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A historical region of central Asia between the Himalaya and Kunlun mountains. A center of Lamaist Buddhism, Tibet first flourished as an independent kingdom in the seventh century. It fell under Mongol influence from the 13th to the 18th century and later came under Chinese control (1720).
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Tibet (see Name section below for other spellings) is a Plateau region in Central Asia and the indigenous home to the Tibetan people. With an average elevation of 4,900 metres (16,000 ft), it is the highest region on Earth and is commonly referred to as the "Roof of the World."
Tibet is today part of the People's Republic of China (PRC) (with a small part, depending on definitions, by India). As an exclusive mandate, Tibet is also officially claimed by the Republic of China (Taiwan). In the Tibetan sovereignty debate, the government of the People's Republic of China and the Government of Tibet in Exile disagree over when Tibet became a part of China, and whether this incorporation into China is legitimate according to international law.
King Songtsän Gampo united many parts of the region in the seventh century. From the early 1600s the Dalai Lamas, commonly known as spiritual leaders of the region[1], are believed to be the emanations of Avalokiteśvara ("Chenrezig" [spyan ras gzigs] in Tibetan), the bodhisattva of compassion.
Between the 17th century and 1959, the Dalai Lama and his regents were the predominant political power administering religious and administrative authority[1] over Tibet from the traditional capital Lhasa, regarded as Tibet's holiest city.[citation needed]
![Seal of Tibet [citation needed]](http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/a/a4/160px-Seal_of_Tibet.PNG)
When the Government of Tibet in Exile and the Tibetan refugee community abroad refer to Tibet, they mean the areas consisting of the traditional provinces of Amdo, Kham, and Ü-Tsang, but excluding Sikkim, Bhutan, and Ladakh that have also formed part of the Tibetan cultural sphere.[citation needed]
When the People's Republic of China (PRC) refers to Tibet, it means the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR): a province-level entity which, according to the territorial claims of the PRC, includes Arunachal Pradesh (which is an Indian state but disputed by China). The TAR covers the Dalai Lama's former domain, consisting of Ü-Tsang and western Kham, while Amdo and eastern Kham are part of Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan, and Sichuan.
The difference in definition is a major source of dispute. The distribution of Amdo and eastern Kham into surrounding provinces was initiated by the Yongzheng Emperor during the 18th century and has been continuously maintained by successive Chinese governments. Tibetan exiles, in turn, consider the maintenance of this arrangement from the 18th century as part of a divide-and-rule policy.[citation needed]
Tibetans call their homeland Bod (བོད་), pronounced [pʰøʔ] in Lhasa dialect. It is first attested in the geography of Ptolemy as βαται (batai) (Beckwith, C. U. of Indiana Diss. 1977). Tibetans refer to Tibet as a "fatherland" (Tibetan: ཕ་ཡུལ་; Wylie: pha-yul), whereas "motherland" (Tibetan: མ་ཡུལ་; Wylie: ma-yul) is a neologism introduced in the 1960s to refer to China.[citation needed]
The modern Chinese name for Tibet, 西藏 (Xīzàng), is a phonetic transliteration derived from the region called
The government of the People's Republic of China equates Tibet with the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). As such, the name “Xīzàng” is equated with the TAR. In order to refer non-TAR Tibetan areas, or to all of cultural Tibet, the term 藏区 Zàngqū (literally, "ethnic Tibetan areas") is used. However, Chinese-language versions of pro-Tibetan independence websites, such as the Free Tibet Campaign, the Voice of Tibet, and Tibet Net use 西藏 (“Xīzàng”), not 藏区 ("Zàngqū"), to mean historic Tibet.
Some English-speakers reserve “Xīzàng”, the Chinese word transliterated into English, for the TAR, to keep the concept distinct from that of historic Tibet. Some pro-independence advocates duplicate the situation into the Chinese language, and use 土番 (Tǔbō) or 图伯特 (Túbótè), which are both phonetic transcriptions of the word "Tibet", to refer to historic Tibet.[citation needed]
The character 藏 (zàng) has been used in transcriptions referring to Tsang as early as the Yuan Dynasty, if not earlier, though the modern term "Xizang" (western Tsang) was devised in the 18th century. The Chinese character 藏 (Zàng) has also been generalized to refer to all of Tibet, including other concepts related to Tibet such as the Tibetan language (藏文, Zàngwén) and the Tibetan people (藏族, Zàngzú).
