Is Tibet really Chinese?
As the protests continue with the passage of the Olympic torch from one city to another, people around the world are wondering anew about the status of Tibet. It is currently a province in China, but this situation is hugely controversial.
The Government of Tibet in exile contends that Tibet was a distinct and independent nation before its conquest by the Yuan Dynasty 700 years ago, as well as between the fall of the Yuan Dynasty in 1368 and Tibet’s incorporation into the Qing Dynasty in 1720, and again between the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 and incorporation into the People’s Republic of China in 1951.
In 1950, the People’s Liberation Army entered Tibet, crushing the Tibetan army. During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards inflicted a campaign of organised vandalism against the cultural sites of Tibet’s Buddhist heritage. 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.
You can read the case for Tibetan independence here and you can read the case for Chinese rule here. In fact, the Dalai Lama supports a ‘third way’ with Tibet remaining part of China but having full autonomy. In some senses, this is the similar to the current position of Hong Kong and it might be the way to reconcile mainland China with Taiwan.
These issues raise the question of what exactly defines a nation state. This is a matter I have discussed in my essay on “The Question Of Nationhood”.