The Thought Salesman

Everyone knows by now that there are problems in Tibet. Whether you heard it on the news, or in the paper, or even if you have family back in China, the message is the same, Tibet is rioting. It is very rare in any struggle for one side to be completely right while the other is completely wrong, and from what we are fed in the west by our news media, this appears to be one of those times. China, a superpower in its own right, is oppressing the people of an alien nation that it has greedily annexed. That is what we are to learn from even the most prominent western news stations.

It isn’t that simple. Chinese history is about as complex as the entire history of Europe, and goes back until around the time of the Egyptians, when European history consisted of tribal warfare, not the emergence of nation-states. Tibet, like all of the entities that neighbour China has played a part in this complicated and bloody history.

What’s going on now is this: China has locked down its Tibetan provinces, and has moved the army in to deal with the riots. Tibetan protestors are firebombing government and police buildings as well as targeting those who are ethnically Chinese with violence. The world waits to see how heavy handed the response of the Chinese government will be.

To fully understand the situation, it is important to fully understand the history of Tibet. Tibet’s name comes to English through Arabic, which took the word from the Persians, who took the word from the Turks. The original meaning of the Turkic word was “the heights,” appropriate, since the nation is situated on the highest mountain range in the world. Until the 1700’s this was also the root of the Chinese word for Tibet, after this time, several Chinese words for Tibet arose, the most recently accepted one being Xīzàng. The Tibetan word for Tibet is Bo.

The earliest histories of Tibet come from Chinese Imperial court records, when the Tibetan Empire sent ambassadors to the Chinese Empire in the 600’s AD. At this time Tibet was newly unified under Namri Songzen, whose son was strategically wed to a Chinese princess to solidify peace with China, a separate nation at this point. China had just come out of a civil war, which saw the rise to power of one of its most brutal ruling dynasties, the Tang. After about 50 years of Tang rule China had stabilized and was a terror state of immense power. Tibet, during this time was also quite powerful, and like all powerful monarchies decided to stick its head into a hornet’s nest by declaring war on its neighbour. The resulting war initially saw Tibet gain 3 medium sized Chinese provinces, and even the capture of the Chinese capital, however, the fertile plains of China supported a much larger population than the barren mountains of Tibet, and therefore a larger army. Tibet lost all of its gained territory, and was nearly conquered itself, but was saved in the end by its traditional allies, the Arabs and the Turks who rode to the rescue.

With borders restored, the two nations enjoyed a relative peace, relative for the time period anyway. Tibet busily conquered much of India, while China pushed into Manchuria and East Turkestan.

China went through several civil wars after 900 AD, eventually arriving at the divided Song Dynasty, which was actually a number of concurrent dynasties that ruled states carved out of the former Chinese Empires. This lasted until around 1200 AD when the world witnessed the rise of the Mongols. Genghis Khan Conquered China and Persia, while his grandchildren conquered territories stretching from Vietnam in the southeast, to what is now Russian Siberia in the northeast, to Hungary in the northwest, and at times Syrian and Egyptian territories in the southwest. This territory included Tibet.

It is this time period of mutual submission to a foreign power, a power that claimed the throne of not only China, but most of the world, that China bases much of its claim on Tibet. Part of the claim arises from the Tibetan ruler at the time swearing fealty to the Mongol overlords and trading in his position as King of Tibet for Viceroy of Tibet, the ruling group was known in this period as the Sakyas. In fact, prior to the Mongol invasions, Tibet was in a state of civil war, something that the Mongols put an end to. It is also partly because of the complete surrender by Tibet that Tibet was spared the sort of heavy handed massacres that other nations suffered. In fact, after the initial invasions, Tibet received a favourable position in the Mongol Empire, as money was funnelled into Tibet from China to pay the Lamas of Tibet for their spiritual guidance across the empire.

