China in all its glory

[Chewillneverdie]

History is always in the making. Especially so when it concerns the troubled country of Tibet where events unfold like the pages of a book on aggression, marginalisation and violence. Consider this: 1999 -- Tashi Tsering attempted to raise the Tibetan National Flag at the Potala on the 50th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party and was tortured to death, 1995 -- Gendun Choekyi Nyima, the boy identified by HH the Dalai Lama as the 11th Panchen Lama, was arrested and the Chinese installed their own candidate, 1950 -- Despite protests by Britain, US and India, 40,000 Chinese troops overwhelmed the small number of Tibetan troops in Eastern Tibet.

These and many more occasions will now make for a display of photographs from November 29 to December 1 at the Yashwantrao Chavan Art Gallery, organised by Friends of Tibet. Hemant Patil, who, along with the five-member Pune-based support team that backs the morale of around 40 Tibetan students in Pune, wants to raise the awareness level to a new high. "Our current campaign is against dumping of Chinese goods in Asian markets because Tibetan prisoners are used to produce these cheap goods. We are protesting against counterfeit medicine which claimed 1,92,000 people," adds Patil.

im boycotting made in china stuff now. THIS IS WHY I SUPPORT A REVOLUTION IN TIBET
oh and heres the site
http://www.friendsoftibet.org/

[Fidelbrand]

So, in the same token, u do support Taiwan's independence from China? (as China is desperate to unite Taiwan in forming a bigger and more powerful nation)

Tibet has long been part of China since the pre-histotical era. Tibet's democratic reform and strive for independence is something that should be adored, but for a conservative country like China, their actions are too radical. Also, China is immensely concerned of it territorial boundaries. They see the Tibetian movement as an act against the CCP.

As for Taiwan, the KMT was defeated by the CCP and they all moved to Taiwan and set up their own nation. China has never recgonised their national presence, China has been addressing Taiwan as "Taiwan province" all the way through. In my opinion, they needa talk more. Taiwan stresses itself as a democractic and capitalist country, and detests China's communist nature. But, in my opinion, Taiwanese are just all Chinese who has moved to a new place. Nothing is to be blamed if China wants to take it back, but i oppose any military actions to be used.

P.S. If Hong Kong, China, Taiwan successfully unites into a nation, U.$ would be in deep shit (economical power threatened, political influence lowered, etc) that is why U.$ always oppose China's action of trying to unite Taiwan.

[Chewillneverdie]

i dont support anything the chinese have done recently, if they wanna be their own country, let them be. Fidelbrand do you support the executions of the Tibetan people? They rank higher than any other country do they not? Once they kill 'em by a bullet to the back of the head, they make sure and chop them up really nice so the organs can be sold lol. Fucking disgusting

[Bolshevika]

I'm not a fan of the Chinese government at all, but to be fair Tibet is rightfully theirs. As is Hong Kong and Taiwan and I believe Mongolia too (not too sure).

The Dalai lama is a superstitious figure that deserves no attention except for banishment (I don't support his execution because he is non violent) If the Tibetans really wanted independence and go back to religious feudalism they would've done it by now, thing is there are many Maoists in Tibet who don't want this.

And if you live in America I think you're going to have a hard time boycotting Chinese products. Practically everything sold here in the USA is made in China, from toys to clothing.

It's silly to think you can do anything about the situation in Tibet, the Chinese government has support of all the major western governments.

[Chewillneverdie]

Fuck China, there, i said it and its out in the open. Im buddhist, oh yeah the Dalai Lama has sure harmed so many people. Im buddhist, its the reason im leftist, it calms me and gives me an understanding of people, and life in general. Most of the Buddhist in Tibet are non-violent, and tell me with a tiny army, can they defend for long against China? It would result in even more suffering for the Tibetan people. If the US will ever do anything right, it will be to confront China, they never do and i doubt they never will, but i would like to see it happen (not in war, but politically, China would have alot to lose if the US boycotted them)

[Chewillneverdie]

Bolsh, all i can do is try, in the end,at least I can say i tried to help, no matter if i make a dent or not

[Bolshevika]

Why would the U.S. boycott China? They have no reason to.

Another thing, don't you think Tibet, before China took it back, was a little backwards?

What is the difference between the Dalai Lama and the Pope?

[Fidelbrand]

Chewillneverdie,

The killing of Tibetian people is an evil act. I agree with you on this.
But as for chopping them up and selling their organs, ..... I know a Tibetian burial culture - where the dead man is chopped up into pieces and is put on the rural area for the hwaks to eat .. they believe that this is the way to get rid of the earthly body so the dead man can go straight to heaven.

Bolshevika,

Hong Kong is an inalienable part of China. China was defeated in the civil wars in 1890s and Hong Kong was handed to the British, agreements was signed then that Hong Kong will be returned to China at the year 1997.

China made agreements with the British in the " Joint Declaration" and they draft the "Basic Law" together to regulate the future operations of Hong Kong. Hong Kong people has differed opinions towards China, but they are trying hard to strive for more democracy given the fact that they know Hong Kong is absolutely China's territory.

[Chewillneverdie]

Buddhist monks that are tortured for their beliefs do not believe in heaven by the way. Dalai Lama has never really harmed anyone, you never hear of a Buddhist burning a cross or bombing a church. The Dalai Lama promotes happiness and peace, even in times of unrest. Oh and unlike the Pope he teaches happiness instead of murmering stuff. Bolsh how were they backwards?

[Yazman]

China can go to hell. I'm sick of all this crap about China. It's just another backward cappie nation that needs fixing.

[Saint-Just]

The Dalai lama is a superstitious figure that deserves no attention except for banishment (I don't support his execution because he is non violent)

He does support violent actions, he may not fight himself, but he will and has sent money. Also, there was recently a post on Che-Lives about his support for the Iraq war. I don't care much about what China wants now though.

[Bolshevika]

The Dalai Lama supported the Iraq war!? Oh well, than I would have no problem in having the bastard killed.

I'm on China's side here.

[ComradeRobertRiley]

There are bigger worries than that of China. U$A needs destroying first.

[Hawker]

You guys Hong Kong is a part of China now,the U.K. gave it back to China in 1997.

I think that Tibet and China need to be a seperate country again,I know that no country will ever give up land that's been conquered easily,but they could turn Tibet into a commonwealth,it's giving the country independence yet at the same time still pretty much under your rule.

[giant24us]

LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA!

[New Tolerance]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2003, 10:39 PM
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA!
:lol: YEH, down with the seperatists! :lol:

(jk)

[MiDnIgHtMaRaUdEr]

Well, most of the Chinese people are against (hopefully) the capitalization of China's economy. I think perhaps they are forgetting what the revolution was all about. They have potential, an economic collapse ought to "refresh their memory", and I am confident they would remove their capitalistic policies. I would only support revolution in Tibet if it were strictly Marxist. It doesn't do the Tibetian people any good to remove one bourgoise power for another one. Besides, how are the Tibetians any different from the rest of the Chinese? I think perhaps a few Buddists here some overly romantic ideas about Tibet...

[New Tolerance]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2003, 11:58 PM
Well, most of the Chinese people are against (hopefully) the capitalization of China's economy. I think perhaps they are forgetting what the revolution was all about. They have potential, an economic collapse ought to "refresh their memory", and I am confident they would remove their capitalistic policies. I would only support revolution in Tibet if it were strictly Marxist. It doesn't do the Tibetian people any good to remove one bourgoise power for another one. Besides, how are the Tibetians any different from the rest of the Chinese? I think perhaps a few Buddists here some overly romantic ideas about Tibet...
A collaspe might be on the way:

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaySt...tory_id=2216039 (http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2216039)

Remember, I said "might be".

[LuZhiming]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2003, 04:39 PM
The Dalai Lama supported the Iraq war!? Oh well, than I would have no problem in having the bastard killed.
He didn't support the war. He considered both the war in Afghanistan and Iraq irrational and innapropriate. For example, in this video: http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/dem...6.rm&proto=rtsp (http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/dalai_256.rm&proto=rtsp) He constantly brings up how the main thing the U.S. and bin Laden should do is: "talk." He also mentions that bin Laden has a lot of reason to complain. He does not support the war.


And on the question of what's the difference between the Pope and the Dalai Lama, my opinion is this: The Pope really is useless, nothing but a reciter of the Bible. The Dalai Lama however, does make real points, and does say meaningful things.

[Chewillneverdie]

id fight a war in Tibet, it wouldnt be marxist, IM SORRY I DONT SUPPORT SLAVERY YOU ASS'S. The Chinese use Tibetan people, to make cheap chinese fall apart products. Giant, why do you support China? Of course some of this has to do with my religion but im also against executions for no reason. THESE PEOPLE ARE BEING TORTURED AND KILLED FOR THEIR BELIEFS, im sorry if you think thats okay, and i feel sorry for you if you do

[Jesus Christ]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2003, 12:28 AM
id fight a war in Tibet, it wouldnt be marxist, IM SORRY I DONT SUPPORT SLAVERY YOU ASS'S. The Chinese use Tibetan people, to make cheap chinese fall apart products. Giant, why do you support China? Of course some of this has to do with my religion but im also against executions for no reason. THESE PEOPLE ARE BEING TORTURED AND KILLED FOR THEIR BELIEFS, im sorry if you think thats okay, and i feel sorry for you if you do
ill second that

[Chewillneverdie]

AND I THIRD! oh wait i firsted lol, sigh i love how people trash the US for killing 10,000 but turn a blind eye to the communist nations, dont worry i dont support the US, but i dont support a country just cus its communist

[revolutionindia]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2003, 11:09 AM

Tibet has long been part of China since the pre-histotical era. Tibet's democratic reform and strive for independence is something that should be adored, but for a conservative country like China, their actions are too radical. Also, China is immensely concerned of it territorial boundaries.


Dude get your history straight! :angry:
Tibet is distinct and different from china .
Tibetians are peace loving people and way to gentle to wage a revolution
or fight for their country
The chinese have systematically destroyed the local culture and economy
There is enormous suffering in the country.
China has no right to occupy tibet.

Somebody shold kick china hard in the ass.
If che was alive he would be with tibetians

[Bolshevika]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2003, 04:49 AM
AND I THIRD! oh wait i firsted lol, sigh i love how people trash the US for killing 10,000 but turn a blind eye to the communist nations, dont worry i dont support the US, but i dont support a country just cus its communist
China isn't and never was communist.

[Chewillneverdie]

either way, i want to see china fall, lol in my eyes China is worse than the US, way worse. mebbe cus im buddhist, and maybe because there is no reason in slaughtering these people, all they want is to go back to a peaceful life. Notice that those coming back from years of torture, just go back to the way they were before. No fighting, or suicide bombing. Bolsh, you against the buddhists in tibet?

[LuZhiming]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2003, 05:49 AM
I'm not a fan of the Chinese government at all, but to be fair Tibet is rightfully theirs. As is Hong Kong and Taiwan and I believe Mongolia too (not too sure).
I don't agree. The Chinese didn't ever have Tibet until as late as 1720. And on the case of Mongolia, it has more of a right over China than the opposite. (Not that I think they should own China.) China didn't conquer Mongolia until the 17th century, and China was once conquered by the Mongols a long time before that. Do you also believe China has the right to own Vietnam?


Also, to Chewillneverdie, the persecution of Buddhists isn't that common in China anymore. There is however, a large amount of persecution against Muslims.

[Bolshevika]

I am certainly against the Dalai Lama, I am a Marxist Leninist, and I support Chairman Mao's actions towards Tibet and oppose religion 100%.

And revolutionindia, I strongly suggest informing yourself better on Che. He had extremely strong ties with Mao Tse Tung and despised religion with a passion.

[martingale]

Here's an article on the history of Tibet that you rarely see in the West. The article was written in 1997:

It was no Shangri-La
Hollywood hides Tibet's true history
By Gary Wilson

With two major Hollywood movies about Tibet this year, the Tibetan region of China is being put in an unusual spotlight.

The Tibetan people are just one of the many national minorities in China. Yet most people in the United States have heard only of the Tibetans.

In China, there are 56 national minorities. Most of the population is Han.

Tibetans are the eighth biggest nationality. In terms of numbers, Tibetans are about 4 million—or .39 percent of China’s population.

There are other nationalities in Tibet itself, besides the Tibetans: Moinbas, Lopas, Naxis, Huis, Dengs and Xiaerbas.

But only the Tibetans are stars in Hollywood. No, that’s not it. Common Tibetans aren’t the stars of Hollywood films. The focus is almost exclusively on a very small group of Tibetans—the former elite of Tibet and the person the media sometimes call the "god-king," the Dalai Lama.

Hollywood’s fictional accounts are presented as based on historical fact. That’s like saying the movie "Gone with the Wind" shows what the South was like during slavery, when really it is only a glorification of the slave masters and completely ignores life for African Americans.

The Tibet movies are very much like "Gone with the Wind." They present the view of a defeated oligarchy, and ignore the reality of those who are oppressed.

The movie "Seven Years in Tibet" not only glorifies feudal Tibet and its aristocrats; it also makes a hero of a Nazi storm trooper—Heinrich Harrer.

So what is the history of Tibet? And why is it getting so much attention now?

