From: zhimin@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Zhimin Wen)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Re: Sources on Tibet
Date: 31 Aug 92 04:21:15 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Aug30.233749.9478@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> mlibucha@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark A Libucha) writes:

>This is the last time I will respond to one of your postings. In fact, I
......
(deleted)

>I do not support Tibetan Independence and I am not with U.S. intelligence.
>I'm an average U.S. citizen with an interest in China, and an admittedly
>skeptical eye on any information which has been filtered by the CCP
>propaganda machine. However, I try to keep an open mind, and that's why
>I made my original request.

Well, you certainly made a reasonable request. 
Too bad you missed all those great Tibetan debates/flames on s.c.c a year 
or so ago, when both sides presented tons of so-called "sources" :-)

For "information filtered by the CCP propaganda machine":-), I really
don't think CCP has any particular different views on Tibet from their 
predecessors: KMT and the early republican government. It would be more proper 
to call that the Han Chinese side of views. This basically is: Tibet has 
been part of China ever since the Yuan dynasty.  See the book
"Tibet, Today and Yesterday", by Li, Tieh-tseng, for such typical Chinese
views and tons of historical facts supporting the claims. Note this author 
has nothing to do with CCP and was a KMT diplomat before becoming a historian 
in some US university.

As for the other side of the coin, the so-called Tibetan views, i.e., 
views and informations from the Tibetan Government in exile(TGI) and the
Tibetan Information Network in London, there are a whole pile of them.
The usual "standard facts" as reported by western midia(TV,
newspapers,etc.) on Tibet are more or less taken directly from the following
sources(by no means exhaustive), as those media people typically know
nothing about Tibet, or China for that matter. The most famous one would
be of course the book by "His Holyness" himself:  
 "Freedom in exile : the autobiography of the Dalai Lama"
Others include: "In exile from the land of snows", by  John Avedon, and 
"Seven years in Tibet", by Heinrich Harrer, etc.. Avedon is the spokeman of 
Dalai in New York, and Harrer was the former Austrian Nazi who escaped the 
prisoner camp of WWII in British India and then became the English Tutor of 
His Holyness in Tibet. In the view of Tom Grunfeld(see below), the views of 
these two are more or less that of Dalai himself.

What about the so-called fair and objective sources on Tibet? That is really
hard to find. Someone keeps claiming Melvyn Goldstein is a fair observer,
but I think he is certainly pro-TGI in some sense though not a mindless
Laimaist propagandist. IMO he is at best a biased historian. 
His book, "A history of modern Tibet, 1913-1951", contains a lot of facts
that contradict many of the claims by TGI, although it  only covers the period
of 1913-1950.  The most objective book I come around(again IMO) is the book
by Tom Grunfeld, " The making of modern Tibet". This book, although bief,
covers the whole history of Tibet, including what the CIA did in the height
of Cold war regarding Tibet. 

My own view on Tibet is that although it maight not be relevant to go back 
as far as Yuan dynasty, but in Qing dynasty, the Qing court certainly had 
authority/control over Tibet. The Ambans(Qing officials in Tibet) even had
the authority to decide the new Dalais in case of ambiguity. When the Panchen 
Lama made the trip to Beijing, it was only after Emperor Qianlong issued 
decree of excusing him of Kowtowing(that is, granting him the same right 
as key ministers)that he stoped doing that in the diection of Beijing. That is
hardly a relationship of "patron and preist" as claimed by the Lamaist
propaganda.  It was true that Tibet was out of the domain of the central
government following the the fall of Qing dynasty in 1911 untill 1950,
but that was true for many other parts of China and there was hardly any
effective central government at all for the most of time. ANd the 17-points
agreement between the central and Tibetan local government(headed by Dalai)
in 1951 settled all the remaining dusts concerning the ambiguous status and 
legality of Tibet.

What about improving the human right, etc., and  autonomy, I am all for that
and I think not many 
people would object that. However as long as the TGI keeps popping out 
outragous claims such as genicide, xxx millions of Tibetans killed, or more 
recently, as put out by a self-claimed "half Han brother", that PLA force 
the nuns and monks having sex in public, etc. etc..., The TGI will gain little
sympathy from ordinary Chinese except some idiots like the D-fighter Shen T***,
and more recently(and more regrettably) Prof. Fang.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china