Encyclopedia
Tibet is a region in
Central Asia and the home of the
Tibetan people. With an average
elevation of 4,900
m , it is often called the "Roof of the World".
Definitions
When the
Government of Tibet in Exile and the Tibetan refugee community worldwide refer to Tibet, they mean a large area that formed the cultural entity of Tibet for many centuries, consisting of the traditional provinces of Amdo,
Kham , and Ü-Tsang , but excluding areas outside the
People's Republic of China like
Arunachal Pradesh ,
Sikkim,
Bhutan, and
Ladakh that have also formed part of the Tibetan cultural sphere.
When the People's Republic of China refers to Tibet, it means the
Tibet Autonomous Region : a
province-level entity which, according to the territorial claims of the PRC, includes
Arunachal Pradesh . Sikkim, Bhutan, and Ladakh may also be considered to be parts of cultural Greater Tibet in addition to Amdo, Kham, and Ü-Tsang. The TAR covers the
Dalai Lama's former domain consisting of Ü-Tsang and western Kham, while Amdo and eastern Kham are now found within the provinces of
Qinghai,
Gansu,
Yunnan, and
Sichuan.
The difference in definition is a major sticking point in the dispute. The distribution of Amdo and eastern Kham into surrounding provinces was initiated by the
Yongzheng Emperor during the eighteenth century and has been continuously maintained by successive Chinese governments. Tibetan exiles, in turn, consider the maintenance of this arrangement since the eighteenth century as part of a divide-and-rule policy.
A sovereign nation?
Tibet was once an independent empire. The government of the People's Republic of China and the Government of Tibet in Exile, however, disagree over when Tibet became a part of China, and whether this incorporation into China was legitimate.
Name
In Tibetan
Tibetans call their homeland
Bod , pronounced
pö in Lhasa dialect. It is first attested in the geography of
Ptolemy as ßata? . They refer to a fatherland , rather than to a motherland as the Chinese are known to do.
In Chinese
The Chinese name for Tibet, ?? , is a phonetic transliteration derived from Tsang The name originated during the
Qing Dynasty of China. It can be broken down into Xi ? , and Zang ? . The term can be interpreted as either "Western Treasure House", or "Storage place of/in the West".
The government of the
People's Republic of China equates Tibet with the
Tibet Autonomous Region . As such, the name "Xizang" is equated with the TAR. In order to refer non-TAR Tibetan areas, or to all of cultural Tibet, the term ?? Zàngqu is used. However, Chinese-language versions of pro-Tibetan independence websites, such as the , the , and use ?? , not ?? , to mean historic Tibet.
Some English-speakers reserve "Xizang", 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 ??? or ???, which are both phonetic transcriptions of the word "Tibet", to refer to historic Tibet, though this usage is rare.
The character ? has been used in transcriptions referring to Tsang as early as the
Yuan Dynasty, if not earlier, though the modern term "Xizang" was devised in the
18th century. The Chinese character ? has also been generalized to refer to all of Tibet, including other concepts related to Tibet such as the Tibetan language and the Tibetan people . The two characters of Xizàng can literally mean "western storehouse", which some Tibetans find offensive and indicative of what they see as Chinese colonial attitudes towards Tibet. However, the offending character, "zàng", can also mean "treasure" or "Buddhist scripture". In addition, Chinese transliterations of non-Chinese names do not necessarily take into account the literal meanings of words; usually a positive or neutral connotation combined with phonetic similarity is enough for the transliteration to come into use. See Transliteration into Chinese characters for other examples.
In English
The English word
Tibet, like the word for Tibet in most European languages, is derived from the
Arabic word
Tubbat. Ultimately, the word derives via
Persian from the Turkic word
Töbän , meaning "the heights".. The same Turkic word is the origin of the Chinese term ?? .
Cities
Lhasa is Tibet's traditional capital and the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region. Other cities in Historic Tibet include, in the TAR,
Shigatse ,
Gyantse ,
Chamdo , Nagchu,
Nyingchi , Nedong , Barkam , Sakya , Gartse , Pelbar , and Tingri ; in
Sichuan,
Dartsendo ; in
Qinghai, Kyegundo or Yushu , Machen , Lhatse , and
Golmud .