For 700 years a part of China

In the 13th century, Genghis Khan and the Mongolians unified China and founded the Yuan Dynasty. This included Tibet. For the next 700 years, Tibet was an administrative region in China.

The Tibetan Autonomous Region of China today includes Tibet as it was defined in 1911 at the fall of the Chinese empire, plus an area called Chamdo. During the last days of the empire, Chamdo had been part of a province called Sikang.

Today’s Tibet includes the territory of "U," where the Dalai Lama directly ruled, and the territory of Tsang, where the Panchen Lama ruled.

When the promoters of a "Greater Tibet" refer to Tibet, much more is included. They include large parts of adjacent provinces: Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Quinghai. This includes the oil-rich Tsaidam Basin.

Today, about 1.8 million Tibetans live in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. There are another 2.1 million Tibetans in the neighboring four provinces.

While a greater part of the Tibetan population lives outside Tibet in these neighboring provinces, this does not make these other areas part of Tibet any more than the big Irish population in Boston makes Boston part of Ireland. There has been a centuries-long migration of Tibetans into these areas, where the Tibetans remain a minority population. Hans have also been migrating to these neighboring provinces.

However, when the promoters of "Greater Tibet" talk of Hans "penetrating Tibetan lands," they are really talking about these non-Tibetan provinces and a migration process that has occurred over centuries.

The central government was weak after the fall of the Chinese empire, and had little or no influence on domestic affairs in Tibet. But Tibet was still considered part of China.

"No nation has ever publicly accepted Tibet as an independent state," writes A. Tom Grunfeld in the history book "The Making of Modern Tibet."

Britain invades in 1903

At the turn of the century, in 1903, Britain decided that Tibet should come under its influence along with India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and China. At that time, Britain sent an invading force into Tibet.

Earlier British government expeditions had reported that Tibet was rich with natural resources and even said that "masses of gold were lying around in the rivers." They may have believed they had found another empire like the Incan empire in what is now Peru, where Spanish conquistadors stole a wealth of gold.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, in July 1903 Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, authorized Col. Francis Younghusband and a military escort to cross the Tibetan border to negotiate a trade treaty.

"When efforts to begin negotiations failed," the encyclopedia reports, "the British, under the command of Maj. Gen. James Macdonald, invaded the country and slaughtered some 600 Tibetans at Guru. Younghusband moved on to Chiang-tzu (Gyantze), where his second attempt to begin trade negotiations also failed. He then marched into Lhasa, the capital, with British troops and forced the conclusion of a trade treaty with the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s ruler. This action brought him a knighthood in 1904."

British journalist Alan Winnington writes in his book "Tibet" that the treaty "made Tibet as far as possible a British sphere of influence."

Even then, Britain recognized Chinese "sovereignty" in Tibet—and sent a bill for 750,000 pounds to the central Chinese government for the expenses incurred in the invasion.

Tibet then became an area of intrigue and a pawn in the competition between the imperialist powers, particularly Britain, czarist Russia and Germany. The 13th Dalai Lama, the one preceding the current Dalai Lama, worked closely with the British. And until the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, the Tibetan aristocracy looked to Britain and India, even sending their children to British schools in India.

According to Winnington, "When [the 13th Dalai Lama] died in 1933, Tibet was more and more becoming a British sphere."

This is part of the reason Nazi Germany sent an expedition to Tibet in the 1930s. Its defeat in World War I had stripped Germany of its colonies. The rise of the Nazi regime was driven in part by the big German capitalists’ need to expand and gain new colonies, new "spheres of influence."

Reality vs. romanticized
view of Tibet

Reports by the British and German imperialists, primarily, have created the popular image of Tibet in the West.

Books like "Lost Horizon" by James Hilton and "Seven Years in Tibet" by Heinrich Harrer promoted a romanticized view of Tibet.

Harrer’s book is the basis for the Hollywood movie starring Brad Pitt. Leaving aside for a moment the issue of Harrer’s role, what was Tibet like in the 1940s when the story takes place?

Because of its extreme isolation high up in the Himalayas, Tibet might have looked exotic to an outsider. Tibet was a region with no roads, only horse trails. The wheel was unknown. It was practically untouched by industrialization.

But Tibet was not that much different from the rest of the world. It just hadn’t caught up to the 20th century.

"The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking," writes Grunfeld in "The Making of Modern Tibet."

In the 1940s, Tibet was a feudal theocracy with a dual papacy—the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. By all accounts, the Dalai Lama was considered supreme in political matters.

Below the Dalai Lama were the aristocratic lords—owners of the estates, most descended from the ancient kings of Tibet before the Mongol invasion. "Despite claims to the contrary, heredity and ennoblement were the only avenues for joining the nobility," Grunfeld writes.

"As in all agricultural societies, the source of power and wealth was not titles but land. Land was divided among three ruling groups: the monasteries, the lay nobility and the Lhasa government," Grunfeld says.

The Dalai Lama himself was never from a ruling family, for that would have given an individual family domination. Rarely did the Dalai Lama ever reach adulthood, with fierce disputes often leading to murder of the young ruler.

The aides to the Dalai Lama really ruled the local government. The 13th Dalai Lama was one of the few to have survived into adulthood.

The vast majority of the people of Tibet were serfs. A small part of the population, about 5 percent, was slaves to the nobility.

Women were considered inferior to men. Polyandry—where one woman was the wife of several brothers—and polygamy were common.

As in every agricultural society, religion played a big role in Tibet.

Tibetan Buddhism is a distinct branch that incorporates ancient pre-Buddhist beliefs. This makes it unique in many ways.

But the ruling oligarchy controlled religion and the interpretation of its meaning. Tibetan Buddhism was used as a means of repressing the serfs.

Much is made of the Tibetan Buddhist prohibition against killing any life form, including animals or insects. But the death penalty was imposed under Tibetan law for killing a monk.

According to Gorkar Mebon, the mayor of Lhasa in the 1950s, when the death sentence was administered "it was in the form that made no person responsible for the death: by hurling the person from a precipice or sewing him in a yak skin and throwing him in a river. Lighter sentences were of amputation of a hand, both hands, a leg or both legs, the stumps being sterilized with boiling butter." ("Tibet," Winnington)

The whip was also a common form of punishment, Mebon says. "If a person had 300 strokes of it properly applied he would almost certainly die afterwards." In this way it could be said that the government, in accordance with religious law, had directly killed no one.

After the overthrow of Tibetan feudalism, in 1959 the serfs opened an exhibition of the torture instruments used against them. The exhibition was presented as a show on the "abuse of religion" and the execution of "evil deeds under cloak of religion."

Heinrich Harrer’s hidden role

During the rule of the 14th Dalai Lama in the 1940s, Tibet was again a center of intrigue. The German Nazis hoped to expand into Asia, particularly into India, Nepal and Tibet, leaving the penetration of China to their ally, imperialist Japan.

This is how Heinrich Harrer ended up in Tibet. His book on Tibet is really a fictionalized account of his adventures.

Who Harrer is and what his role was is of interest not just because of the movie. Harrer by all accounts was a teacher of the Dalai Lama and has remained a close adviser ever since.

"It came as a bombshell five months ago when the German magazine Stern reported that, as early as 1933, Harrer had been a Nazi, a member of the ruthless SA [storm troopers] and, later, the SS [elite protective guard]," according to a report in the October 1997 issue of the magazine Men’s Journal.

Harrer had always denied he had been a Nazi. When he could no longer deny it, it was said that he had been a Nazi but he had only joined in order to further his career as a mountain climber. This claim did not hold up, since his 1933 entry would not have helped his career in Austria, where he lived. The Nazi Party was illegal in Austria and had to operate underground.

The Men’s Journal story is written by someone who had seen Harrer as a hero and reluctantly came to the conclusion, after extensive research, that Harrer was a "150-percent Nazi" and had to have been involved in some of the most brutal crimes in Austria in the 1930s. Harrer had first been recruited by Heinrich Himmler, the second most powerful person in the Third Reich.

Harrer was part of the Dalai Lama’s inner circle at the time of the Chinese Revolution in 1949. At that time the Dalai Lama was a teenager who, by his own account, knew nothing of the outside world. He was completely dependent on his advisers.

China’s liberation in 1949

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army did not go into Tibet in 1949.

The Chinese Communist Party was committed to insuring the rights of all national minorities. In fact, a Communist constitution was put forth in 1931 to show the principles that would be the basis for a socialist China.

That constitution said that "all Mongolians, Tibetans, Miao, Yao, Koreans and others living in the territory of China shall enjoy the full rights to self-determination."

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army did not enter Tibet because its ranks had few Tibetans. The policy was to first win the Tibetan population to the Communist Party and its ideals. Then political power could be won from within Tibet.

But the Chinese Communist Party was not given a chance to carry out such a slow policy. Tibet immediately became the target of not only the British imperialists but the United States imperialists as well.

There were many reasons for the interest in Tibet. One State Department expert even suggested that in the age of rocket warfare, Tibet was the ideal center for controlling all of Asia.

George Merrell, the top officer at the U.S. Embassy in India, wrote, "Tibet is in a position of inestimable strategic importance both ideologically and geographically." ("The Making of Modern Tibet," Grunfeld)

But Tibet was the focus of so much attention primarily because of the Communist revolution in China. The United States had launched a fierce war to "take back" China. At the time of the Chinese Revolution, the Tibetan oligarchy was in a panic. They sent out appeals to Britain, the United States and India for military aid.

U.S. forces in Korea march
toward China

There were reports that Washington was preparing to recognize Tibet as a sovereign state. In June 1950, U.S. forces landed at Inchon in Korea and were driving up the peninsula. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was threatening to cross the Yalu River and carry the war into China.

President Harry Truman had ordered the Navy’s Seventh Fleet to encircle Taiwan and protect Chiang Kai-shek’s "jumping-off ground" for an attack against China. There was talk that French-controlled Vietnam would also be used as a base in a many-pronged invasion aimed at reversing the Chinese Revolution.

The Kwangming Daily, a Chinese newspaper, reported, "America and Britain have been making energetic efforts to keep their control of Tibet so that it may be used as a continental base for the invasion of China."

The People’s Liberation Army advanced into the Chamdo area, which was not part of Tibet at that time. In Chamdo, the PLA was confronted by the Tibetan Army, sent there by the Dalai Lama. Its commander-in-chief was Ngapo Ngawang Jigme, a descendant of Tibetan kings and a top Tibetan noble.

It was not much of a battle. Many of the Tibetan Army soldiers—serfs forced into service by the nobility—went over to the side of the PLA. The battle was quickly over.

Ngapo Ngawang Jigme expected death as the normal outcome of defeat. The PLA surprised him by treating him well and giving him long lectures on the New China’s policies toward minor nationalities, such as Tibetans. He liked what he heard.

Within a year, Ngapo Ngawang Jigme was the deputy commander-in-chief for the PLA forces in Tibet. He became a leader not only of Tibet but also the Chinese Communist Party. His account of the battle and his conversion can be found in Anna Louise Strong’s book "Tibetan Interviews."

The Communist government in China did not enter Tibet in the way an imperialist power would. No immediate changes were introduced in Tibet. Serfdom remained and would not be outlawed until 1959.

The Chinese policy was to win over the population to end serfdom.

There had been no change in the local government. The Buddhist church continued to operate as it had before. Freedom of religion was guaranteed. Reforms in Tibet were not compulsory.

Tibet was changed forever

But Tibet was changed forever.

Schools were built. Newspapers were introduced. Telephones and a postal service were begun.

Hospitals and movie theaters were built. And for the first time, highways to the outside world were built.

When the Tibetan oligarchy says the Chinese government did not respect Tibetan customs in the 1950s, this is what they are referring to.

The Chinese did violate local customs. Wages were paid to Tibetans who worked building the roads. This disrupted the custom of servitude. Paying Tibetan children to attend school also gave the serfs economic leverage against the age-old work practices as well as providing avenues for rising out of serfdom.

Some of the old aristocracy of Tibet were like Ngapo Ngawang Jigme and saw that serfdom had to be ended, but others resisted change. These are the Tibetan nobility who turned to the United States and the CIA.

In 1955 or possibly earlier—the date varies according to different sources—the CIA began to build a counter-revolutionary army in Tibet. The Dalai Lama’s older brother, Gyalo Thondup, coordinated this operation from a base in India.

Contrary to the popular image of nonviolence that has been built up around the Dalai Lama and his supporters, this CIA mercenary force was armed and murderous. It included contra-style death squads.

The Tibetan mercenaries were trained at Camp Hale in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. They were then parachuted into Tibet by the CIA’s Civil Air Transport. According to the Pentagon Papers, there were at least 700 of these flights in the 1950s; these same Air Force C-130s were later used for CIA operations in the Vietnam War. The mercenaries were dropped in with submachine guns and ammunition, according to a detailed report in the Jan. 25, 1997, Chicago Tribune.

More details of this operation are given in "Presidents’ Secret Wars—CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II," by John Prados. Also, "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence," by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, has some information on the CIA in Tibet.

After several years of isolated attacks and assassinations, this CIA-trained squad attacked a PLA barracks in Lhasa. This is commonly portrayed in the U.S. media as a popular uprising. But a secret U.S. State Department study called this a "wild exaggeration." ("The Making of Modern Tibet," Grunfeld)

The "rebellion" was confined almost exclusively to Lhasa, the Dalai Lama’s headquarters. Residents of Tibet’s second biggest city didn’t even hear of the events until a month later.

