chinese fealty to the Dalai Lama rather than the other way around. Under emperor Qianlong, Turkestan was defeated and incorporated by the Chinese, and China also captured outer Mongolia. Emperor Qianlong fought two wars with eastern Tibet, while Tibetan Buddhism spread throughout Mongolia. The installation of the (I think this was the 5th Dalai Lama but I'll have to check) Dalai Lama is the foundation of China's legal claim, which is a little like the UK claiming the US as historically theirs.
- In the mid-to-late 1700s, during sectarian in-fighting in Tibet, the Chinese again sent a garrison to Lhasa to support the Dalai Lama, but after that they gave up. Apparently realizing the perception that his support was viewed as fealty to the Dalai Lama, Qianlong changed tactics. He had religious images made of himself as a more important incarnation than the Dalai Lama.
- During the opium wars the Chinese were way too distracted by Britain to pay attention to Tibet (if they'd intended to). A Chinese resident continued to live in Tibet, but his influence was so negligible that the British empire negotiated with Tibet in the early 1900s without even being aware of his existence. China continued to be absorbed in its internal issues from 1911 on, and did not show an interest in Tibet again until the late 1940s.
- In Tibet, from the late 1800s, power rested with the Panchen Lama who was regent until the young Dalai Lama grew up. But three young Dalai Lamas mysteriously died just before reaching their age of majority (most Tibetans believe the Panchen Lama, or factions supporting him, poisoned the boys so he could stay in power).
- The young thirteenth Dalai Lama, the predecessor to the current Dalai Lama, survived thanks to some loyalists. He inherited a post-1911 Tibet with war boiling in China, Britain and Russia vying for control of the entire region in "the great game" as they called it, India uniting behind Gandhi and bucking the British Empire, and a Tibetan government riddled with corruption and intrigue. The Panchen Lama was exiled to eastern Tibet but he still had supporters in Lhasa. The 13th Dalai Lama started a balancing act of inviting US representatives, and then British representatives, but he did not have the absolute authority of the current Dalai Lama (largely created by a common enemy, China, since historically the Dalai Lamas have had to contend with many competing factions).
The invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the Lhasa uprising on March 10th, 1959
- With the death of the 13th Dalai Lama (from old age this time), the successor to the discredited Panchen Lama had to be recalled from exile to lead Tibet. I could add detail here, but suffice it to say there was a power vacuum while the current Dalai Lama grew up (he was put through an accelerated Tibetan version of Buddhist doctorate, keeping him cloistered in study his entire childhood) because of near-universal distrust of the Panchen Lama. This gave China its opening to slowly encroach into Tibet.
- In 1950, at age 15, the current Dalai Lama finished his Geshe degree (a seven year post-secondary school Buddhist program) defending the Tibetan version of a dissertation in debate against the top scholars in Tibet, in front of thousands of spectators. No pressure. At that point he was qualified to take leadership of Tibet. The normal age to finish this degree is in one's late 20s. No, it contains no political training whatsoever.
- In 1950, China began its "peaceful liberation" of Tibet. The garrisons they sent were very, very polite, practically carrying daisies in their rifles as they took up positions throughout Tibet, easily capturing Tibet's top general and his 8,000 man army. China had had to move slowly because the roads into Tibet were goat tracks. There's good reason the famous Silk Road circled around Tibet.
- Tibet panicked and tried three simultaneous solutions: 1) they sent agents over the mountains to India to plead to the fledgling UN for help (by yak, I think, there was only one car in Tibet); 2) they contacted various governments for military aid; 3) they met with Indian officials to see if they could evacuate the Dalai Lama to India. The US under Eisenhower responded, providing military training and supplies for Khampa mountain tribesmen in eastern Tibet. Tibet tried to negotiate with China, meeting with Mao. After being turned down by the UN, Tibet admitted they couldn't fight an overwhelming force, capitulated and signed the 17 Point Agreement which declared Tibet a part of China but provided for complete political and cultural autonomy.
- The Khampas kept right on fighting, furious at the central government for giving in. Kham is sort of the Texas of Tibet: part of Tibet, but they'd once been a sovereign state. There was something of a serf system in central Tibet (not quite, homes and property were passed down through individual families, but your legal complaints were settled by the local Tibetan noble). Kham had a completely different system where extended families owned ancestral grazing lands, individuals owned their own animals, and legal issues were settled by the head of the family. If you didn't like it, you could strike out on your own.
- China almost immediately broke all the terms of the 17 Point Agreement, instituting communist "reforms" all over Tibet. The communists began instituting "land reform" in Kham first, taking land away from the "nobles" (i.e., the local tribesmen).
- In 1956, with support and training from the CIA (Khampas were flown to Colorado to train in mountain guerilla warfare) – the Khampas struck back. The Chinese military at first was inappropriately equipped for Tibet's harsh conditions, didn't carry enough food, and found themselves caught in mountain bottlenecks with a better armed and trained force than they'd experienced before. The monasteries in Kham acted as message relay points, hid Khampa fighters from the Chinese, and even allowed storage caches of weapons. The eldest son of every Khampa family was sent to the monastery to become a monk and receive an education, you see, so generally speaking, the fighters were the younger brothers of the monks. (In the 1959 uprising China shelled the Khampa monasteries in retaliation.)
- I'm sure you already know about the 1959 uprising in Tibet against China, when 20,000 Tibetan civilians surrounded the Dalai Lama's Potala palace and the Dalai Lama fled to stop the bloodbath as China shelled the crowd. My friend Christine's father worked for the CIA at Langley during that period and he was one of the ones responsible for getting the Dalai Lama to India. The CIA is damned proud of that.
