China Guy, I’m sure you know a great deal more about this subject than do I, as for me it’s one of many things about which I read from time to time but have never made a concentrated study. I was making only a small point, with which it’s not clear to me you disagree. My point was simply that China’s claim to Tibet, whether or not valid, has a long pedigree. I find that most Americans don’t know this.
BTW, not to hijack the OP, but I would appreciate enlightenment on a point which has always escaped me. Why did China reannex Tibet? It doesn’t have any meaningful resources. Nor was it a security risk, either in its own right or as a conduit for foreign forces. Meanwhile, it was a drain of administrative resources and a distraction. Why bother? Not so much asking your personal opinion (though that’s welcome) as the official explanation.
My understanding is that traditionally the choice has been made within the Tibetan Buddhist priesthood. The Chinese position is that it granted that power to the priests so China is actually the ultimate authority. The reason this is now an issue is because the Chinese government has said that it will no longer delegate this power and will directly choose the next Dalai Lama.
The identity of the Panchen Lama, the second highest spiritual leader in Tibbetan Buddhism is in dispute. When the previous Panchen Lama died in 1989, the priests designated one person as his successor and the Chinese government designated a different person.
If you’re really interested, do a web search or check out some books by Sir Charles Bell, including Tibet Past and Present. The free ebook is here: http://e-asia.uoregon.edu/easia/echina_b.htm
Sir Charles Bell was an Indian born British civil servant who knew the 13th Dalai Lama well, and spent 1 year in Lhasa.
Or either of the books by Hugh Richardson “Tibet & It’s History” or "A Cultural History of Tibet.
Hugh Richardson was the British Envoy to Tibet, based in Lhasa from 1936 to 1950.
And I’ll add to this (for the umpteenth time) Tibet, Tibet by the former head of the Free Tibet movement, who resigned for ethical reasons. It’s a very well written personal account, as well as giving fascinating, nuanced insights into pre-Chinese Tibet, the effects of the Cultural Revolution, Tibet under the Communists, and some pragmatic conclusions on what can be done for the Tibetan people, with the understanding that the Chinese will never leave. I highly recommend it.
Thats lame argument. You can as well argue that American Indians are better off now than they were in 1491. They have cars, and modern medicine and political unity and casino privileges.
We’ve supported some over the years, most recent being in the breakup of Serbia. Part of that, however, is because most of the secesions we supported were based in countries with multiple hostile ethnic groups which had been forcibly stuck together before or after WW1.
The Mongol Empire of Ghengis and his immediate successors had already split up into a number of culturally distinct and often hostile entities by the time the conquest of China was complete - Kublai and his successors had established themselves as being the rulers of the part of this old empire that was made up China and its’ periphery, and were a political entity distinct from, say, the Il Khanate of Hulagu in the Middle East, or the Golden Horde that ruled much of modern day Russia, both of which adopted Islam as their state religion and Islamic civilization as the bedrocks of their rule. It would be problematic for the Chinese to claim Iraq as being a part of China on that basis. The Yuan dynasty, despite having a ruling elite of non-Chinese, was essentially a “Chinese” regime, with heir power base in China proper and their state organized along Chinese lines. The official Chinese position, if you’ll recall, is that China is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic state - the ethnicity of Mongols (or Tibetans) has no bearing on their “Chineseness”, Mongols, Manchus (and Tibetans, obviously) are just as Chinese as the Han majority, and thus the Mongol and Manchu dynasties were legitimate parts of a contiguous Chinese civilization.
Of course, the Chinese histories tend to gloss over the more serious problem with this stance - that the successors to the Yuan, the Ming, notably did NOT retain control of Tibet, and no one seriously disputes that Tibet during the Ming dynasty was by any measure an independent state distinct from the Chinese one. The claim that Tibet was “a part of China during the Yuan Dynasty”, however, is pretty consistent and reasonable.
People should also bear in mind that the Tibetan government-in-exile is not the same government that ruled Tibet back in the 1940s. A lot of water has gone under the bridge. The Central Tibetan Administration is no longer a theocracy. The Dalai Lama does still rule as the Head of State (a position analagous to Queen Elizabeth’s) but the head of the government is the elected Prime Minister, Lobsang Tenzin.
Another problem, I think, is that the historical relationship between Tibet and China might best be described as a suzerainty, a concept that AFAIK doesn’t have an analogue in modern international law.
ETA: and suzerainty itself appears only to have been an approximate description bestowed by Western observers of the time. The actual diplomatic theory that all states in the world derive their authority from the Chinese emperor, needless to say, is even further removed from anything in international law today.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Chinese ever done for us?