History of Tibet (1950–present)

In 1949, seeing that the Communists were gaining control of China, the Kashag expelled all Chinese connected with the Chinese government, over the protests of both the Kuomintang and the Communists.[2] Tibet was its own de facto country before 1951.[3] but both the Republic of China (ROC) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) have maintained China's claim to sovereignty over Tibet.

The Chinese Communist government led by Mao Zedong, which came to power in October, lost little time in asserting a new PRC presence in Tibet. The PRC has carried out different projects in Tibet but the people of Tibet seem to feel ignored politically and economically in the “Tibet Autonomous Region” and in the Tibetan portions of land in Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan.[4] In June 1950, the UK Government in the House of Commons stated that His Majesty's Government "have always been prepared to recognize Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, but only on the understanding that Tibet is regarded as autonomous."[5] On 7 October 1950,[6] The People's Liberation Army invaded the Tibetan area of Chamdo. The large number of units of the PLA quickly surrounded the outnumbered, largely pacifistic Tibetan forces. By October 19, 1950, five thousand Tibetan troops surrendered to the PRC.[6]

In 1951, representatives of Tibetan authority, with the Dalai Lama's authorization,[7] 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.[8] According to author Melvin Goldstein, the agreement was ratified in Lhasa a few months later.[9] According to the Tibetan government-in-exile, some members of the Tibetan Cabinet (Kashag), for example, Tibetan Prime Minister Lukhangwa, never accepted the agreement.[10] 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'."[11] Tibetan exile sources generally consider it invalid, as having been reluctantly or unwillingly signed under duress.[12] 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"[11] and reaffirmed his government as the only legitimate representative of Tibet.[13][14] According to the Seventeen Point Agreement, the Tibetan area under the Dalai Lama's authority 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.[15] 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.[15] 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.[15] 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.[16] The Chinese built highways that reached Lhasa, and then extended them to the Indian, Nepalese and Pakistani borders.

Tibetan areas in Qinghai, known as Kham, which were outside the authority of the Dalai Lama's government, did not enjoy this same autonomy and had land redistribution implemented in full. Most lands were taken away from noblemen and monasteries and re-distributed to serfs. The Tibetan region of Eastern Kham, previously Xikang province, was incorporated into the province of Sichuan. Western Kham was put under the Chamdo Military Committee. In these areas, land reform was implemented. This involved communist agitators designating "landlords"—sometimes arbitrarily chosen—for public humiliation in so-called "struggle sessions",[17] torture, maiming, and even death.[18][19] It was only after 1959 that China brought the same practices to Central Tibet.[20][21]

By 1956 there was unrest in eastern Kham and Amdo, where land reform had been implemented in full. Rebellions erupted and eventually spread into western Kham and Ü-Tsang. In some parts of the country Chinese Communists tried to establish rural communes, as they were in the whole of China.

A rebellion against the Chinese occupation was led by noblemen and monasteries and broke out in Amdo and eastern Kham in June 1956. The insurrection, supported by the American CIA,[22] eventually spread to Lhasa.

The Tibetan resistance movement began with isolated resistance to PRC control in 1956. Initially there was considerable success and with CIA support and aid much of southern Tibet fell into Tibetan guerilla fighters hands. During this campaign, tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed.[23]

For many, their religious beliefs were not even left untouched by the communist influence. Those who practice Buddhism, as well as the Dalai Lama, were not safe from harm at this time. It came to the point where the Chinese government had caused a suppression of religion and in the end felt threatened by the Dalai Lama. What the Chinese government had thought to do was to kidnap and harm him. India ended up being the country that provided the safest land for the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama who wanted to practice Buddhism in peace and be safe at the same time.