This was the case until the collapse of the Mongol Empire in the late 1300’s AD. Problems started when the Tibetan people overthrew the puppet government that the Mongols had installed. The Mongols then accepted the new Phagmodru as the authority in the new Tibetan puppet state. Four years later, China overthrew the Mongols and established the Ming dynasty. At this time Tibet and China were roughly equal in material wealth and military strength, and in terms of allies, the fall of the Mongol Empire served as a sort of geopolitical reboot in Asia. Every region of the former empire was now in a period of strife at best, and full out civil war at worst. Tibet’s civil war was fought between Tibet’s several factions, including the Sakya, the Phagmodru, and a group from the southeast, the Kham. The Ming Emperor, fearing what a powerful Tibet could mean for China sided with the Kham, and promised their officials that the same posts they held in the Mongol court could be renewed in the Ming court. The Ming sought to foster peace between Tibet and China through their common religion, Buddhism. It is during this time that the relationship between Tibet and China gets a little hazy, as China had no authoritative rule over Tibet, which remained unstable, however, Tibetan governors answered to the Chinese courts. Tibet paid tribute, but was protected by its own armies. The politics of Tibet seemed to be very internal, while the politics of China seemed to ignore Tibet. It is during this time that the modern Chinese claim a second period of Chinese rule. Due to the unique nature of the relationship between the Ming and Tibet Empires, the actual status of Tibet during this period may never be known, especially since power shifted in this period between the Sakya, the Phagmodru, and the Kham, and only the Kham accepted Chinese authority, and even then, only partly.

It is during this period in the late 1500’s AD that the Dalai Lama lineage was established. During the next three hundred years power struggles in China leaked into Tibet, as did the various armies belonging to the tribes of Mongolia and Manchuria. During this period, until 1912, China again fell under a period of foreign rule, this time by the Manchurians, who created the ‘Qing Dynasty,’ in the same way the Mongols referred to their rule as the ‘Yuan Dynasty.’ Manchurian rule, like Manchurian armies crossed the border into Tibet and brought the nation to its knees. It remained a vassal of Manchurian China until its collapse, and resisted numerous invasions by Nepal during this time. It is again during this period of mutual subordination to a foreign power that China claims as evidence of Tibetan ownership.

During the later part of Manchurian rule, the British decided it would be a good idea to invade Tibet. Having conquered India, and engaged with Russia over dominance of Afghanistan, the British sent a 10,000 man strong force into Tibet, where under assurances by the British government that it was a peaceful mission, the Tibetans prepared no defence. The British tactics were so ruthless that in one instance, the British Commander Younghusband convinced 2,000 Tibetan defenders that the British were in Tibet for peaceful purposes, then after the Tibetans put out the fuses on their basic rifles, the British mowed them all down with machine guns. Younghusband would unwittingly do more terrible damage to Tibet than he had intended. After roaming vaguely towards the capital of Tibet, Younghusband feared what would happen to him if he returned to India without something to show for is troubles. It is during this time that he drafted a treaty that said that Britain would accept the Manchurian borders established for Tibet, as well as the Manchurian ownership of Tibet as long as the following conditions were met:

1. The Manchurian Government would reimburse the British Government for the expenses incurred during Younghusband’s expedition
2. Manchuria opened Tibetan borders for trade with Britain
3. Manchuria would accept no foreign interference in Tibet

It is in the language of this treaty that China makes its strongest claim to dominance over Tibet. Because a treaty written by a murderous British Army Colonel in 1903 claimed that Tibet was Chinese, the Communist Chinese would later make the same claim.

After this interference from the British, the Manchurians sent a governor to Tibet to reassert control over the region. Tibet, which was only tenuously controlled by the Qing at this point, fell into open revolt. It was after this that the Manchurians sent Zhao Erfing to silence the revolution, which he did, with help from the Chinese army. Zhao began a process known as sinification, or settling ethnically Chinese people in Tibetan lands to eventually eliminate the Tibetans. In 1911, at the beginning of the Chinese Revolution, Zhao’s troops rebelled and killed him. The new government of the Republic of China withdrew all troops from Tibet and made their commander of the Tibetan Army their new ambassador to Tibet. The Dalai Lama returned from exile, and Tibet was now independent. At this time the other possessions of the Manchu were set free, and Mongolia signed a treaty proclaiming that Tibet and Mongolia mutually acknowledge each other’s independence.