The mercenary army apparently kidnapped the Dalai Lama at that time and took him to India. They needed the Dalai Lama to give legitimacy to the Tibetan aristocrats’ claim to be the Tibetan "government in exile."

Some contend that since the mercenary army’s leadership was in the hands of four of the Dalai Lama’s six top aides, he had been at the center of planning the armed attack.

Whatever the truth about that, the CIA and the U.S. government has remained the main force keeping alive the so-called government in exile. That is true to this day. According to ex-CIA employee Ralph McGehee, who has written many exposés of the agency, the CIA has stepped up its Tibetan contra operations in recent years, working closely with the Dalai Lama’s brother.

An internal matter

The issue of Tibetan self-determination is an internal affair for China and no one outside. The right of self-determination depends on the conditions of the time when it is raised and the international situation, which can be of enormous significance.

China is a state with a considerable number of nationalities. And if there is one aspect where the People’s Republic of China stands out for its progressive character, it is its policy with respect to national minorities.

Tibet has been a part of China for centuries. It is not a province that was purchased, like the United States did with Alaska. It is not a conquered territory a thousand miles away like Hawaii.

The kind of self-determination proposed by the "Tibetan government in exile" and the Dalai Lama would be a neocolony of imperialism and a dagger aimed at the heart of China.

There are unlimited possibilities for self-determination within the framework of the multinational state of China, or any other relationship that is mutually worked out between the Chinese government and the Tibetans in the spirit of socialist solidarity. But it is a problem that is exclusively theirs to work out.

- END -

Copyright © 1997 workers.org

[Chewillneverdie]

martin you do realize that Tibetans are enslaved now to build cheap products? and Bolsh, fuck you and your views on religion, whats wrong with Buddhism? Oh and the people of Tibet have REALLY benifited from China. lol

[Bolshevika]

and Bolsh, fuck you and your views on religion, whats wrong with Buddhism?

It is another form of superstition. Superstition is the enemy, our goal is to destroy all class antagonisms.

Why should we encourage people to live lies, rather than reality?

We see the wrong superstition does, to women and children especially. Why should we keep these feudal ideas? To allow the ruling class to regain power?

[Chewillneverdie]

tell me two fucking things you know about my religion before you start spouting off stupid filth. Buddhism teaches you to live life as you yourself see it fit. Yeah thats really telling you to listen to the ruling class ya ass. So do you think its okay that people are persecuted because of their beliefs? I dont see what makes you any differant than a tyranical government. Bolsh i am yet to see you make an even remotely reasonable arguement for yourself

[martingale]

I don't trust the propaganda coming out of the so-called "free Tibet movement". This "free Tibet movement" has from its very beginning been a pawn of US imperialism, going back to the 1950's when the Dalai Lama and his small clique of feudal aristocratic advisers were paid CIA agents. Their goal has always been to reverse the revolutionary changes that has occured in Tibet, especially the Communist-initialted land reform that redistributed their land to the serfs. Of course, the US has much bigger fish to fry. It has surrounded China with military bases from Korea to Kyrgyzstan. In reality, "Tibet independence" would mean that Tibet would become a client state of the U.S., a launching pad for the US military, an imperialist arrow aimed at the heart of China. Here's more background information on the Dalai Lama - CIA connection:


The Dalai Lama and the CIA
Revolutionary Worker #765, July 17, 1994

Shortly after the 1949 victory of Maoist forces against the U.S.-backed dictator Chiang Kai-shek, the revolution came to Tibet. The ruling class of Tibet--a feudal class of aristocrats and monks--alternated wildly between passivity and resistance.

Starting in 1957, sections of their class participated in a series of armed anti-communist actions--attempting to stop the deepening revolutionary changes in Tibet. Lamaist propagandists, including the Dalai Lama himself, portray these actions as a noble, home-grown resistance to foreign domination.

The truth is this: from its beginning within Tibet in the 1950s to the armed feudalist uprising of 1959, to the armed exile-based guerrilla movement of the 1960s--this "struggle" was organized, financed, trained, armed, led, and finally dispersed by the CIA.

In the old days, the Dalai Lama was a figurehead of an oppressive feudal order. In exile, he became the figurehead of a Tibetan CIA-backed, anticommunist armed movement headed by his brother, Gyalo Thondup--similar to so many "contra" (counterrevolutionary) armies the CIA has created to wage covert wars.


"Many of the arms were brought in from abroad. The rebels' base south of the Tsangpo river on a number of occasions received airdropped supplies from the Chiang Kai-shek bands and radio stations were set up by agents sent by the imperialists and the Chiang Kai-shek bands for their intrigues."

The revolutionary news agency Xinhua, March 1959

"Nobody, either in committed or uncommitted countries, would be taken in by the communist allegation that... the rebellion was supported by `imperialists, the Chiang Kai-shek bands and foreign reactionaries.' "

The Economist 1959

"There is nothing at all coming in from the outside."

Thubten Norbu, the Dalai Lama's
brother, interviewed in
U.S. News and World Report, 1959

In the early 1950s, the U.S. invaded Korea and threatened to invade revolutionary China itself. Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked day and night to gather reactionary forces into its spy networks and to develop covert teams that could wage secret war against the new people's power in China.

In April 1949 U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson cabled his Ambassador in New Delhi that the U.S. rulers would like to see "Tibetan military capacity [to] resist quietly strengthened." Tibet historian A. Tom Grunfeld writes: "In the summer of 1950 instructions were given to the Office of Policy Coordination, the bureaucratic arm officially in charge of covert operations, to `initiate psychological warfare and paramilitary operations against the Chinese Communist regime.' "

Top feudal forces around the Dalai Lama offered themselves as eager agents--first to the reactionary Kuomintang (KMT) forces led by Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan and soon to the U.S. directly. The Dalai Lama's two older brothers, the "incarnated lama" Thubten Jigme Norbu and Gyalo Thondup, emerged as key Tibetan CIA agents.

Grunfeld writes, "George Patterson...was intimately involved as a translator and go-between in these negotiations. He reported that in 1953 Thubten Norbu contacted the CIA and was told to take his case to the KMT (from whom he was already receiving covert aid). Patterson also recalled an encounter two years later between Ragpa Pangdatsang and representatives from the Indian and American governments. At this time the United States was supposed to have suggested a ten-year plan of revolt, the aim of which was the eventual overthrow of China's control in Tibet.... John F. Avedon, whose recent book can be considered the `official' version of the Dalai Lama view of history, contends that Gyalo Thondup made an agreement with the CIA as early as 1951. It was initially an intelligence-gathering arrangement upgraded to guerrilla warfare in 1956. Within a short space of time the United States had eclipsed the KMT as the rebel's prime source of military aid." Grunfeld adds that in opening these arrangements with the U.S. imperialists, Thubten Norbu carried "a letter authorizing him to negotiate on behalf of the Dalai Lama." In 1958, the CIA started using air bases in Bangkok, Thailand to airdrop guns and ammunition into the ethnic-Tibetan regions of Kham.

Grunfeld writes: "It was Gyalo Thondup who arranged the first CIA training missions, picking six Tibetans for that purpose." A secret CIA training camp was soon set up for Tibetan agents at Camp Hale, high in the Colorado Rockies.


Tibetan Plots--Made in the USA
The CIA intrigues encouraged an armed uprising in March 1959, as feudal forces tried to expel the revolutionary army from Tibet. Grunfeld writes: "Despite cries of innocence on the part of the Dalai Lama, officials in Washington were planning for the events months before that fateful March in 1959."

In March 1959, the feudal Tibetan forces were quickly defeated. The Dalai Lama was whisked into exile in India by a covert CIA operation. Grunfeld documents that CIA-trained agents in the Dalai Lama's caravan laid out special airdrop targets in the snow to guide a U.S. military C130 aircraft that had been specially modified to fly in the thin Tibetan air. Halfway to India, a radio operator joined the Dalai Lama's group so the whole operation could be directly monitored from the CIA station in Dacca, East Pakistan.

The CIA immediately set up a Tibetan contra force among the exiles. Ten Tibetan contra camps were set up in the tiny principality of Mustang on the Nepal-China border. The CIA had three more C130s modified for high altitude airdrops. Grunfeld writes: "This major recruiting effort yielded 14,000 Tibetans and some additional tribal people in the field, `entirely dependent on long-range transport and infiltration,' and `armed, equipped and fed by the Agency [CIA].' "

In 1961 the Dalai Lama said: "the only weapons that the [lamaist] rebels possess are those they've managed to capture from the Chinese." Some reports say the Dalai Lama personally picked the contra field commander in Mustang.


India's War Threats
At this time, the Indian government was preparing a border war with revolutionary China, and their direct involvement in the Tibetan contra army picked up. At a secret Indian base in Orissa, U.S. agents, Indian officials and Tibetan contras met weekly to coordinate their activities. The first Tibetan contra raid into China was staged in late 1961, just before war broke out between India and China. Grunfeld documents a CIA study from this period with detailed information on how Tibet's unique weather might affect the use of aerial, chemical and biological warfare.

Meanwhile, the top Tibetan clergy rented tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees to the Indian government to build military roads in northern India for the coming war against the Chinese revolution (see the accompanying article for a description of these forced labor camps). When war broke out between India and revolutionary China in 1962, India's forces were quickly defeated by the People's Liberation Army.

While the Tibetan exiles were helping India attack China, powerful revolutionary forces inside India were taking inspiration from the Maoist revolution. Internationalist Indian revolutionaries took the side of China. Soon, revolutionary communists led by Charu Mazumdar formed a new Maoist vanguard party in India and in 1967 started a great armed struggle among the peasants of Naxalbari--in the same Darjeeling district where so many Tibetan feudals had entered India.


Raids and Spying from the Tibetan Contra Bases
The Tibetan contra border raids continued through the '60s. The CIA money that Gyalo Thondup received for these operations increased. The CIA hoped these Tibetan contras could maintain networks of agents, conduct sabotage, and generally harass the revolutionary forces.

But, overall, this whole Tibetan contra operation was a failure. As the revolution deepened in Tibet, the border was more and more successfully sealed. Revolutionary militias of the People's Communes--made up of former Tibetan serfs--joined the People's Liberation Army in hunting down and killing these hated feudal saboteurs and spies. Meanwhile, the people in Nepal increasingly demanded that these armed camps be removed.

In the last known raid in 1969, a Tibetan contra raiding party was completely wiped out by revolutionary forces. By the early 1970s, the U.S. ruling class was tied down in Vietnam and was preparing to open relations with the People's Republic of China. A corrupt, ineffectual, armed Tibetan contra movement no longer suited U.S. imperialist plans. The CIA simply cut the Tibetan contras loose.

This was a pattern of use-and-discard familiar to reactionaries among the Kurds of Iran, the Hmong hill tribesmen of Indochina, the Misquito Indians of eastern Nicaragua, and the Islamic fundamentalist forces who fought in Afghanistan.

In 1975 the Dalai Lama ordered the remnants of the contra forces in Nepal to lay down their arms. The Tibetan feudals were militarily and politically defeated inside Tibet. When CIA funding dried up, the Tibetan contras simply had no basis for continuing their guerrilla war from exile.


*****
For documentation and more detail on the CIA involvement with the Dalai Lama's contra movement, see A. Tom Grunfeld's book The Making of Modern Tibet.

[Bolshevika]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2004, 08:53 AM
tell me two fucking things you know about my religion before you start spouting off stupid filth. Buddhism teaches you to live life as you yourself see it fit. Yeah thats really telling you to listen to the ruling class ya ass. So do you think its okay that people are persecuted because of their beliefs? I dont see what makes you any differant than a tyranical government. Bolsh i am yet to see you make an even remotely reasonable arguement for yourself
Personally, I don't give two shits about Buddhism. What I do care about is a government based on Buddhist and aristocratic principles, that belong's in the 1500's rather than the 20th and 21st century. The Buddhist oppressors kept the Tibetan peasantry down with their ideological filth, they are oppressors. The Buddhists in Tibet have worked with the Americans, that is helping the imperialists. So frankly, I have no sympathy for them at all. Why should I have sympathy for feudalists?

They can practice their religion all they want, at home. However, in public keep it to yourself, because religions play no positive impact on society. I doubt you are a real buddhist, you are probably some American teenager who saw it on MTV and said "Hey dude, that looks cool", so just forget about it.

[YKTMX]

It is the duty of socialists to support self determination and democracy wherever possible, especially when the people of a particular culture are being oppressed by an Imperialist nation like China. Their is a lot of double standards here, tell me, would peoples attitude be the same if it was the USA interfering in the affairs of the Tibetan people?

[YKTMX]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31 2003, 06:08 AM
I am certainly against the Dalai Lama, I am a Marxist Leninist, and I support Chairman Mao's actions towards Tibet and oppose religion 100%.

And revolutionindia, I strongly suggest informing yourself better on Che. He had extremely strong ties with Mao Tse Tung and despised religion with a passion.
Buddhism isn't even a religion, it's more of a philiosophy, like Marxism.