In 1959, China's socialist land reforms and military crackdown on rebels in Kham and Amdo led to the 1959 Tibetan uprising. In an operation launched in the wake of the National Uprising of 10 March 1959 in Lhasa, 10,000 to 15,000 Tibetans were killed within three days.[24] Resistance spread throughout Tibet. Fearing capture of the Dalai Lama, unarmed Tibetans surrounded his residence, at which point the Dalai Lama fled[25] with the help of the CIA to India, because the people of Tibet wanted to take a stance and protect the man they all cherished, from the communist government .[26][27] India ended up being the country that provided the safest land for the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama who wanted to practice Buddhism in peace and be safe at the same time. On 28 March,[28] the Chinese set the Panchen Lama (who was virtually their prisoner[29]) as a figurehead in Lhasa, claiming that he headed the legitimate Government of Tibet in the absence of the Dalai Lama, the traditional ruler of Tibet.[30] In 2009, Serfs Emancipation Day began as a holiday on 28 March in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The Chinese authorities claim that on this day in 1959, one million Tibetans (90% of the population) were freed from serfdom.[28][31]

After this, resistance forces operated from Nepal. Operations continued from the semi-independent Kingdom of Mustang with a force of 2000 rebels; many of them trained at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, United States[32] Guerrilla warfare continued in other parts of the country for several years.

In 1969, on the eve of Kissinger's overtures to China, American support was withdrawn and the Nepalese government dismantled the operation.

Following Mao's death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping launched initiatives of rapprochement with the exiled Tibetan leaders, hoping to persuade them to come to live in China. Ren Rong, who was Communist Party Secretary in Tibet, thought that Tibetans in Tibet were happy under Chinese Communist rule and that they shared the Chinese Communist views of the pre-Communist Tibetan rulers as oppressive despots. "By 1979 most of the estimated 600,000 monks and nuns were dead, disappeared, or imprisoned, and the majority of Tibet's 6,000 monasteries had been destroyed."[76] So, when delegations from the Tibetan government in exile visited Tibet in 1979–80, Chinese officials expected to impress the Tibetan exiles with the progress that had occurred since 1950 and with the contentment of the Tibetan populace. Ren even organized meetings in Lhasa to urge Tibetans to restrain their animosity towards the coming representatives of an old, oppressive regime. The Chinese, then, were astonished and embarrassed at the massive, tearful expressions of devotion which Tibetans made to the visiting Tibetan exiles. Thousands of Tibetans cried, prostrated, offered scarves to the visitors, and strove for a chance to touch the Dalai Lama's brother.[77]

These events also prompted Party Secretary Hu Yaobang and Vice Premier Wan Li to visit Tibet, where they were dismayed by the conditions they found. Hu announced a reform program intended to improve economic standards for Tibetans and to foster some freedom for Tibetans to practice ethnic and cultural traditions. In some ways, this was a return from the hard line authoritarianism and assimilation policies of the 1960s to Mao's more ethnically accommodating policies of the 1950s, with the major difference that there would be no separate Tibetan government as there had been in the 1950s.[78] Hu ordered a change in policy, calling for the revitalization of Tibetan culture, religion, and language, the building of more universities and colleges in Tibet, and an increase in the number of ethnic Tibetans in the local government.[79] Concurrent liberalizations in economics and internal migration have also resulted in Tibet seeing more Han Chinese migrant workers, though the actual number of this floating population remains disputed.

New meetings between Chinese officials and exiled leaders took place in 1981–1984, but no agreements could be reached.[80]

In 1986–1987, the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamshala launched a new drive to win international support for their cause as a human rights issue. In response, the United States House of Representatives in June 1987 passed a resolution in support of Tibetan human rights.[81] Between September 1987 and March 1989, four major demonstrations occurred in Lhasa against Chinese rule.[82] American Tibetologist Melvyn Goldstein considered the riots to be spontaneous mass expressions of Tibetan resentment, sparked in part by hope that the United States would soon provide support or pressure enabling Tibet to become independent.[83] In 1987, the Panchen Lama delivered a speech estimating the number of prison deaths in Qinghai at approximately 5 percent of the total population in the area.[84] The United States passed a 1988–1989 Foreign Relations Act which expressed support for Tibetan human rights.[81] The riots ironically discredited Hu's more liberal Tibetan policies and brought about a return to hard-line policies; Beijing even imposed martial law in Tibet in 1989. Emphasis on economic development brought increasing numbers of non-Tibetans to Lhasa, and the economy in Tibet became increasingly dominated by Han. Lhasa became a city where non-Tibetans equalled or outnumbered Tibetans.[85]