- Refugees poured out of Tibet into India, where Nehru welcomed them. Tibetans continued guerilla warfare. The Khampa refugees were the hardest hit because they had the farthest to walk. I heard from one of the survivors of the exodus that of nearly 100 people that left Kham with him, only a little over a dozen survived. The others were taken out by Chinese snipers, starvation, and exposure.
- Under Kennedy, the CIA was not given the go-ahead to continue operations to support the Khampas even though weapons drops, everything was in place. Several thousand Khampa fighters were massacred by the Chinese as a result. Johnson resumed support of the Khampa rebels, but they no longer trusted the US. In 1972, Nixon changed US policy towards China, abandoning the struggling Khampa resistance for a second time.
- The cultural revolution in the late 60s, well... a friend of mine, a Tibetan nomad named Kyid-pe, went through China's cultural revolution in the late 60s in Tibet. He still hasn't been able to find any living relatives. The Chinese took him at the age of seven from his family and put him in a Chinese boarding school, gave him a Chinese name, and tried to indoctrinate him into communism. There he was beat up and harassed by the Chinese students because he was Tibetan, which is considered racially inferior to the Han Chinese. He was not permitted to talk to the other Tibetans at the schools so that he'd "integrate" and "become Chinese." He's now a Tibetan monk. His is a fairly typical story. The harsher the Chinese were, the more aggressively "Tibetan" the Tibetans became. Becoming a monk in Tibet these days is a political message in and of itself.
- On Capitol Hill in 1987 I attended the congressional hearings on Tibet, so I heard the stories of the abuses of the Chinese during the 60s, 70s, and 80s first-hand from survivors. If you ask me, I'll repeat them, but they're too horrible. I hope the general headings of torture, raping nuns, putting Tibetan monks into work camps breaking rocks with little food, simply because they were monks ... I hope that will suffice. One Lama I know can barely walk because the Chinese broke the bones in his feet so often during torture, his feet are mush. He's very gentle and peaceful so I guess his Buddhism is working for him.
- Amnesty International reports that the Tibetan work camps continued into the late 80s, early 90s.
- More recent stories out of Tibet since Deng Xioping in the late 80s and the growth of the Chinese version of capitalism is one of Tibetans overwhelmed by Chinese immigration and economic disadvantage. The Chinese view their policies as incorporating Tibet into China economically, bringing Tibetans out of their outmoded ideas into the 20th century. Tibetans view these policies as a means to make them a minority in their own country where the Chinese are the only ones who benefit.
- Tibetans are now allowed to become monks but only after they receive a communist indoctrination. They're so tightly controlled (only allowed to practice a few hours a day, only allowed to have a certain number of monks, etc.), it's mostly a dog-and-pony show for the westerners, where Chinese run the Tibetan Buddhist tourist business.
- It's true that the Tibetans have not benefited economically. The Chinese who've moved to Tibet are sending their money back to central China. They are not investing locally. Tibetans are turned away from modern Chinese-oriented hospitals. The Chinese have plumbing and toilets while the Tibetans do not. The Chinese have modern housing while the Tibetans live in slums. Most of the businesses in Tibet are owned and run by Chinese, while Tibetan businessmen struggle with a Chinese bureaucracy that requires bribes and Chinese political connections that they don't have. Tibetans are given a substandard education and discouraged from pursuing higher education. Those Tibetans who go to Chinese universities are unable to get jobs in their field because they lack Chinese political connections, even when they're able to provide the right bribes.
The current situation in Tibet leading up to the protests and riots this month
- The Olympic torch is scheduled to cross Tibet as part of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics. Tibetans view this as both an opportunity to speak out, and an insult suggesting that Tibet is an inalienable part of China.
- China took control of Tibet on March 10th, 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled, but the Tibetans have fought this for the last 50 years. Tibetans don't even use the names that China uses for Tibetan provinces that have been in effect for 50 years.
- China re-wrote the boundaries of Tibet, taking two of three provinces and making them part of existing Chinese provinces, calling the third province the "Tibetan Autonomous Region," or TAR.
- The religious freedoms of Tibetans are severely restricted. Monks-to-be have to undergo Communist training before they are allowed to become monks, and China restricts the number of monks (something they did in China during the T'ang dynasty as well; there's some deep history here). The numbers of monks are strictly controlled, as is the amount of time spent in spiritual practice. Tibetans are not allowed to gather to protest and face arrests if they do. It's illegal to have a picture of the Dalai Lama or a copy of the Tibetan flag. Amnesty International's reports are largely about the abuse, torture, and summary executions of jailed protesters. The families of those arrested are not told where the prisoners are being held, and prison sentences for protesting have beeen as high as 14 years. Tibetans are second-class citizens in their own country, regarded as aborigines by the Chinese.
- The other two provinces that are now considered "China" actually have more freedoms than the TAR. In eastern and northeastern Tibet (called Kham and Amdo by Tibetans; Sichuan, Abe, and Gansu by Chinese) they've been rebuilding the monasteries with money from Buddhists in Taiwan. Ethnic Chinese in those regions began attending Tibetan Buddhist services over the last ten years, which caused the Chinese government to create more restrictions, and in some cases bulldoze houses. China's okay with a minority tourist attraction religion, but not a popular movement.
- The Dalai Lama has operated the Tibetan Government in exile in Dharamsala India since 1959. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. He's in his 70s now and is talking of a successor, whom he wants to be democratically elected.
