| People's Liberation Army Invasion of Tibet (1950-1951) | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Tibet |
 People's Republic of China |
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| Strength | |||||||
 Tibetan Army[2] : 8,500[3] |
 People's Liberation Army :40,000[4][5] |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 5,000[4][6] | ~10,000[citation needed] | ||||||
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) defeated the Tibetan army in a battle at Chamdo on October 7, 1950. This attack marked the beginning of Beijing’s campaign to integrate Tibet into the People's Republic of China. This operation was called a peaceful liberation of Tibet by the PRC government[7][8] as the Seventeen Point Agreement was signed by delegates of the 14th Dalai Lama and PRC government affirming Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. It is called an invasion by the Central Tibetan Administration (the Government of Tibet in Exile) [9], the US Congress[10], military analysts including Jane's,[11][12] media sources and NGOs such as the International Commission of Jurists[13] and the Center for World Indigenous Studies[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] as the defeated Tibet had little choice but to sign the agreement.
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The People's Liberation Army first entered eastern Tibet (Chamdo) on October 7, 1950. The highly mobile units of the PLA quickly surrounded the outnumbered Tibetan forces, and by October 19, 1950, 5,000 Tibetan soldiers had been killed, and the small Tibetan army had surrendered. After confiscating their weapons, the PLA soldiers gave their prisoners lectures on socialism, and a small amount of money, and allowed them to return to their homes.[4]
The PLA then continued on to central Tibet, but halted its advance 200 km to the east of Lhasa, at what China claimed was the de jure boundary of Tibet.[19][22]
Here they stopped and demanded Tibet's "peaceful liberation." (和平解放西藏) The PLA, while possessing overwhelming military advantage, wanted to avoid intervention by other powers such as the US[23], and was also set on winning the hearts and minds of the Tibetan populace. At first, they treated the local populace very well, building roads, and paying locals for their labor. According to Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, the PLA did not attack civilians: "The Chinese were very disciplined. They were like the British soldiers (in 1904). Even better than the British, because they distributed some money (to villagers and local leaders). So they carefully planned."[4]
The PLA sent released prisoners (among them Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme, a captured governor) to Lhasa to negotiate with the Dalai Lama on the PLA's behalf. The PLA promised that if Tibet was "peacefully liberated", the Tibetan elites would keep their privileges and power. At the same time, Jigme and other released captives testified to their good treatment by the PLA. The Tibetan government asked the UN for help facing the invasion of the Tibet by China. Only El Salvador supported Tibet's cause in the UN.[24] As the PLA had stopped and was asking for peaceful negotiations instead of entering Lhasa unimpeded, the United Nations dropped the issue from the agenda. The combination of military pressure, reports of good treatment from locals and released prisoners, and the lack of international support convinced the Tibetan representatives to enter negotiations with the PLA.[4]
Several months later, in May 1951, the Tibetan representatives signed a seventeen-point agreement in Beijing with the PRC's Central People's Government which the Chinese say affirms China's sovereignty over Tibet. The agreement was ratified in Lhasa a few months later.[1][25] Point 15 of the agreement stated that the Chinese government would set up a military and administrative committee and a military area headquarters in Tibet. PLA troops entered Lhasa peacefully in the fall of 1951.[1] An article released by the Tibetan Government in Exile in 1996 states that the treaty was imposed on Tibet by force and it "was never validly concluded and was rejected by Tibetans,"[26] a position that was supported by a UK parliamentary review.[27][28]
According to the Chinese government, a portion of the population in old Tibet were serfs ("mi ser"),[29][30] bound to land often owned by wealthy Tibetan monasteries and Tibetan aristocrats. This however was untrue of eastern and northeastern two-thirds of Tibet where the nomads owned their own land.[31] 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.[32] Announcements were made via Radio Peking on October 25 to state the troops were there to "free Tibetans from imperialist oppression".[33] First generation Communist party leaders such as Mao Zedong stated that the decision to unite Tibet into the PRC was done to achieve ethnic equality.[34]
In July 2001 a monument was established to commemorate the event.[34] Beijing says that Tibet was under an uninterrupted series of Chinese governments that has ruled Tibet and China since Kublai Khan.[4] In 2005 president Hu Jintao asserted Tibet has been an "inalienable part of Chinese territory" from the time of the Yuan Dynasty conquest onward.[4] This has been taught to Chinese students since 1912.[4] (Scholarship outside China generally regards Tibet as having been independent during the Ming Dynasty.)
Sources from the PRC, or supportive of the PRC, are frequently marked by use of the term "serfs" for the common people of Tibet pre-1950, and "feudal serfdom" for Tibet at that time. For a fuller discussion of this term and its political ramifications, see Serfdom in Tibet controversy.
The UN General Assembly passed resolutions condemning China for "violations of fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people" in 1959,[35] 1961[36] and 1965.[37] German Federal Parliament held hearings on Tibet on June 19 1995, and passed a resolution on June 20 1996 stating they were "deeply concerned that this independent identity has been threatened by destruction since the Chinese action by brutal force of arms in 1950" and that China had deprived the Tibetans of self-determination.[20] The US Congressional Human Rights Caucus in 1987 reviewed testimony from Tibetans who detailed human rights abuses, resulting in a congressional motion that condemned Chinese actions in Tibet.[38] In 2006 a lawsuit was filed by the Madrid-based Committee to Support Tibet in a Spanish court. The group said that more than one million Tibetans had been killed or gone missing since China occupied Tibet in 1951.[39] The China Quarterly notes that there has been "little easing in Chinese repression there nor any improvement in the anti-Chinese attitude of the local population."[40]
The seventeen-point agreement was initially put into effect in Tibet proper. However, Eastern Kham and Amdo (the provinces of Xikang and Qinghai in the Chinese administrative hierarchy) were outside the administration of the Tibetan government in Lhasa, and were thus treated like any other Chinese province with land redistribution implemented in full—a peculiar idea given that the Khampas and nomads of Amdo traditionally owned their own land.[31] Unsurprisingly, resistance broke out in Amdo and eastern Kham in June 1956.
