History Lesson
Not only does China want the world to accept that Tibet is a part of China, but they also want the world to accept the lie that Tibet was never an independent nation with its own long history of civilization. China would have the world go back and rewrite history, changing the past to suit its present claims.

China would have us believe that the Tang Dynasty sent princess Gyasa (Wen Cheng) to the Tibetan Empire to civilize the Tibetans and bring them into China. This, despite the fact that she was a lesser wife to the Emperor of Tibet and her influence in history seems to be slim, if at all. Tibet, at the time when Tang China existed, was the dominant military power and cultural influence throughout central Asia, including the border nations that existed between Tang and Tibet. Princess Gyasa was sent to Tibet at the “request” of Emperor Songtsen Gampo to seal a diplomatic agreement of peace between Tang and Tibet.

To claim that Gyasa was sent as an agent of Tang China to civilize the Tibetans is simply propaganda from later times. Tang records indicate that Tibetan military and social organization was advanced. And the Tibet of that time was a successful merging of the two dominant economic modes of Asia - nomadic pastoralism and sedentary agriculture. The Tibetan Empire was the result of the Yarlung Dynasty from Central Tibet annexing the ancient kingdom of Shang Shung and then spreading a centralized administration across the entire Tibetan plateau.

For nearly two hundred years, the Tibetan Empire held sway, but eventually it collapsed in the rising tide of chaos that also ended up destroying Tang China. In the end, Tibetan political and military control fragmented into smaller states all nominally still part of the old central government.

In China, after the Tang Dynasty collapsed, there was chaos until the Song Dynasty established control over some of the areas once under Tang administration. There was almost no contact between Tibet and the Song dynasty.

The next area of distortion in Chinese accounts occurs when talking about the Mongols. China today claims the Mongols as a Chinese nationality. This is an absurd rationalization to justify China’s claim to vast tracts of territory in its north which were never considered Chinese until modern times. Claiming the Mongolian Empire was simply another Chinese dynasty is also the rationalization for China’s claims on Tibet. The Chinese version is that Tibet was annexed to China during this time.

However, the reality is different. The Mongolian Empire actually gained dominance over the Tibetans and worked out arrangements of “protectorate” status long before the Mongols annexed Song China. From the Central Asian standpoint, the Mongolian conquest of China was necessary to stop an expansionist people from encroaching any further. The original plan of the Mongolian Empire was to exterminate the majority of the citizens of China and return the agricultural areas to pastoralist cultures. In the midst of that extermination, the Tibetans, who were given the responsibility of being spiritual tutors to all of the nations in the Mongolian Empire, persuaded the Mongolians to allow Chinese people to survive.

Perhaps the Tibetans persuaded out of a sense of Buddhist compassion, or perhaps it was because Tibetan society was unique in Asia, being a mix of both nomadic pastoralists and agriculturalists, so they could understand the mentalities of both types of cultures. Whatever the case may be, China should thank its lucky stars that Tibet was a part of the Mongolian Empire and had such influence over the Mongolian rulers.

When the Mongolian Empire collapsed, one of the first nations to regain its independence was Tibet. In fact, Tibet did so over ten years before China was again strong enough to declare its own independence from the Mongols.

China today calls the Mongolian Empire the Yuan Dynasty, as if this was a Chinese empire and only a part of Chinese history. This is in ignorance of Central Asia and of Tibetan and Mongolian history. Also, the assertion that Tibet became a part of China during this period is absurd since Tibet had been given a position of privilege within the Mongolian Empire, while China remained an occupied vassal nation.

Some Chinese argue that the Mongolians became Chinese. This is actually false. Some of the leaders may have taken up some Chinese practices, but the Mongolians as a whole rejected and despised Chinese culture as effete and worthless to them. And Mongolian leaders who showed too much affection for Chinese influences imperiled themselves.

Either way, when the Mongolian Empire fractured, many Asian nations became independent once again. Both Tibet and China came out of the period intact and independent. Ming China and Tibet had little to no diplomatic contacts. And despite the Ming Dynasty’s claim to some of the other nations under the Mongolian Empire (the first recorded instance of China using this tactic to claim neighboring countries), Ming China was not powerful enough to enforce its claims for long.

During this period, when the Ming Dynasty was pacifying its society, Central Asia and Tibet were embroiled in a conflict which only the remnants of the Mongolian empire could pacify. It was the Mongolians who established the rule of Dalai Lamas in Lhasa. The Great 5th Dalai Lama was the first to take the throne.

