The Positive Impacts of China in Tibet: a response

The following is the response by Mr. M.A. Jones, an Australian teacher within China, taken from the P.B.S. “China from the inside” discussion forum:

“I’m becoming quite adept at turning the other cheek, though whether of the upper or lower anatomy must remain a matter for fascinating conjecture, for as all good readers of Plato will know, all ideal phenomena of the upper kind have their imperfect (indeed, sometimes odiferous) counterparts in the world below.

So now it’s time to deal with sundry affairs: Tony Martin, you begin your critique of my position by personally insulting me, before launching into a vitriolic ramble, and one that is based on a misreading of my position. “Your whole theory relating to Tibet is very similar to all of the other respondents supporting the continued illegal Chinese occupation of a sovereign nation,” you say. “Your position appears to be similar to other invaders of land in our history, or to the various slave trading states over the years. Namely, don’t look at how badly off Tibetans are now in comparison to the rest of China and the world, but rather look at how well off they are compared to how they might be if their invading masters weren’t so benevolent and here to help them.”

I have presented no theories whatsoever relating to Tibet, nor have I ever justified the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet.

I did, however, point out that life for the majority of Tibetans has been improving under Chinese governance since the 1980s, and I did so because the weight of empirically verifiable evidence shows this to be the case.

Let us look at the evidence. If Tibetans were so fiercely suppressed, and if Chinese leaders in Beijing were really out to Sinocize Tibet by increasing the ethnic ratio of Han to Tibetan, then why are all Tibetan families permitted to have up to three children, and are only fined small amounts of money if they exceed this number? Tibetan families in Tibet average 3.8 children, larger than Tibetan families in India. In fact, the population of Tibet in 1959 was only about 1.19 million. Today however, the population of Greater Tibet is 7.3 million, of which, according to the 2000 census, 6 million are ethnic Tibetans. If we consider the Tibet Autonomous Region only, then according to the census conducted in 2000, as referred to in Wikipedia, “there were 2,616,300 people in Tibet, with Tibetans totalling 2,411,100 or 92.2% of the current regional population. The census also revealed that the Tibetan’s average lifespan has increased to 68 due to the improving standard of living and access to medical services.” In 1950 the average lifespan was only 35, and “infant mortality has dropped from 43% in 1950 to 0.661% in 2000.”

As Barry Sautman, who is Associate Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology points out in his study on Tibet and the (Mis-)Representation of Cultural Genocide, “the state sponsored transfer [of Han Chinese] to Tibet is on a small scale. From 1994 to 2001 the PRC organized only a few thousand people to go to Tibet as cadres. Most serve only 3 years and then return to China. Those who move on their own to the Tibet Autonomous Region usually return to China in a few years. They come for a while, find the cities of Tibet too expensive, and then return to China. Some of the 72,000 Chinese who maintain their hukou [household registration] in Tibet don’t really live there. Pensions are higher if your household is registered in Tibet.”

These facts are supported by articles in the Columbia Journal of Asian Law and by an Australian Chinese demographer in Asian Ethnicity in 2000, and show that the claims of ethnic swamping in Tibet are misleading. “What I think these articles show,” says Barry Sautman, “is that there is no evidence of significant population losses over the whole period from the 1950s to the present. There are some losses during he Great Leap Forward but these were less in Tibetan areas than in other parts of China. Where these were serious were in Sichuan and Qinghai, but even there not as serious in the Han areas of China. There are no bases at all for the figures used regularly by the exile groups. They use the figure of 1.2 million Tibetans dying from the 1950s to the 1970s, but no source for this is given. As a lawyer I give no credence to statistics for which there is no data, no visible basis.”

In fact, as Michael Parenti has pointed out in his article on Friendly Feudalism: the Tibet Myth, “both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that ‘more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation.’ But the official 1953 census – six years before the Chinese crackdown -recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.33 Other census counts put the ethnic Tibetan population within the country at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then whole cities and huge portions of the countryside, indeed almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves – of which we have not seen evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese military force in Tibet was not big enough to round up, hunt down, and exterminate that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.”

Tibetans in exile and their supporters seem to pull such figures out of a hat in the same way that the Chinese exile Harry Wu does in relation to the number of mainland prisoners (see my piece On the Nature of Chinese Governance and Society for details).

Barry Sautman also convincingly challenges claims that the Tibetan language is being devalued and replaced by Chinese. “92-94% of ethnic Tibetans speak Tibetan,” he notes. “Instruction in primary school is pretty universally in Tibetan. Chinese is bilingual from secondary school onward. All middle schools in the TAR also teach Tibetan. In Lhasa there are about equal time given to Chinese, Tibetan, and English.”

There is also an upsurge of the performing arts, poetry and painting by Tibetans, which many visitors to Tibet today cannot fail to notice, all of which are encouraged and funded by Beijing, though of course the growing tourist market also plays an important role in encouraging Tibetans to continue practicing their traditional arts and crafts, albeit, in a commodified form.

Importantly, Sautman, like me, has observed surprisingly “few aspects of Chinese culture in Tibet, but there are many aspects of Western culture, such as jeans, disco music, etc.”