The English word Tibet, like the word for Tibet in most European languages, is derived from the Arabic word Tubbat.[3] This word is derived via Persian from the Turkic word Töbäd (plural of Töbän), meaning "the heights".[4] in Medieval Chinese, 吐蕃 (Pinyin Tǔfān, often given as Tubo), is derived from the same Turkic word.[4] Tǔfān was pronounced /t'o-bwǝn/ in Medieval times.
The exact derivation of the name is, however, unclear. Some scholars believe that the named derived from that of a people who lived in the region of northeastern Tibet and were referred to as 'Tübüt'. This was the form adapted by the Muslim writers who rendered it Tübbett, Tibbat, etc., from as early as the 9th century, and it then entered European languages from the reports of the medieval European accounts of Piano-Carpini, Rubruck, Marco Polo and the Capuchin monk Francesco della Penna.[5]
PRC scholars favor the theory that "Tibet" is derived from Tǔfān.[3][6]
The Tibetan language is spoken in Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, and in parts of northern India such as Sikkim. It is generally classified as a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Spoken Tibetan includes numerous regional dialects which, in many cases, are not mutually intelligible. Moreover, the boundaries between Tibetan and certain other Himalayan languages are sometimes unclear. In general, the dialects of central Tibet (including Lhasa), Kham, Amdo, and some smaller nearby areas are considered Tibetan dialects, while other forms, particularly Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Sherpa, and Ladakhi, are considered for political reasons by their speakers to be separate languages.[citation needed] Ultimately, taking into consideration this wider understanding of Tibetan dialects and forms, "greater Tibetan" is spoken by approximately 6 million people across the Tibetan Plateau. Tibetan is also spoken by approximately 150,000 exile speakers who have fled from modern-day Tibet to India and other countries.
The Tibetan language has its own script, which is derived from Sanskrit Devanagari script.[verification needed]
Chinese and the "proto-Tibeto-Burman" language may have split sometime before 4000 BC, when the Chinese began growing millet in the Yellow River valley while the Tibeto-Burmans remained nomads. Tibetan split from Burman around AD 500.[7][8]
Prehistoric Iron Age hill forts and burial complexes have recently been found on the Chang Tang plateau but the remoteness of the location is hampering archaeological research. The initial identification of this culture is as the Zhang Zhung culture which is described in ancient Tibetan texts and is known as the original culture of the Bön religion.
A series of kings ruled Tibet from the 7th to the 11th century. At times, Tibetan rule may have extended as far south as Bengal and as far north as Mongolia.[citation needed]
Tibet first enters history in the Geography of Ptolemy under the name batai (βαται), a Greek transcription of the indigenous name Bod. Tibet next appears in history in a Chinese text where it is referred to as fa. The first incident from recorded Tibetan history which is confirmed externally occurred when King Namri Lontsen sent an ambassador to China in the early 7th century.[9]
However general, the history of Tibet begins with the rule of Songtsän Gampo (604–50 CE) who united parts of the Yarlung River Valley and ruled Tibet as a kingdom. In 640 he married Princess Wencheng, the niece of the powerful Chinese emperor Emperor Taizong of Tang China.
The Tibetans were allied with the Arabs and eastern Turks. In 747, the hold of Tibet was loosened by the campaign of general Gao Xianzhi, who tried to re-open the direct communications between Central Asia and Kashmir. By 750 the Tibetans had lost almost all of their central Asian possessions to the Chinese. However, after Gao Xianzhi's defeat by the Arabs and Qarluqs at the Battle of Talas river (751), Chinese influence decreased rapidly and Tibetan influence resumed. Tibet conquered large sections of northern India and even briefly took control of the Chinese capital Chang'an in 763 during the chaos of the An Shi Rebellion.[10]
There was a stone pillar, the Lhasa Zhol rdo-rings, in the ancient village of Zhol in front of the Potala in Lhasa, dating to c. 764 CE during the reign of Trisong Detsen. It also contains an account of the brief capture of Chang'an, the Chinese capital, in 763 CE, during the reign of Emperor Daizong.[11][12]
In 821/822 CE Tibet and China signed a peace treaty. A bilingual account of this treaty including details of the borders between the two countries are inscribed on a stone pillar which stands outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa.[13] Tibet continued as a Central Asian empire until the mid-9th century.
