Free In Exile From the Land of Snows by John Avedon

Tibetan—
man-tze
, meaning “barbarian”—all confounded popular expectation. The precedent for such largess, however, had been set a year before in Kham. Tibetan soldiers captured in the wake of the invasion had been called “brothers” by their counterparts, given packets of food and money and then released, Chinese cameras filming their relieved expressions as evidence of the people’s joy on being “liberated.” One Khampa warrior summed up the general reaction by observing, “They are strange people, these Chinese. I cut off eight of their heads with my sword and they just let me go.” Stranger still was the content of propaganda pamphlets. The claim that China wished to help Tibet modernize made some sense, but that of “uniting to drive out imperialist forces”—there having been only six Westerners in Tibet prior to the invasion, all of whom had nowleft—was incomprehensible. Being “welcomed back” to the “big family of the motherland” amounted to a blatant non sequitur. “In the beginning,” commented Takster Rinpoché, who found a new home in America, “they put their words like honey on a knife. But we could see, if you lick the honey your tongue will be cut.”
    Within nine months of occupation, the first crisis occurred. True to its name, the People’s Liberation Army lived off the land, taking from the civilian population whatever it required. On their arrival in Lhasa, the Chinese had demanded a “loan” of two thousand tons of barley from the Tibetan government. When a second order for an additional two thousand tons was issued, the back of the capital’s delicate economy broke. The price of grain spiraled to a tenfold increase, that of meat, vegetables and household goods close behind. For the first time in history famine hung over Lhasa and with it the people revolted. Songs and posters denouncing the Chinese filled the streets, public meetings were held and Tibet’s first major resistance group, called the Mimang Tsongdu or People’s Assembly, formed to dispatch a six-point petition to both the Tibetan government and the Chinese military command demanding the PLA’s withdrawal.
    The Chinese reacted swiftly. They insisted that the Tibetan Army be integrated into the PLA without delay. When Lukhwanga, the Dalai Lama’s outspoken lay Prime Minister, defied them, his resignation was called for as well as the imprisonment of five of the Mimang Tsongdu’s leaders. To forestall further confrontation, the Dalai Lama accepted the resignations of both his lay and religious Prime Ministers in the spring of 1952, determining henceforth that he would deal directly with the Chinese generals.
    Tenzin Gyatso now viewed himself as the sole buffer between his people and China’s armies. Recognizing that a future impasse in relations would severely jeopardize Tibet’s remaining freedom, he resolved to pursue a strict course of nonviolent resistance. Though politically expedient, the approach was ultimately rooted in the Dalai Lama’s religious conviction, shared by the entire clergy. As Kyhongla Rato Rinpoché, a lama of Drepung Monastery, explained: “We could not hate the Chinese because it was their own ignorance that motivated them to harm us. A true practitioner of religion considers his enemy to be his greatest friend, because only he can help you develop patience and compassion.” “Basically everyone exists in the very nature of suffering,” the Dalai Lama later wrote of his decision, “so to abuse or mistreat each other is futile.”
    Tibet’s compliance, however, was far less than what China hoped for. By the end of 1953, Peking determined that its attempt to create a puppet government, through which it could both control the country and muteinternational condemnation of its invasion, had failed. Accordingly, the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party decided to supersede the Seventeen-Point Agreement by intervening directly in the administration of Tibet. The Dalai Lama