[Hiero]

No matter you say tibet was better before the invasion even though it wasnt perfect and feudilistic theocracy and tibet buddhism can be really cruel and foolish and the site www.friendsoftibet.org admit that. Most tibetenese arent maoist most a reffuges, maybe the chinese that are flooded in there are maoist. Commmunism never came to tibet, there workers are forced and have no right. Face facts Tibet under chinese rule is inhumane not communist adn this is mostly the same through china.

[Bolshevika]

Originally posted by [email protected] 2 2004, 06:44 PM
It is the duty of socialists to support self determination and democracy wherever possible, especially when the people of a particular culture are being oppressed by an Imperialist nation like China. Their is a lot of double standards here, tell me, would peoples attitude be the same if it was the USA interfering in the affairs of the Tibetan people?
China may be a state capitalist nation, but it is not imperialist.

When have they taken something that wasn't there's?

Of course I would have a problem with the U.S. invading Tibet, because it isn't there's and it's imperialism. Tibet is China's however.

[Chewillneverdie]

whew thank u bolsh i feel so much better! Now it seems okay that they torture their people, execute them and sell their organs,but first working as slaves before they are tortured and executed. wow youve cleared everything up for me! lol ass.

[Sensitive]

Here is a good article about the "dalai lama"....

Bush's 'man of peace'

The New York Times headline on Sept. 18 jumps out: "Dalai Lama says terror may need a violent reply."

The former monarch of Tibet, despite big advance publicity, drew a modest crowd to an event in New York's Central Park. Most who showed up were expecting to hear a message of peace. Perhaps they had heard George W. Bush call him a man of peace. Before the Dalai Lama went to New York he met with Bush at the White House where he was received with honors just one step below those given a head of state. In return, the Dalai Lama has given his blessing to many of Bush's projects.

In an interview just days before the Central Park event, Tenzin Gyatso, the last monarch of Tibet, said he was for nonviolence "whenever possible," but war is justified at times. The particular wars that he thought okay were World War II and the U.S. war on Korea. He thinks the war on Vietnam started out right but ended up badly. Badly for whom, he doesn't say, but the Vietnamese thought it ended well when the U.S. finally withdrew.

Tenzin "Dalai Lama" Gyatso did not clarify what side he thought was right in World War II. He had spent most of that war in the company of a Nazi SS officer, Heinrich Harrer, whose book "My Seven Years in Tibet" is a fictionalized version of their time together in the 1940s.

The Dalai Lama also praised the bombing of Afghanistan by the United States Air Force, calling it a "liberation" of the Afghans. (World Tibet Network News, a support site for the Dalai Lama, has this headline: "Dalai Lama praises U.S. approach to bombing Afghanistan." www.tibet.ca) The Afghans have a very different view of the bombing.

As for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Dalai Lama says it was justified, though he hedged his support. Like Vietnam, it may end up going "badly"; the Iraqis may force the U.S. occupiers to leave.

These views may surprise some who've thought of the Dalai Lama as a pacifist. But Tenzin Gyatso is no pacifist.

As historian A. Tom Grunfeld, author of "The Making of Modern Tibet," says, "The Dalai Lama's description of the Tibet under his serfdom rule as 'Shangri-La' has led to an infatuation with Tibet, which is a fad that will ultimately fade. ... The fascination is not with the real Tibet but a fantasy version. A dose of the real Tibet would leave them deeply disillusioned."

Tenzin Gyatso has many views that would make him quite unpopular if they were more widely known. In "Cuddly Dalai Lama is our fantasy creation," the former director of the so-called Free Tibet Campaign, Patrick French, says, "The Dalai Lama is very different from the genial figure we see in the West." (www.smh.com.au) For example, the Dalai Lama's anti-lesbian/anti-gay views are so extreme his U.S. publisher removed them from the book "Ethics for the New Millennium" for fear they would make the book unsaleable.

French worries that the truth about the Dalai Lama is becoming more widely known and he wants to minimize its impact. The Dalai Lama has been pumped up by the imperialist West to near-god status because he has been useful for their campaign to break Tibet away from China.

Hopefully a dose of the real Dalai Lama will put an end to the illusion that this is someone who is a spokesperson for peace. The real voices for peace will be in the streets of Washington, D.C., on Oct. 25 making it clear that peace means ending the occupation of Iraq and bringing the troops home now, without any qualifications.

Reprinted from the Oct. 2, 2003, issue of Workers World newspaper

http://www.workers.org/ww/2003/edit1002.php

[Hiero]

The new york times has said alot of dumb shit which i have read in dude where my country -michael moore. The dalai lama never said terror may need a violent reply the paper has taken what he has said out of context.Go here http://www.buddhistnews.tv/current/dl-news...fuse-011003.php

[Sensitive]

Originally posted by comrade [email protected] 3 2004, 03:10 AM
The new york times has said alot of dumb shit which i have read in dude where my country -michael moore. The dalai lama never said terror may need a violent reply the paper has taken what he has said out of context.Go here http://www.buddhistnews.tv/current/dl-news...fuse-011003.php
First of all, your link does not work, but I did look at the laughable "Buddhist News Network" website you were trying to link too.

So, we are supposed to believe some spin from a religious "news site" that clearly favors seeing the Dalai Lama's brutal, feudalistic rule return to Tibet? Hah!

If you hippies think that the Dalai Lama is "Wicked cool, man!" - then I guess that is your problem, but don't expect me to believe drivel from that website.

[martingale]

Historian Michael Parenti documents the kind of lives that the vast majority of Tibetans lived in the old feudal order:

http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

Quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shangri-La (for Lords and Lamas)

Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into religious or secular manorial estates worked by serfs. Even a writer like Pradyumna Karan, sympathetic to the old order, admits that "a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches. . . . In addition, individual monks and lamas were able to accumulate great wealth through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending."8 Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries went to the higher-ranking lamas, many of them scions of aristocratic families, while most of the lower clergy were as poor as the peasant class from which they sprang. This class-determined economic inequality within the Tibetan clergy closely parallels that of the Christian clergy in medieval Europe.

Along with the upper clergy, secular leaders did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. He also was a member of the Dalai Lama's lay Cabinet.9 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some of its Western admirers as "a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma."10 In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order and catch runaway serfs.11

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they became bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common practice for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated childhood rape not long after he was taken into the monastery at age nine.12 The monastic estates also conscripted peasant children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.
In Old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the "middle-class" families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery.13

In 1953, the greater part of the rural population---some 700,000 of an estimated total population of 1,250,000---were serfs. Tied to the land, they were allotted only a small parcel to grow their own food. Serfs and other peasants generally went without schooling or medical care. They spent most of their time laboring for the monasteries and individual high-ranking lamas, or for a secular aristocracy that numbered not more than 200 families. In effect, they were owned by their masters who told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. A serf might easily be separated from his family should the owner send him to work in a distant location. Serfs could be sold by their masters, or subjected to torture and death.14

A Tibetan lord would often take his pick of females in the serf population, if we are to believe one 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf: "All pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished." They "were just slaves without rights."15 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture and forcibly bring back those who tried to flee. A 24-year old runaway serf, interviewed by Anna Louise Strong, welcomed the Chinese intervention as a "liberation." During his time as a serf he claims he was not much different from a draft animal, subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold, unable to read or write, and knowing nothing at all. He tells of his attempts to flee:

The first time [the landlord's men] caught me running away, I was very small, and they only cuffed me and cursed me. The second time they beat me up. The third time I was already fifteen and they gave me fifty heavy lashes, with two men sitting on me, one on my head and one on my feet. Blood came then from my nose and mouth. The overseer said: "This is only blood from the nose; maybe you take heavier sticks and bring some blood from the brain." They beat then with heavier sticks and poured alcohol and water with caustic soda on the wounds to make more pain. I passed out for two hours.16

In addition to being under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land---or the monastery's land---without pay, the serfs were obliged to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. "It was an efficient system of economic exploitation that guaranteed to the country's religious and secular elites a permanent and secure labor force to cultivate their land holdings without burdening them either with any direct day-to-day responsibility for the serf's subsistence and without the need to compete for labor in a market context."17

The common people labored under the twin burdens of the corvée (forced unpaid labor on behalf of the lord) and onerous tithes. They were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child, and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a new tree in their yard, for keeping domestic or barnyard animals, for owning a flower pot, or putting a bell on an animal. There were taxes for religious festivals, for singing, dancing, drumming, and bell ringing. People were taxed for being sent to prison and upon being released. Even beggars were taxed. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being placed into slavery for as long as the monastery demanded, sometimes for the rest of their lives.18

The theocracy's religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their foolish and wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as an atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve upon being reborn. The rich and powerful of course treated their good fortune as a reward for--and tangible evidence of-virtue in past and present lives.


Torture and Mutilation in Shanghri-La

In the Dalai Lama's Tibet, torture and mutilation---including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation of arms and legs--were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, runaway serfs, and other "criminals." Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: "When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion."19 Some Western visitors to Old Tibet remarked on the number of amputees to be seen. Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet.20

Some monasteries had their own private prisons, reports Anna Louise Strong. In 1959, she visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, and breaking off hands. For gouging out eyes, there was a special stone cap with two holes in it that was pressed down over the head so that the eyes bulged out through the holes and could be more readily torn out. There were instruments for slicing off kneecaps and heels, or hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disembowling.21

The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master's cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.22

Theocratic despotism had been the rule for generations. An English visitor to Tibet in 1895, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the Tibetan people were under the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's rule as "an engine of oppression" and "a barrier to all human improvement." At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O'Connor, observed that "the great landowners and the priests . . . exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal," while the people are "oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft the world has ever seen." Tibetan rulers, like those of Europe during the Middle Ages, "forged innumerable weapons of servitude, invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition" among the common people.23

In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them, nor do laymen take part in or even attend the monastery services. The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth."24
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Bolshevika]

Man, I'm really glad Mao Tse Tung got rid of those superstitious pricks.

I guess the Tibetans were really better off under feudalism....atleast a few thousand monks were.

If you support the Tibetans monks you might as well support the Taleban.

Chewillneverdie: What kind of 'communist' are you?

[Saint-Just]

Also, the Dalai Lama has donated money to the Supreme Truth Cult of Japan, the group resonsible for the Sarin Gas attack on the Tokyo underground. He is a ruthless religious fanatic. In addition, he supports the American occupation of Iraq. It is a shame that the Chinese let out of the country. They should have imprisoned him and all his type.

Still, the Chinese reeducated most Buddhists. Unfortunately, with the fascist, national-chauvanist clique that now rules China Buddhism is returning.

This is part of an essay by a member who I have not seen many posts from here recently, Severian. He is well into the anti-Stalinist camp, but he knows what he is talking about regarding Tibet:

Free Tibet ?
by Evan Roberts
"The people of Tibet and their nonviolent struggle are crucial for all peoples. The Tibetans will not resort to guns or bombs. It is nonviolence in its purest and most essential form." -website of the Milarepa Fund
"More than 500,000 pounds - 250 tons - of...military gear...were dropped by the CIA to the Tibetan resistance forces from 1957 to 1961." - former CIA agent John Kenneth Knaus, in his book Orphans of the Cold War
"Only deities that are recognized by the [Dalai Lama's] government may be worshipped. Worshipping deities that are not recognized by the government is against the law." -Tibetan exile politician Tashi Angdu
Organizations and individuals throughout the world have called on the US and other governments to pressure the Chinese government to get out of Tibet. And they have promoted the image of pre-1950s Tibet as a land of mystical harmony under the benevolent rule of the god-king known as the Dalai Lama.
There are two problems with this. The smaller problem is the glorification of a bunch of feudal serf-owners and theocrats. The bigger problem is looking to the US government to force China out of Tibet thereby giving cover for Washington's moves towards a military confrontation with China.
The strange affair of Dorje Shugden One peculiar scandal involving the Tibetan government-in-exile headed by the Dalai Lama helps cut through the layers of myth to the underlying reality.
Dorje Shugden is a once-respectable Tibetan Buddhist god. But now the Dalai Lama says anyone who worships him is aiding the Chinese Communist occupiers of Tibet. Those who persist in the worship of Shugden have been driven out of Tibetan exile communities, beaten, their possessions destroyed. Three monks have been killed in this dispute.
Wall posters and newspaper ads egg on the vigilantes. The Tibetan government-in-exile rules that no follower of Shugden may be a government official. The Dalai Lama writes to the abbot of Seramey Monastery, "Should anyone continue to believe in the deity Dorje Shugden, make a list with his name, address, birth place...keep the original and send a copy to us."
Yet somehow Tibet's former feudal elite retain their image as pacifist defenders of religious freedom -- against ‘godless totalitarianism’ of the Chinese Revolution, of course.
History of the confict
1949 - the peasant armies led by the Chinese Communist Party win the civil war. The new government begins consolidating its control over the territory claimed by the former rulers, who have fled to Taiwan.
June 1949 - the Indian government, encouraged by the US and Britain, begins supplying weapons, ammunition, and training to the Tibetan army.
June 1950 - the Korean War begins.
August 1950 - the US government offers to send arms to Tibet.
Fall 1950 - the Chinese army crosses the Yangtze river into the territory ruled by the Dalai Lama. Whether these lands were legally part of China or an independent country has been endlessly debated. In any case the Tibetan people, like any other, have the right to self-determination whether or not they were previously conquered by China's emperors.
The Tibetan army was unable to put up an effective fight due to its out-of-date organization and methods. (Most of its soldiers were peasants doing their corvee. What's corvee, you ask? Here's how the American Heritage Dictionary defines it: "1.Labor exacted by a local authority for little or no pay or instead of taxes and used especially in the maintenance of roads. 2. A day of unpaid work required of a vassal by his feudal lord." It's originally a French word, but a number of authors use it in describing Tibet.)
The Tibetan government had no choice but to agree to Chinese troops entering Tibet. In exchange, Mao's government promised to respect local self-government , and, more importantly, not to touch the property and privileges of the hereditary nobility and the religious hierarchy. In essence, the so-called Communist Party of China promised there would be no social revolution in Tibet.
Both sides stood to gain from keeping this agreement - only the Tibetan peasants were left out. But it was inevitable that both sides would break it. The contradiction between Tibet's social structure and the revolutionary upheaval sweeping China could not be smoothed over.
Social structure
As David Patt - an admirer of the old Tibet - admits in his book A Strange Liberation, "Unquestionably the political power in the country was held by two major groups: a collection of aristocratic families or clans, and the monastic establishment....The aristocracy and the monasteries owned huge estates, usually received as patronage from the central government. Many small peasants owned their own plots, but many also worked the land of the great estates, owned by the monasteries and leading families. A taxation system which demanded payment to the local authority, either in grain or free labor, kept such peasant families bound to their estates and deep in debt."
In general, Asian countries did not go through exactly the same stages of social evolution as Europe did. But the similarity of Patt's description to Europe in the Middle Ages is striking.
Even the arguments used to justify this system only confirm its feudal character:
Even the children of poor families could become monks and hope to climb up through the religious hierarchy. --Yes, just as in medieval Europe the Church was the main route for moving up in the class system. The Dalai Lama began some reforms after 1950. --Yes, just as the French aristocrats gave up some of their privileges, hoping to keep the Revolution from taking them all.
The Tibetan peasants were so religious they were glad to work to support the monasteries. --If they were so glad to support the monasteries, why was it necessary to compel them to work under penalty of law? And pre-1959 Tibetan justice was no pacifist affair. Floggings and whippings were common. Another punishment was gouging out the offenders' eyeballs. The nobility had judicial power over their own peasants. If the peasants were born poor and deprived, it was punishment for their sins in past lives. --I don't intend to debate theology, but this argument could be used to justify any kind of oppression - even the abuses of the Chinese occupation. After all, the Beijing regime could just as easily claim that anyone who suffers at its hands is also being punished by the gods for their own bad karma.