In 1240, the Mongols marched into central Tibet and attacked several monasteries. Köden, younger brother of Mongol ruler Güyük Khan, participated in a ceremony recognizing the Sakya lama as temporal ruler of Tibet in 1247. The Mongol khans had ruled northern China by conquest since 1215. They were the emperors of the Yuan Dynasty. Kublai Khan was a patron of Tibetan Buddhism and appointed the Sakya Lama his "Imperial preceptor," or chief religious official. Tibetans viewed this relationship as an example of yon-mchod, or priest-patron relationship. In practice, the Sakya lama was subordinate to the Mongol khan. The collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368 led to the overthrow of the Sakya in Tibet. Tibet was then ruled by a succession of three secular Tibetan dynasties. According to a Chinese source, in 1372, an emperor of China’s Ming Dynasty granted the desi (sde-srid, viceroy) of Tibet the official title of Abhiseca State Tutor, and gave him the jade seal of authority. The following year saw this ruler (Jamyang Sagya Gyaincain) send people to pay tribute to the Ming court.[14]
According to a Chinese source,[15] between the 17th century to 1721, the political leader of Tibet was the Degsi or governor. In 1721, the Chinese emperor abolished the position of Degsi and gave the political power to the hands of four Galoons. The Qing Emperor put Amdo under Qing government's direct rule in 1724, and incorporated east Kham into neighbouring Chinese provinces in 1728.[16] The Qing government sent a resident commissioner (amban) to Lhasa. Tibetan factions rebelled in 1750 and killed the ambasa. Then, a Qing army entered and defeated the rebels and installed an administration headed by the Dalai Lama. The number of soldiers in Tibet was kept at about 2000. The defensive duties were partly helped out by a local force which was reorganized by the resident commissioner, and the Tibetan government continued to manage day-to-day affairs as before. In 1751, the Chinese emperor established the Dalai Lama as both the spiritual leader and political leader of Tibet who lead a government (Gaxag) with four Galoons in it.
According to the same Chinese source,[17] in 1578, Altan Khan, who was subordinate to China’s Ming Dynasty from 1571, invited Soinam Gyaco to lecture on Buddhism in what is today considered by China as Qinghai and bestowed upon him the title of "Dalai Lama," thus beginning the official use of the title "Dalai Lama." The 3rd Dalai paid tribute to the Ming imperial court through Althan Khan and wrote to the Chinese prime minister, requesting to be allowed to pay tribute to the imperial court on a regular basis, and was approved. In the 16th century, Altan Khan of Tumet Mongolian tribe supported the Dalai Lama's religious lineage to be the dominant religion among Mongols and Tibetans. This fact is, however, contested by Tibetan exiles.
According to a Chinese source, the sixth Dalai Lama enjoyed a lifestyle that included drinking, the company of women, and writing love songs.[18][19] Declaring him to be unworthy as a monk, Mongol leader Lha-bzang Khan invaded Tibet with the approval of China's Kangxi emperor in 1705. According to this claim, the Kangxi emperor dismissed him (the sixth Dalai Lama) from office and ordered him brought by Chinese troops to Beijing for questioning. He died soon afterwards on the way to Beijing in 1706.[20] Tibetans in exile claimed that in 1706, the sixth dalai lama was invited to China and died on the way.[21][verification needed] In the book of "Tibet: A Political History", written by a famous pro-independent Tibetan official—Xagabba, the author claimed that "The emperor decided to dismiss the 6th Dalai Lama from office."