Barry Sautman’s views are by no means marginalised within Western academia either Tony. Colin Mackerras, Professor Emeritus of International Business and Asian Studies at Griffith University, Australia, for example, remarked that Suatman’s book “is a courageous and long overdue study of a highly emotional and extremely important topic’ in that it meticulously details and documents “the processes of cultural change in religion, the arts, language, migration and various other aspects” which are rightly attributed “mainly to Westernised modernity.”

Another interesting and insightful study is the one carried out by Melvyn C. Goldstein, who is Professor and Chairman, Department of Anthropology, and Director of the Center for Research on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, and Cynthia M. Beall, who is Professor of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. Their study, titled The Impact of China’s Reform Policy on the Nomads of Western Tibet, was carried out over a 16 month period in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and was supported by grants from the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China, the Committee on Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society, and the National Science Foundation.

It’s worth quoting at length from their conclusion:

“The new Chinese economic and cultural policies implemented in Tibet following Hu Yaobang’s investigation tour in May of 1980 have produced a major transformation in Phala. Following decollectivisation, the nomads’ economy immediately reverted to the traditional household system of production and management, which, enhanced by the concession on taxes, has led to an overall improvement in the standard of living even though local-level officials have not completely implemented an open (or negotiated) market system. The new policies have also led to increasing involvement in the market economy and dramatic social and economic differentiation. Equally important, the post-1980 policies have fostered a cultural and social revitalization that has allowed the nomads to resurrect basic components of their traditional culture….life in Phala today is closer to that of the traditional era than at any time since China assumed direct administrative control over Tibet in 1959. The post-1980 reforms created conditions whereby the nomadic pastoralists of Phala were able to regain control of their lives and recreate a matrix of values, norms, and beliefs that is psychologically and culturally meaningful. The new polices have, in essence, vindicated the nomads’ belief in the worth of their nomadic way of life and their Tibetan ethnicity.”

Tyler Denison reached similar conclusions in his study, titled Reaffirmation of ‘Ritual Cosmos’: Tibetan Perceptions of Landscape and Socio-Economic Development in Southwest China, published quite recently in the Spring 2006 edition of the University of New Hampshire Undergraduate Research Journal.

“Rather than finding Tibetan tradition being destroyed by Chinese rule and the influx of people, goods and ideas from the modern world,” concludes Denison, “I witnessed firsthand the importance of Kawa Karpo and the ritual cosmos in the lives of the Tibetans of Deqin county: it has not been diminished. Tibetans’ enduring perception of the landscape as a ritual cosmos cannot be termed a static reality of tradition, but more a dynamic cultural process, as they are continually renegotiating and redefining their beliefs in light of new social and economic realities.”

So much then Tony, for your claims of cultural genocide. And by the way, most Tibetans, if you ever get a chance to visit Tibet and to converse with the Tibetan locals, will tell you that they are not “forced” to learn Chinese, but rather, do so keenly, and on the expectation that being fluent in both Chinese and English will help to empower themselves by broadening their future employment opportunities.

Tony, I hereby charge you with having a patronising attitude towards the Tibetan people – they are not passive victims, and you really shouldn’t deny them of any agency. In fact, as Tsering Shakya has pointed out in a paper he wrote for the New Left Review back in 2002, “Tibetans are indeed well represented on bodies like the National People’s Congress and the People’s Consultative Conference. In fact I would go further and say that they are over-represented, given the size of the Tibetan population.” And don’t forget the role that many Tibetans themselves played in the destruction of monastries and the various perscutions that took place in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. Let’s not deny the people of Tibet of any agency.

Your assertion that Western journalists make their observations of Tibet in the presence of “Chinese Communist Party lackeys” also demonstrates your ignorance. Journalist and tourists alike are quite free to wander about most parts of Tibet (provided they have PSB permits) without the accompaniment of officials.

You asked me to provide you with evidence of journalists having met Tibetans in Tibet who have expressed the view that the positives of Chinese rule outweigh the negatives.

Let us take attitudes towards the Beijing to Lhasa railway for starters. In the lead-up to the opening of that railway, the Dalai Lama expressed fears that the railway was going to aid in the Sinocisation of Tibet, and this was quickly seized on by Tibetans in exile support groups throughout the Western world as a development that would aid in Beijing’s alleged policy of genocide. Such claims of course, excited the imaginations of many ordinary Tibetans, many of who not surprisingly then expressed suspicions about what the new train line would bring them. But as many tourists and journalists to Tibet soon discovered, many urban ethnic Tibetans felt as though the positives would outweigh the negatives, and this is because an increasing number of Tibetans now have a very real material stake in the new economy. Their living standards are improving, and although Han retailers and small businesses stand to benefit more from increases in tourism and trade, the fact is that this will likely change as more and more Tibetans accumulate sufficient enough capital to start up enterprises of their own. And many Tibetans know this. Jonathon Watts, of The Guardian newspaper, reported that “Among the four or five unscheduled meetings I had with Tibetans, most were looking forward to the economic benefits the line is expected to bring: 2.5m tonnes of cargo and 1m tourists and business people.”

