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Ancient Tibetan works

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Tibetan literature includes religious texts, works of history, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, fiction and poetry. Much of it is connected with Buddhism. After the establishment of new China, especially in late 1978, when the Central Government introduced the reform and opening-up program, Tibetan literature achieved much and Chinese literary works equally developed. Literary writing and criticism made simultaneous progress, and poetry, the novel, prose, drama, movies as well as quyi (Chinese folk art forms including ballad singing, story telling, comic dialogues, clapper talk, cross talk) bloomed at the same time.

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Tibetan is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. The written language is based on Classical Tibetan and is highly conservative. How can a language be conservative you think? Well a language is conservative if it has fewer innovations and remains close to its parent language. There are schools where Standard Tibetan is taught through the 6th grade to children who speak Chinese and their local Tibetan dialect. There are schools in which instruction is entirely in Tibetan and where Chinese is taught as a second language. As we can tell, Tibetan is highly embraced in China and that is because of the large population residing there.

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Mao Zedong Visiting the Yongshou Temple by Dhondub Tsheten

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The reason why this artwork is so controversial is because it includes a major event from modern Chinese history. This image depicts the leaders of the Red Army during the Long March, such as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, meeting with local religious figures from what are now Tibetan autonomous prefectures in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. The Long March was a series of military retreats undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China to evade the pursuit of the Chinese Nationalist Party army.  This artwork is called a thangka which is is an ancient art form involving scroll paintings on silk or cotton depicting Tibetan Buddhist imagery, local folk legends and local architecture. By combining such a rich feature of Tibetan culture and religion with Chinese history, a history that opressed thousands of Tibetans, it seems to many as sacrilege.

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Immediately following the Battle of Chamdo in October 1950, during the period between November 1950 and April 1951, the leaders of the new People's Republic of China (PRC) had two priorities in regard to Tibet. The first was to persuade the Tibetan government to send delegates to Beijing as soon as possible in order to start “negotiations,” and the second was to prevent the Dalai Lama from fleeing Tibet. The 17-Point Agreement was an agreement affirming Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, and was signed by Tibetan representatives on May 23, 1951 in Beijing, China. As we can see in the image above, there was controversy by the people signing this because they saw it as a trap. If leaders agreed to this, then Tibet would no longer be independent but under China’s rule. China would then go on to eliminate every aspect of their culture to make Tibetans assimilate.

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Destruction during the cultural revolutions

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In Tibet, many people’s lives are dedicated to Tibetan Buddhism. Religious customs are part of everyday life, from chanting mantras and walking the ‘kora’ around a temple or sacred site. China wishes to control and limit Tibetan Buddhism in order to weaken Tibetan identity and strengthen its control over its people. Monks and nuns face restrictions on their practice and China’s military put on shows of force at religious events. Access to pilgrimage sites is restricted and many sacred lakes and mountains have been closed off. Religion is one of the most distinctive and important aspects of Tibet’s unique culture. For the Chinese government, however, religion in Tibet is a political and security issue. Destroying monasteries, monks and nuns and controlling how Tibetans practice their religion is central to its plans to eliminate Tibetan resistance to its rule. China’s control and suppression of Tibetan religious life is based on much more than violence. All aspects of Tibetan Buddhism are subject to state control and China has even claimed the right to appoint the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama. During the 1960s Cultural Revolution, thousands of monasteries and cultural sites were destroyed, sacred books were burned, and thousands of monks and nuns were imprisoned, tortured or killed.

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Section 6: The Organs of Self-Government of Ethnic Autonomous Areas

Article 112: The organs of self-government of ethnic autonomous areas are the people’s congresses and people’s governments of autonomous regions, autonomous prefectures, and autonomous counties.

Article 113: In the people’s congress of an autonomous region, autonomous prefecture or autonomous county, in addition to delegates of the ethnicity or ethnicities exercising regional autonomy, the other ethnicities inhabiting the administrative area shall also have appropriate representation. Among the chairperson and vice chairpersons of the standing committee of the people’s congress of an autonomous region, autonomous prefecture, or autonomous county, there shall be one or more citizens of the ethnicity or ethnicities exercising regional autonomy.

From Constitution of People's Republic of China

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In order to protect the equal and autonomous rights of ethnic minorities, the Chinese Government gave the exercise of the power of self-government in areas of ethnic minorities that lived in compact communities. To start with, autonomous  means having the right or power of self-government. Compact communities are communities consisting of many ethnic groups. This meant that the people of ethnic minorities are their own masters exercising the right of self-government to administer local as well as internal affairs of their own ethnic groups. The Tibet Autonomous Region is one of the five autonomous areas in China where it is exercised. Regional ethnic autonomy was first implemented in 1965 and Tibetans have actively participated in administration of the state and local affairs and allowed Tibetan society to develop greatly.

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When China talks about 'Tibet', they are referring only to the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), an administrative region created in 1965. Tibetans mostly live in the Tibet Autonomous Region instead of their historical locations due to being "excised". For Tibetan people, the term “Tibet” refers to all of the lands on the vast Tibetan Plateau and it covers about a third of the landmass of what the Chinese government today calls China. Shortly after the Chinese occupation of Tibet in the 1950’s, China carved up Tibet into a number of pieces. This is the region that the Chinese government most tightly restricts, and for which you need a permit to enter. The rest of the Tibetan Plateau was carved up and included in the neighboring Chinese regions of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan. Today, those Tibetan regions are mostly labeled by the Chinese as Tibet Autonomous Prefectures. As you can see from the map, many rivers enter the TAR which provides it with trade routes, fresh water, and goods such as fish.

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Tibetan History with China and Background

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Tibetan History with China and Background

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Tibetan History with China and Background (audio)

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Tibetan History with China and Background (audio)

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Tibetans may be one of China’s most popular ethnic groups as its population in China ranges from 5 million to 7 million. Tibetans reside in China as well as neighboring  provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan. Although the population is quite large, the control of Tibet was anything but peaceful. Starting from the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century, China and Tibet were brought into a complex relationship; as Tibet came under the control of the Mongol Empire, historians claim that it marked the incorporation of Tibet into China, though others point out that both Tibet and China had been added to the Mongol Empire as separate entities. For many centuries, there was uncertainty to the relationship between Tibet and China. There was the continuous presence of the Chinese in Tibetan political affairs although Chinese intervention was infrequent over the next two centuries. By the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the Chinese Civil War of the 1920s and 1930s and the Second World War gave Tibetans the opportunity to reassert their independence. However, soon afterwards in 1950, the People’s Liberation Army crushed the Tibetan army in Chamdo, and in 1951 a Seventeen-Point Agreement, an agreement affirming Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, was signed by Tibetan representatives. During the Great Leap Forward period, anywhere between 200,000 and 1 million Tibetans may have died. A full-scale uprising occurred in Lhasa on 10 March 1959, with almost 300,000 people gathering outside the Potala Palace. Two days later, thousands of Tibetan women again demonstrated outside of Potala Palace, which has become known as Women’s Uprising Day. During the 1960s Cultural Revolution, thousands of monasteries and cultural sites were destroyed, sacred books were burned, and thousands of monks and nuns were imprisoned, tortured or killed.