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