Indeed, Tibetans are divided on the issue of whether or not the benefits of being a part of China outweigh the negatives. “Tibetans are divided,” noted Jonathon Watts. There are those “independence activists” who expressed disapproval of the railway because they are against being a part of China, and who therefore regard the new line as evidence that Beijing is out to further entrench their rule, while others acknowledged the good that the trains might bring. “I was surprised to find a living Buddha make one of the strongest arguments in favour of the railway,” wrote Watts. “’We’ve been too backward, too isolated for too long,’ said the lama, who asked that his name not be used. ‘The rest of the world is in the 21st century. We are still in the middle ages.’ A more predictable advocate was the governor of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Jampa Pahtsok. “It is unimaginable to have a high growth rate without a railroad.’” (see The Guardian, Sep.20, 2005)

And life is improving for many Tibetan farmers also, as Goldstein and Beall’s research (mentioned earlier) shows. When Dexter Roberts came across villagers in Northern Tibet’s Nagqu Prefecture, he discovered that most of the villagers (barley farmers and herdsmen) were quite content. “Life isn’t bad at all”, he quoted one villager as saying. (see “Tibet: Caught in China’s Two Hands”, Business Week Online, Sep.19, 2003).

Tony, I have never argued that most Tibetans don’t want some form of self-government. I simply said that I think it is presumptuous to say that the majority of Tibetans want independence. I stand by that. Maybe they do? But to assert with confidence that most want independence without supporting such a claim with any empirically verifiable evidence of a quantitative nature is questionable, especially when there is a growing amount of qualitative evidence to show that Tibetans are divided on such issues. Even the Dalai Lama himself says that he no longer wants total independence from China, but instead, some form of self-government.

Take a closer, more objective look at Tibet today. The mass protests have stopped. As Robert Barnett, author of Lhasa: Streets with Memories (published by Columbia University Press) stated in an interview back in April 2006, “Tibet has become a dispute in which the main weapons are forms of economic change that have benefits and drawbacks: the market, the leisure industry, mass tourism, population shift, uneven wealth, and consumerism.”

It won’t be all that much longer Tony, before Lhasa’s main thoroughfares find themselves hosting McDonald’s, KFC, and Pizza Hut fast food outlets, along with Starbuck’s and other such global enterprises. And don’t be too surprised if some of the license holders turn out to be ethnic Tibetans.

Tony, you argue that “Tibet and Tibetans might [have] been very different had China not invaded, but for sure they would be sovereign masters of their own destiny.”

Bollocks! How many ordinary Tibetans were ever the “masters of their own destinies”? I’m not justifying China’s invasion and occupation of Tibet, which was carried out for geopolitical reasons, and largely in response to continual incursions by Britain and Russia, and which therefore needs to be viewed in the context of the Cold War. The Kuomintang of course consistently made it clear that they intended on invading and occupying Tibet, and had they defeated the PLA, they probably would have gone on to do just that. Had that been the case, I bet the the U.S. State Department wouldn’t have objected.

But let us not romanticise the life of Tibetans prior to the invasion either. As Michael Parenti (and many others like Leigh Feigon, in his book Demystifying Tibet) has documented, Tibet “was a retrograde theocracy of serfdom and poverty, where a favoured few lived high and mighty off the blood, sweat, and tears of the many. It was a long way from Shangri-La.”

And “whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese in Tibet, after 1959 they did abolish slavery and the serfdom system of unpaid labour, and put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular education, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.”

Finally, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the Tibetans in exile and their supporters have consistently exaggerated the human rights abuses that have taken place in Tibet, as Barry Sautman and others have convincingly demonstrated. Such exaggerations from the Tibetan community in exile come as no surprise though. As Michael Parenti says:

“For the rich lamas and lords, the Communist intervention was a calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA… throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicised, the Dalai Lama’s organisation itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama’s annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment….Today, mostly through the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable-sounding than the CIA, the US Congress continues to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for ‘democracy activities’ within the Tibetan exile community.”

The Tibetan issue is by no means clear-cut. It is complex, and in constant states of flux. Even Tibetan specialists find it difficult to fit together images and realities, and so one might imagine how much more difficult it is for the great majority who make no pretence to knowledge about Tibet and who, if interested, seek guidance in the formulation of their own images. Those who seek such guidance from the plethora of publications produced by the numerous existing Tibetan support groups should therefore read them with some considerable caution, given their obvious bias.

I am not a Tibetan specialist, by any means, but I have more confidence in the findings of independent academic researchers (who present more objective, more soberly balanced views that are based on empirically verifiable research data of both a quantitative and qualitative nature) than I do in both the claims of official Chinese sources and of the various Tibetans in exile support groups.

Oh, and by the way Tony, your puerile attempt to discredit me by dismissing me as an employee of the Chinese government really is pathetic, and only serves to further demonstrate the height of your ignorance. I have been in China now for five years, not four, and I am not, and never have been, employed by the Chinese government. I teach a university preparation program at a Chinese private university in Hangzhou for a Sydney-based college, and I am paid an Australian salary, in Australian dollars, by my employer of over 15 years, the N.S.W. Department of Education and Training. There is absolutely no pressure on me to “two the Partly line” – in fact, nobody here has ever interfered with my teaching.

I suggest, Tony Martin, that you take a sedative and calm down. A few laxatives will no doubt help!”

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China Proper? Fair or False?

Here is some more from my professor from Beijing University teaching my 20th Century Chinese History class. He brought up the topic of false western notions about Chinese history in class.

He stated that the western interpretation of “barbarian” (yi-fan) as “foreign” and “foreign” is wrong because “barbarian” in Chinese originally means uncivilized people or tribes. He then said that the Chinese never used this word to describe the civilized peoples who were foreign, like India and Rome, thus this western translation/notion is a wrong one.