It is during this time that the British interfered again, and after the brief period of independence, signed a treaty with China and Tibet allowing the British to annex a large portion of Tibet, and add it to India. The treaty also formalised the status of Tibet as a tributary of China, but not part of China, assuring that Tibet would never become a province of China.

During World War I China entered a period of great instability, where warlords carved the country up into several pieces. Tibet was then ignored and left to self governance for nearly 20 years while the Chinese government sought to eliminate these warlords and regain control over the country. Things got so bad that there was actually a brief restoration of the Manchurian throne within China.

Just prior to World War II China saw the emergence of a communist faction within its borders. Keeping them at bay seemed to be the dominant strategy as the country was finally starting to rebuild after years and years of strife. Prior to the invasion by Japan, China received gifts and loans from Nazi Germany to see it through the hard times. After the Japanese invasion, the USA would take over this role. The Japanese invasion would see the devastation of much of China, as well as atrocities that rivalled that of the Holocaust. During the war, the Communists and the Republicans struck an alliance that saw the expulsion of Japan from China. After the war, this alliance faded.

China entered its last period of Civil war at this point, seeing the Communists as the victors. The Republicans were pushed into Taiwan, where they remain unconquered, but not un-annexed. The People’s Republic of China was established, and the process of re-conquest began. The People’s Republic of China invaded territories that lay outside of the area controlled by the Republic of China, Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Sinking (also known as East Turkestan) as well as in 1951 Tibet. The Dalai Lama surrendered, and Tibet was to remain a “highly autonomous” region of China. Two provinces of Tibet were excluded by the People’s Republic of China’s definition of Tibet, and monastery land was appropriated and given to Chinese peasants. This caused revolt in these two regions. The USA’s CIA helped to turn into a general Tibetan revolution which was crushed in 1959. Angered, the People’s Republic of China changed Tibet’s status to that of any province and redistributed its land in the same way it had been doing across the country. The People’s Republic of China also restarted the sinification.

This is where we are today. The People’s Republic of China is settling Tibet with ethnically Chinese people in an effort to forever destroy the Tibetan people, Tibet’s status has been determined by punitive measures, and The People’s Republic of China’s claim on Tibet is weak at best.

The revolts are a response to the increased attention on China, due to the Olympics, and frustration by the Tibetan people.

Which leads us to the original question, who is right?

Nobody is.

The Chinese Government is committing enormous crimes against the Tibetan people. I think I have explained these crimes in enough depth, sinification, the lockdown, the, as the Dalai Lama put it, “cultural genocide.”

And the Tibetan people? They are murdering the children of Chinese settlers who were given land and the promise of a better life. Sinification is wrong, but it has nothing to do with the ethnic Chinese who were born in Tibet. They are being killed simply for being Chinese. These are nothing more than hate crimes.

The worst part is, that the Chinese army has been used to settle these disputes in the past, and there is a good chance that after the Olympics are done, the tanks will come rolling in.

Actually, in all of this there is one person who is right. The Dalai Lama has done nothing but publicly call for an end to the violence, even threatening to step down if they do not stop. He has received nothing but blame by the Chinese government, and yet he still espouses a message of peace.

Unfortunately though, the protestors today are the children of the original Tibetan refugees. They have grown up with their parents’ strategy of non-violence, and seen that it is ineffective.

Whatever happens with Tibet, I can guarantee you that these violent protests have only worsened the situation, both politically and morally. The Tibetans are no longer innocent in this fight; they have the blood of the murdered Chinese on their hands.

And as for China, it isn’t called Red China for nothing.