When the 10th Panchen Lama addressed the Tibet Autonomous Region Standing Committee Meeting of the National People's Congress in 1987, he detailed mass imprisonment and killings of Tibetans in Amdo (Qinghai): "there were between three to four thousand villages and towns, each having between three to four thousand families with four to five thousand people. From each town and village, about 800 to 1,000 people were imprisoned. Out of this, at least 300 to 400 people of them died in prison...In Golok area, many people were killed and their dead bodies were rolled down the hill into a big ditch. The soldiers told the family members and relatives of the dead people that they should all celebrate since the rebels had been wiped out. They were even forced to dance on the dead bodies. Soon after, they were also massacred with machine guns. They were all buried there"[86]

"Police Attention: No distributing any unhealthy thoughts or objects." A trilingual (Tibetan–Chinese–English) sign above the entrance to a small cafe in Nyalam Town, Tibet, 1993

Civil Defence Billboard. Lhasa. 1993

Hu Jintao became the Party Chief of the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1988. In 1989, the 10th Panchen Lama died. Many Tibetans believe that Hu was involved in his unexpected death.[87] A few months later, according to Tang Daxian, a dissident journalist, the police in Lhasa received orders from General Li Lianxiu to provoke an incident. Peaceful demonstrations led to the death of 450 Tibetans that year.[88] The fourth national census was conducted in 1990, finding 4,590,000 ethnic Tibetans in China, including 2,090,000 in the TAR. The Chinese government compares these numbers to the first national census to conclude that the Tibetan population has doubled since 1951.[16]

In 1995, the Dalai Lama named 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th Panchen Lama without the approval of the government of China. The PRC named another child, Gyaincain Norbu, in conflict with the Dalai Lama's choice. Gyaincain Norbu was raised in Tibet and Beijing and makes frequent public appearances related to religion and politics. The PRC-selected Panchen Lama is rejected by exiled Tibetans who commonly refer to him as the "Panchen Zuma" (literally "fake Panchen Lama").[89] Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his family are missing: kidnapped, says Amnesty International, or living under a secret identity for protection and privacy, says Beijing.[89]

Economic development

In 2000, the Chinese government launched its Western Development Strategy aimed at boosting the economies of its poorer western regions. The strategy has featured a strong bias for large-scale, capital-intensive projects such as the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. Such projects however, have roused fears of facilitating military mobilisation and Han migration.[90] Robert Barnett reports that the economic stimulus was used by hardliners to stimulate Han migration to Tibet as a control mechanism, and that 66% of official posts in Tibet are held by Han.[91] There is still an ethnic imbalance in appointments and promotions to the civil and judicial services in the Tibet Autonomous Region, with disproportionately few ethnic Tibetans appointed to these posts.[92]

A rail attendant for the service from Xining to Lhasa

The PRC government claims that its rule over Tibet has provided economic development to Tibetan people, and that the Western Development Strategy plan is a benevolent and patriotic undertaking by the wealthier east coast to help the western parts of China catch up in terms of prosperity and living standards. On the other hand, the government maintains that the Tibetan Government did almost nothing to improve the Tibetans' material standard of life during its rule from 1913 to 1959, and that they opposed any reforms proposed by the Chinese government. According to the Chinese government, this is the reason for the tension that grew between some central government officials and the local Tibetan government in 1959.[93] The claims of economic hardship under the Dalai Lama's government from 1913–59 are disputed by the 10th Panchen Lama in the 70,000 Character Petition; however, the Panchen Lama praised the 1980s reform and opening up under Deng Xiaoping.[94]

The government, in turn, rejects claims that the lives of Tibetans have deteriorated, and states that the lives of Tibetans have been improved immensely compared to self-rule before 1950.[95] Despite China's claims that the lives of Tibetans have improved immensely, a 2004 book claimed some 3,000 Tibetans brave hardship and danger to flee into exile every year.[96] In addition, Human Rights Watch reports continued widespread abuses committed by Chinese security forces[97] and torture by Chinese police and security forces.[98]