Now here’s the second thing he said, it had to do with the Western notion of “China Proper”:

He stated that: Westerners used this term to refer to Central China, but the Chinese consider their current territory as a whole. The Chinese perceived that everywhere in the world is the Emperor’s (“All under heaven”). The Chinese dislike the term “China Proper” because it may be used to justify separation on foreign conquest”. Thus in these Chinese mindsets there is no “China proper”, but only a single “One China” that encompasses all of its current modern day territories, including Taiwan.

He also compared how the US has the original 13 colonies, yet no one calls this place the “US proper”. I didn’t think that was such a good example to explain why the notion of China proper was wrong, but I won’t get into that.

I don’t understand where the controversy is? The area outlined as China proper is roughly the traditional cultural area of China and also encompass the original territories united under the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang. I suppose it’s the word “proper” which some Chinese, particularly the PRC, may find as insulting or divisive since it sort of implies that this is what the China’s “proper” boundaries should be.

Once again though, I think it all has to do with how people are perceiving the use of this word “China proper”. The Westerners imply it on a cultural basis and the angered Chinese may perceive it on a political basis or with a divisive motive. Which is a possible fair assessment, in reference to uses of the word in the past, since the term originated from Western scholars at a time when China was being divided up by Western powers. What I don’t agree with is how some Chinese still believe that it is being used to justify separatism in the present day.

Early Tibet Blog

Check out this great site for info of Early Tibetan history

From the site:
“This site is an evolving resource for the study of the early history of Tibet, from the Tibetan Empire (7th to 9th centuries) to the dark age of the 10th century.

The main content of this site is a series of research notes (my own) presented in a weblog. My primary sources are the Stein collection at the British Library and the Pelliot collection at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. These are the most important collections of early Tibetan manuscripts. They were excavated from several sites in Chinese Central Asia, but most are from a single cave in Dunhuang, which was sealed in the early 11th century and not opened up again until the early 20th century. While some of these manuscripts are well known to scholars, many more continue to languish in obscurity. It is my aim here to bring some of these neglected sources to light.”

Site link here

Songtsen Gampo: First Emperor of a Unified Tibet

By Jigme Duntak

In 618 CE Songtsen Gampo ascended the throne as Tsenpo of the Pugyel dynasty after the assassination of his father Namri Löntsen. During this era the ‘formal designation’ for rulers was ‘Tsenpo’,

“…a term that served as the exclusive title of the Tibetan monarch, and early on they appear to have also adopted the dynastic label ‘Pugyel’, “king of Pu,” perhaps reflecting the dynasty’s distant origins in Powo in south-eastern Tibet.”

Tibetan records from the twelfth century generally write that Songtsen Gampo therefore ascended the throne at the age of thirteen and then ruled until his death 650 CE. However, the Danguang manuscripts and the annals of China’s Tang dynasty record that Songtsen Gampo ruled a much shorter reign since they suggest that he was born in 617 CE and that his father’s assassination was in 629 CE. Thus, in the Tibetan histories Songtsen Gampo is attributed to have ruled a much longer reign and life, some Tibetan histories have even suggested that Songtsen Gampo ruled for over eighty years.

During Songsten’s father’s (Namri Löntsen) reign, he brought “new cultural ties to the east, whereby Chinese traditions of medicine and divination were first introduced to Tibet.” The government of Namri Löntsen sent two embassies to China in 608 and 609, marking the appearance of Tibet on the international scene. Löntsen also expanded the Pugyel Dynasty’s territory during his reign but it was not until Songtsen Gampo’s reign that the imperial conquest began to advance considerably. Following his fathers assassination, the young Songtsen Gampo and his ministers quickly began to makes plans to retake control of the “parts of the country that had been lost during Namri Löntsen’s last years and also to gain new adherents.” The young Songtsen Gampo also had the support and protection of the powerful minister Myang Mangpoje until he himself was able to take over the work of imperial expansion. However in 632-3 CE Myang Mangpoje was accused of treason and executed, he was then succeeded by minister Gar Songtsän.

The Old Tibetan Chronicle records that Songtsen Gampo’s government did not want to engage in warfare in order to subjugate the rebelling territories and new territories due to the costs of war. Thus they instead used diplomacy whenever possible to obtain territorial gains.

“[Advisor Myang] Mangpoje advised against bringing an army to attack the Sumpa, a nomadic or semi nomadic people living to the northeast of Tibet, who had been among Namri’s feudatories. Instead he offered protection for their flocks, wherefore, in the words of the Chronicle, ‘all their households were naturally captured as subjects.’”

It was in this manner that Songtsen Gampo was able to expand his Tibetan Empire and use his new subjects as allies. At its height, the Tibetan empire ranged from the plains of India and the mountains of Nepal to the frontiers of China. However, peaceful diplomacy and incentives were not the only way Songtsen Gampo expanded the Tibetan Empire, warfare was also used.

“…the conquest of the kingdom of Zhangzhung, in the western part of the Tibetan plateau, was achieved through a combination of deviousness and military force. Songsten’s sister was given to the ruler of Zhangzhung, Limigya, thereby forming an alliance between the two realms. The Tibetan queen Semakar however seems to have been marginalized by the Zhangzhung ruler and this set her scheming…in the event, the impasse in her marriage corresponded to deteriorating relations between the two kingdoms…As hostilities became imminent, it was the intelligence provided by queen Semakar that signalled the moment for attack, whereupon Songsten’s armies slaughtered the Zhangzhung king and annihilated his strongholds.”