- Traditionally a Lama's successor is found through the instructions left by the dying Lama and then verified through a series of tests (the child recognizing the belongings of the previous incarnation, etc.). The verification is then certified by at least two or three high-ranking Lamas, and the child is trained to be a Lama from an early age (which I think is the most important part). I suspect the Dalai Lama wishes to avoid what the Chinese did with the young incarnation of the Panchen Lama in 1995. The Chinese "recognized" their own Panchen Lama, while the Dalai Lama recognized a five-year-old Tibetan child. At the age of nine, the child disappeared and hasn't been heard from since.
- While originally in 1987 the Dalai Lama called for freedom for Tibet, he has stated repeatedly since the early 90s that he doesn't feel independence is feasible and has been lobbying for Tibet's political and religious autonomy within China. The Chinese ignore what he says and claim that the splittest "Dalai clique" agitates for Tibetan independence. Most of the western pro-Tibet organizations are pro-independence, and many Tibetans who follow the Dalai Lama are pro-independence. He's a moderate.
- The young Tibetan generation say that the Dalai Lama's conciliatory approach has accomplished nothing in the last 50 years. A group of them recently released a movie called "We Are Not Monks."
- China has given incentives to Chinese businessmen to move into Tibet from the 1980s onward.
- Throughout China there is endemic corruption and graft at the local level of government, with lower level bureaucrats taking advantage of even water supplies to make a buck. The central government seems to have no power to stop this without resorting to extreme measures. The rural areas of China are very poor, without basic infrastructure like running water and toilets. A couple of years ago an NGO with a grant and support from the PRC tried to bring running water to Gansu, which is the formerly eastern Tibet. The NGO employees discovered that if they went through with the project, the local government would cut off the poor from having water at all unless they were bribed. The project was shelved. Two years later, another NGO tried to do the same thing. They couldn't get around the corruption either and the project was shelved again.
- Chinese businessmen tell the Wall Street Journal that Tibet is a frontier and a great place to do business, that they have done very well. Knowing the level of corruption in areas far from the central government, like Gansu, these statements suggest corruption is extensive in the TAR.
- Throughout China there is a rising gap between the urban rich and the rural poor. The impoverished farmers are usually illiterate, or taught by teachers who have less than a high school education. If they come to work in urban areas as porters (called bang-bang) they are not allowed to live in urban areas. A few of these urban poor have "made it"—a fact that's lauded by the Chinese press—but only with the help of connected Chinese. There's a valorization of the poor right now in China, narratives of simple farmers who've become successful, although these successes are rare, and these men become isolated. They are not accepted by the upper class urban Chinese except as curiosities, and they invariably attempt to separate themselves from their poor relations.
- There is an even larger socio-economic gap between the Tibetans in Tibet, who are poor, and the Chinese businessmen, that is compounded by the Chinese attitude that they are racially superior to Tibetans. The Tibetans live in slums, receive a substandard education compared to Chinese in Tibet. Tibetans who've received college educations in China can't get jobs because they lack Chinese connections.
The protests and riots that began March 10, 2008
- Starting March 10th, Tibetans peacefully protested on behalf of monks who'd been arrested the year before for championing Tibetan independence.
- March 11th, police fired tear gas in Lhasa to disperse the protestors, who returned to demand the release of those arrested the day before as well as the monks arrested last year.
- March 14th, in Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet, Tibetans turned violent when Chinese policemen entered a Tibetan slum to look for monks who'd protested. They found themselves outnumbered and facing a crowd who'd been hearing rumors the missing monks had been killed (Amnesty International has reported several hurried cases where Tibetan political prisoners have been executed, and China has used work camps and torture on Tibetan dissidents, who are often monks). Once the Chinese police realized they were surrounded, they ran, and Tibetans chased them into the Chinese business district. A crowd of over 900 Tibetans attacked the Chinese businesses, government buildings, and a hospital (Chinese hospitals turn Tibetans away, so Tibetans are served by rudimentary monastery hospitals), marking Tibetan-owned businesses with white scarves so they wouldn't get damaged. They beat up any Chinese caught out in the open, as well as Chinese ethnic minorities from other regions of China. Foreigners went unmolested, so it was the Chinese they were targeting. Western observers say that the Chinese police did nothing.
- On March 15th, Tibetan protests spread to all three of the historical Tibetan provinces where they burned the Chinese flag. Tibetan students broke windows on government buildings. Monks lead a rally of 4,000 in Gansu, with various disorganized calls for either freedom for Tibet, talks with the Dalai Lama, more autonomy for Tibet. They were able to walk up to government buildings unmolested while police officers fell back and took pictures, as part of that same lack of response from China that first day in Lhasa. In Kham, eastern Tibet (western Sichuan) Tibetan nomads protested, racing back and forth on horseback.
- March 16th, a group of Tibetan students in Gansu protested, chanting slogans and carrying the Tibetan flag. In Lhasa, China began house-to-house searches, where all those with photos of the Dalai Lama were arrested. Several thousand Tibetans protested in Aba, where they smashed windows at a police station. Four protestors were killed by sniper fire.
- March 17th, tour guides report that police were confiscating digital cameras and deleting photos of the protests before returning the empty cameras. Protestors in Seda raised a Tibetan flag. British journalists attempting to sneak into Tibet reported all roads blocked. Tourists were ordered out of western China. Smaller protests of 40 here, 200 there, continued throughout the two Chinese provinces of Tibet, vastly outnumbered by Chinese PAP, while Lhasa remained under martial law. Foreign businessmen were permitted to remain in Lhasa.
- March 18th, 300 monks in Guoluo marched peacefully, unmolested by the 40 local police, who just took photos. The protestors demanded the release of prisoners and the police complied. Then the protestors tore down Chinese flags at the hospital and local school and raised Tibetan flags in their place. Four trucks of paramilitary troops arrived later, arrested a half dozen monks, while the others fled into the mountains. The troops surrounded the monastery, locking monks who hadn't participated in the protests inside.