[Comrade Ceausescu]

Fuck China, there, i said it and its out in the open. Im buddhist, oh yeah the Dalai Lama has sure harmed so many people. Im buddhist, its the reason im leftist, it calms me and gives me an understanding of people, and life in general. Most of the Buddhist in Tibet are non-violent, and tell me with a tiny army, can they defend for long against China? It would result in even more suffering for the Tibetan people. If the US will ever do anything right, it will be to confront China, they never do and i doubt they never will, but i would like to see it happen (not in war, but politically, China would have alot to lose if the US boycotted them)

An understanding of people?You just said 'fuck china'.real understanding.you just insulted a quarter of the world.I do not support the Chinese governments actions in tibet since 1977,but I also do not support an independent Tibet.Could you please take che out of your avatar though?it is really bothering me how you totally mis represent this man's principles.http://www.sozialistische-klassiker.org/Pic/Che/mao.jpgplease read this

The True Story of Maoist Revolution in Tibet, Part 1
When the Dalai Lamas Ruled:
Hell on Earth
Revolutionary Worker #944, February 15, 1998
Hard Climate, Heartless Society
Tibet is one of the most remote places in the world. It is centered on a high mountain plateau deep in the heart of Asia. It is cut off from South Asia by the Himalayas, the highest mountains in the world. Countless river gorges and at least six different mountain ranges carve this region into isolated valleys. Before all the changes brought about after the Chinese revolution of 1949, there were no roads in Tibet that wheeled vehicles could travel. All travel was over winding, dangerous mountain trails--by mule, by foot or by yaks which are hairy cow-like mountain animals. Trade, communications and centralized government were almost impossible to maintain.
Most of Tibet is above the tree line. The air is very thin. Most crops and trees won't grow there. It was a struggle to grow food and even find fuel for fires.
At the time of the revolution, the population of Tibet was extremely spread out. About two or three million Tibetans lived in an area half the size of the United States--about 1.5 million square miles. Villages, monasteries and nomad encampments were often separated by many days of difficult travel.
Maoist revolutionaries saw there were "Three Great Lacks" in old Tibet: lack of fuel, lack of communications, and lack of people. The revolutionaries analyzed that these "Three Great Lacks" were not mainly caused by the physical conditions, but by the social system. The Maoists said that the "Three Great Lacks" were caused by the "Three Abundances" in Tibetan society: "Abundant poverty, abundant oppression and abundant fear of the supernatural."
Class Society in Old Tibet
Tibet was a feudal society before the revolutionary changes that started in 1949. There were two main classes: the serfs and the aristocratic serf owners. The people lived like serfs in Europe's "Dark Ages," or like African slaves and sharecroppers of the U.S. South.
Tibetan serfs scratched barley harvest from the hard earth with wooden plows and sickles. Goats, sheep and yaks were raised for milk, butter, cheese and meat. The aristocratic and monastery masters owned the people, the land and most of the animals. They forced the serfs to hand over most grain and demanded all kinds of forced labor (called ulag). Among the serfs, both men and women participated in hard labor, including ulag. The scattered nomadic peoples of Tibet's barren western highlands were also owned by lords and lamas.
The Dalai Lama's older brother Thubten Jigme Norbu claims that in the Lamaist social order, "There is no class system and the mobility from class to class makes any class prejudice impossible." But the whole existence of this religious order was based on a rigid and brutal class system.
Serfs were treated like despised "inferiors"--the way Black people were treated in the Jim Crow South. Serfs could not use the same seats, vocabulary or eating utensils as serf owners. Even touching one of the master's belongings could be punished by whipping. The masters and serfs were so distant from each other that in much of Tibet they spoke different languages.
It was the custom for a serf to kneel on all fours so his master could step on his back to mount a horse. Tibet scholar A. Tom Grunfeld describes how one ruling class girl routinely had servants carry her up and down stairs just because she was lazy. Masters often rode on their serfs' backs across streams.
The only thing worse than a serf in Tibet was a "chattel slave," who had no right to even grow a few crops for themselves. These slaves were often starved, beaten and worked to death. A master could turn a serf into a slave any time he wanted. Children were routinely bought and sold in Tibet's capital, Lhasa. About 5 percent of the Tibetan people were counted as chattel slaves. And at least another 10 percent were poor monks who were really "slaves in robes."
The Lamaist system tried to prevent any escape. Runaway slaves couldn't just set up free farms in the vast empty lands. Former serfs explained to revolutionary writer Anna Louise Strong that before liberation, "You could not live in Tibet without a master. Anyone might pick you up as an outlaw unless you had a legal owner."
Born Female--Proof of Past Sins?
The Dalai Lama writes, "In Tibet there was no special discrimination against women." The Dalai Lama's authorized biographer Robert Hicks argues that Tibetan women were content with their status and "influenced their husbands." But in Tibet, being born a woman was considered a punishment for "impious" (sinful) behavior in a previous life. The word for "woman" in old Tibet, kiemen, meant "inferior birth." Women were told to pray, "May I reject a feminine body and be reborn a male one."
Lamaist superstition associated women with evil and sin. It was said "among ten women you'll find nine devils." Anything women touched was considered tainted--so all kinds of taboos were placed on women. Women were forbidden to handle medicine. Han Suyin reports, "No woman was allowed to touch a lama's belongings, nor could she raise a wall, or 'the wall will fall.'... A widow was a despicable being, already a devil. No woman was allowed to use iron instruments or touch iron. Religion forbade her to lift her eyes above the knee of a man, as serfs and slaves were not allowed to life the eyes upon the face of the nobles or great lamas."
Monks of the major sects of Tibetan Buddhism rejected sexual intimacy (or even contact) with women, as part of their plan to be holy. Before the revolution, no woman had ever set foot in most monasteries or the palaces of the Dalai Lama.
There are reports of women being burned for giving birth to twins and for practicing the pre-Buddhist traditional religion (called Bon). Twins were considered proof that a woman had mated with an evil spirit. The rituals and folk medicine of Bon were considered "witchcraft." Like in other feudal societies, upperclass women were sold into arranged marriages. Custom allowed a husband to cut off the tip of his wife's nose if he discovered she had slept with someone else. The patriarchal practices included polygyny, where a wealthy man could have many wives; and polyandry, where in land-poor noble families one woman was forced to be wife to several brothers.
Among the lower classes, family life was similar to slavery in the U.S. South. (See The Life of a Tibetan Slave.) Serfs could not marry or leave the estate without the master's permission. Masters transferred serfs from one estate to another at will, breaking up serf families forever. Rape of women serfs was common--under the ulag system, a lord could demand "temporary wives."
The Three Masters
The Tibetan people called their rulers "the Three Great Masters" because the ruling class of serf owners was organized into three institutions: the lama monasteries possessed 37 percent of the cultivated land and pasture in old Tibet; the secular aristocracy 25 percent; and the remaining 38 percent was in the hands of the government officials appointed by the Dalai Lama's advisors.
About 2 percent of Tibet's population was in this upper class, and an additional 3 percent were their agents, overseers, stewards, managers of estates and private armies. The ger-ba, a tiny elite of about 200 families, ruled at the top. Han Suyin writes: "Only 626 people held 93 percent of all land and wealth and 70 percent of all the yaks in Tibet. These 626 included 333 heads of monasteries and religious authorities, and 287 lay authorities (including the nobles of the Tibetan army) and six cabinet ministers."
Merchants and handicraftsmen also belonged to a lord. A quarter of the population in the capital city of Lhasa survived by begging from religious pilgrims. There was no modern industry or working class. Even matches and nails had to be imported. Before the revolution, no one in Tibet was ever paid wages for their work.
The heart of this system was exploitation. Serfs worked 16- or 18-hour days to enrich their masters--keeping only about a quarter of the food they raised.
A. Tom Grunfeld writes: "These estates were extremely lucrative. One former aristocrat noted that a 'small' estate would typically consist of a few thousand sheep, a thousand yaks, an undetermined number of nomads and two hundred agricultural serfs. The yearly output would consist of over 36,000 kg (80,000 lbs.) of grain, over 1,800 kg (4,000 lbs.) of wool and almost 500 kg (1,200 lbs.) of butter... A government official had 'unlimited powers of extortion' and could make a fortune from his powers to extract bribes not to imprison and punish people.... There was also the matter of extracting monies from the peasantry beyond the necessary taxes."
The ruling serf owners were parasites. One observer, Sir Charles Bell, described a typical official who spent an hour a day at his official duties. Upper class parties lasted for days of eating, gambling and lying around. The aristocratic lamas also never worked. They spent their days chanting, memorizing religious dogma and doing nothing.
The Monasteries: Strongholds of Feudalism
Defenders of old Tibet portray Lamaist Buddhism as the essence of the culture of the people of Tibet. But it was really nothing more or less than the ideology of a specific oppressive social system. The Lamaist religion itself is exactly as old as feudal class society. The first Tibetan king, Songsten-gampo, established a unified feudal system in Tibet, around 650 A.D. He married princesses from China and Nepal in order to learn from them the practices used outside Tibet to carry out feudalism. These princesses brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet, where it was merged with earlier animist beliefs to create a new religion, Lamaism.
This new religion had to be imposed on the people over the next century and a half by the ruling class, using violence. King Trosong Detsen decreed: "He who shows a finger to a monk shall have his finger cut off; he who speaks ill of the monks and the king's Buddhist policy shall have his lips cut off; he who looks askance at them shall have his eyes put out..."
Between the 1400s and the 1600s, a bloody consolidation of power took place, the abbots of the largest monasteries seized overall power. Because these abbots practiced anti-woman celibacy, their new political system could not operate by hereditary father-to-son succession. So the lamas created a new doctrine for their religion: They announced that they could detect newborn children who were reincarnations of dead ruling lamas. Hundreds of top lamas were declared "Living Buddhas" (Bodhisattvas) who had supposedly ruled others for centuries, switching to new bodies occasionally as old host bodies wore out.
The central symbol of this system, the various men called Dalai Lama, was said to be the early Tibetan nature-god Chenrezig who had simply reappeared in 14 different bodies over the centuries. In fact, only three of the 14 Dalai Lamas actually ruled. Between 1751 and 1950, there was no adult Dalai Lama on the throne in Tibet 77 percent of the time. The most powerful abbots ruled as "regent" advisors who trained, manipulated and even assassinated the child-king Dalai Lamas.
Tibetan monasteries were not holy, compassionate Shangrilas, like in some New Age fantasy. These monasteries were dark fortresses of feudal exploitation--they were armed villages of monks complete with military warehouses and private armies. Pilgrims came to some shrines to pray for a better life. But the main activity of monasteries was robbing the surrounding peasants. The huge idle religious clergy grew little food--feeding them was a big burden on the people.
The largest monasteries housed thousands of monks. Each "parent" monastery created dozens (even hundreds) of small strongholds scattered through the mountain valleys. For example, the huge Drepung monastery housed 7,000 monks and owned 40,000 people on 185 different estates with 300 pastures.
Monasteries also made up countless religious taxes to rob the people--including taxes on haircuts, on windows, on doorsteps, taxes on newborn children or calves, taxes on babies born with double eyelids...and so on. A quarter of Drepung's income came from interest on money lent to the serf-peasantry. The monasteries also demanded that serfs hand over many young boys to serve as child-monks.
The class relations of Tibet were reproduced inside the monasteries: the majority of monks were slaves and servants to the upper abbots and lived half-starved lives of menial labor, prayer chanting and routine beatings. Upper monks could force poor monks to take their religious exams or perform sexual services. (In the most powerful Tibetan sect, such homosexual sex was considered a sign of holy distance from women.) A small percent of the clergy were nuns.
After liberation, Anna Louise Strong asked a young monk, Lobsang Telé, if monastery life followed Buddhist teachings about compassion. The young lama replied that he heard plenty of talk in the scripture halls about kindness to all living creatures, but that he personally had been whipped at least a thousand times. "If any upper class lama refrains from whipping you," he told Strong, "that is already very good. I never saw an upper lama give food to any poor lama who was hungry. They treated the laymen who were believers just as badly or even worse."
These days, the Dalai Lama is "packaged" internationally as a non-materialist holy man. In fact, the Dalai Lama was the biggest serf owner in Tibet. Legally, he owned the whole country and everyone in it. In practice, his family directly controlled 27 manors, 36 pastures, 6,170 field serfs and 102 house slaves.
