Tibet lucky to have China

Tibet lucky to have China

I would like to comment on the article titled 'Shameless' pact
backs China's Tibet stance by Bill Smith which appeared in The
Jakarta Post on May 19, 2001. Mr. Bill Smith seems to have
forgotten three other shameless pacts signed by Great Britain,
all of which explicitly acknowledged Chinese suzerainty in Tibet.

The 1904 Lhasa Treaty or the Anglo-Tibetan Convention was
imposed by Colonel Younghusband after his invasion of Tibet, to
exact financial indemnity, trade concessions and the division of
Tibet and Sikkim. Even so, Chinese suzerainty in Tibet was
recognized and the Chinese Amban was present at the signing,
though China did not recognize the treaty.

The 1906 Anglo-Chinese Convention in Beijing was signed to
reverse the right of Britain and Tibet to conduct direct
negotiations as they had done in Lhasa, indicating that in the
future the Chinese government would have to be involved in all
matters concerning the administration or territory of Tibet.

The 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention in St. Petersburg agreed
that neither Britain nor Russia should conduct negotiations over
Tibet except through the Chinese government, and that neither
should attempt to send resident representatives to Lhasa.

As far back as 1790, British Gurkha forces had already tried
to invade Tibet but were repulsed by Chinese troops in Shigatse.
As the Qing dynasty was in a state of decline, more outside
forces harbored political designs on Tibet for its total
liberation from the repressive theocracy based on serfdom.

Prior to this, and after the downfall of the Qing dynasty,
Tibet continued to be administered under the ministry of
Mongolian and Tibetan affairs, which was renamed in 1928 the
Mongolian and Tibetan affairs commission.

The world seems to have forgotten too that Sikkim was once
part of Tibet. The so-called 1959 uprising was in fact a failed
CIA secret operation code-named St. Circus, as was reported in
Newsweek on April 19, 1999. The allegation that Chinese soldiers
and police have in the last 50 years caused the death of 1.2
million Tibetans out of the now 2.6 million population of Tibet
is the most outrageous unfounded speculation.

As a matter of fact, the damage from the disastrous Cultural
Revolution was not confined to Tibet only, but to China as a
whole. Tibetan religion and culture are not dead, and in fact
there are more followers of Tibetan Buddhism in the whole of
China than in the Tibetan province. The YongHe Gong Lamasery in
Beijing has stood tall and firm for almost three centuries and is
well preserved and receives many visitors.

The US$2.4 billion rail project to link Lhasa to the national
rail network is possibly the highest per capita spending for any
single infrastructure project on earth.

It is ironic and hypocritical that those people who claim to
be sympathetic to the people of Tibet denounce or even oppose
this project, which will certainly help improve the overall
economic well-being of the Tibetan people. Perhaps what these
people want to see in Tibet, and what they mean by real
Tibetan culture, is what they call the timeless picture of a
nomadic Tibetan family living in Yak tents on the grasslands,
with the man riding a horse tending his cattle, with his
illiterate uneducated children, the woman cooking with sheep fat,
without any electricity, running water or plumbing.

SIA KA-MOU

Jakarta