History
Early days
The Tibetan language is generally considered to be a Tibeto-Burman language and distantly related to
Chinese.
In general, the history of Tibet begins with
King Srong-tsan-gam-po Songtsen Gampo , although there were 27 kings before him. King Songtsen Gampo is generally considered to have introduced Buddhism to Tibet at this time. Christianity is known to have been present in Tibet prior to 782.
King Songtsen Gampo sought to marry Princess Wen-Cheng, a member of the extended royal family of the Chinese Tang Dynasty.
Conflict between Tibet and the Tang began as Tu-Yu Huen was against the marriage. Tibet sent an army to drive it from the valleys around the source of
Huang He. After several indecisive battles, which helped Tibet gain recognition as a local power, the Tang government became receptive and marriage took place in 641.
The next Tang emperor sent General Hsueh Zen-Kuei with an army to recover Tu-Yu Huen for the southern part of
Qinghai . A Tibetan army defeated him on the high plateau of Qinghai. Subsequently, Tibet conquered all small tribes in Qinghai and southern
Xinjiang.
During this period, Tibet had a population of 10 million with 3 million Tibetans and an army of comparable strength facing the two Tang armies of Southern Xinjiang and of the
Silk Road . Disputes involved trade controls. Tibet wanted the four Tang garrisons at the Southern Xinjiang . After the Tang's withdrawal of the Silk-road army and its garrison troops of Northern and Southern Xinjiang during the An Lu-san rebellion, Tubo military power conquered all of that territory up to the border of the Hue-He , capturing the Silk-road.
Tibet attacked
Sichuan and fought many inconclusive battles with the Tang. The Tibetan army ransacked Changan, now Xi'an, the capital of Tang Empire, and crowned an emperor who lasted for a few days .
Tibet had also conquered the ethnic tribes scattered in the present areas of Lijiang and Dali,
Yunnan, and had established a military administration in northwest Yunnan. Yunnan was a tributary of Tibet. Tibet also bordered with India, and Persia. This was the largest area which was ever controlled by Tibet.
The military route used by the Tibetans to reach Yunnan was closely related to the contemporary tea and horse route. “Tea and Horse Caravan Road” of Southwest China is less well known than the famous
Silk Road.
According to the Tibetan book
Historic Collection of the Han and Tibet “In the reign of the Tibetan King Chidusongzan [Khri ‘Dus sron] , the Tibetan aristocracy started to drink tea and use the tea-bowl, and tea was classified into different categories.”
After the downfall of the Tibetan Dynasty, the Tang recovered the Silk-road .
According to one study, more than 20,000 warhorses per year were exchanged for tea during the Northern Song dynasty.
The distinctive form of Tibetan society, in which land was divided into three different types of holding—estates of noble families, freeheld lands and estates held by monasteries of particular Tibetan Buddhist sects—arose after the weakening of the Tibetan kings in the
10th century. This form of society was to continue into the
1950s, at which time more than 700,000 of the country's population of 1.25 million were
serfs.
Mongols & Manchus
In 1240, the Mongols marched into central Tibet and attacked several monastaries. Köden, younger brother of Mongol ruler Güyük Khan, participated in a ceremony recognizing the Sa-skya lama as temporal ruler of Tibet in 1247. The Mongol khans had ruled northern China since 1215. They declared themselves Chinese emperors in 1271 as the
Yuan dynasty.
Kublai Khan was a patron of Tibetan Buddhism and appointed the Sa-skya 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 Sa-skya lama was subordinate to the Mongol khan. The collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368 led to the overthrow of the Sa-skya in Tibet. Tibet was then ruled by a succession of three secular dynasties. 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.
Beginning in the early 18th century, the
Qing government sent a resident commissioner 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 1841 Tibet was invaded by the army of
General Zorawar Singh from the Indian Kingdom of Jammu & Kashmir. After his death in the Battle of To'Yo the Sino-Tibetan armies invaded Jammu but were defeated at the Battle of Chushul——a treaty signed at that place marked out the boundaries of India and Tibet.
