This is the second of a series of articles concerning our staff reporter Lin Liangqi's interview with Li Yan, a well-known scholar of Tibetan history. The first, entitled Tibet's Historical Status, was printed in issue No. 52,1992.

QUESTION: Since China has held sovereignty over Tibet for such a long time, how was the issue of "Tibetan independence" created?

ANSWER: The so-called Tibetan independence is the product of aggression against China by modern colonialists and imperialists. The word "independence" did not exist in the Tibetan vocabulary in the early days of this century. And prior to the 1840 Opium War, "Tibetan independence" had never occurred in history.

Following the 1840 Opium War, the British launched two wars of aggression against China's Tibet. After they failed to oust the Chinese government and assume full control over Tibet through direct military incursion, Britain and some other countries changed their tact and began plotting to separate Tibet from China.

In August 1907, Britain and Russia signed the Convention Between Great Britain and Russia, which, in its special chapter on Tibet, changed China's sovereignty over Tibet into "suzerainty."

In 1912 the British government sent a five-point memorandum to the Chinese government, demanding that the Chinese government not interfere in the internal affairs of Tibet nor make Tibet a province, and declaring that the British would recognize "China's suzerainty in Tibet." When the Chinese government rejected the British demands, which were aimed at negating China's sovereignty over Tibet, the British blocked all the roads leading from India to Tibet and obstructed the Chinese government officials' move into Tibet via India.

In 1913 the British government inveigled the Tibetan authorities to declare independence and proposed that "Britain be the weaponry supplier after total independence of Tibet"; "Tibet accept British envoys' supervision over Tibetan financial and military affairs in return for Britain's support of Tibetan independence"; "Tibet adopt an open policy and allow freedom of movement of the British"; and "Britain be responsible for resisting the army of the Republic of China when it reaches Tibet."

In order to get rid of the Chinese government, Britain did its best to obstruct direct contacts between the central and Tibetan local governments. Charles Bell, a political officer sent to Sikkim by the British-Indian government, wrote in his book Tibet: Past and Present that China's right to administer Tibet should not be accepted. Whenever necessary, pressure should be exerted to prevent Chinese officials from moving into Tibet via Sikkim. He even declared that such measures were a powerful weapon.

The Simla Conference, held in 1913 at the behest of the British government, is the best illustration of the British plot and ambition to incite "Tibetan independence" as a means of gaining full control of Tibet.

Taking advantage of the Yuan Shikai government's eagerness for foreign diplomatic recognition, the British government threatened that if a tripartite conference of China, Britain and Tibet could not be held, Britain would not recognize the Yuan Shikai government. If the Chinese government did not attend the conference, it would conclude a direct agreement with the Tibetans. Under this threat and pressure, the government of the Chinese Republic agreed, on the condition the conference be held in Beijing or London. But the British insisted the conference be held in Darjeeling, India. The conference was finally convened in Simla,India so that, in the words of Indian Viceroy Warren Hastings, the British could have more effective control of the proceedings. (A. Tom Grunfeld: The Making of Modern Tibet)

Before the Tibetan representative set off for the conference, Britain had sent Bell to Gyangze, Tibet, where he met privately with the Tibetan representative, coaching him on how to deal with his Chinese counterpart and advising him to bring along all documents he could collect referencing borders between the Han and Tibetan peoples and which could be used as grounds for separation from China.

Stirred up and thus assisted by the British, the Tibetan representative raised the slogan of "Tibetan independence" for the first time during the conference, putting forward six strong demands, such as "Tibetan territory includes Qinghai, Litang, Batang and Dajianlu" and "the Regulations on Trade Between India and Tibet, signed in the 17th and 34th years of Emperor Guangxu's reign, be revised by Britain and Tibet, and China should not ask after the matter." When this demands were categorically opposed and rejected by the Chinese representative, the British representative proposed a prearranged "compromise" scheme. According to the scheme, the Tibetan inhabited areas in China would be divided into "outer Tibet" and "inner Tibet." The Chinese government would have to "recognize the autonomy of outer Tibet" and "refrain from interfering in its internal affairs." The essence of this "compromise" scheme was to separate Tibet from the authority of the Chinese government. The British side demanded arbitrarily that the Chinese side give a "yes" or "no" answer in one week and asserted that no change could be made. Naturally this was strongly opposed by the Chinese people. The representative of the Chinese government refused to sign the Simla Convention and issued a statement which read in part, "The Government of China refuses to recognize any agreement which His Majesty's Government and Tibet might conclude independently either now or in the future." Thus, the Simla conference, in which the British government forced the Chinese government to participate, ended in failure. In The Making of Modern Tibet, Grunfeld said: At the very beginning of the Simla conference, people knew very well who was manipulating the conference and for whom it worked. During the six months of negotiations, British and Tibetan officials met secretly to discuss matters concerning trade and the delineation of the border. They didn't invite the Chinese representative, and even kept him in the dark about the secret meetings. The British official managed to legalize the British aim, but was compelled to resort to means which were extremely deceitful.

After this, Britain went into action to stir up "Tibetan independence" by supplying the Tibetan local government with huge quantities of arms and ammunition and even instigated the Tibetan army to attack troops in Sichuan.