When he moved from palace to palace, the Dalai Lama rode on a throne chair pulled by dozens of slaves. His troops marched along to "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," a tune learned from their British imperialist trainers. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama's bodyguards, all over six-and-a-half feet tall, with padded shoulders and long whips, beat people out of his path. This ritual is described in the Dalai Lama's autobiography.
The first time he fled to India in 1950, the Dalai Lama's advisors sent several hundred mule-loads of gold and silver bars ahead to secure his comfort in exile. After the second time he fled, in 1959, Peking Review reported that his family left lots of gold and silver behind, plus 20,331 pieces of jewelry and 14,676 pieces of clothing.
Bitter Poverty, Early Death
The people lived with constant cold and hunger. Serfs endlessly gathered scarce wood for their masters. But their own huts were only heated by small cooking fires of yak dung. Before the revolution there was no electricity in Tibet. The darkness was only lit by flickering yak-butter lamps.
Serfs were often sick from malnutrition. The traditional food of the masses is a mush made from tea, yak butter, and a barley flour called tsampa. Serfs rarely tasted meat. One 1940 study of eastern Tibet says that 38 percent of households never got any tea--and drank only wild herbs or "white tea" (boiled water). Seventy-five percent of the households were forced at times to eat grass. Half of the people couldn't afford butter--the main source of protein available.
Meanwhile, a major shrine, the Jokka Kang, burned four tons of yak butter offerings daily. It has been estimated that one-third of all the butter produced in Tibet went up in smoke in nearly 3,000 temples, not counting the small alters in each house.
In old Tibet, nothing was known about basic hygiene, sanitation, or the fact that germs caused disease. For ordinary people, there were no outhouses, sewers or toilets. The lamas taught that disease and death were caused by sinful "impiety." They said that chanting, obedience, paying monks money and swallowing prayer scrolls was the only real protection from disease.
Old Tibet's superstition, feudal practices and low productive forces caused the people to suffer terribly from disease. Most children died before their first year. Even most Dalai Lamas did not make it to 18 years old and died before their coronations. A third of the population had smallpox. A 1925 smallpox epidemic killed 7,000 in Lhasa. It is not known how many died in the countryside. Leprosy, tuberculosis, goiter, tetanus, blindness and ulcers were very common. Feudal sexual customs spread venereal disease, including in the monasteries. Before the revolution, about 90 percent of the population was infected--causing widespread sterility and death. Later, under the leadership of Mao Tsetung, the revolution was able to greatly reduce these illnesses--but it required intense class struggle against the lamas and their religious superstitions. The monks denounced antibiotics and public health campaigns, saying it was a sin to kill lice or even germs! The monks denounced the People's Liberation Army for eliminating the large bands of wild, rabies-infested dogs that terrorized people across Tibet. (Still today, one of the "charges" against the Maoist revolution is that it "killed dogs"!)
The Violence of the Lamas
In old Tibet, the upper classes preached mystical Buddhist nonviolence. But, like all ruling classes in history, they practiced reactionary violence to maintain their rule.
The Lamaist system of government came into being through bloody struggles. The early lamas reportedly assassinated the last Tibetan king, Lang Darma, in the 10th century. Then they fought centuries of civil wars, complete with mutual massacres of whole monasteries. In the 20th century, the 13th Dalai Lama brought in British imperialist trainers to modernize his national army. He even offered some of his troops to help the British fight World War I.
These historical facts alone prove that Lamaist doctrines of "compassion" and "nonviolence" are hypocrisy.
The former ruling class denies there was class struggle in old Tibet. A typical account by Gyaltsen Gyaltag, a representative of the Dalai Lama in Europe, says: "Prior to 1950, the Tibetans never experienced a famine, and social injustices never led to an uprising of the people." It is true that there is little written record of class struggle. The reason is that Lamaism prevented any real histories from being written down. Only disputes over religious dogma were recorded.
But the mountains of Tibet were filled with bandit runaways, and each estate had its armed fighters. This alone is proof that constant struggle--sometimes open, sometimes hidden--defined Tibetan society and its power relations.
Revolutionary historians have documented uprisings among Tibetan serfs in 1908, 1918, 1931, and the 1940s. In one famous uprising, 150 families of serfs of northern Tibet's Thridug county rose up in 1918, led by a woman, Hor Lhamo. They killed the county head, under the slogan: "Down with officials! Abolish all ulag forced labor!"
Daily violence in old Tibet was aimed at the masses of people. Each master punished "his" serfs, and organized armed gangs to enforce his rule. Squads of monks brutalized the people. They were called "Iron Bars" because of the big metal rods they carried to batter people.
It was a crime to "step out of your place"--like hunting fish or wild sheep that the Lamaist declared were "sacred." It was even a crime for a serf to appeal his master's decisions to some other authority. When serfs ran away, the masters' gangs went to hunt them down. Each estate had its own dungeons and torture chambers. Pepper was forced under the eyelids. Spikes were forced under the fingernails. Serfs had their legs connected by short chains and were released to wander hobbled for the rest of their lives.
Grunfeld writes: "Buddhist belief precludes the taking of life, so that whipping a person to the edge of death and then releasing him to die elsewhere allowed Tibetan officials to justify the death as 'an act of God.' Other brutal forms of punishment included the cutting off of hands at the wrists, using red-hot irons to gouge out eyes; hanging by the thumbs; and crippling the offender, sewing him into a bag, and throwing the bag in the river."
As signs of the lamas' power, traditional ceremonies used body parts of people who had died: flutes made out of human thigh bones, bowls made out of skulls, drums made from human skin. After the revolution, a rosary was found in the Dalai Lama's palace made from 108 different skulls. After liberation, serfs widely reported that the lamas engaged in ritual human sacrifice--including burying serf children alive in monastery ground-breaking ceremonies. Former serfs testified that at least 21 people were sacrificed by monks in 1948 in hopes of preventing the victory of the Maoist revolution.
Using Karma to Justify Oppression
The central belief of Lamaism is reincarnation and karma. Each living being is said to be inhabited by an immortal soul that has been born and reborn many times. After each death, a soul is supposedly given a new body.
According to the dogma of karma, each soul gets the life it deserves: Pious behavior leads to good karma--and with that comes a rise in the social status of the next life. Impious (sinful) behavior leads to bad karma and the next life could be as an insect (or a woman).
In reality, there is no such thing as reincarnation. Dead people do not return in new bodies. But in Tibet, the belief in reincarnation had terrible real consequences. People intrigued by Tibetan mysticism need to understand the social function served by these lamaist beliefs inside Tibet: Lamaist Buddhism was created, imposed and perpetuated to carry out the extreme feudal oppression of the people.
Lamaists today tell the story of an ancient Tibetan king who wanted to close the gap between rich and poor. The king asked a religious scholar why his efforts failed. "The sage is said to have explained to him that the gap between rich and poor cannot be closed by force, since the conditions of present life are always the consequences of actions in earlier lives, and therefore the course of things cannot be changed at will."
Grunfield writes: "From a purely secular point of view, this doctrine must be seen as one of the most ingenious and pernicious forms of social control ever devised. To the ordinary Tibetan, the acceptance of this doctrine precluded the possibility of ever changing his or her fate in this life. If one were born a slave, so the doctrine of karma taught, it was not the fault of the slaveholder but rather the slaves themselves for having committed some misdeeds in a previous life. In turn, the slaveholder was simply being rewarded for good deeds in a previous life. For the slave to attempt to break the chains that bound him, or her, would be tantamount to a self-condemnation to a rebirth into a life worse than the one already being suffered. This is certainly not the stuff of which revolutions are made..."
Tibet's feudalist abbot-lamas taught that their top lama was a single divine god-king-being--whose rule and dog-eat-dog system was demanded by the natural workings of the universe. These myths and superstitions teach that there can be no social change, that suffering is justified, and that to end suffering each person must patiently tolerate suffering. This is almost exactly what Europe's medieval Catholic church taught the people, in order to defend a similar feudal system.
Also like in medieval Europe, Tibet's feudalists fought to suppress anything that might undermine their "watertight" system. All observers agree that, before the Maoist revolution, there were no magazines, printed books, or non-religious literature of any kind in Tibet. The only Tibetan language newspaper was published in Kalimpong by a converted Christian Tibetan. The source of news of the outside world was travelers and a couple of dozen shortwave radios that were owned only by members of the ruling class.
The masses created folklore, but the written language was reserved for religious dogma and disputes. The masses of people and probably most monks were kept completely illiterate. Education, outside news and experimentation were considered suspect and evil.
Defenders of Lamaism act like this religion was the essence of the culture (and even the existence) of the Tibetan people. This is not true. Like all things in society and nature, Lamaist Buddhism had a beginning and will have an end. There was culture and ideology in Tibet before Lamaism. Then this feudal culture and religion arose together with feudal exploitation. It was inevitable that Lamaist culture would shatter together with those feudal relations.
In fact, when the Maoist revolution arrived in 1950, this system was already rotting from within. Even the Dalai Lama admits that the population of Tibet was declining. It is estimated there were about 10 million Tibetans 1,000 years ago when Buddhism was first introduced--by the time of the Maoist revolution there were only two or three million left. Maoists estimate that the decline had accelerated: the population had been cut in half during the last 150 years.
The Lamaist system burdened the people with massive exploitation. It enforced the special burden of supporting a huge, parasitic, non-reproducing clergy of about 200,000--that absorbed 20 percent or more of the region's young men. The system suppressed the development of productive forces: preventing the use of iron plows, the mining of coal or fuel, the harvesting of fish or game, and medical/sanitary innovation of any kind. Hunger, the sterility caused by venereal disease, and polyandry kept the birthrate low.
The mystical wrapping of Lamaism cannot hide that old Tibetan society was a dictatorship of the serf owners over the serfs. There is nothing to romanticize about this society. The serfs and slaves needed a revolution!
In Part 2:
Tibet Meets the Maoist Revolution
Through the 1930s and '40s, a revolutionary people's war arose among the peasants of central China. Under the leadership of the Communist Party and its Chairman Mao Tsetung, the revolution won overall state power in the heavily populated areas of eastern China in 1949. By then, U.S. intrigues were already starting at China's northern border with Korea, and French imperialists were launching their colonialist invasion of Vietnam along China's southern border. Clearly, the Maoist revolutionaries were eager to liberate the oppressed everywhere in China, and to drive foreign intriguers from China's border regions.
But Tibet posed a particular problem: In 1950, this huge region had been almost completely isolated from the revolutionary whirlwind that swept the rest of China. There were almost no Tibetan communists. There was no communist underground among Tibet's serfs. In fact, the serfs of Tibet had no idea that a revolution was happening elsewhere in their country, or even that such things as "revolutions" were possible.
The grip of the Lamaist system and its religion was extremely strong in Tibet. It could not be broken simply by having revolutionary troops of the majority Han nationality march in and "declare" that feudalism was abolished! Mao Tsetung rejected the "commandist" approach of "doing things in the name of the masses." Maoist revolution relies on the masses.
In Part 2 of this series, we will discuss how Maoist revolution got its foothold in Tibet, and how the revolution grew into great mass storms that blew away the Lamaist oppression.
Sources:
· The Anguish of Tibet, ed. Petra Kelly, Gert Bastian and Pat Aeillo, Parallax Press, Berkeley, 1991. A collection of pro-lamaist essays.
· Avedon, John F. "In Exile from the Land of Snows," in The Anguish of Tibet. Avedon, an author and Newsweek journalist, is a prominent apologist for Lamaism.
· Dalai Lama, Freedom in Exile--The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama, Harper Collins, N.Y., 1990.
· Grunfeld, A. Tom, The Making of Modern Tibet, Zed Books, 1987.
· Grunfeld, A. Tom, "Tibet: Myths and Realities," New China, Fall 1975.
· Gyaltag, Gyaltsen, "An Historical Overview," an essay published in The Anguish of Tibet. Gyaltsen Gyaltag is a representative of the Dalai Lama in Europe.
· Han Suyin; Lhasa, the Open City--A Journey to Tibet, Putnam, 1977.
· Hicks, Roger, Hidden Tibet--The Land and Its People, Element Books, Dorset, 1988.
· China Reconstructs, "Tibet--From Serfdom to Socialism," March 1976.
· Peking Review, "Tibet's Big Leap--No Return to the Old System," July 4, 1975.