The defeat of Limigya marked the end of the Bön center of religion in Zhangzhung and also marked the first time the Tibetan plateau was subject to a unified rule. With this unity came a large pool of resources and manpower which thereby became available for Songtsen Gampo to set in motion the growth of the Tibetan Empire in the following decades.

Sources:

Choephel, Gendun. The White Annals. Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, 1978.

Kapstein, Matthew T. The Tibetans, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2006.

Snellgrove, David and Hugh Richardson, A Cultural History of Tibet (Boulder: PrajanaPress, 1980

Mongol Pacification Through Qing-Tibetan Relations

By: Jigme Duntak

As early as 1639 the Qing monarchs were documented to have engaged in relations with Tibet through patronage of the Yellow Hat sect (Gelugpa) temples and monasteries. Tibetan cult objects were also already introduced at the Aisin Gioro temple in the Qing capital of Mukden well before the Qing invasion of North China.[1] This relationship through patronage and the adoption of Tibetan Buddhist practices stemmed back to a blueprint laid out by Emperor Nurhaci (see right) where he had stated that “legitimate rule of the Mongols depended upon patronizing Tibetan lamas, whom Altan Khan had established as the spiritual guides of the Mongols.”[2] Relations between the Qing and Tibet therefore existed before the Qing became rulers of China and due to the religious implications, good relations with Tibet were essential for the Qing rulers in order to maintain good relations with Mongolia.

Therefore, Qing relations with Tibet were heavily interrelated with the Qing policy of Mongol pacification which was achieved through the Tibetan Buddhist sect relations, principally with the Yellow Hat sect hierarchs. Under the Qianlong emperor many Mongol rebellions had to be suppressed by Qing forces. In 1756, Qianlong emperor (see right) pointed out that “the western Mongols must have four khans recognized among them, “in order to keep their forces divided. Each has to be concerned about his own welfare, and submit to the empire for protection from the others.” This was the policy of the Qing to maintain division among the Mongols as a policy to pacify possible Mongol threat.

By 1644 the Qing had finally completed the overthrow of the Ming dynasty and had established themselves as the rulers of China. Similarly in 1642 the Fifth Dalai Lama and his Yellow Hat sect, had consolidated their own realm, in large part due to the support of Gushri Khan (a Khosut-Oirat prince).[3] “The Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682) (see right) was the first Dalai Lama to assume temporal control of Tibet, aided by the troops of the Khosut Mongol chief, Gushri Khan.”[4] By this time the Qing are the newly rising power of Asia and the numerous different factions within Tibet are quick to recognize this. The various factions quickly begin to send envoys to the Manchu court in an attempt to win favour and support, and to obtain a leverage or advantage over one another. The different factions consisted of the Gushri and the Fifth Dalai Lama, The deposed King of Tsang, and the Karma-pa hierarchs.[5] In 1652 the Fifth Dalai Lama travels to Beijing and has an imperial audience with the Qing emperor in an attempt for both parties to seal a favourable relationship. Upon meeting, the Emperor seizes the Dalai Lama’s hand and inquires about his health through an interpreter[6]. Throughout the meeting the Emperor and Dalai Lama show signs of mutual respect and when the tea arrived the Emperor in fact urges the Dalai Lama to drink before him. Vast amounts of presents are in addition offered to the Dalai Lama. From the conduct of the Shunzhi Emperor we can see that he surprisingly met the Dalai Lama as his equal. In fact there had also been discussion about the Shunzhi Emperor possibly traveling to a place beyond the Great Wall to meet the Dalai Lama.[7] After this formal meeting the “priest-patron” relation had been established between the Qing Emperor and Tibet. Both parties had successfully attained what they had been pursuing: The Dalai Lama had gained assurance of support from the Qing Emperor in order to maintain his power over his rivals, and the Qing had earned spiritual legitimation from the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchs through association, future political manipulation, and also titles of Bodhisattva bestowed upon the emperor and future emperors which gave them influence and significance within the Tibetan Buddhist community. The key of all these factors was that the Qing could now have political influence by establishing themselves as the patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. This was of particular importance in regards to pacifying Mongolia since the Dalai Lama had great influence amongst the Mongols, and was later asked by Qing rulers to use this influence to “prevent danger to China”.[8] According to David Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson,

“Just as the Indian masters of Buddhist doctrine and practice had once everything to give (or sell) to Tibetans who were so anxious to learn, so now the Mongols continued to learn from their Tibetan masters in religion all they could of Buddhist doctrine. Mongol students came to Tibetan monasteries… just as Tibetans had once visited the great monastic universities of northern India.”