The PRC claims that from 1951 to 2007, the Tibetan population in Lhasa-administered Tibet has increased from 1.2 million to almost 3 million. The GDP of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) today is thirty times that of before 1950. Workers in Tibet have the second highest wages in China.[99] The TAR has 22,500 kilometres (14,000 mi) of highways, as opposed to none in 1950. All secular education in the TAR was created after the revolution. The TAR now has 25 scientific research institutes as opposed to none in 1950. Infant mortality has dropped from 43% in 1950 to 0.661% in 2000.[100] (The United Nations reports an infant mortality rate of 3.53% in 2000, fallen from 43.0% in 1951.[101]) Life expectancy has risen from 35.5 years in 1950 to 67 in 2000. It points to the collection and publishing of the traditional Epic of King Gesar, which is the longest epic poem in the world and had only been handed down orally before. (However, corresponding Tibetan texts exist from the 18th century, and in the late 19th and early 20th centuries a woodblock edition of the story was compiled by a scholar-monk from Ling-tsang (a small kingdom north-east of sDe-dge) with inspiration from the prolific Tibetan philosopher Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso) It also highlights the allocation of 300 million Renminbi since the 1980s for the maintenance and protection of Tibetan monasteries.[100] The Cultural Revolution and the cultural damage it wrought upon the entire PRC is generally condemned as a nationwide catastrophe, whose main instigators, in the PRC's view, the Gang of Four, have been brought to justice. The China Western Development plan is viewed by the PRC as a massive, benevolent, and patriotic undertaking by the wealthier eastern coast to help the western parts of China, including Tibet, catch up in prosperity and living standards.

In 2008 the Chinese government "launched a 570-million-yuan (81.43 million U.S. dollars) project to preserve 22 historical and cultural heritage sites in Tibet, including the Zhaxi Lhunbo Lamasery as well as the Jokhang, Ramogia, Sanyai and Samgya-Goutog monasteries."[102]

After the 2008 unrest, Tibetan-populated areas of China remained tightly sealed off from outside scrutiny, according to Amnesty International. While Chinese authorities announced after the protests that over 1,000 individuals detained had been released, overseas Tibetan organizations claimed that at least several hundred remained in detention by the start of 2009. Following the detentions were reports of torture and other ill-treatment in detention, some cases resulting in death.[108] Religious repression included locking down major monasteries and nunneries, and a propaganda campaign where local authorities renewed “Patriotic Education,” which required Tibetans to participate in criticism sessions of the Dalai Lama and sign written denunciations of him, according to Amnesty's 2009 China report. Tibetan members of the Chinese Communist Party were also targeted, including being made to remove their children from Tibet exile community schools where they would have received a religious education.[108] According to former political prisoners Tibet is virtually a big prison.[109]

The issue of the proportion of the Han population in Tibet is a politically sensitive one and is disputed, involving the Government of Tibet in Exile, the PRC, and the Tibetan independence movement.

The Government of Tibet in Exile has said that government policies are sinicizing Tibet by encouraging the migration of non-ethnic Tibetans, especially Han and Hui, so that they outnumber ethnic Tibetans in the Tibetan region.[111] Some non-Tibetans migrating to the area may end up assimilating into and adapting to the Tibetan culture of the area to a degree, given its significance in the local culture. But if they adapt a more distinct identity to the Tibetans, Tibetan culture would be more likely to become endangered, particularly if Tibetans are the minority. The PRC gives the number of Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region as 2.4 million, as opposed to 190,000 non-Tibetans, and the number of Tibetans in all Tibetan autonomous entities combined (slightly smaller than the Greater Tibet claimed by exiled Tibetans) as 5.0 million, as opposed to 2.3 million non-Tibetans. In the TAR itself, much of the Han population is to be found in Lhasa.[112]

This statistic is in dispute primarily based on the distinction between the area often referred to as "Greater Tibet", in which ethnic Tibetans are a minority in the overall population, and the Tibet Autonomous Region, in which ethnic Tibetans are a majority. Qinghai, which is claimed by Tibetan exile groups, is made up of many ranging cultures local to different regions within the Province. Tibetan culture is local to and alive in many villages and towns throughout Qinghai.[113]