Meanwhile, the imperialists left no stone unturned to cultivate pro-imperialist separatist forces among the upper class in Tibet. When Living Buddha Razheng, a man with patriotic ideas, became the reigning regent in Tibet after the death of the 13th Dalai Lama, the British decided to remove this obstacle to "Tibetan independence." They directed pro-British troops to force the resignation of Living Buddha Razheng. Richardson, the British representative in Lhasa, even instigated the pro-British forces to murder Razheng under a fabricated charge in 1947. After the event, the Tibetan local government fell entirely into the hands of the pro-British Dagzhag clique, who,working under the instructions of the imperialists, stood in opposition to the central Chinese government.In 1949, influenced by the Americans and British, the clique engineered a "Hans, go home!" incident.

Recalling this segment of history, the 14th Dalai Lama once said, "The imperialists made use of the Tibetan people's opposition to the Manchurian Qing and the Kuomintang regimes to inveigle and sow dissension in an attempt to separate the Tibetan people from the motherland and put them under their oppression and enslavement." Here lies the essence of the so-called Tibetan independence.

Q: Since the central people's government and the Tibetan local government negotiated and signed the Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet on May 23, 1951, why did an armed rebellion break out in Tibet in the late 1950s?

A: The armed rebellion broke out in Tibet in 1959 with imperialist instigation and support.

In the fall of 1949,just after New China was founded, Lowell Thomas, "a mobile American weaponry promoter who disguised himself as a radio commentator, "visited Tibet. Upon departing from Lhasa, he said the United States should give Tibet military aid and help train guerrillas. Grunfeld reported in The Making of Modern Tibet that after Thomas left, a former US strategic intelligence agency official named Leonard Clark went mountain climbing in Amdo; but one scholar said he was actually probing into the possibilities of carrying out anti-Communist activities in the area. About the same time, American diplomatic personnel met with Xagabba and Surkang, two members of the Tibetan upper ruling class then in New Delhi. During the first half of 1950, a load of American weaponry was shipped into Tibet through Calcutta. In November of the same year, US Secretary of State Dean Acheson openly slandered China's liberation of its own territory of Tibet as an "invasion." The New York Times urged United Nations "intervention" in Tibet, and the United States prodded other countries to propose a motion at the United Nations for intervention in China's Tibet.

According to materials available, in early 1956 Goinbo Zhaxi,a leader of the Tibetan separatists, managed to get in touch with the CIA. In 1957 the CIA culled six young men from among Tibetans residing in India and sent them to Guam, a US protectorate, to receive special training. Subsequently, the United States trained 170 "Kamba guerrillas" in batches in Hale Camp, Colorado. The trained "Kamba guerrillas" were air-dropped or sneaked into Tibet. Before long, the United States air-dropped and clandestinely shipped large amounts of arms and ammunition overland to the rebels in Tibet. In The Making of Modern Tibet, Grunfeld wrote that during the few months prior to March 1959,Washington officials were already busy plotting the event. This was the international scenario behind the 1959 armed rebellion. The imperialist forces plotted the "Tibetan independence" rebellion with a view to turning Tibet into a base for subverting the People's Republic of China, an effort which was included in the Cold War plan of the West headed by the United States. The armed rebellion was put down in a few days with the support of the broad masses of the patriotic monks and lay people. Thus the myth about "Tibetan independence" exploded.

Q: The slogan "Tibetan independence" was not heard in the 1970s in the international community. Why has it surfaced once again?

A: This has much to do with the change in the international situation. In the 1970s the United States, confronted with what was then the Soviet Union, changed its time-honored stance of hostility toward China. With the relaxation of Sino-American relations, the two countries established diplomatic ties. The United States and some other countries in the West gradually stopped offering political and military support to the Tibetan separatist clique and reduced their open anti-China propaganda concerning the Tibetan issue. In December 1977 the US State Department even refused the Dalai Lama's demand for visa. Such a Sino-American relationship landed the Dalai separatist clique, which lived on foreign anti-China forces, in a predicament. The boisterous international clamor for "Tibetan independence" died down.

The international situation shifted once again in the late 1980s. Because of political motivations, some people in the international community again hoisted the "Tibetan independence" flag.

On June 18, 1987, a so-called amendment on China's encroachment of human rights in Tibet was adopted by the US House of Representatives. In defiance of international law and the fact that Tibet is part of Chinese territory, a fact well acknowledged internationally and even at one time by the US government, they harped on the old tune of Chinese "military occupation and violent rule" and intentionally told the lie that the Chinese government encroached upon "human rights" in Tibet.

On September 21, 1987, the Human Rights Subcommittee of the US House of Representatives invited the Dalai Lama to give a speech in the American Congress.Six days later, separatists who had entered China through various ways staged riots in Lhasa,the most serious in the last few decades.

In 1988 the Dalai Lama, invited by certain members of the European Parliament, held a press conference in the European Parliament Building. There he put forth the "Strasbourg proposal" for the "solution of the Tibetan issue." In doing so he was engaging in "Tibetan independence" in a covert way.

In October 1989, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Norway, with clear political motivation, awarded the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize to the Dalai Lama,giving its strong support to the Tibetan separatists in their activities to split the motherland and sabotage national unity.

Some Western countries offered the Dalai Lama platforms and the means to communicate his efforts to split the motherland.The US Congress even allocated special funds for the creation of a Tibetan language program to be aired on Voice of America,spreading rumors and agitating the people.

All these have given the separatist clique a shot in the arm. And an uproar for "Tibetan independence" has thus been created. This, however, is a mere political farce staged by the anti-China forces in the West, and it will come to no good end.

(This article appears on page 19, No. 2, 1993)