- March 20th, the Tibetan city of Litang was shut down by Chinese police after a Tibetan girl led a protest of 300 Tibetans, holding up a picture of the Dalai Lama. She was arrested. In Amdo, 2,000 monks and lay Tibetans protested in a more organized fashion, calling specifically for talks between China and the Dalai Lama. In Ganzi, a monk was shot as Chinese police stopped a protest heading into the center of the city. Students at a Tibetan studies program chanted slogans and threw thermoses out of windows until officials called a halt, and students were required to submit a written confession and threatened with being removed from the communist party (the death knell for a career in the future). 400 students in Qinghai protested, taking down Chinese flags and setting them on fire and were issued a warning. Approximately 1,000 Tibetans protested peacefully in Serthar. Several were shot when they refused to take down a Tibetan flag. House-to-house searches began in the two Chinese provinces of Tibet. Those arrested were told they would be held until after the Olympics after which time they'd be dealt with. The dead and wounded from protests outside the TAR were brought to Tibetan monasteries as Tibetans feared to seek treatment at Chinese hospitals.
- March 20th in Lhasa, arrests continued, regardless of whether the individuals had papers or participated in riots. Police instituted full body searches. Tibetans report angry Chinese forces beating Tibetans, regardless of whether they participated in the riots. Chinese police stole 10,000 yuan from one family in the process of their search. Prisons in Lhasa were filled to capacity and families were not told where arrested individuals were sent. Nomads in Tibet (who do not carry ID) were arrested for not carrying ID. Lhasa began a clean-up, although foreigners were not allowed to walk around the city. Lhasa police seized the bodies of dead Tibetans from families, saying they were going to do a mass cremation of all the bodies from the riots.
My opinion on Tibet is informed, although I don't speak for the Chinese perspective by any means. But voices of the Tibetans in Tibet are almost totally absent in the media because of crackdown. We can't get independent verification.
I need more classes on modern China to feel I have a well-informed view of China's internal political climate. But in my opinion, China's version of capitalism has been marked with the return of the corruption seen in imperial China. The system of bribes and milking local political positions for money goes as far back as the 11th century Song dynasty. Communism eliminated the Imperial elite but seems to have simply replaced it with a new elite, and corruption has made it such that minorities like Tibetans, Yi, Hui, Mongols, as well as poor rural Han, have no access to the booming Chinese economy. Add the lack of personal freedoms continuing from communism, and you have a population that's cornered. As the famous military strategist Sun Tzu says, "If you want to see how hard a man can fight, leave him with no route of escape."
My estimation? The Dalai Lama is the only force that can keep a lid on the boiling anger in Tibet, and he's in his 70s. If the PRC was smart, they'd meet with the Dalai Lama while he's alive to build symbolic cred with the Tibetans. He's offered to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics if China stops the crackdown. But I think the PRC hopes that the next Dalai Lama (or other political representative) will not be as popular. The PRC seems to feel that Tibetan opposition coalesces around the Dalai Lama and that it will go away once he's gone. I don't think that will happen. It's more likely that once he's gone, the restive young Tibetans may turn to terrorism modeled on the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Which would be a disaster for everyone.
I was asked to do a post on Tibet. I'm glad you asked.
A friend of mine works for Radio Free Asia and they received cell phone calls from Tibetans in Lhasa that haven't made the news. As an Asian studies major I'm also in contact with students who specialize in China who've recently returned from western China. I've also taken a bit of ancient Chinese history, and I'm in the process of researching a paper on Tibetan history.
This itself is not a scholarly paper, merely an outline, so I do not have footnotes. If you're interested for the source for any particular fact, just let me know. I should probably at least provide a bibliography and will do so on request. Later. For right now I'm electing to work on Out Of Bounds instead.
This is a lot of information, so I've broken it into four sections:
- The history of the relationship between China and Tibet, 2nd century to 20th century
- The invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the Lhasa uprising on March 10th, 1959
- The current situation in Tibet leading up to the protests and riots this month
- The protests and riots that began March 10, 2008
This is gleaned from western scholarship on the region, western scholarship on China, and from the Tibetans themselves. In China students are taught a very different picture. Chinese scholars are accused by Japanese, Korean, and western scholars of agressively cherry-picking and "renovating" Chinese history, directly serving the political purposes of the PRC. I've been reading the Beijing Review. Information is presented to the Chinese "pre-chewed." There are blanket statements backed by decontextualized cherry-picked facts.
The history of the relationship between China and Tibet, 2nd century to 20th century
- China claims that Tibet has been part of China for hundreds of years. Some Chinese assume this goes back to the earliest foundation of the Chinese Han dynasty, the 2nd century B.C. China's rewriting the history of Asia to suit itself has been a problem, angering Korean and Japanese scholars with self-serving inaccuracies.
- The classical Confucian Han dynasty did not extend to Tibet, which was far too remote a region, although China did have Taoist legends of Chinese goddesses living in the Himalayas.
- After China's Han dynasty fell apart in 220 C.E., China's next major dynasty was the Buddhist T'ang Dynasty in the 7th century. The T'ang dynasty was at war with the Tibetan empire as well as with Korea, the Turks, and various northern steppe tribes. The Tibetan empire seized Chang'an, the capital of China, but couldn't hold it.