In fact, the sixth Dalai lama visited the Panchen Lama in Shigatse and requested his forgiveness, and renounced even the vows of a novice monk.[citation needed] Though he continued to live in the Potala Palace, he roamed around Lhasa and other outlying villages, spending his days with his friends in the park behind the Potala Palace and nights in taverns in Lhasa and Shol (an area below the Potala) drinking chang and singing songs.[citation needed] He was known to be a great poet and writer and he wrote several poems.[citation needed]
The first Europeans to arrive in Tibet were Portuguese missionaries in 1624 and were welcomed by the Tibetans who allowed them to build a church. The 18th century brought more Jesuits and Capuchins from Europe who gradually met opposition from Tibetan lamas who finally expelled them from Tibet in 1745. However, at the time not all Europeans were banned from the county — in 1774 a Scottish nobleman George Bogle came to Shigatse to investigate trade for the British East India Company, introducing the first potato crop into Tibet.
However by the 19th century the situation of foreigners in Tibet grew more ominous. The British Empire was encroaching from northern India into the Himalayas and Afghanistan and the Russian Empire of the tsars was expanding south into Central Asia and each power became suspicious of intent in Tibet. By the 1850s Tibet had banned all foreigners from Tibet and shut its borders to all outsiders.
In 1865 Great Britain began secretly mapping Tibet. Trained Indian surveyor-spies disguised as pilgrims or traders counted their strides on their travels across Tibet and took readings at night. Nain Singh, the most famous measured the longitude and latitude and altitude of Lhasa and traced the Yarlung Tsangpo River.
Then in 1904 a British advance mission, accompanied by a large military escort, invaded Lhasa. The head of the mission was Colonel Francis Younghusband, who in his earlier days was noted for wanting to "make a name for himself". The principal pretext for the British invasion was a fear, which proved to be unfounded, that Russia was extending its footprint into Tibet and possibly even giving military aid to the local Tibetan government. But on his way to Lhasa, Younghusband slaughtered 1,300 Tibetans in Gyangzê, because the natives feared that the British would force an unequal treaty on the Tibetans. Younghusband first tricked them into extinguishing the burning ropes of their basic rifles before opening fire with the Maxim machine guns. Some documents claim that 5,000 Tibetans were killed by the British army.
When the mission reached Lhasa, the Dalai Lama had already fled to Urga in Mongolia, Younghusband found the option of returning to India empty-handed untenable, he proceeded to draft a treaty unilaterally, and have it signed in the Potala by the regent, Ganden Tri Rinpoche, and any other local officials he could gather together as an ad hoc government. The Tibetan ministers whom Younghusband dealt with had apparently, unknown to him, just been appointed to their posts. The regular ministers had been imprisoned for suspected pro-British leanings and it was feared they would be too accommodating to Younghusband.[22] A treaty was signed by lay and ecclesiastical officials of the said Tibetan government, and by representatives of the three monasteries of Sera, Drepung, and Ganden[23] and the British force left the city of Lhasa on 23 September, 1904.
The treaty made provisions for the frontier between Sikkim and Tibet to be respected, for free trade between British and Tibetan subjects, and for an indemnity to be paid from the Qing court to the British Government for its expenses in dispatching armed troops to Lhasa. It also made provision for a British trade agent to reside at the trade mart at Gyangzê. The provisions of this 1904 treaty were confirmed in a 1906 treaty signed between Britain and China, in which the British, for a fee from the Qing court, also agreed "not to annex Tibetan territory or to interfere in the administration of Tibet.".[24] The position of British Trade Agent at Gyangzê was occupied from 1904 until 1944. It was not until 1937, with the creation of the position of "Head of British Mission Lhasa", that a British officer had a permanent posting in Lhasa itself.[25] A Nepalese agency had also been established in Lhasa after the invasion of Tibet by the Gurkha government of Nepal in 1855.[26]
In the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1906 which confirmed the Anglo-Tibetan Treaty of 1904, Britain agreed "not to annex Tibetan territory or to interfere in the administration of Tibet" while China engaged "not to permit any other foreign state to interfere with the territory or internal administration of Tibet".[27] In the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, drafted by the British, Britain also recognized the "suzerainty of China over Thibet" and, in conformity with such admitted principle, engaged "not to enter into negotiations with Tibet except through the intermediary of the Chinese Government."[28] The Qing central government established direct rule over Tibet for the first time in 1910.