British influence
Main article:
British expedition to TibetIn 1904 a
British diplomatic mission, accompanied by a large military escort, forced its way through to Lhasa. The head of the diplomatic mission was Colonel Francis Younghusband. The principal motivation for the British mission was a fear, which proved to be unfounded, that
Russia was extending its footprint into Tibet and possibly even giving military aid to the Tibetan government. When the mission reached Lhasa, the Dalai Lama had already fled to
Urga in
Mongolia, but a treaty was signed by lay and ecclesiastical officials of the Tibetan government, and by representatives of the three monasteries of
Sera,
Drepung, and
Ganden.. The treaty made provisions for the frontier between Sikkim and Tibet to be respected, for freer trade between British and Tibetan subjects, and for an indemnity to be paid from the Tibetan Government 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 Gyantse. The provisions of this 1904 treaty were confirmed in a 1906 treaty signed between Britain and China, in which the British also agreed "not to annex Tibetan territory or to interfere in the administration of Tibet.". The position of British Trade Agent at Gyantse was occupied from 1904 up 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.
A Nepalese agency had also been established in Lhasa after the invasion of Tibet by the Gurkha government of
Nepal in 1855.
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". In Bell's history of Tibet, he would write 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".
Relations with the Chinese Republic
In February of 1912 the Qing emperor abdicated and the new
Republic of China was formed . In April of 1912 the Chinese garrison of troops in Lhasa surrendered to the Tibetan authorities. The new Chinese Republican government wished to make the commander of the Chinese troops in Lhasa their new Tibetan representative, but the Tibetans were in favour of having all of the Chinese troops return to
China Proper. 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 In 1950, the
People's Liberation Army entered the Tibetan area of
Chamdo, crushing nominal resistance from the ill-equipped Tibetan army. In 1951, the
Seventeen Point Agreement was reached, under PLA's military pressure, by representatives of the Dalai Lama and Beijing affirming Chinese sovereignty over Tibet with a joint administration under representatives of the central government and the Tibetan government. Most of the population of Tibet at that time were peasants, often bound to land owned by
monasteries and aristocrats. Any attempt at land redistribution or the redistribution of wealth would have proved unpopular with the established landowners. 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 rebellion broke out in Amdo and eastern
Kham in June of 1956. The insurrection, supported by the American
CIA, eventually spread to Lhasa. It was crushed by 1959. Tibetan exiles claim that 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
CIA support was withdrawn.
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 in the absence of the Dalai Lama, the traditional head of the Tibetan government. In 1965, the area that had been under the control of the Dalai Lama's government from the
1910s to 1959 was set up as an Autonomous Region. The monastic estates were broken up and secular education introduced. During the
Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards inflicted a campaign of organized vandalism against cultural sites in the entire PRC, including Tibet's Buddhist heritage. Many young Tibetans joined in the campaign of destruction, voluntarily due to the ideological fervour that was sweeping the entire PRC and involuntarily due to the fear of being denounced as "enemies of the people". Of the several thousand monasteries in Tibet, over 6000 were destroyed, only a handful remained without major damage, and thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns were killed or imprisoned.
Since 1979, there have been major
economic changes, like the rest of the PRC, but the political system remains undemocratic and repressive. Some PRC policies in Tibet have been described as moderate, while others are judged to be more oppressive. Most religious freedoms have been officially restored, provided the lamas do not challenge PRC rule. Foreigners can visit most parts of Tibet, and it is claimed that the less savoury aspects of PRC rule are kept hidden from visitors.
In 1989, the Panchen Lama died, and the Dalai Lama and the PRC recognised different reincarnations. While officially an atheist state, the People's Republic of China has affirmed its right to confirming high-level reincarnations, a
tulku in the Tibetan tradition of
Vajrayana Buddhism, citing a precedent set by the
Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty . The Dalai Lama named
Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th Panchen Lama but without confirmation by the vase lot, while the PRC named another child, Gyancain Norbu by the vase lot. Gyancain Norbu was raised in Beijing and has appeared occasionally on state media. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his family have gone missing, into imprisonment according to Tibetan exiles, and under a hidden identity for protection and privacy according to the PRC.
The PRC continues to portray its rule over Tibet as an unalloyed improvement, and foreign governments continue to make occasional protests about aspects of PRC rule in Tibet. All governments, however, recognise PRC sovereignty over Tibet, and none has recognised the
Dalai Lama's government in exile in India.