In addition by tightening and improving relations with the Tibetans, the Qing rulers were reducing the possibility of Tibetans uniting with the Mongols against them. This was a great fear of the Kangxi Emperor’s, during his reign he, “remained wary of strategic combinations between Tibet and the unconquered Mongols of Central Asia. His concerns had proved justified when the western Mongol leader Galdan enlisted ambitious factions in Tibet to support his cause.”[9] The willingness to completely disregard the Chinese imperial protocol by Emperor Shunzhi (see right) also demonstrated just how significant relations with the Tibetan Buddhist leaders were to the Qing in order to pacify the Mongols. “It must be remembered that Chinese political theory excluded entirely the possibility of equal diplomatic relations with any other country whatsoever.”[10] The willingness to forgo the imperial foreign policy towards the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchs did not center on this sole event between the Fifth Dalai Lama and the Shunzhi Emperor alone. On the 20^th of August, 1780 the Qianlong Emperor met the Third Panchen Lama in Chengde and in this visit he too disregarded the Chinese imperial protocols for foreigners, just as his predecessor the Shunzhi Emperor had done. The Qianlong Emperor extended a huge celebration and show upon the Panchen Lama’s arrival. “As the greetings started, the Panchen Lama began to kneel down but the emperor took his hand and made him rise, saying in Tibetan, “Lama, please do not kneel.””[11] Also similarly to what had occurred when the Dalai Lama and the Shunzhi Emperor met in 1652, the Qianlong Emperor urged the Panchen Lama to drink his tea before him on more than one occasion. However they always resolved to drink simultaneously. The visit itself was very costly with all the large performances and gifts being given on behalf of the emperor. It lasted over sixty six days and all expenses for the Panchen Lama and his escorts were paid for through the Imperial treasury. This showed exactly how important relations with Tibetan Buddhist hierarchs remained from Shunzhi’s reign to Qianlong’s since both were identically willing to disregard their imperial political policies towards foreigners in dealings with the Tibetan high lamas. In fact it possibly shows a growth in the importance of the priest-patron relationship. This was due to the fact that the Qianlong Emperor’s devotion and advocacy of Tibetan Buddhism was stronger than that of his predecessors.

Under the Qianlong Emperor, Tibet functioned as an ideological resource and was subject to strategic intervention of imperial forces.[12] However Emperor Qianlong was unsatisfied with the previous ritual relationships the Qing dynasty had with Tibetan Buddhists. He therefore “intended to make his imperial capital at Peking the spiritual capital of the Lamaist realm…Tibetan Buddhism was enshrined in various temples closely linked with the imperial family”.[13] In 1757 the Qing defeated the western Mongols and the strategic interest of the Qing were lessened, but carefully the Qianlong emperor “decreed that no more reincarnations of the living Buddha would be found among Mongols; only Tibetans would henceforth be living Buddhas.”[14] This demonstrated the use of Chinese political manipulation in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy in order to prevent the threat of the Mongols. However this form of political manipulation was much more direct and imposing, since after 1720 the Qing had militarily occupied Tibet due to the Zhungar invasion of central Tibet and Kham therefore establishing Tibet as a protectorate state.[15] “Tibet was under Qing military domination, the Dalai Lamas themselves were virtual prisoners of the Qing court.”[16]

Tibet was “a geo-political sector of fundamental importance in the maintenance of Qing domination, and intimately associated with progressive Qing control over Mongolia.” The Qing emperors made sure to maintain good relations with the Tibet for this specific reason and in particular leaders of Tibetan Buddhism, such as the Dalai Lama. By associating themselves with Tibetan Buddhism and acting as patrons and protectors of the Tibetan Buddhist Yellow Hat sect, the emperors were bestowed titles such as bodhisattva which helped them legitimize their rule in the eyes of the Mongols. Engaging in good relations with the Tibetan Buddhists also diminished the possibilities of a Mongol-Tibetan union in rebellion against the Qing, a fear that was realized under the Kangxi Emperor. Association with the Tibetan Buddhist also allowed the Qing emperors to manipulate the Tibetan hierarchs in order to suit their political motives especially since the Dalai Lama acted with great influence amongst the Mongols. Therefore, Qing relations with Tibet were heavily interrelated with the Qing policy of Mongol pacification which was achieved through the Tibetan Buddhist sect relations.

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[1] Pamela Kyle Crossley, The Manchus (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997) 113
[2] Ibid.
[3] Matthew T. Kapstein, The Tibetans (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2006) 140
[4] Donald S. Lopez, “Tibetan Buddhism”, edited by Ruth W. Dunnell, New Qing Imperial History: The Making of the Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde. (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004) 26
[5] David Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson, A Cultural History of Tibet (Boulder: Prajana Press, 1980) 198
[6] Kapstein, 140
[7] Ibid.
[8] Snellgrove, 198
[9] Crossley, 118
[10] Snellgrove, 198.
[11] Nima Dorjee Rangubs, “The Third Panchen Lama’s visit to Chengde, Edited by Ruth W. Dunnell, New Qing Imperial History: The Making of the Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde. (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004) 190
[12] Crossley 113
[13] Crossley 118.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Kapstein 148.
[16] Crossley 121.

Sources:

Barrett, Tim. “The Florescence of Buddhism”. Cradles of Civilization: China, edited by Robert E. Murwick, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.

Cohen, Warren I. East Asia at the Center. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Choephel, Gendun. The White Annals. Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, 1978.

Crossley, Pamela K. The Manchus, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.

Hsu, Immanuel C.Y. The Rise of Modern China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Kapstein, Matthew T. The Tibetans, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2006.

Lopez, Donald S. “Tibetan Buddhism”, edited by Ruth W. Dunnell, New Qing Imperial History:the Making of the Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.

Rangubs, Nima D. “The Third Panchen Lama’s visit to Chengde, Edited by Ruth W. Dunnell, New Qing Imperial History: The Making of the Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.