The True Story of Maoist Revolution in Tibet
Storming Heaven
Revolutionary Worker #945, February 22, 1998
Bringing the Revolution to Tibet
By 1949, Mao's People's Liberation Army had defeated all the main reactionary armies in central China. The day of the poor and oppressed had arrived! But the big powers in the world were moving quickly to crush and "contain" this revolution. French troops invaded Vietnam, south of China's border. By 1950, a massive U.S. invasion force would land in Korea with plans to threaten China itself.
The western mountains and grasslands of China's border areas are inhabited by dozens of different national groupings, whose cultures are different from China's majority Han people. One of those regions, Tibet, had been locally ruled as an isolated, "water-tight" kingdom by a class of serf-owners, headed by the monk-abbots of large Lamaist Buddhist monasteries. During the Chinese civil war, Tibet's ruling class conspired to set up a phony "independent" state that was really under the wing of British colonialism.
Maoist revolutionaries were determined to bring revolution to Tibet--to secure China's border regions against invasion and to liberate the millions of oppressed Tibetan serfs there. There was no doubt that Mao's hardened peasant-soldiers could defeat any army of Tibetan feudalists.
But the revolution faced a problem: The huge, sparsely populated region of Tibet had been completely isolated from the revolutionary war sweeping the rest of China. In 1949 there was no force among the Tibetan masses to carry out real liberation. There was yet no rebel underground among Tibet's serfs. There were almost no Tibetan communists or even Han communists who spoke Tibetan. The masses of Tibetan serfs had never heard that a great revolution had swept the rest of their country. Tibetan serfs had been taught that their current misery and poverty was justified--caused by their own sinfulness in earlier lives.
Mao Tsetung taught that a true revolution must rely on the masses--on the needs, wishes, and actions of the oppressed people themselves. Maoism calls this principle the Mass Line. Mao said: "It often happens that objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should wait patiently. We should not make the change until, through our work, most of the masses have become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to carry it out. Otherwise we shall isolate ourselves from the masses. Unless they are conscious and willing, any kind of work that requires their participation will turn out to be a mere formality and will fail."
In October 1950 the People's Liberation Army (PLA) advanced into the grasslands and mountains of southwest China. At Chamdo, they easily defeated an army sent against them by the Tibetan ruling class -- and then they stopped. They sent a message to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.
China's new revolutionary government offered Tibet's rulers a deal: Tibet would be reattached to the Chinese republic, but for the time being the regime of Tibetan serf-owners (called the Kashag) could continue to rule as a local government, operating under the leadership of the Central People's government. The Maoists would not abolish feudal practices, or challenge the Lamaist religion until the people themselves supported such changes. The People's Liberation Army would safeguard China's borders from imperialist intervention, and foreign agents would be expelled from Lhasa. About half of the Tibetan population lived in regions of Tsinghai and Chamdo that were not under the political rule of the Kashag. These regions were not covered by the proposal.
The Tibetan serf-owners signed this special "17-point agreement" and on October 26, 1951, the People's Liberation Army peacefully marched into Lhasa.
Both sides knew that struggle would eventually break out. How long could the aristocrats and monasteries continue to enslave "their" serfs--when everyone could now see Han peasants who had liberated themselves from similar conditions using guns and Maoism?
The most powerful serf-owning families started to plan an armed uprising. The Dalai Lama's brother traveled abroad to cement ties with the CIA, to get arms and request political recognition. Monasteries organized secret conferences and spread wild rumors among the masses: like saying Han revolutionaries fueled their trucks with the blood of stolen Tibetan children. Long mule-trains of U.S. arms started winding their way from India to key Tibetan monasteries. The CIA set up combat training centers for its Tibetan agents, eventually based in the high altitude of Camp Hale, Colorado. CIA planes dropped weapons into Tibet's eastern Kham region.
Applying Mao's Mass Line to the Special Conditions of Tibet
Meanwhile, Mao instructed the revolutionary forces to win over the masses for the coming revolution--without provoking an early polarization in which the masses might be against the revolution. Mao wrote: "Delay will not do us much harm; on the contrary, it may be to our advantage. Let them [the lamaist ruling class] go on with their senseless atrocities against the people, while we on our part concentrate on good deeds--production, trade, road-building, medical services and united front work (unity with the majority and patient education) so as to win over the masses."
One red soldier later said, "We were given much detailed instructions as to how to behave."
The Tibetan masses were too poor to spare any grain for the revolutionary troops. So the PLA soldiers often went hungry until their own fields were ready for harvest. They were taught to respect Tibetan cultures and beliefs--even, for now, the intense superstitious fears that dominated Tibetan life.
During those first years, the PLA worked as a great construction force building the first roads connecting Tibet with central China. A long string of workcamps stretched thousands of miles through endless mountains and gorges. Alongside these camps, the Han soldiers raised their own food using new collective methods. Serfs from surrounding areas were paid wages for work on the road.
The rulers of old Tibet treated the serfs like "talking animals" and forced them to do endless unpaid labor--so the behavior of these PLA troops was shocking to the Tibetan masses. One serf said, "The Hans worked side by side with us. They did not whip us. For the first time I was treated as a human being." Another serf described the day a PLA soldier gave him water from the soldier's own cup, "I could not believe it!" As serfs were trained to repair trucks, they became the first proletarians in the history of Tibet. One runaway said: "We understood it was not the will of the gods, but the cruelty of humans like ourselves, which kept us slaves."
The PLA road camps quickly became magnets for runaway slaves, serfs, and escaped monks. Young serfs working in the camps were asked if they wanted to go to school to help liberate their people. They became the first Tibetan students at Institutes for National Minorities in China's eastern cities. They learned reading, writing, and accounting "for the agrarian revolution to come"!
In this way, the revolution started recruiting activists who would soon lead the people. The first Communist Party member from central Tibet was recruited in the mid-1950s. By October 1957, the Party reported 1,000 Tibetan members, with an additional 2,000 in the Communist Youth League. (See "Recruiting Young Rebels to the Revolution.")
All through Tibet's eastern rural areas and the valleys around Lhasa, the People's Liberation Army acted as a huge "seeding machine" of the revolution--just as it had during Mao's historic Long March of the 1930s.
Any Hint of Change Shook the Water-tight Kingdom
Once the first white-sand road was completed, long caravans of PLA trucks arrived, carrying key goods like tea and matches. The expanded trade and especially the availability of inexpensive tea improved the diet of ordinary Tibetans. By the mid-'50s, the first telephones, telegraphs, radio station and modern printing had been organized. The first newspapers, books and pamphlets appeared, in both Han and Tibetan. After 1955, Tibet's first real schools were founded. By July 1957 there were 79 elementary schools, with 6,000 students. All this started to improve the life of poor people and infuriated the upper classes, who had always monopolized all trade, book learning and contact with the outside world.
When revolutionary medical teams started healing people, even monks and the upper classes started showing up at the early clinics. The first coal mine opened in 1958 and the first blast furnace in 1959. This undermined superstitions that condemned innovation and preached that diseases were caused by sinful behavior.
Starting in 1956, increasingly intense armed revolts organized by feudal landowners started in Han-Tibet border areas. These areas were not covered by the 17 points, and the serfs there were being encouraged by the revolutionaries to stop paying land rent to the monasteries and estates. In 1958 a communist leader in Tsinghai wrote, "The great socialist revolution in the pastoral areas has been a very violent class struggle of life and death."
Some forces within the Communist Party urged compromise. They suggested slowing down the land reform and closing down the schools and clinics that were opposed by the Lamaists. Teachers and medical teams were withdrawn. But this did not stop the conspiracies of the Lamaists.
In the late '50s, the Tibetan ruling class pressed ahead with a full-scale revolt. They believed that the intense struggles breaking out in central China--called the Great Leap Forward--might give them an opening to drive out the PLA. CIA support was increasing, and trained agents were in place.
Serf-Owners' Revolt Triggers Revolution
"Historically, all reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct a last desperate struggle against the revolutionary forces."--Mao Tsetung
In March 1959, armed monks and Tibetan soldiers attacked the revolutionary garrison in Lhasa and launched a revolt along the Tibet-India border. One monk later said, "All of us were told that, if we killed a Han, we would become Living Buddhas and have chapels to our name." Without much support among the masses, the Lamaists were soon dug in at some shrines. The main revolt was over within a few days.
During the fighting, the Dalai Lama fled into exile. This flight is portrayed by Lamaists as a heroic, even mystical event. But it is now well documented that the Dalai Lama was whisked away by a CIA covert operation. The Dalai Lama's own autobiography admits that his cook and radio operator on that trip were CIA agents. The CIA wanted him outside of Tibet--as a symbol for a contra-style war against the Maoist revolution.
Defeated in their revolt, large sections of the upper clergy and aristocracy followed the Dalai Lama south into India--accompanied by many slave-servants, armed guards and mule-trains of wealth. In all, 13,000 went into exile, among them the most hard-core feudal forces and their supporters. Suddenly, many of Tibet's Three Masters--the rich lamas, the high government officials, and the secular aristocrats--were gone!
Revolutionary forces mobilized to root out the feudalist conspiracy. And a thousand Tibetan students rushed back from the National Minorities Institutes to help organize the first great wave of revolutionary change in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama's Kashag government had largely supported this counterrevolutionary revolt and was dissolved. New organs of power were created in every region called "Offices to Suppress the Revolt." The new regional government was called "Preparatory Committee for the Autonomous Region of Tibet" (PCART)--in it, new Tibetan cadres and veteran Han cadres worked together.
This first stage of the revolution was called "the Three Anti's and the Two Reductions." It was against the Lamaist conspiracy, against forced labor, and against slavery. In the past serfs had paid three-quarters of their harvest to the masters, now the revolution fought to reduce that "land rent" to 20 percent. The other reduction eliminated the massive debts that serfs "owed" to their masters.
This campaign attacked the heart of Tibet's feudal relations: Forced ulag labor was abolished. The nangzen slaves of the nobles and monasteries were freed. The masses of slave-monks were suddenly allowed to leave the monasteries. Arms caches were cleaned out of the main monasteries, and key conspirators were arrested.
Some people like to talk about "struggle for religious freedom in Tibet"--but throughout Tibetan history, the main struggle around "religious freedom" has been for the freedom not to believe, not to obey the cruel monks and their endless superstitions. The sight of thousands of young monks eagerly getting married and doing manual labor was a powerful blow to superstitious awe.
Women's liberation got off the ground--under the then-shocking slogan "All men and women are equal!" Revolutionary property changes helped ease old pressures for polygamy. With a large new pool of eligible men, there was no longer the same pressure for women to accept a situation where one man could have many wives. With the redistribution of the land, women were no longer under the same pressure to marry several brothers in one family--a practice that had been used to limit the population who depended on small plots of land.
Without the land rent, the huge parasitic monasteries started to dry up. About half the monks left them and about half the monasteries closed down.
In mass meetings, serfs were encouraged to organize Peasant Associations and fight for their interests. Key oppressors were called out, denounced and punished. The debt records of the serf-owners were burned in great bonfires. Women played a particularly active role. They are seen in the photographs of those days leading such meetings and denouncing the oppressor. Soon, the serfs seized the land and livestock. Ex-serfs, former beggars, and ex-slaves each received several acres. Serfs received 200,000 new deeds to the land and herds--decorated with red flags and pictures of Chairman Mao.
Serfs said: "The sun of the Kashag shone only on the Three Masters and their landlord henchmen, but the sun of the Communist Party and Chairman Mao shines on us--the poor people."
Sharp Class Struggle
These revolutionary moves took intense and often bloody class struggle. There was all the complexity, heroism, mistakes, advances and setbacks of real-life revolution.
The revolutionaries aroused the class hatred of the serfs. The serf-owners countered by accusing revolutionary Tibetans of being foreign collaborators and destroyers of holiness. Sometimes the revolutionary forces had the upper hand--and huge changes happened in the lives of the people. In other places the feudal forces gained the upper hand--and tried to wipe out any challenge. For years, there were pitched battles, raids, and executions by both sides. As Mao Tsetung teaches: "A revolution is not a dinner party.... A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.... Without using the greatest force, the peasants cannot possibly overthrow the deep-rooted authority of the landlords which has lasted for thousands of years."
The revolutionary army was a powerful force backing the upsurge, and many eager serfs volunteered to join the People's Liberation Army. But Tibet is a huge land of isolated valleys. Organizers in the widely scattered settlements were largely on their own. They risked everything for the people and were often killed by feudal gangs--just like the early Klan killed freed slaves in the days after the U.S. civil war.
Sharp struggle also broke out in the new Institutes of National Minorities--often along class lines. Some Tibetan students from aristocratic background intended to become a new elite--some resented it when land reform affected their serf-owning families back in Tibet. They also rejected moves toward social equality: demanding to have servants who would make their beds and clean their rooms, and they refused to mingle with fellow students from slave and serf backgrounds. Similar issues divided the new schools in Lhasa itself: aristocrat-students demanded that slave-students carry their "master's" books. Lamas were sent in to "oversee education" and conduct prayers before and after study sessions. These early struggles prepared the students from serf, slave and beggar classes for the day when such issues would be struggled out throughout Tibet's society.
Even as most land was divided into individual plots, far-sighted experiments tried out socialist, collective forms in the countryside. Mao taught that the road to liberation in the countryside required new forms of cooperation among the people. In Tibet, new "mutual aid teams" shared farm implements and animals, worked the fields together and pooled their labor to dig canals, dam streams, collect fertilizer and build new roads.
Through these great storms of struggle, the Maoist revolution created a wide base for itself among the newly freed serfs of Tibet.
In Part 3: The Revolution Within the Revolution
Tibet's storm of class struggle displeased some powerful forces inside the Chinese Communist Party itself. These forces, called revisionists, opposed Mao's revolutionary line. These forces were grouped around the party leader Liu Shao-chi, the top general Lin Piao, and Deng Xiaoping (who rules China today.) They had a completely different (and quite capitalist) view of what should be done with Tibet.
The revisionists did not see much reason to mobilize the masses to overthrow the feudal landlords. They were "Han chauvinists" who looked down on the masses of Tibetan people--considering them hopelessly backward and superstitious. They thought the Tibetan students in the Institutes of National Minorities should be trained as administrators, not as revolutionary organizers. They thought Tibet should be ruled through the educated upper classes, while relying on military means to keep the region "under control."
To these revisionists, Maoist class struggle was just "disruption" of their plans for exploiting Tibet. When they looked at Tibet, they saw only a border that needed defending, mineral resources to be exploited, and a potential "breadbasket" that could help feed the rest of China. They thought that developing independent industries or diversified agriculture was "inefficient" and a waste of time. The revisionists imagined that they could reach a long-term arrangement with the Lamaist ruling class--that would be profitable for them both.
But at that time, these capitalist-roaders did not have overall power. Mao was determined to lead the masses of people in all-the-way revolution. He fought to have a revolutionary approach carried out in Tibet and other national minority areas.
As early as 1953, Mao wrote in the essay Criticize Han Chauvinism: "In some places the relations between nationalities are far from normal. For Communists this is an intolerable situation. We must go to the root and criticize the Han chauvinist ideas which exist to a serious degree among many Party members and cadres, namely, the reactionary ideas of the landlord class and the bourgeoisie...which are manifested in the relations between nationalities.... In other words, bourgeois ideas dominate the minds of those comrades and people who have had no Marxist education and have not grasped the nationality policy of the Central Committee."
In 1956 Mao again raised the issue in his famous speech "On The Ten Major Relationships": "We put the emphasis on opposing Han chauvinism. Local-nationality chauvinism must be opposed too, but generally that is not where our emphasis lies.... All through the ages, the reactionary rulers, chiefly from the Han nationality, sowed feelings of estrangement among our various nationalities and bullied the minority peoples. Even among the working people it is not easy to eliminate the resultant influences in a short time.... The air in the atmosphere, the forests on the earth and the riches under the soil are all important factors needed for the building of socialism, but no material factor can be exploited and utilized without the human factor. We must foster good relations between the Han nationality and the minority nationalities and strengthen the unity of all the nationalities in the common endeavor to build our great socialist motherland."
The storms of revolution in Tibet after 1959 were a great step forward for Mao's line. While the serfs were fighting for their land, struggle intensified within the Communist vanguard itself over how far such movements should go. In many places in Tibet there were still rich and poor, even after the land was distributed. Feudal customs and practices of all kinds were still strong. New revolutionary organizations were just getting started. The revolution still had a long way to go.
In the early '60s, revisionist forces called for "five years of consolidation" within Tibet--which to them meant a cooling-out of the struggle. Socialist experiments in Tibet, like the early rural communes and many new factories, were disbanded.
The revisionists did not get "five years of consolidation" to suppress the people in Tibet. In 1965 the sharp line struggle came to a head within the Central Committee of the Communist Party itself. Chairman Mao unleashed an unprecedented "revolution within the revolution" called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
In Part 3 of this series we will examine how the storms of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution rocked Tibet.