Evaluation of PRC rule
Evaluation by the Tibetan exile community
Tibetan exiles generally say that the number that have died in the
Great Leap Forward, of violence, or other unnatural causes since 1950 is approximately 1.2 million, which the Chinese Communist Party denies. According to Patrick French, the estimate is not reliable because the Tibetans were not able to process the data well enough to produce a credible total. There were, however, many casualties, perhaps as many as 400,000. This figure is extrapolated from a calculation Warren W. Smith made from census reports of Tibet which show 200,000 "missing" from Tibet. Even
The Black Book of Communism is a book authored by several European acade...
expresses doubt at the 1.2 million figure, but does note that according to Chinese census the total population of ethnic Tibetans in the PRC was 2.8 million in 1953, but only 2.5 million in 1964. It puts forward a figure of 800,000 deaths and alleges that as many as 10% of Tibetans were interned, with few survivors. Chinese demographers have estimated that 90,000 of the 300,000 "missing" Tibetans fled the region.
The government of Tibet in Exile also says that, fundamentally, the issue is that of the right to self-determination of the Tibetan people. While refusing to agree to China's demands that he renounce the idea that Tibet was once an independent country, the Dalai Lama has stated his willingness to negotiate with China for "genuine autonomy" . The Dalai Lama sees the millions of Han immigrants, attracted to the TAR by economic incentives and preferential socioeconomic policies, as presenting an urgent threat to the Tibetan nation by diluting the Tibetans both culturally and through intermarriage. 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. It is also reported 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 behind neighbouring provinces. Policies were changed, and since then the central government's policy in Tibet has granted most religious freedoms. But monks and nuns are still sometimes imprisoned, and many Tibetans continue to flee Tibet yearly. At the same time, many Tibetans view projects that the PRC claims to benefit Tibet, such as the China Western Development economic plan or the
Qinghai-Tibet Railway, as politically-motivated actions to consolidate central control over Tibet by facilitating militarization and Han migration while benefiting few Tibetans; they also view the money funneled into cultural restoration projects as being aimed at attracting foreign tourists. They note that Tibet is still behind the rest of the PRC: for example, the first big hospital in Tibet was not built until 1985; that several of Lhasa's main roads weren't paved until 1987; and that the first students at Tibet University didn't graduate until 1988. They also say that there is still preferential treatment awarded to Han in the labor market as opposed to Tibetans.
Evaluation by the People's Republic of China
The government of the
PRC says that the population of Tibet in 1737 was about 8 million, and that due to the backward rule of the local theocracy, there was rapid decrease in the next two hundred years and the population in 1959 was only about 1.19 million. Today, the population of Greater Tibet is 7.3 million, of which, according to the 2000 census, 5 million are ethnic Tibetans. The government of the PRC views this population growth as the result of the abolishment of the theocracy and introduction of a modern, higher standard of living. Based on the census numbers, the PRC also rejects claims that the Tibetans are being swamped by Han Chinese; instead the PRC says that the border for Greater Tibet drawn by the government of Tibet in Exile is so large that it incorporates regions such as
Xining that are not traditionally Tibetan in the first place, hence exaggerating the number of non-Tibetans.
The government of the PRC also rejects claims that the lives of Tibetans have deteriorated, pointing to rights enjoyed by the Tibetan language in education and in courts and says that the lives of Tibetans have been improved immensely compared to the Dalai Lama's rule before 1950. Benefits that are commonly quoted include: the
GDP of Tibet Autonomous Region today is 30 times that before 1950; TAR has 22,500 km of highways, as opposed to 0 in 1950; all secular education in TAR was created after the revolution; TAR now has 25 scientific research institutes as opposed to 0 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
Renminbi since the 1980s to the maintenance and protection of Tibetan monasteries . The
Cultural Revolution and the cultural damage it wrought upon the entire PRC is generally condemned as a nationwide catastrophe, whose main instigators have been brought to justice and whose reoccurrence is unthinkable in an increasingly modernized China. The China Western Development plan is viewed by the PRC as a massive, benevolent, and patriotic undertaking by the eastern coast to help the western parts of China, including Tibet, catch up in prosperity and living standards.