- The Tibetan empire fell apart 200 years later in 842. The king of Tibet was assassinated by his older brother at the same time the northern Uigur tribes were conquered, causing a massive influx of refugees Tibet couldn't handle. Tibet divided into several states until 1247, none of which had anything to do with China. China, after the collapse of the T'ang was broken into "Ten Kingdoms and Five Dynasties," and then the smaller but finally centralized again in the Song dynasty of China. The very thorough Chinese histories have virtually no mention of Tibet.
- Then the Mongols came. The Mongols conquered both China and Tibet.
- In 1247 the Mongols conquered Tibet, while in 1276 they conquered China. The Mongols left local governmental systems intact, but the Tibetan government was still broken into several states. So the Mongols elevated a Tibetan Lama as the only central authority they could locate. No, not the Dalai Lama; the Sakya Lama. But this began the centering of religious and political authority in one person. Originally Tibet and China were assigned to two different Mongol leaders, but the Mongol leader of Tibet died, and so Kublai Khan was left in charge of both.
- When China fell, Mongols began the Yuan dynasty. The Mongols imported outsiders to help run China's government because they didn't trust the Chinese, hiring Marco Polo at one point and bringing in Tibetans. Chinese now say that Tibet was part of China at this time. It's more accurate to say that China and Tibet were part of Mongolia. The Mongols were eventually "sinefied" becoming indistinguishable from Chinese. Tibetans believe that they converted the Mongols to Buddhism.
- In China, the Mongol Yuan dynasty was overthrown by a popular revolt leading to China's Ming dynasty in the 14th century. Meanwhile, control of Tibet by the Mongols simply faded as they were too involved in trying to keep their prized China and didn't seem to care much about Tibet. After the overthrow of the Yuan, Tibet kept up a nominal relationship with the Mongol leaders in Mongolia. It was a Mongol leader who supported the first of the Dalai Lamas.
- The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) pretty much had nothing to do with Tibet, which went its own way for the next 300 years. Chinese histories barely mention Tibet.
- The Manchurian Qing dynasty (1644-1911) under emperor Kangxi attempted to incorporate Tibet into China by installing a pro-China Dalai Lama as the head of the state in 1720, leaving a garrison and a Chinese resident. The Tibetans viewed this as Chinese fealty to the Dalai Lama rather than the other way around. Under emperor Qianlong, Turkestan was defeated and incorporated by the Chinese, and China also captured outer Mongolia. Emperor Qianlong fought two wars with eastern Tibet, while Tibetan Buddhism spread throughout Mongolia. The installation of the (I think this was the 5th Dalai Lama but I'll have to check) Dalai Lama is the foundation of China's legal claim, which is a little like the UK claiming the US as historically theirs.
- In the mid-to-late 1700s, during sectarian in-fighting in Tibet, the Chinese again sent a garrison to Lhasa to support the Dalai Lama, but after that they gave up. Apparently realizing the perception that his support was viewed as fealty to the Dalai Lama, Qianlong changed tactics. He had religious images made of himself as a more important incarnation than the Dalai Lama.
- During the opium wars the Chinese were way too distracted by Britain to pay attention to Tibet (if they'd intended to). A Chinese resident continued to live in Tibet, but his influence was so negligible that the British empire negotiated with Tibet in the early 1900s without even being aware of his existence. China continued to be absorbed in its internal issues from 1911 on, and did not show an interest in Tibet again until the late 1940s.
- In Tibet, from the late 1800s, power rested with the Panchen Lama who was regent until the young Dalai Lama grew up. But three young Dalai Lamas mysteriously died just before reaching their age of majority (most Tibetans believe the Panchen Lama, or factions supporting him, poisoned the boys so he could stay in power).
- The young thirteenth Dalai Lama, the predecessor to the current Dalai Lama, survived thanks to some loyalists. He inherited a post-1911 Tibet with war boiling in China, Britain and Russia vying for control of the entire region in "the great game" as they called it, India uniting behind Gandhi and bucking the British Empire, and a Tibetan government riddled with corruption and intrigue. The Panchen Lama was exiled to eastern Tibet but he still had supporters in Lhasa. The 13th Dalai Lama started a balancing act of inviting US representatives, and then British representatives, but he did not have the absolute authority of the current Dalai Lama (largely created by a common enemy, China, since historically the Dalai Lamas have had to contend with many competing factions).
The invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the Lhasa uprising on March 10th, 1959
- With the death of the 13th Dalai Lama (from old age this time), the successor to the discredited Panchen Lama had to be recalled from exile to lead Tibet. I could add detail here, but suffice it to say there was a power vacuum while the current Dalai Lama grew up (he was put through an accelerated Tibetan version of Buddhist doctorate, keeping him cloistered in study his entire childhood) because of near-universal distrust of the Panchen Lama. This gave China its opening to slowly encroach into Tibet.
- In 1950, at age 15, the current Dalai Lama finished his Geshe degree (a seven year post-secondary school Buddhist program) defending the Tibetan version of a dissertation in debate against the top scholars in Tibet, in front of thousands of spectators. No pressure. At that point he was qualified to take leadership of Tibet. The normal age to finish this degree is in one's late 20s. No, it contains no political training whatsoever.
- In 1950, China began its "peaceful liberation" of Tibet. The garrisons they sent were very, very polite, practically carrying daisies in their rifles as they took up positions throughout Tibet, easily capturing Tibet's top general and his 8,000 man army. China had had to move slowly because the roads into Tibet were goat tracks. There's good reason the famous Silk Road circled around Tibet.
- Tibet panicked and tried three simultaneous solutions: 1) they sent agents over the mountains to India to plead to the fledgling UN for help (by yak, I think, there was only one car in Tibet); 2) they contacted various governments for military aid; 3) they met with Indian officials to see if they could evacuate the Dalai Lama to India. The US under Eisenhower responded, providing military training and supplies for Khampa mountain tribesmen in eastern Tibet. Tibet tried to negotiate with China, meeting with Mao. After being turned down by the UN, Tibet admitted they couldn't fight an overwhelming force, capitulated and signed the 17 Point Agreement which declared Tibet a part of China but provided for complete political and cultural autonomy.
- The Khampas kept right on fighting, furious at the central government for giving in. Kham is sort of the Texas of Tibet: part of Tibet, but they'd once been a sovereign state. There was something of a serf system in central Tibet (not quite, homes and property were passed down through individual families, but your legal complaints were settled by the local Tibetan noble). Kham had a completely different system where extended families owned ancestral grazing lands, individuals owned their own animals, and legal issues were settled by the head of the family. If you didn't like it, you could strike out on your own.
- China almost immediately broke all the terms of the 17 Point Agreement, instituting communist "reforms" all over Tibet. The communists began instituting "land reform" in Kham first, taking land away from the "nobles" (i.e., the local tribesmen).
- In 1956, with support and training from the CIA (Khampas were flown to Colorado to train in mountain guerilla warfare) – the Khampas struck back. The Chinese military at first was inappropriately equipped for Tibet's harsh conditions, didn't carry enough food, and found themselves caught in mountain bottlenecks with a better armed and trained force than they'd experienced before. The monasteries in Kham acted as message relay points, hid Khampa fighters from the Chinese, and even allowed storage caches of weapons. The eldest son of every Khampa family was sent to the monastery to become a monk and receive an education, you see, so generally speaking, the fighters were the younger brothers of the monks. (In the 1959 uprising China shelled the Khampa monasteries in retaliation.)
- I'm sure you already know about the 1959 uprising in Tibet against China, when 20,000 Tibetan civilians surrounded the Dalai Lama's Potala palace and the Dalai Lama fled to stop the bloodbath as China shelled the crowd. My friend Christine's father worked for the CIA at Langley during that period and he was one of the ones responsible for getting the Dalai Lama to India. The CIA is damned proud of that.
- Refugees poured out of Tibet into India, where Nehru welcomed them. Tibetans continued guerilla warfare. The Khampa refugees were the hardest hit because they had the farthest to walk. I heard from one of the survivors of the exodus that of nearly 100 people that left Kham with him, only a little over a dozen survived. The others were taken out by Chinese snipers, starvation, and exposure.
- Under Kennedy, the CIA was not given the go-ahead to continue operations to support the Khampas even though weapons drops, everything was in place. Several thousand Khampa fighters were massacred by the Chinese as a result. Johnson resumed support of the Khampa rebels, but they no longer trusted the US. In 1972, Nixon changed US policy towards China, abandoning the struggling Khampa resistance for a second time.
- The cultural revolution in the late 60s, well... a friend of mine, a Tibetan nomad named Kyid-pe, went through China's cultural revolution in the late 60s in Tibet. He still hasn't been able to find any living relatives. The Chinese took him at the age of seven from his family and put him in a Chinese boarding school, gave him a Chinese name, and tried to indoctrinate him into communism. There he was beat up and harassed by the Chinese students because he was Tibetan, which is considered racially inferior to the Han Chinese. He was not permitted to talk to the other Tibetans at the schools so that he'd "integrate" and "become Chinese." He's now a Tibetan monk. His is a fairly typical story. The harsher the Chinese were, the more aggressively "Tibetan" the Tibetans became. Becoming a monk in Tibet these days is a political message in and of itself.
- On Capitol Hill in 1987 I attended the congressional hearings on Tibet, so I heard the stories of the abuses of the Chinese during the 60s, 70s, and 80s first-hand from survivors. If you ask me, I'll repeat them, but they're too horrible. I hope the general headings of torture, raping nuns, putting Tibetan monks into work camps breaking rocks with little food, simply because they were monks ... I hope that will suffice. One Lama I know can barely walk because the Chinese broke the bones in his feet so often during torture, his feet are mush. He's very gentle and peaceful so I guess his Buddhism is working for him.
- Amnesty International reports that the Tibetan work camps continued into the late 80s, early 90s.
- More recent stories out of Tibet since Deng Xioping in the late 80s and the growth of the Chinese version of capitalism is one of Tibetans overwhelmed by Chinese immigration and economic disadvantage. The Chinese view their policies as incorporating Tibet into China economically, bringing Tibetans out of their outmoded ideas into the 20th century. Tibetans view these policies as a means to make them a minority in their own country where the Chinese are the only ones who benefit.
- Tibetans are now allowed to become monks but only after they receive a communist indoctrination. They're so tightly controlled (only allowed to practice a few hours a day, only allowed to have a certain number of monks, etc.), it's mostly a dog-and-pony show for the westerners, where Chinese run the Tibetan Buddhist tourist business.
- It's true that the Tibetans have not benefited economically. The Chinese who've moved to Tibet are sending their money back to central China. They are not investing locally. Tibetans are turned away from modern Chinese-oriented hospitals. The Chinese have plumbing and toilets while the Tibetans do not. The Chinese have modern housing while the Tibetans live in slums. Most of the businesses in Tibet are owned and run by Chinese, while Tibetan businessmen struggle with a Chinese bureaucracy that requires bribes and Chinese political connections that they don't have. Tibetans are given a substandard education and discouraged from pursuing higher education. Those Tibetans who go to Chinese universities are unable to get jobs in their field because they lack Chinese political connections, even when they're able to provide the right bribes.
The current situation in Tibet leading up to the protests and riots this month
- The Olympic torch is scheduled to cross Tibet as part of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics. Tibetans view this as both an opportunity to speak out, and an insult suggesting that Tibet is an inalienable part of China.
- China took control of Tibet on March 10th, 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled, but the Tibetans have fought this for the last 50 years. Tibetans don't even use the names that China uses for Tibetan provinces that have been in effect for 50 years.
- China re-wrote the boundaries of Tibet, taking two of three provinces and making them part of existing Chinese provinces, calling the third province the "Tibetan Autonomous Region," or TAR.
- The religious freedoms of Tibetans are severely restricted. Monks-to-be have to undergo Communist training before they are allowed to become monks, and China restricts the number of monks (something they did in China during the T'ang dynasty as well; there's some deep history here). The numbers of monks are strictly controlled, as is the amount of time spent in spiritual practice. Tibetans are not allowed to gather to protest and face arrests if they do. It's illegal to have a picture of the Dalai Lama or a copy of the Tibetan flag. Amnesty International's reports are largely about the abuse, torture, and summary executions of jailed protesters. The families of those arrested are not told where the prisoners are being held, and prison sentences for protesting have beeen as high as 14 years. Tibetans are second-class citizens in their own country, regarded as aborigines by the Chinese.
- The other two provinces that are now considered "China" actually have more freedoms than the TAR. In eastern and northeastern Tibet (called Kham and Amdo by Tibetans; Sichuan, Abe, and Gansu by Chinese) they've been rebuilding the monasteries with money from Buddhists in Taiwan. Ethnic Chinese in those regions began attending Tibetan Buddhist services over the last ten years, which caused the Chinese government to create more restrictions, and in some cases bulldoze houses. China's okay with a minority tourist attraction religion, but not a popular movement.
- The Dalai Lama has operated the Tibetan Government in exile in Dharamsala India since 1959. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. He's in his 70s now and is talking of a successor, whom he wants to be democratically elected.
- Traditionally a Lama's successor is found through the instructions left by the dying Lama and then verified through a series of tests (the child recognizing the belongings of the previous incarnation, etc.). The verification is then certified by at least two or three high-ranking Lamas, and the child is trained to be a Lama from an early age (which I think is the most important part). I suspect the Dalai Lama wishes to avoid what the Chinese did with the young incarnation of the Panchen Lama in 1995. The Chinese "recognized" their own Panchen Lama, while the Dalai Lama recognized a five-year-old Tibetan child. At the age of nine, the child disappeared and hasn't been heard from since.
- While originally in 1987 the Dalai Lama called for freedom for Tibet, he has stated repeatedly since the early 90s that he doesn't feel independence is feasible and has been lobbying for Tibet's political and religious autonomy within China. The Chinese ignore what he says and claim that the splittest "Dalai clique" agitates for Tibetan independence. Most of the western pro-Tibet organizations are pro-independence, and many Tibetans who follow the Dalai Lama are pro-independence. He's a moderate.
- The young Tibetan generation say that the Dalai Lama's conciliatory approach has accomplished nothing in the last 50 years. A group of them recently released a movie called "We Are Not Monks."
- China has given incentives to Chinese businessmen to move into Tibet from the 1980s onward.
- Throughout China there is endemic corruption and graft at the local level of government, with lower level bureaucrats taking advantage of even water supplies to make a buck. The central government seems to have no power to stop this without resorting to extreme measures. The rural areas of China are very poor, without basic infrastructure like running water and toilets. A couple of years ago an NGO with a grant and support from the PRC tried to bring running water to Gansu, which is the formerly eastern Tibet. The NGO employees discovered that if they went through with the project, the local government would cut off the poor from having water at all unless they were bribed. The project was shelved. Two years later, another NGO tried to do the same thing. They couldn't get around the corruption either and the project was shelved again.
- Chinese businessmen tell the Wall Street Journal that Tibet is a frontier and a great place to do business, that they have done very well. Knowing the level of corruption in areas far from the central government, like Gansu, these statements suggest corruption is extensive in the TAR.
- Throughout China there is a rising gap between the urban rich and the rural poor. The impoverished farmers are usually illiterate, or taught by teachers who have less than a high school education. If they come to work in urban areas as porters (called bang-bang) they are not allowed to live in urban areas. A few of these urban poor have "made it"—a fact that's lauded by the Chinese press—but only with the help of connected Chinese. There's a valorization of the poor right now in China, narratives of simple farmers who've become successful, although these successes are rare, and these men become isolated. They are not accepted by the upper class urban Chinese except as curiosities, and they invariably attempt to separate themselves from their poor relations.
- There is an even larger socio-economic gap between the Tibetans in Tibet, who are poor, and the Chinese businessmen, that is compounded by the Chinese attitude that they are racially superior to Tibetans. The Tibetans live in slums, receive a substandard education compared to Chinese in Tibet. Tibetans who've received college educations in China can't get jobs because they lack Chinese connections.
The protests and riots that began March 10, 2008
- Starting March 10th, Tibetans peacefully protested on behalf of monks who'd been arrested the year before for championing Tibetan independence.
- March 11th, police fired tear gas in Lhasa to disperse the protestors, who returned to demand the release of those arrested the day before as well as the monks arrested last year.
- March 14th, in Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet, Tibetans turned violent when Chinese policemen entered a Tibetan slum to look for monks who'd protested. They found themselves outnumbered and facing a crowd who'd been hearing rumors the missing monks had been killed (Amnesty International has reported several hurried cases where Tibetan political prisoners have been executed, and China has used work camps and torture on Tibetan dissidents, who are often monks). Once the Chinese police realized they were surrounded, they ran, and Tibetans chased them into the Chinese business district. A crowd of over 900 Tibetans attacked the Chinese businesses, government buildings, and a hospital (Chinese hospitals turn Tibetans away, so Tibetans are served by rudimentary monastery hospitals), marking Tibetan-owned businesses with white scarves so they wouldn't get damaged. They beat up any Chinese caught out in the open, as well as Chinese ethnic minorities from other regions of China. Foreigners went unmolested, so it was the Chinese they were targeting. Western observers say that the Chinese police did nothing.
