Journalist and author Thomas Laird, in his book The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama, writes that Wang and Nyima present the government viewpoint of the People's Republic of China in their Historical Status of China's Tibet, and fail to realize that China was "absorbed into a larger, non-Chinese political unit" during the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which Wang and Nyima paint as a characteristic Chinese dynasty succeeded by the Ming