By 1957, Kham was in chaos. PLA reprisals against Khampa resistance fighters such as the Chushi Gangdruk became increasingly brutal. They included beatings, starving prisoners, and the rape of prisoners' wives in front of them until they confessed.[41] Monks and nuns were forced to have sex with each other and forcibly renounce their celibacy vows. After torture, these men and women were often killed.[41] Numerous cases of children being forced to shoot their parents to death were reported to the International Commission of Jurists.[42] By the late 1950s, the number of Tibetan freedom fighters numbered in the tens of thousands.[43] Kham's monastic networks came to be used by guerrilla forces to relay messages and hide rebels.[44]
Lhasa continued to abide by the seventeen point agreement and sent a delegation to Kham to quell the rebellion. After speaking with the rebel leaders, the delegation instead joined the rebellion.[45] Kham did an end run around Lhasa and contacted the CIA directly, but the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under President Dwight D. Eisenhower required an official request from Lhasa to support the rebels. Lhasa did not respond.[45] Finally, the CIA ignored Lhasa's official stance and supplied the rebellion. By then the rebellion had spread to Lhasa which had filled with refugees from Kham.[43]
China's intended "peaceful liberation" of Tibet had gone badly awry. It culminated in the Lhasa uprising on March 10, 1959. Chinese warned and then shelled with artillery a crowd of 30,000 Tibetan civilians who had gathered outside the Dalai Lama's Potala palace.[43][46] Captured PLA documents estimated the casualties to be as high as 85,000.[43] Under the new Kennedy administration special operations Air Force planes ready to drop supplies and ammunition were ordered to stand by, resulting in the massacre of between six and eight thousand Tibetan resistance fighters.[43] According to the Tibetan Government in Exile tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed in the struggle.[47]
The 14th Dalai Lama and other government principals fled to exile in India.[48] Isolated resistance continued in Tibet until 1972 when President Nixon pursued a new policy towards China and withdrew military and financial support.[49] The month of fighting along the Dalai Lama's escape route had decimated the fighters and, according to the CIA, "the backbone of the rebellion had been smashed."[43] According to the rebel leaders they were overrun by the PLA and focused on protecting the route for Tibetan refugees to India.[46]
| Deaths claimed by Tibetan Government in Exile[50][51][52] | |
|---|---|
| 433,000 | military action |
| 343,000 | famine |
| 173,000 | imprisonment |
| 157,000 | execution |
| 93,000 | torture |
| 9,000 | suicide |
| Total: 1,148,000 deaths. | |
Samdhong Rinpoche, the 14th Dalai Lama, and other Tibetans in exile have accused the PRC government of a campaign of terror which led to the destruction of monasteries and disappearance of up to 1.2 million Tibetans. By 1962 only 70 of the original 2,500 monasteries in the Tibet Autonomous Region were left and 93% of the monks were forced out. The "1.2 million" figure for deaths since 1950 dates to a figure from the Tibetan Government-in-exile which they break down to 433,000 through military action, 343,000 through famine, 173,000 through imprisonment, 157,000 through execution, 93,000 through torture and 9,000 through suicide.[53]
The high casualty reported by the Tibetans has been questioned by various scholars. Sinologist Tom Grunfeld finds that the figure is "without documentary evidence."[54]
According to Patrick French, ex-Director of Free Tibet Campaign in London and supporter of the Tibetan cause, who was able to view the data and calculations from the archives of Dharamsala, the estimate is not reliable. French says this total was based on refugee interviews, but when he examined the raw data, he found no names, but "the insertion of seemingly random figures into each section, and constant, unchecked duplication."[55] French estimates that half a million Tibetans died as a result of Chinese policies, "a devastating enough figure, in all conscience, which in no way diminishes the horror of what was done in Tibet."[56]. Prior to 1950, population figures for Tibet, estimated by the Lhasa government and foreign visitors, generally ranged from 1 to 1.5 million. The official Tibetan census in 1953 recorded a population of 1,273,969.[57]
The Dalai Lama claimed to have seen a secret PLA document stating 87,000 deaths in the 1959-60 revolt period, however; the veracity of such a claim is difficult to verify.[54]
Robert Webster Ford, a Briton who was present during the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, wrote in 1957 an eye-witness account of how the Chinese treated Tibetans who fought them. (Ford was employed by the Tibetan government when the Tibetan town Chamdo was captured by the PLA in 1950. He had been under investigation for espionage activities and for causing the death of Geda Lama, a prominent Tibetan Living Buddha and peace emissary sent by the Communist Chinese to Tibet to negotiate for peaceful unification. The lama's death contributed to the Chinese decision to capture Chamdo by force).[58]
There was no sacking of monasteries...the Chinese took great care not to cause offense through ignorance...The Chinese had made it clear that they had no quarrel with the Tibetan religion. Nor with the Tibetan people, who were treated with equal care...Cleverest of all was the way the Chinese solved their prisoner-of-war problem. They simply had the Tibetan troops lined up and gave them all safe-conduct passes and money and told them to go back to Lhasa with their wives and children. Another newsreel was made of this, and the soldiers did not have to be told to smile. Nor would they need to be told to spread the news of what friendly people the Chinese were...[59]
A Khamba survivor of the garrison of fifty told us..."They are strange people, these Chinese...I cut off eight of their heads with my sword, and they just let me go." [59]
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