From: lix@yangtze.bu.edu (Xiaowen Li)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.china
Subject: Forward for Mr. Anonymous \(em More about Sikkim
Date: 30 Sep 92 21:00:26 GMT
Organization: Boston University

The following article is forwarded upon the request of Mr. Anonymous.


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In article <BvB98q.JCw@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> richter@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca
(C. Richter) wrote:
>
>The Indian army is *not* in Bhutan.  The kingdom you are thinking of
>is Sikkim.  I think Sikkim was annexed by the British, not the Indians  \(em
>though I stand to be corrected here.
>
>Tibet, on the other hand, was taken over by force.  This, it seems
>to me, is tantamount to "behaving like a total bully."

He also wrote (in article <BvAxp9.AI2@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>):

>In article <1a7bg0INN4ml@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> txt15@po.CWRU.Edu (Tao Tao)
 writes:
>>
>>If Tibet does become an independent country, who will guarantee its soverenty?
>>I guess it will end up being annexed by India, the chief rival of China in
>>that region.
>
>Why should that be the case?  Nepal and Bhutan are sovereign states?

	It is evident that Mr. Richter's expertise has not extended
	all the way to the history and geography of the Himalayas.
	Let's give him some help.

	1.  China has owned Tibet at least since the Yuan dynasty
	    (1279-1368), long before Chris Columbus and his fellow
	    "discoverers" started to destroy the Indian communities
	    in Central, South, and North America.

	2.  Tibet was universally recognized as part of China even
	    during the years of the decline and fall of the Qing dynasty,
	    namely 1840-1911.  British and Russian documents always
	    agreed on this point.  If Tibet were not part of China,
	    it would have been idiotic for either Russia or Britain to
	    pretend otherwise.  It would have been much easier to
	    simply declare Tibet unclaimed property and then grab it.

	3.  During the year 1911-1933, when China was badly beset by
	    civil wars and Japanese aggression, Tibetans who supported
	    Thupten Gyatso, a.k.a the Dalai Lama XIII, tried to assert
	    independence from China.  No foreign state accepted their
	    claims.  Standard maps published in Britain and the U.S.
	    continued to show Tibet as part of China.

	4.  Whenever China grows stronger, you will hear more noises
	    from the West about how Tibetans deserve independence,
	    why Tibet should not be part of China, how Tibetans
	    are superior to the "Chinese" (and therefore not Chinese),
	    etc.  It happens with predictable precision. Strange
	    but true.  It happened during the years of KMT ascendancy.
	    It happened during the consolidation and growth of CCP
	    power on the Mainland.  It kind of makes you wonder.

	5.  Sikkim was annexed by India and received the wonderful
	    title of "the youngest (or smallest) State in the Union
	    of India".  It used to have a king, married to an
	    American socialite.  If you don't believe what you read
            here, check the back issues of National Geographic.  One
	    of the least discussed consequences of the American defeat
	    in Vietnam is India's takeover of Sikkim.

	6.  Sikkim was part of Tibet.  That's why it has a traditional
	    Chinese name: Zhe-Meng-Xiong.  The British persuaded its
	    rulers to leave the Chinese realm.  The result had been
	    disastrous for the people of that place.  A unmistakably
	    Sino-Tibetan community has since been destroyed and its
	    remnants are now under the sway of Hindus there, who were
	    originally bussed in as paperless immigrants.

	7.  Nepal was time and again saved from the same fate only
	    because a couple of CCP armies had marched into Tibet during
	    1950-51 and have stayed there ever since.  They may not have
	    been liberators or saviors of the Tibetans, but they certainly
            provide the only effective deterrent against India ambitions
	    in Nepal.

	8.  Bhutan is an independent Sino-Tibetan country.  Its King
	    and people are quite unsympathetic to the Tibetans who
	    support the present Dalai Lama XIV. The full story of
            Bhutan and its people's resistance to Indian encroachment
            and the "Tibetan Refugees" who tried to kill their King
	    and take over the country deserves a Ph.D. thesis.

	9.  In sum, like it or not, Bhutan and Nepal have maintained
            their sovereignty only because China has asserted and
   	    enforced its claims to the north of their borders.  If
	    the followers of the Dalai Lama should ever succeed in
	    detaching Tibet from China, both Bhutan and Nepal, in
	    rapid succession and followed closely by a supposedly
	    independent new state named Tibet, would be incorporated
            into the Union of India. Tibetan would then become a dying
	    language and Buddhism would suffer a far worse fate than it
	    may have suffered so far in Tibet.  Why so?  Please ask
            the Buddhist majority of Sri Lanka.

	10. No attempt has been made here to discuss whether Tibet
	    should or should not go independent. It is really beyond
            the scope of this note.   Nor does it even begin to
	    address the question of the consequences China as a
	    nation might suffer in that event.  Its modest aim is
	    simply to point out the very obvious.  Learned readers
	    should decide for themselves whether it would be desirable
	    for any country or place to stay out of the Union of India.

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