The True Story of Maoist Revolution in Tibet
Red Guards and People's Communes
Revolutionary Worker #752, April 17, 1994
Fertile Soil in Tibet for Mao's Cultural Revolution
One sun-filled day in August 1966, Mao Tsetung stood in front of a million young Red Guards who had flooded into Peking--and he put on one of their red armbands. Mao Tsetung did something no other head of state in history had done: he called on the masses of people to rise up against the government and the ruling party that he himself headed. "Bombard the Headquarters!" he said. The intense and historic struggle he unleashed was to rage across China for the next ten years--from 1966 until 1976. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was on.
Within a couple days of that great rally, some Red Guards flew into Lhasa, Tibet--where their radical message found an eager audience. The new high school in Tibet had graduated its first senior class in 1964. A core group of youth from serf and slave backgrounds now knew how to read--and had learned basic Maoist principles about revolution.
Immediately, students of Lhasa High School and the nearby Tibet Teacher's Training School formed their own Red Guard organizations. They were in no mood to wait for orders. They debated how to push the revolution forward. And they immediately took action.
Here, in Part 3 of this series, we will tell what we know about the ten years of struggle that followed in Tibet. It is not easy to uncover the truth. These were wild, complex events in a large and isolated region.
On one hand, those class forces who were targets of the Maoist revolution portray the Cultural Revolution as a senseless nightmare of fanaticism and destruction. The Publicity Office of the Dalai Lama, based in India, offers "eyewitness accounts "told by ultra-conservative, mainly upper-class Tibetan exiles. The men who rule China today talk of "ten wasted years" filled with the "excesses of the Gang of Four." ("Gang of Four" is the name they give to Mao Tsetung's closest supporters.) Such anti-revolutionary accounts are highly unreliable.
On the other hand, the revolutionary activists in Tibet have themselves not found a way to make their own story heard. Many of them are undoubtedly in prison or dead.
To write this article we examined leaflets written by Tibetan Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution itself. We read the writings of different observers and progressive scholars and even critically examined the claims of Maoism's enemies. There are major gaps in the story. But it is possible to piece together a basic picture of what the revolutionaries in Tibet were trying to accomplish in these intense ten years.
Real Communists vs. Phony Communists in Tibet
Mao unleashed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution because he saw a great danger for the people: The Chinese revolution that came to power in 1949 had stalled.
Powerful forces in the government and the Communist Party of China called for building a "modern" China by focusing on orderly production. Though these forces called themselves "communists," they really had no intention of going farther than abolishing feudalism and building a powerful national state. They wanted a halt to revolutionary change.
Mao saw that their imitation of "efficient" capitalist methods would leave the masses of people powerless. Their road would create a soulless, de-politicized, state-capitalist system similar to the one that came to power in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev. Mao labeled such forces "revisionists" and "phony communists." He said they were "bourgeois democrats turned capitalist roaders." Their main national leaders in the mid-'60s were Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.
In Tibet, this conflict between the revisionist line and Mao's line was not widely known among the people--but it had been very sharp.
Mao's line called for a continuing revolutionary process conducted one step after another--a process that fundamentally relied on and organized the masses of Tibetan people themselves.
Mao had urged patiently building revolutionary organization in Tibet during the 1950s. By the early 1960s, a great alliance of Tibet's serfs and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had shattered the heart of the old oppressive society--liberating the masses from serfdom and slavery, seizing land from the ruling class, and forbidding many old oppressive practices. It was a great advance and application of Mao's line.
Mao believed the revolution had to advance beyond anti-feudal land reform if the masses of people were to be truly liberated. He envisioned the systematic development of new, collective organization in the countryside--so that the masses of peasants could pool their resources: dig irrigation, build roads, create armed peasant militias and schools. Without socialist collectivization, Mao believed, poor peasants would ultimately be oppressed by richer peasants and new exploiters. This applied to Tibet, just as in the rest of China. Mao argued for a self-reliant socialist industrial base in the Tibetan highlands to meet the needs of the people there. And Mao envisioned a revolution of ideas that would uproot the hateful superstitions of the past and on that basis bring about the flowering of a new liberating Tibetan culture.
But the powerful revisionist forces saw Tibet through very different eyes. They were not interested in the revolutionary potential of Tibet's people. They wanted to develop "efficient" systems for exploiting Tibet's wealth--so the region could quickly contribute to the "modern" China they envisioned.
The revisionists intended to turn Tibet's peasants into efficient grain producers. They planned to import workers and technicians from other Chinese regions to develop a few mineral-based industries.
The revisionists wanted to eliminate those aspects of Tibetan feudalism that held back increased production. But they intended to offer the old feudal rulers a permanent slice of power--to use their feudal organizations and ideology as instruments for stabilizing a new revisionist order.
Everyone knew that the Lamaist aristocracy was involved in all kinds of counterrevolutionary conspiracies. But the revisionists believed they could contain such plots: first, by offering to protect different aspects of the old society from the masses, and second, by relying on the overwhelming military power of the PLA.
This line was clearly hostile to the masses of Tibetan people: It saw them as hopelessly backward, while it based itself on alliances with their oppressors. This line justified itself by talking constantly of "special conditions in Tibet"--but in practice had an extreme "Han chauvinist" approach to anything Tibetan, and expected to eventually absorb Tibetans into the Han nationality--the majority nationality of China. And the revisionists were not about to tolerate the people rising up to make revolution.
In particular, the revisionists were hostile to any plans for a new revolutionary wave in Tibet. They were against socialist measures--including both collective land ownership and an autonomous industrial base. They said these socialist things would be premature, disruptive, inefficient, and would forever break their "united front" with the feudalists.
In short, the revisionist line for Tibet was essentially a plan for a new oppressive order in which the revisionists (in alliance with the old oppressors) relied on military means to exploit Tibet. This "capitalist road" was sharply opposed to Mao's line in every way.
The revisionist program is familiar because this line is precisely the oppressive capitalist policies that have been carried out by Deng Xiaoping's government and troops in Tibet since they defeated the Maoists in 1976. Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to overthrow exactly those forces who oppress the people of China (including Tibet) today.
Revolution Hits Lhasa Like a Thunderbolt
"Revolutionary successors of the proletariat are invariably brought up in great storms."--Mao Tsetung
In 1966 the revisionists in Tibet were quite arrogant. They controlled the army and had powerful connections in Peking, including with Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. The top Tibetan revisionist was PLA General Zhang Guohua, who had arrived in 1950 and saw Tibet as his private "kingdom."
Zhang's forces planned to ride out Mao's new campaign. They used the tactic of "waving the red flag to oppose the red flag." When the Cultural Revolution was announced, they organized their own official "Cultural Revolution Group." They literally painted Lhasa red--announcing that every house should fly the red flag and display a Mao poster. Loudspeakers broadcast revolutionary songs and streets were given new names. Having "proven" their revolutionary enthusiasm in this way, Tibet's authorities announced "there are no two lines here in Tibet." The main reactionary forces, they said, were the bands of CIA-backed feudalists and so the armed struggle by the PLA was the main revolutionary activity that was still needed. In short, the revisionists wanted the Cultural Revolution in Tibet to be confined to orderly production, quiet study, and army actions. They sent squads to every factory and school to make sure that the growing Red Guard movement did not get out of their control. Powerful forces in Peking, including Premier Zhou Enlai, one of the top officials in the government, tried to help by ordering the Red Guards to stay out of Tibet. They even gave the Red Guards a going-away dinner party. But the Red Guards refused to leave.
Tibet's Cultural Revolution took off like a prairie fire! Red Guards formed everywhere and rocked the house. Some Red Guard organizations immediately seized the Jokhang shrine in Lhasa--declaring war on those who tolerated continued feudal oppression and superstition. Shocked authorities declared this illegal and "counter-revolutionary." Building takeovers spread.
The Red Guards demanded to know why senior Party officials kept putting forward serf-owners and top lamas--like the Dalai Lama, Panchen Lama and Ngawang Jigme Ngabo--as "leaders of the Tibetan people." Red Guards revealed that Deng Xiaoping even suggested recruiting Tibet's upper strata lamas as Communist Party members. Didn't class analysis and social practice show such forces were oppressors?
The special conditions of Tibet, one early leaflet said, did not mean that Tibet was "a zone of vacuum for the class struggle." The Red Guards said the authorities were violating Maoist principles: "The core of Chairman Mao's revolutionary line is the mass line... to have complete faith in the masses, to give free rein to the masses, to have the courage to rely on the masses."
First Seizure of Power, Then Exercise of Power
"In the new situation of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, surrounded by war drums repudiating the bourgeois reactionary line, the Lhasa Revolutionary Rebel General Headquarters is born!... We don't fear winds or storms, or flying sand, or moving rocks. We don't care if that handful of capitalist-roaders in authority...oppose us or fear us. We also don't care if the bourgeois Royalists denounce us or curse us. We will resolutely make revolution and rebel. To rebel, to rebel and to rebel through to the end in orde