The 13th Dalai Lama fled to British India in February 1910. The same month, the Chinese Qing government issued a proclamation deposing the Dalai Lama and instigating the search for a new incarnation.[29] While in India, the Dalai Lama became a close friend of the British Political Officer Charles Alfred Bell.
The official position of the British Government was it would not intervene between China and Tibet and would only recognize the de facto government of China within Tibet at this time.[30] Bell, in his history of Tibet, wrote of this time that "the Tibetans were abandoned to Chinese aggression, an aggression for which the British Military Expedition to Lhasa and subsequent retreat [and consequent power vacuum within Tibet) were primarily responsible".[31] Britain later violated all these treaties when it fomented the Sino-Indian border dispute by defining the McMahon Line in London without China's agreement and with the Simla conference, thus interfering in the affairs of the region.
On 1 January 1912 the Republic of China was established and one month later the Qing Emperor abdicated.[32] In April 1912 the Chinese garrison of troops in Lhasa surrendered to the Tibetan authorities while the new Chinese Republican government wished to make the commander of the Chinese troops in Lhasa its new Tibetan representative.
The Dalai Lama returned to Tibet from India in July 1912. By the end of 1912, the Chinese troops in Tibet had returned, via India, to China Proper.[32]
In 1913, Tibet and Mongolia allegedly[33][34] signed a treaty proclaiming mutual recognition and their independence from China. However, the validity of such a treaty is disputed by historians and diplomats[33] as there was not, at the time, nor has there been since, any official publication of the text by either party, and the text does not appear to have been published in any language other than English.[34][35]
In 1914, representatives of China, Tibet and Britain negotiated a treaty in India: the Simla Convention. During the convention, the British tried to divide Tibet into Inner and Outer Tibet. When negotiations broke down over the specific boundary between Inner and Outer, the British demanded instead to advance their line of control, enabling them to annex 90,000 square kilometers of traditional Tibetan territory in southern Tibet, which corresponds to most of the modern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, while recognizing Chinese suzerainty over Tibet[36] and affirming the latter's status as part of Chinese territory, with a promise from the Government of China that Tibet will not be converted into a Chinese province.[37][38] Tibetan representatives secretly signed under British pressure; however, the representative of China's central government declared that the secretive annexation of territory was not acceptable. The boundary established in the convention, the McMahon Line, was considered by the British and later the independent Indian government to be the boundary; however, the Chinese view since then has been that since China, which was sovereign over Tibet, did not sign the treaty, the treaty was meaningless, and the annexation and control of southern Tibet Arunachal Pradesh by India is illegal. This paved the way to the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the boundary dispute between China and India today.
The subsequent outbreak of World War I and Chinese Civil War caused the Western powers and the infighting factions of China proper to lose interest in Tibet, and the 13th Dalai Lama ruled undisturbed until his death in 1933. At that time, the government of Tibet controlled all of Ü-Tsang (Dbus-gtsang) and western Kham (Khams), roughly coincident with the borders of Tibet Autonomous Region today. Eastern Kham, separated by the Yangtze River was under the control of Chinese warlord Liu Wenhui. The situation in Amdo (Qinghai) was more complicated, with the Xining area controlled by ethnic Hui warlord Ma Bufang, who constantly strove to exert control over the rest of Amdo (Qinghai).
Writing in 1940, after his visit to Tibet in 1936–7, F. Spencer Chapman said:
Since the expulsion of the Chinese, following the revolution of 1910, there has been no official representative in Lhasa. In 1934, however, when General Huang Mu Sung returned to China, he left a wireless transmission set in the charge of a certain Mr. Tsang. As the Tibetans have no other form of wireless transmission, Tsang became a rather important person. This was especially clear during the recent disturbances on the Sino-Tibetan frontier, for it takes ten days or a fortnight for a mounted messenger from Lhasa to reach Derge or Chamdo. If Tsang did not like the message he changed it; if he disapproved of it altogether, he just didn't send it."[39]
In 1935 the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso was born in Amdo in eastern Tibet and was recognized as the latest reincarnation. He was taken to Lhasa in 1937 where he was later given an official ceremony in 1939. During the 1940s during World War II, two Austrian mountaineers, Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschnaiter came to Lhasa, where Harrer became a tutor and friend to the young Dalai Lama giving him a sound knowledge of western culture and modern society, until he was forced to leave with the Chinese invasion in 1950.