Geography
Tibet is located on the
Tibetan Plateau, the world's highest region. Most of the
Himalaya mountain range lies within Tibet. Its most famous peak,
Mount Everest, is on
Nepal's border with Tibet.
The atmosphere is severely dry nine months of the year. Western passes receive small amounts of fresh snow each year but remain traversable 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 summer and intense cold in winter.
Historic Tibet consists of several regions:
- Amdo in the northeast, incorporated by China into the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan.
- Kham in the east, divided between Sichuan, northern Yunnan and Qinghai.
- Western Kham, part of the Tibetan Autonomous Region
- U , in the center, and Tsang in the center-west, part of the Tibetan Autonomous Region
- Ngari in the far west, part of the Tibetan Autonomous Region
Tibetan cultural influences extend to the neighboring states of
Bhutan,
Nepal, adjacent regions of India such as
Sikkim and
Ladakh, and adjacent provinces of China where
Tibetan Buddhism is the predominant religion.
On the border with India, the region popularly known among Chinese as
South Tibet is claimed by China and administered by
India as the state of
Arunachal Pradesh.
Several major rivers have their source in the Tibetan Plateau , including:
...
Economy
The Tibetan economy is dominated by subsistence agriculture. Due to limited
arable land,
livestock raising is the primary occupation. In recent years, due to the increased interest in Tibetan Buddhism
tourism has become an increasingly important sector, and is actively promoted by the authorities.
The
Qinghai-Tibet Railway which links the region to
Qinghai in
China proper was opened in 2006.China says the line will promote the development of impoverished Tibet.But opponents argue the railway will harm Tibet. For instance, some Tibetans contend that it would only draw more Han Chinese residents, the country's dominant ethnic group, who have been migrating steadily to Tibet over the last decade, bringing with them their popular culture. These Tibetans believe that the large influx of Han Chinese will ultimately extinguish the local culture.
Other opponents argue that the railway will damage Tibet's fragile ecology and that most of its economic benefits will go to migrant Han Chinese . As activists call for a boycott of the railway, the Dalai Lama has urged Tibetans to "wait and see" what benefits the new line might bring to them. According to Government-in-exile's spokemen, the Dalai Lama welcomes the building of the railway, "conditioned on the fact that the railroad will bring benefit to the majority of Tibetans."
Demographics
Historically, the population of Tibet consisted of primarily ethnic
Tibetans. Other ethnic groups in Tibet include Menba , Lhoba,
Mongols and
Hui. According to tradition the original ancestors of the Tibetan people, as represented by the six red bands in the Tibetan flag, are: the Se, Mu, Dong, Tong, Dru and Ra.
The issue of the proportion of the
Han Chinese population in Tibet is a politically sensitive one. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile says that the People's Republic of China has actively swamped Tibet with Han Chinese migrants in order to alter Tibet's demographic makeup, while the People's Republic of China has denied this.
View of the Tibetan exile community
Between the
1960s and
1980s, many prisoners were sent to laogai camps in Amdo , where they were then employed locally after release. Since the 1980s, increasing economic liberalization and internal mobility has also resulted in the influx of many
Han Chinese into Tibet for work or settlement, though the actual number of this floating population remains disputed. The
Government of Tibet in Exile gives the number of non-Tibetans in Tibet as 7.5 million , and considers this the result of an active policy of demographically swamping the Tibetan people and further diminishing any chances of Tibetan political independence, and as such, to be in violation of the
Geneva Convention of 1946 that prohibits settlement by occupying powers. The Government of Tibet in Exile questions all statistics given by the PRC government, since they do not include members of the
People's Liberation Army garrisoned in Tibet, or the large floating population of unregistered migrants. The
Qinghai-Tibet Railway is also a major concern, as it is believed to further facilitate the influx of migrants.
View of the People's Republic of China
The PRC government does not view itself as an occupying power and has vehemently denied allegations of demographic swamping. The PRC also does not recognize Greater Tibet as claimed by the government of Tibet in Exile, saying that the idea was engineered by foreign imperialists as a plot to divide China amongst themselves, and that those 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. The PRC gives the number of Tibetans in
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 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. Population control policies like the
one-child policy only apply to
Han Chinese, not to minorities such as Tibetans. Jampa Phuntsok, chairman of the TAR, has also 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.