Shakya, Tsering. The Dragon in the Land of Snows, New York: Penguin Compass, 1999.

Oldstone-Moore, Jennifer. “The Way of the Buddha”. China: Empire and Civilization, edited by Edward L. Shaughnessy, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Snellgrove, David and Hugh Richardson, A Cultural History of Tibet (Boulder: PrajanaPress, 1980

Stein, R. A. Tibetan Civilization. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972.

The CIA in Tibet

An excellent documentary on the Tibetans who were trained by the CIA in 1950′s to launch a guerrilla war against Chinese forces within Tibet. Includes commentary from ex-CIA members who participated in the Tibetan Guerrilla training program, Tibetan Guerrillas who fought the Chinese, and the Dalai Lama.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Tibet: Does History Matter?

“Tsering Shakya teaches in the Contemporary Tibetan Studies Program at the University of British Columbia. His primary research interests are the political, cultural, and literary histories of twentieth-century Tibet. His publications include Fire Under the Snow: The Testimony of a Tibetan Prisoner (1997) and The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 (1999). Sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley and the Institute of East Asian Studies”.

The Lost Years of Jesus in Tibet

The undocumented portion of Jesus’s early life, popularly known as “The Lost Years of Jesus, have aroused many questions about Jesus of Nazareth’s whereabouts and activities during this period. “The Lost Years of Jesus” are generally said to comprise of Jesus’s life after 12 years of age and prior to 30 years of age. These years have been suitably labeled the “Lost Years” since there has been no biblical or middle eastern/western records of Jesus’s activities during this period to date.

However in 1887 Nicolas Notovitch (pictured in right), a Russian aristocrat and journalist, traveled to an ancient Tibetan monastery in Himis, north of Srinagar in Kashmir, and discovered and translated ancient Buddhist scripts which spoke of a Saint Issa (a transliteration of the word Jesus), a man who had traveled from Israel to the lands of India, Persia, Tibet (in the Ladakh area of Kashmir) and many others. Here is an excerpt from Notovitch’s book published in 1894 called The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ in which he writes of a lama who speaks about Saint Issa at the monastery:

“Issa [Jesus] is a great prophet, one of the first after the twenty-two Buddhas. He is greater than any one of all the Dalai Lamas, for he constitutes part of the spirituality of our Lord. It is he who has enlightened you, who has brought back within the pale of religion the souls of the frivolous, and who has allowed each human being to distinguish between good and evil. His name and his acts are recorded in our sacred writings. And in reading of his wondrous existence, passed in the midst of an erring and wayward people, we weep at the horrible sin of the pagans who, after having tortured him, put him to death.” …

“Where are these writings now to be found? And by whom were they originally written down?” I asked. “The principal scrolls, whose compilation was effected in India and Nepal at different epochs, proportional to the events, are to be found at Lassa [Lhasa] to the number of several thousands. …” pp. 154-155″

recently, since many scholars and researchers such as J. Archibald Douglas claim his findings to be pure fabrication. Just as there were many skeptics to Notovitch’s findings during his time, there were also those who supported Notovitch’s findings. Nicholas Roerich traveled throughout Central Asia from 1924 to 1928 and “discovered that legends about Issa were widespread”

“It is not certain what route Jesus took on his journey to the East. Here [Above] is one possible itinerary via ancient roads and trade routes, reconstructed from Notovich, Abhedananda, and Roerich texts and legends: Jesus departed Jerusalem (follow the yellow line), took the Silk Road to Bactra, headed south to Kabul, crossed the Punjab and proceeded to a Jain area on the Kathiawar peninsula where Jain temples were later built bear the town of Palitana. He crossed India to Juggernaut (Puri), made trips to Rajariha (Rajgir), Benares, and other holy cities and, fleeing his enemies went to Kapilavatsu–birthplace of Gautama Buddha. Jesus took a trail just west of Mt. Everest to Lhasa (where the palace of the Dalai Lama was built in the 17th century). On the return trip (follow the violet line), he took the caravan route to Leh, went south to the state of Rajputana and the north to Kabul. He proceeded on the southern trade route through Persia where Zoroastrian priests abandoned him to wild beasts. Jesus survived and arrived unharmed in Jerusalem.” (*Map and text from The Lost Years of Jesus).

Scholars have also found similarities between the teachings of Buddha and Jesus which further adds to the possibility that Jesus learned his teachings from Buddhists. Here are some excerpts from Jesus and Buddha, The Parallel Sayings:

1) -”There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” Mark 7:15

-”Stealing, deceiving, adultery; this is defilement. Not the eating of meat.” Sutta Nipata 242

-”Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.” Matthew 6:19-20

-”Let the wise man do righteousness: A treasure that others can not share, which no thief can steal; a treasure which does not pass away.” Khuddakapatha 8:9

-”Jesus spoke unto them saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” John 8:12

-”When a Bodhisattva descends from heaven, there appears in this world an immeasurable, splendid light surpassing the glory of the most powerful glow. And whatever dark spaces lie beyond the world’s end will be illuminated by this light.” Digha Nikaya 14:1:7

*Also an interesting fact to be noted is that the current 14th Dalai Lama himself regards Jesus as a bodhisattva “who dedicated his life to the welfare of human beings”.