Neither the Republic of China nor the People's Republic of China have ever renounced China's claim to sovereignty over Tibet.[40]
In 1950, the People's Liberation Army invaded the Tibetan area of Chamdo, crushing minimal resistance from the ill-equipped Tibetan army. In 1951, the Tibetan representatives, under PLA military pressure, signed a seventeen-point agreement with the PRC's Central People's Government affirming China's sovereignty over Tibet. The agreement was ratified in Lhasa a few months later.[41][42]
Some Tibetans have accused the People's Republic of China of a campaign of terror after the invasion, which they claim led to the disappearance of up to 1 million Tibetans. The PRC denies these claims. Charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, state terrorism and torture are currently being investigated by a Spanish court.[43]
Though some of the population of Tibet at that time were serfs ("mi ser"),[44][45] often bound to land owned by monasteries and aristocrats, Tibetans in exile have claimed that the serfs formed only a small part of Tibetan society, and argued that Tibet would have modernized itself without China's intervention. However, the Chinese government claims that most Tibetans were still serfs in 1951, and have proclaimed that the Tibetan government inhibited the development of Tibet during its self-rule from 1913 to 1959, and opposed any modernization efforts proposed by the Chinese government.[46] This agreement was initially put into effect in Tibet proper. However, Eastern Kham and Amdo were outside the administration of the government of Tibet, and were thus treated like any other Chinese province with land redistribution implemented in full. As a result, a resistance broke out in Amdo and eastern Kham in June 1956. The resistance, supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), eventually spread to Lhasa. It was crushed by 1959. During this campaign, tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed. The 14th Dalai Lama and other government principals fled to exile in India, but isolated resistance continued in Tibet until 1969 when the CIA abruptly withdrew its support.
Although the Panchen Lama remained a virtual prisoner, the Chinese set him as a figurehead in Lhasa, claiming that he headed the legitimate Government of Tibet since the Dalai Lama had fled to India after the failed Tibetan uprising in 1959, and they established him as the traditional head of the Tibetan government.[citation needed] In 1965, the area that had been under the control of the Dalai Lama's government from the 1910s to 1959 (U-Tsang and western Kham) was set up as an Autonomous Region. The monastic estates were broken up and secular education introduced. During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Red Guards inflicted a campaign of organized vandalism against cultural sites in the entire PRC, including Tibet's Buddhist heritage. Some young Tibetans joined in the campaign of destruction, voluntarily due to the ideological fervour that was sweeping the entire PRC[47][48] and involuntarily due to the fear of being denounced as enemies of the people.[49] Of the several thousand monasteries in Tibet, over 6,500 were destroyed,[50] only a handful of the most important, religiously or culturally, monasteries remained without major damage.[51] Hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns were forced to return to secular life.[52] Some were even imprisoned or killed.
In 1989, the Panchen Lama was finally allowed to return to Shigatse, where he addressed a crowd of 30,000 and described what he saw as the suffering of Tibet and the harm being done to his country in the name of socialist reform under the rule of the PRC in terms reminiscent of the petition he had presented to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1962[53]. Five days later, he mysteriously died of a massive heart attack at the age of 50.[54]
In 1995 the Dalai Lama named 6 year old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th Panchen Lama without Chinese approval, while the PRC named another child, Gyancain Norbu in conflict. Gyancain Norbu was raised in Beijing and has appeared occasionally on state media. The PRC-selected Panchen Lama is rejected by exiled Tibetans and anti-China groups who commonly refer to him as the "Panchen Zuma" (literally "fake Panchen Lama"). Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his family have gone missing — believed by some to be imprisoned by China — and under a hidden identity for protection and privacy according to the PRC.[55]
The PRC continues to portray its rule over Tibet as an unalloyed improvement, but foreign governments continue to make occasional protests about aspects of PRC rule in Tibet because of frequent reports of human rights violation in Tibet by groups such as Human Rights Watch. All governments, however, recognize the PRC's sovereignty over Tibet today, and none have recognized the Government of Tibet in Exile in India.