Some of Tibet's towns and villages are located in India and Nepal. The total population for Tibetans in India is given at 94,203, and 13,514 in Nepal. One example of this is the city of Leh in the Indian union territory of Ladakh, with a population of 27,513. The people of Leh are ethnic Tibetan, speaking Ladakhi, an East Tibetan language. Along with this, there are several Tibetan villages in northern Nepal. These regions are currently not claimed by Tibetan Exile Groups.[114][115][116]

[111] Referencing the population figures of Lhasa, the Dalai Lama has recently accused China of "demographic aggression" while stating that the Tibetans had been reduced to a minority "in his homeland".[117] Exiled Tibetans have also expressed concern that the Qinghai-Tibet railway (Xining to Lhasa) is intended to further facilitate the influx of Chinese migrants.[118] The PRC does not recognize Greater Tibet as claimed by the government of Tibet in Exile.[119] The PRC government claims that the ethnically Tibetan areas outside the TAR were not controlled by the Tibetan government before 1959 in the first place, having been administered instead by other surrounding provinces for centuries. It further alleges that the idea of "Greater Tibet" was originally engineered by foreign imperialists in order to divide China amongst themselves (Mongolia being a striking precedent, gaining independence with Soviet backing and subsequently aligning itself with the Soviet Union).[120]

The Government of Tibet in Exile disputes most demographic statistics released by the PRC government since they do not include members of the People's Liberation Army garrisoned in Tibet, or the floating population of unregistered migrants, and states that China is attempting to assimilate Tibet and further diminishing any chances of Tibetan political independence.[111] CCP member Jampa Phuntsok, chairman of the TAR, has said that the central government has no policy of migration into Tibet due to its harsh high-altitude conditions, that the 6% Han in the TAR is a very fluid group mainly doing business or working, and that there is no immigration problem. (This report includes both permanent and temporary residences in Tibet, but excludes Tibetans studying or working outside of the TAR).[121] By 2006, 3% of the permanent residences in Tibet were of Han ethnicity, according to National Bureau of Statistics of China.[112] The TAR has the lowest population density among China's province-level administrative regions, mostly due to its mountainous and harsh geographical features. As of 2000, 92.8% of the population were ethnic Tibetans, while Han Chinese comprised 6.1% of the population. In Lhasa, the capital of TAR, Hans made up 17%, far less than what many activists have claimed. Former population control policies like the one-child policy applied only to Han Chinese, not to minorities such as Tibetans.[122]

Traditional Kham houses

Sergius L. Kuzmin's review of different sources revealed that during the Cultural Revolution the Tibetan population decreased by between 3% and 30%.[123]

Barry Sautman accused pro-independence forces of wanting the Tibetan areas cleansed of Han and the Dalai Lama of consistently misrepresenting the present situation as one of a Han majority. The Tibetan countryside, where three-fourths of the population lives, has very few non-Tibetans.[124]

Sautman also stated:

[The settlers] are not personally subsidized by the state; although like urban Tibetans, they are indirectly subsidized by infrastructure development that favors the towns. Some 85% of Han who migrate to Tibet to establish businesses fail; they generally leave within two to three years. Those who survive economically offer competition to local Tibetan business people, but a comprehensive study in Lhasa has shown that non-Tibetans have pioneered small and medium enterprise sectors that some Tibetans have later entered and made use of their local knowledge to prosper.

Tibetans are not simply an underclass; there is a substantial Tibetan middle class, based in government service, tourism, commerce, and small-scale manufacturing/ transportation. There are also many unemployed or under-employed Tibetans, but almost no unemployed or underemployed Han because those who cannot find work leave.

In a Writenet paper written for the UNHCR, Professor Colin Mackerras (using PRC censuses) expresses the view that claims of the Chinese overtaking Tibetans in their own country and 1.2 million Tibetans dying due to Chinese occupation "should be treated with the deepest skepticism":[125]

The figures show that since the early 1960s, the Tibetan population has been increasing, probably for the first time for centuries. What seems to follow from this is that the TGIE's allegations of population reduction due to Chinese rule probably have some validity for the 1950s but are greatly exaggerated. However, since the 1960s, Chinese rule has had the effect of increasing the population of the Tibetans, not decreasing it, largely due to a modernization process that has improved the standard of living and lowered infant, maternity and other mortality rates.