The Manchurians (formerly known as the Jurchen until they became Buddhist), long the enemies of both the Mongolians and the Chinese, became powerful at this time. After successfully conquering the several Mongolian powers still existing in Central Asia, they invaded and annexed China. Under the Manchurian Empire (known as the Qing/Ching Dynasty to Chinese people), both Mongolians and Chinese were initially treated very harshly. Tibetans never were incorporated into the Manchurian Empire, though they did accept diplomatic relations and military aid from time to time.

It wasn’t until just before the Manchurian dominance collapsed that the “Qing” Emperors tried to enforce some sort of political control over Tibet. These attempts mostly failed, although there were a few instances of Qing armies in some regions of Tibet acting much as the later Chinese communists would, destroying monasteries, forcing Tibetans from their land and trying to populate some areas with Chinese settlers.

The Manchurian leaders did begin to see themselves as upholders of Chinese civilization, and started a process of Sinicization of Mongolian and Manchurian areas under its control. This is why, today, much of what used to be the Manchurian homeland is mostly Chinese. However, attempts to incorporate Tibet failed, mostly because Tibetans were fiercely independent and also because local Qing military commanders on the border areas between China and Tibet exercised a huge degree of autonomy from the court in Beijing.

After the Han Uprising in 1911 overthrew the Manchurians, there was much discussion over the newly independent China and what shape it would take. It was decided that the Republic of China would continue to enforce the Manchurian territorial claims. So they developed the ideology which stated that Mongolians, Manchurians and Tibetans were all really Chinese national minorities. This was most likely a ploy of political cynicism because 60 percent of the territory the Republic of China was claiming had belonged to neighboring nations subjected to various degrees of control or influence under the Manchurians.

After China became free from the Manchurians, Mongolia and Tibet both immediately declared their independence as a reiteration so that the Republic would have no pretensions to their respective territories. The Tibetan and Mongolian view is that they were equals to China in having been subjected to Manchurian influence and dominance, and now all three nations were free to go about their own respective affairs. The Chinese view then became that Tibet and Mongolia were Chinese minorities. This was despite the fact that before this time, Chinese people considered the Tibetans and Mongolians as separate and distinct foreign nations.

The Chinese claim to all Manchurian dominated or influenced nations is also betrayed by the fact that the Han Uprising of 1911 was then seen as the overthrow of the hated foreign Manchurian overlords. Even though some of those Manchurian overlords had at that point become more Chinese than Chinese people themselves.

The Republic of China was never able to enforce any of its claims, and its invitations to both the Mongolians and the Tibetans to join up were rejected outright. It wasn’t until the triumph of the People’s Republic of China that the Chinese were able to march into Tibet, East Turkestan and other areas. Some of Mongolia being spared only because of being under Russian influence.

Conclusion
As the above shows, the history of Tibet and China is a bit more complex than today’s Chinese nationalists would have the world believe. Their wishful thinking doesn’t erase the history, despite what generations of Chinese have been taught in schools since 1911, and especially since 1950.

Today, China tries to wish the Tibetans away by lying about the history. When they set pre-conditions for talks with the Dalai Lama, not only do they say that he must accept that Tibet is today part of China, but he must also say that Tibet was always part of China since the Mongolian Empire, and that Tibetans and Chinese are not separate peoples. This is absurd. The fact that Tibetans today exist, speaking Tibetan and practicing a culture that is unlike Chinese culture, is enough to demonstrate the separateness between the two peoples.

The main fact is that China, another imperialistic nation, has taken Tibet by the principle of might makes right.

Not only is China now wishing Tibet away, it is enforcing those wishes with media-distortions, historical revisionism and obfuscation….and bullets, batons and several tens of thousands of soldiers…tortures, imprisonments, urban gentrification in Tibetan cities to provide room for Chinese opportunists…Along with a massive drive to have Chinese people settle in Tibet to help continue the colonial process of sinification. China is wishing Tibet away with their own inability to see any other people as being distinctive or equals. This stems from the Sinocentric worldview which considers all non-Chinese to be proto-Chinese who must eventually become assimilated or “civilized.”

China’s wish will fail. All other nations that have tried to conquer and rule the Tibetans have eventually failed miserably. China will be no different, even if its empire’s bones will litter central Asia and Tibet for decades after it collapses.

-Hugh Kunsang
April 26th, 2008

Other Posts by this Author

• Liberation? - May 26th, 2008
• Imagine... - April 30th, 2008
• Nevermind? - April 16th, 2008
• The Beijing Circus of 2008 - April 13th, 2008
• So far, I have gone easy on many of you - April 5th, 2008
• Excuse Me? - April 3rd, 2008
• You Wanted the Spotlight.. - April 3rd, 2008

Posted: 04|27|08 at 9:36 am. Filed under: Free Tibet Blog.
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