In 2005, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's offered to hold talks with the 14th Dalai Lama on the Tibet issue, provided he dropped the demand for independence. The Dalai Lama said in an interview with the South China Morning Post "We are willing to be part of the People's Republic of China, to have it govern and guarantee to preserve our Tibetan culture, spirituality and our environment." A statement that was seen as a renewed diplomatic offensive by the Tibetan government-in-exile. He had already said he would accept Chinese sovereignty over Tibet but insisted on real autonomy over its religious and cultural life. Tibetan government-in-exile, called on the Chinese government to respond.[56] The move was seen to be unpopular with many Tibetans in exile.[56]
In January 2007 the Dalai Lama, in an interview on a private television channel, said "What we demand from the Chinese authority is more autonomy for Tibetans to protect their culture." He added that he had told the Tibetan people not to think in terms of history and to accept Tibet as a part of China.[57]
On 5 June 1959 Shri Purshottam Trikamdas, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India, presented a report on Tibet to the International Commission of Jurists (an NGO). The press conference address on the report states in paragraph 26 that
| “ | From the facts stated above the following conclusions may be drawn: … (e) To examine all such evidence obtained by this Committee and from other sources and to take appropriate action thereon and in particular to determine whether the crime of Genocide — for which already there is strong presumption — is established and, in that case, to initiate such action as envisaged by the Genocide Convention of 1948 and by the Charter of the United Nations for suppression of these acts and appropriate redress;[58] | ” |
On 11 January 2006 it was reported that the Spanish High Court will investigate whether seven former Chinese officials, including the former President of China Jiang Zemin and former Prime Minister Li Peng participated in a genocide in Tibet. This investigation follows a Spanish Constitutional Court (26 September 2005) ruling that Spanish courts could try genocide cases even if they did not involve Spanish nationals.[59] The court proceedings in the case brought by the Madrid-based Committee to Support Tibet against several former Chinese officials was opened by the Judge on 6 June 2006, and on the same day China denounced the Spanish court's investigation into claims of genocide in Tibet as an interference in its internal affairs and dismissed the allegations as "sheer fabrication".[60][61]
In 1991 the Dalai Lama alleged that Chinese settlers in Tibet were creating "Chinese Apartheid":
A report by the Heritage Foundation discussed some of the reasons for the use of this term:
If the matter of Tibet's sovereignty is murky, the question about the PRC's treatment of Tibetans is all too clear. After invading Tibet in 1950, the Chinese communists killed over one million Tibetans, destroyed over 6,000 monasteries, and turned Tibet's northeastern province, Amdo, into a gulag housing, by one estimate, up to ten million people. A quarter of a million Chinese troops remain stationed in Tibet. In addition, some 7.5 million Chinese have responded to Beijing's incentives to relocate to Tibet; they now outnumber the 6 million Tibetans. Through what has been termed Chinese apartheid, ethnic Tibetans now have a lower life expectancy, literacy rate, and per capita income than Chinese inhabitants of Tibet.[64]
In 2001 representatives of Tibet succeeded in gaining accreditation at a United Nations-sponsored meeting of non-governmental organizations. On August 29 Jampal Chosang, the head of the Tibetan coalition, stated that China had introduced "a new form of apartheid" in Tibet because "Tibetan culture, religion, and national identity are considered a threat" to China.[65] The Tibet Society of the UK has called on the British government to "condemn the apartheid regime in Tibet that treats Tibetans as a minority in their own land and which discriminates against them in the use of their language, in education, in the practice of their religion, and in employment opportunities."[66]
These tensions have spilled over into the tourist industry. According to Peter Neville-Hadley:
The Central Tibetan Administration states that the number that have died in the Great Leap Forward, of violence, or other indirect causes since 1950 is approximately 1.2 million,[68] which the Chinese Communist Party denies. The Chinese Communist Party's official toll of deaths recorded for the whole of China for the years of the Great Leap Forward is 14 million[citation needed], but scholars have estimated the number of the famine victims to be between 20 and 43 million[69]. According to Patrick French, the estimate of 1.2 million in Tibet is not reliable because Tibetans were not able to process the data well enough to produce a credible total. There were, however, many casualties, with a figure of 400,000 extrapolated from a calculation Warren W. Smith made from census reports of Tibet which show 200,000 "missing" from Tibet.[70][71] Even The Black Book of Communism expresses doubt at the 1.2 million figure, but does note that according to the Chinese census the total population of ethnic Tibetans in the PRC was 2.8 million in 1953[citation needed], but only 2.5 million in 1964[citation needed]. It puts forward a figure of 800,000 deaths and alleges that as many as 10% of Tibetans were interned, with few survivors.[72] Chinese demographers have estimated that 90,000 of the 300,000 "missing" Tibetans fled the region.[73]
The government of Tibet in Exile also says that, fundamentally, the issue is that of the right to self-determination of the Tibetan people. The Dalai Lama has stated his willingness to negotiate with China for genuine autonomy. According to the government in exile and Tibetan independence groups, most Tibetans still call for full Tibetan independence. The Dalai Lama sees the millions of government-imported Han immigrants [citation needed] and preferential socioeconomic policies, as presenting an urgent threat to the Tibetan nation by stealing economic resources and smothering Tibetan culture. Tibetan exile groups say that despite recent attempts to restore the appearance of original Tibetan culture to attract tourism, the traditional Tibetan way of life is now irrevocably changed.
The Chinese government says that when Hu Yaobang, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, visited Lhasa in 1980 he was unhappy when he found out the region was lagging behind neighbouring provinces.[citation needed] Policies were changed, and since then the central government's policy in Tibet has claimed to have granted most religious freedoms, despite the observation of the more stringent government control implemented over Tibetan monasteries.[citation needed] However, in 1998 three monks and five nuns died while in custody, after suffering beatings and torture for having shouted slogans supporting the Dalai Lama and Tibetan independence.[74] Many Tibetans continue to attempt to flee Tibet.[citation needed] Projects that the PRC claims to have benefited Tibet, such as the China Western Development economic plan or the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, are actually politically-motivated actions to consolidate central control over Tibet by facilitating militarization and Han migration while benefiting only a few Tibetans.[75] The money funneled into cultural restoration projects is being primarily aimed at purely attracting tourists, and Tibet is still lagging behind the rest of the PRC.[citation needed] The first large hospital in Tibet was not built until 1985.[citation needed] Several of Lhasa's main roads were not paved until 1987 and the first students at Tibet University did not graduate until 1988.[citation needed] There is still preferential treatment awarded to the Han Chinese population of the TAR in the labour market as opposed to Tibetans.[76]
The government of the PRC maintains that the Tibetan Government did almost nothing to improve the Tibetans' material and
political standard of life during its rule from 1913–59, 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.[46] The government of the PRC also rejects claims that the lives of Tibetans have deteriorated,
and stated that the lives of Tibetans have been improved immensely compared to self rule before 1950.[77] Benefits that are commonly quoted include — 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,[78] the TAR
has 22,500 km 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, life expectancy has risen from 35.5
years in 1950 to 67 in 2000, 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, allocation of 300 million
Tibet is located on the Tibetan Plateau, the world's highest region. Most of the Himalaya mountain range, one of the youngest mountain ranges in the world at only 4 million years old, lies within Tibet. Its most famous peak, Mount Everest, is on Nepal's border with Tibet. The average altitude is about 3,000 m in the south and 4,500 m in the north.
The atmosphere is severely dry nine months of the year, and average snowfall is only 18 inches, due to the rain shadow effect whereby mountain ranges prevent moisture from the ocean from reaching the plateaus. Western passes receive small amounts of fresh snow each year but remain traversable all year round. Low temperatures are prevalent throughout these western regions, where bleak desolation is unrelieved by any vegetation beyond the size of low bushes, and where wind sweeps unchecked across vast expanses of arid plain. The Indian monsoon exerts some influence on eastern Tibet. Northern Tibet is subject to high temperatures in the summer and intense cold in the winter.
Historic Tibet consists of several regions:
