An Objective Look at Sino-Tibetan History
Filed Under Tibet, China | Posted on April 18, 2008
The Chinese position is, “Tibet has been a part of China for 1000 years.” The Tibetan position is, “Tibet was never a part of China until the Maoist invasion.” It seems the truth lies somewhere in between those two extremes.
Thanks to TIBETSPACE for posting links to the following articles, which provide as objective an analysis as I’ve seen on Sino-Tibetan history.
The Mongols, Mao and the Dalai Lama, by Elliot Sperling
Here are the facts. The claim that Tibet entertained only personal relations with China at the leadership level is easily rebutted. Administrative records and dynastic histories outline the governing structures of Mongol and Manchu rule. These make it clear that Tibet was subject to rules, laws and decisions made by the Yuan and Qing rulers. Tibet was not independent during these two periods.
But although Tibet did submit to the Mongol and Manchu Empires, neither attached Tibet to China. The same documentary record that shows Tibetan subjugation to the Mongols and Manchus also shows that China’s intervening Ming Dynasty (which ruled from 1368 to 1644) had no control over Tibet. This is problematic, given China’s insistence that Chinese sovereignty was exercised in an unbroken line from the 13th century onward.
From 1912 until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, no Chinese government exercised control over what is today China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. The Dalai Lama’s government alone ruled the land until 1951.
There is something less to the arguments of both sides, but the argument on the Chinese side is weaker. Tibet was not “Chinese” until Mao Zedong’s armies marched in and made it so.
Tibetan Sovereignty Has a Long, Disputed History
Tibet has never been considered independent by major players on the world stage, Barnett says. Tibet did declare itself independent in 1913, along with Mongolia. Back then, China was in the middle of a civil war. It then fought off invasions by Japan. The question of Tibet went on the backburner. “The Chinese say they were just busy,” he says. “They were unable to deal with that and they don’t accept it legally.”
Barnett reaches back to 1903 for a key moment in the Tibetan saga. That’s when the British forces crossed into Tibet, killing about 4,000 people in the process. “It was really a shameful episode,” he says. “The British had no reason to invade Tibet. … They suddenly made Beijing worried about its back door.” Worried that Britain would start carving up its territory, in 1910 the Manchu Dynasty decided to invade Tibet and call it a province.
Before then, Tibet has been a protectorate, with a Chinese governor. The Manchu Dynasty collapsed, and Tibetan soldiers drove the Chinese out. Barnett says China “never forgot that bloody wound.” That’s why the Chinese began making such a direct claim on Tibet.
The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics, by Elliot Sperling
China’s contention that Tibet has been an “integral” part of China since the thirteenth century took shape only in the twentieth century. Moverover, as last as the 1950s, Chinese writers were accustomed to describing Tibet’s place in the world of imperial China as that of a subordinate vassal state, not an integral part of China, as current Chinese materials put it. Indeed, for quite some time after Tibet was incorporated into the PRC, Chinese narratives of that process were often vague and beset by contradictory chronologies.
Similarly, the Tibetan concept of a “priest-patron” religious relationship governing Sino-Tibetan relations to the exclusion of concrete political subordination is itself rather a recent construction. Ample evidence shows that Tibetan religious figures entertained religious and spiritual relationships with emperors of several dynasties, sometimes under conditions in which Tibet was politically subordinate to the dynasty in question and at other times under conditions in which Tibet was independent.
Tibet, China and the United States: Reflections on the Tibet Question, by Melvyn C. Goldstein
The roots of the conflict can be traced back hundreds of years, but in modern times the Tibet Question entered the international arena at the turn of the 19th century when British attempts to open relations with Tibet culminated in the 1903-04 invasion and conquest of Lhasa. The Qing China, which considered Tibet politically subordinate, countered this perceived threat to its hegemony by taking measures to increase its control over Tibet’s administration. These actions ended in 1911 when the Qing Dynasty was overthrown in China. Tibetans then expelled all Chinese troops and officials and the 13th Dalai Lama triumphantly returned from exile in India, immediately issuing a proclamation that is considered by many Tibetans to be a declaration of independence.
From 1911-1951, Tibet functioned as a defacto independent nation, conducting all governmental functions without interference from China or any other country. Nevertheless, its international status was ambivalent since China continued to claim Tibet as part of its state and the relevant Western countries like Britain and the United States refused to recognize Tibetan independence. The current dispute over the political status of Tibet is to no small extent an artifact of the Western democracies’ decision to publicly acknowledge Chinese suzerainty over Tibet throughout this period, even though Beijing had no direct influence there.
The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 quickly ended Tibet’s defacto independence. The Communists, like the Nationalists of Chiang Kaishek, claimed Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, and invaded Tibet’s eastern province in October 1950 to force the Tibetan government to commence negotiations to accept such a status. They quickly vanquished the Tibetan forces, and when neither the Western democracies, India, nor the U.N. responded positively to Tibet’s pleas for help, the 14th Dalai Lama sent a negotiating team to Beijing. It signed the 17 Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet in May of 1951. This agreement recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet for the first time in Tibetan history, but also recognized the right of the Dalai Lama’s government to continue to administer Tibet, at least until the Tibetan people and leaders wanted reforms.
This agreement, however, proved difficult to operationalize, and after an eight year period of coexistence, a Tibetan uprising occurred in Lhasa in 1959. The Dalai Lama then fled to exile in India, followed by about 80,000 Tibetans. China now set aside the agreement and established a people’s government in Tibet. The Dalai Lama, in India, similarly denounced the agreement, claiming Tibet’s right to self determination and independence. The political status of Tibet vis-a-vis China reemerged as a contested issue.
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