- On March 15th, Tibetan protests spread to all three of the historical Tibetan provinces where they burned the Chinese flag. Tibetan students broke windows on government buildings. Monks lead a rally of 4,000 in Gansu, with various disorganized calls for either freedom for Tibet, talks with the Dalai Lama, more autonomy for Tibet. They were able to walk up to government buildings unmolested while police officers fell back and took pictures, as part of that same lack of response from China that first day in Lhasa. In Kham, eastern Tibet (western Sichuan) Tibetan nomads protested, racing back and forth on horseback.
- March 16th, a group of Tibetan students in Gansu protested, chanting slogans and carrying the Tibetan flag. In Lhasa, China began house-to-house searches, where all those with photos of the Dalai Lama were arrested. Several thousand Tibetans protested in Aba, where they smashed windows at a police station. Four protestors were killed by sniper fire.
- March 17th, tour guides report that police were confiscating digital cameras and deleting photos of the protests before returning the empty cameras. Protestors in Seda raised a Tibetan flag. British journalists attempting to sneak into Tibet reported all roads blocked. Tourists were ordered out of western China. Smaller protests of 40 here, 200 there, continued throughout the two Chinese provinces of Tibet, vastly outnumbered by Chinese PAP, while Lhasa remained under martial law. Foreign businessmen were permitted to remain in Lhasa.
- March 18th, 300 monks in Guoluo marched peacefully, unmolested by the 40 local police, who just took photos. The protestors demanded the release of prisoners and the police complied. Then the protestors tore down Chinese flags at the hospital and local school and raised Tibetan flags in their place. Four trucks of paramilitary troops arrived later, arrested a half dozen monks, while the others fled into the mountains. The troops surrounded the monastery, locking monks who hadn't participated in the protests inside.
- March 20th, the Tibetan city of Litang was shut down by Chinese police after a Tibetan girl led a protest of 300 Tibetans, holding up a picture of the Dalai Lama. She was arrested. In Amdo, 2,000 monks and lay Tibetans protested in a more organized fashion, calling specifically for talks between China and the Dalai Lama. In Ganzi, a monk was shot as Chinese police stopped a protest heading into the center of the city. Students at a Tibetan studies program chanted slogans and threw thermoses out of windows until officials called a halt, and students were required to submit a written confession and threatened with being removed from the communist party (the death knell for a career in the future). 400 students in Qinghai protested, taking down Chinese flags and setting them on fire and were issued a warning. Approximately 1,000 Tibetans protested peacefully in Serthar. Several were shot when they refused to take down a Tibetan flag. House-to-house searches began in the two Chinese provinces of Tibet. Those arrested were told they would be held until after the Olympics after which time they'd be dealt with. The dead and wounded from protests outside the TAR were brought to Tibetan monasteries as Tibetans feared to seek treatment at Chinese hospitals.
- March 20th in Lhasa, arrests continued, regardless of whether the individuals had papers or participated in riots. Police instituted full body searches. Tibetans report angry Chinese forces beating Tibetans, regardless of whether they participated in the riots. Chinese police stole 10,000 yuan from one family in the process of their search. Prisons in Lhasa were filled to capacity and families were not told where arrested individuals were sent. Nomads in Tibet (who do not carry ID) were arrested for not carrying ID. Lhasa began a clean-up, although foreigners were not allowed to walk around the city. Lhasa police seized the bodies of dead Tibetans from families, saying they were going to do a mass cremation of all the bodies from the riots.
My opinion on Tibet is informed, although I don't speak for the Chinese perspective by any means. But voices of the Tibetans in Tibet are almost totally absent in the media because of crackdown. We can't get independent verification.
I need more classes on modern China to feel I have a well-informed view of China's internal political climate. But in my opinion, China's version of capitalism has been marked with the return of the corruption seen in imperial China. The system of bribes and milking local political positions for money goes as far back as the 11th century Song dynasty. Communism eliminated the Imperial elite but seems to have simply replaced it with a new elite, and corruption has made it such that minorities like Tibetans, Yi, Hui, Mongols, as well as poor rural Han, have no access to the booming Chinese economy. Add the lack of personal freedoms continuing from communism, and you have a population that's cornered. As the famous military strategist Sun Tzu says, "If you want to see how hard a man can fight, leave him with no route of escape."
My estimation? The Dalai Lama is the only force that can keep a lid on the boiling anger in Tibet, and he's in his 70s. If the PRC was smart, they'd meet with the Dalai Lama while he's alive to build symbolic cred with the Tibetans. He's offered to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics if China stops the crackdown. But I think the PRC hopes that the next Dalai Lama (or other political representative) will not be as popular. The PRC seems to feel that Tibetan opposition coalesces around the Dalai Lama and that it will go away once he's gone. I don't think that will happen. It's more likely that once he's gone, the restive young Tibetans may turn to terrorism modeled on the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Which would be a disaster for everyone.
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Date: 2008-04-14 12:55 am (UTC)Concerning his characterization of the Tibetans as lapdogs of the CIA, this article pretty well kills that idea: Roberts, John. "Inside Story of CIA's Black Hands in Tibet." The American Spectator, December 1997. A copy has been uploaded here: http://www.takhli.org/rjw/tibet.htm