Above is a very interesting Tibetan thangka depicting Jesus with Tibetan monks in front of a gompa (fortress monastery). Check below under links for a site with more thangkas like this. Of course this thangka is not a depiction of a real historical event. Had Jesus reached Tibet, Tibetans would not have been Buddhists until some centuries later. I think it is most likely made by or for Christian missionaries work in Tibet.

Above: The Lost Years of Jesus? – A short 10 minute Youtube video briefly describing the possibility of Jesus’s travels to Tibet and India during his “Lost Years”.

Sources:

1. Jesus the Teenage Years
2. Jesus in Tibet: A Modern Myth – Robert M. Price (Director of the Center for Inquiry and Professor of Biblical Criticism for the Center of Inquiry Institute) response to Notovitch’s claims
3. Nicolas Notovitch – Wikipedia
4. The Jesus of the New Age Movement – By Ron Rhodes
5. Lost Years of Jesus – Wikipedia
6. The Lost Years of Jesus – Narrative history of events

Links:

1. The Jesus Thangka – By Terry Anthony; A very interesting site with picture of Tibetan Thangka’s which depict Jesus (St. Issa) throughout his life.

CIA Support to Tibet in the 1950′s

“Tsering Shakya was born in Lhasa in 1959 and fled to India with his family after the Chinese invasion. Later he won a scholarship to study in Britain and graduated from London University, the School of Oriental and African Studies. He is currently a Fellow in Tibetan Studies there.”

Excerpts taken from The Dragon in the Land of Snows by Tsering Shakya:

-”In December 1955 President Eisenhower authorised the CIA to develop secret activities to undermine ‘international communism, which resulted in the establishment of underground, resistance and guerrilla groups. Under the tutelage of Allen Dulles, the fifties were ‘glory years’ for the CIA. While John Foster Dulles led the diplomatic initiatives to contain China, his brother was planning clandestine operation in Tibet.”

-”The Tibetan issue had propaganda appeal in the era of the Cold War: the Chinese actions were seen as evidence of the Communists’ desire for world dominations. Tibet was presented as a small nation fighting for the survival of its culture and way of life. It is unlikely that the US regarded Tibet as strategically important…The US objective was to destabilise the country, and it was for this reason that it abandoned diplomatic initiatives in favour of covert activities.”

-”Accounts of the CIA involvement in Tibet are often sensational and exaggerate the role of the CIA in the flight of the Dalai Lama from Lhasa. CIA activities remained on the periphery of Tibetan political concern. Although Chinese fear of US intervention was an important factor in the Chinese perception of the situation, it must be seen in the light of the bi-polar division of the world and the rhetoric of the time. It does not matter whether the CIA parachuted in a few agents or sent an entire regiment: from the Chinese point of view the American involvement in Tibet transformed the entire situation. It was no longer a question of revolt by some troublesome Tibetan but an international conspiracy to undermine the victory of he Communist Party in China…This may explain the ferocity of Chinese suppression of the Tibetan revolt.”

Posted by: Jigme32

Origin of Ancient Tibetan Social Customs

“Gedun Choephel, one of the most progressive Tibetan scholars of this century, was born in Rekong, Amdo province in 1905. As a youth he studied at Tashi Khyil monastery in Amdo and later at the monastic university of Drepung near Lhasa. An exceptionally gifted and often controversial figure, h was at once a scholar, historian, literary innovator, translator, artist, poet, musician and traveler. He visited both India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and developed highly nationalistic aspirations for Tibet. He passed away in Lhasa in 1951″.

Excerpts from “The White Annals” by Gedun Choephel:

• Those [Tibetans] who were strong-spirited were called rgyal.
• Males were termed as pho.
• The king was designated as rGyal-pho and his queen as Mo-sman.
• Attire of Tibetans consisted of robes derived from animal skins and women endowed themselves with red dyes on their cheeks.
• Meals were spread on carpets on the floor (gden-sha: carpet meat).
• Gold and silver ornaments ewre in wide usage. Gold, silver, copper and lead were the minerals to be found in abundance in tibet.
• Men wore their decorative emblems on their arms, to distinguish their rank in the social hierarchy.
• Barley, what and peas were the staple crops cultivated. Yaks, sheep, pigs, ewes (female sheep) and horses were maintained in a domestic household.
• Earth burial prevailed in early times.
• As yet Tibet had no written script of her own and calculations were charted through symbolic allusions: either signs were drawn on a wooden slate, or with the assistance of knots on a thread.
• The King was the chief arbiter of justice. Punishment for minor offenses were severe. Punishment for major offenses was still harsher, witnessed in the extraction of eyes for males and the mutilation of nose and limbs for females.
• These corporal acts were abolished during Khri-srong’s reign under pledge of oath (according to the rBa-bzhad), though the king and the ministers took exemption from the oath.
• Conclusion:
• In bringing light to the social customs of the past, we have to depend solely upon foreign accounts. In fact certain customs vis-a-vis dress styles were scarcely written about by its own people. For instance, the wearing of the pang-gdan (apron) of assorted colouring, the spa-drug (head ornament) by Lhasa women and the wearing of the fur cap with four flaps on either side by the menfolk have never been mentions in the books written by Tibetans themselves. And perhaps 500 years from the present, future generations will be ignorant of our manner of attirement. It is unfortunate that with the exception of a few scattered information which we can ferret from legendary tales about other people, nothing more can be gauged.

Posted by: Jigme32