DOCSLIB.ORG

The Sino-Indian Border Dispute: Implications of China's Economic

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

The Sino-Indian Border Dispute: Implications of China’s Economic Reforms on the 1987 Border Conflict By Kunsang Gyurme Submitted to Central European University Department of International Relations and European Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in International Relations and European Studies Supervisor: Indre Balcaite Word Count: 16,599 CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2016 Abstract This thesis builds on the existing works on the conflictual Sino-Indian relationship since birth of respective nations to the late 1980s. The first part of this thesis aims to examine the Sino-Indian relationship in two periods, 1947-1962 and 1978-1987. It investigates how two similar conflicts at the same border had different outcomes. I focus on the existing literature to determine the various factors that led to conflict in both periods. By employing the comparative political method, I show that economic interdependence factor was the variable that deescalated border conflict in 1987. The second part of the thesis applies the liberal view of economic interdependence and theory of trade expectations in the Sino-Indian case of the late 1980s. I argue that economic interdependence can explain the absence of war between the two nations. It shows that China’s economic reform and “open poor policy” had a huge impact on China’s prioritizing foreign trade and economic development since the reform was closely linked to the survival of communist regime. Thus China chose cooperation over war in the border conflict with India. As a result, border conflict between India and China did not escalate into a fully-fledged war in 1987. CEU eTD Collection i Acknowledgements I would like to extend my deep appreciation and thanks to my family, friends, Central European University, Open Society Foundation for their support and guidance. Lastly, I cannot thank enough to my supervisor Dr. Indre Balcaite for her constant guidance and support in this journey, without her, I could not have made this thesis possible. CEU eTD Collection ii Table of Contents ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................. I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................................................................................................... II TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................... III LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................................. IV LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................................................... V INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 RESEARCH DESIGN ............................................................................................................ 6 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ON SINO-INDIAN RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN 1947 -1962 AND 1978- 1988 ................................................................................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER 3 THE SINO-INDIAN RELATIONSHIP IN 1947-1988 ............................................................... 24 3.1 SINO-INDIAN BORDER DISPUTE AND THE 1962 WAR .................................................................................. 25 3. 2 CONTENTIOUS RELATIONSHIP IN THE 1980S ............................................................................................ 32 3.3 COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE TWO PERIODS ......................................................................................... 36 CHAPTER 4 CHINA’S ECONOMIC REFORM AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SINO-INDIAN BORDER CONFLICT............................................................................................................................................ 41 4.1 A REVIEW OF LIBERAL THEORY OF ECONOMIC INTERDEPENDENCE ................................................................. 42 4.2 ECONOMIC INTERDEPENDENCE: SINO-INDIAN COOPERATION DURING THE BORDER CONFLICT ............................ 45 4.2.1 Era of Economic Reform in China ......................................................................................... 46 4.2.2 Employing Economic Interdependence Theory in the Case of Sino-Indian relations in the 1980s ............................................................................................................................................... 50 4.2.3 China’s Entry into the World Market ..................................................................................... 54 4.2.4 Regime Survival and Economic Development in Post-Mao China......................................... 56 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................... 59 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................... 61 CEU eTD Collection iii List of Figures FIGURE 1 MILL'S METHOD OF DIFFERENCE........................................................................................... 37 FIGURE 2 ADAPTATION OF MILL'S METHOD TO SINO-INDIAN CASE ..................................................... 38 FIGURE 3 CHINA'S GDP GROWTH (1978-1992) ...................................................................................... 49 FIGURE 4 SINO-INDIAN TRADE VOLUME IN MILLIONS (1964-1990)...................................................... 53 FIGURE 5 CHINA'S TRADE MEASURE AS SHARE OF GDP....................................................................... 54 CEU eTD Collection iv List of Abbreviations CCP - Chinese Communist Party CPC- Communist Party of China LAC - Line of Actual Control MFN - Most Favored Nation NEFA - North East Frontier Agency PLA - People’s Liberation Army PRC - People’s Republic of China ROI - Republic of India SFF - Special Frontier Force CEU eTD Collection v Introduction Having emerged as independent countries in 1947 and 1949 respectively, India and China soon claimed the ownership of disputed regions along their long border. In 1962, they fought a short border war after numerous failed negotiations on demarcating the border. The disputed border was the legacy of British colonial rule in India and China’s reassertion of her control over Tibet. In 1914, Sir McMahon of British India convened a conference to discuss the status of Tibet and to delimit the border between Tibet and India, with parties from both Tibet and China in Simla. The British representatives secured a treaty known as “Simla Convention of 1914”1 signed only by delegations from Tibet and British India but not the Chinese.2 The agreement established the border known as the “McMahon Line”. The Indian government complied with the Simla Convention concerning her border with Tibet and then with China after China’s take over Tibet in 1949, whereas China rejected the validity of the McMahon Line.3 In the early 1950s, India and China signed friendship treaties where India was one of the first democratic nations to recognize CEU eTD Collection 1 Simla Convention is not to be confused with Simla Agreement, a treaty between India and Pakistan concluded in 1972. 2 Amit Ranjan, “India-China Boundary Dispute: An Overview” Asian Affairs, 47, No. 1, (March, 2015), 103. 3 Parshotam Mehra, Essays in Frontier History: India, China, and the Disputed Border, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), 24-31. 1 the Communist Party as the legitimate government of China. In hope of better relations with China, India aggressively pushed the international community to include Communist China in the Security Council of the United Nations, replacing the Republic of China (ROC) – Taiwan under Nationalist (Kuomintang) government.4 However, the territorial issue caused more confrontations in the late 1954 with China issuing a map showing the disputed territories as hers, and also building a highway in the Aksai Chin, one of the disputed areas along the Western border. The Tibetan Uprising of 1959 and the subsequent welcoming of the Dalai Lama in India along with thousands of his fellow Tibetans exacerbated the situation.5 The final straw that pushed China to attack was Nehru’s “forward policy” which increased Indian military presence in the disputed territories.6 This eventually led to the short Indo-China war of 1962 that ended with the Chinese victory. There is broad agreement among scholars that the border conflict escalated because of India’s miscalculations of China’s willingness and ability to wage war and China’s misconception of India’s intentions with regards to the issue of Tibet. The situation at the border remained relatively the same as before the war with no significant commitment to resolve the issue, and relationship went sour as a result. The war CEU eTD Collection 4 Shang Quanyu, “Sino-Indian Friendship in the Nehru Era: A Chinese Perspective” China Report, 41, No.3, (2005), 237-252. 5 John Garver, “China’s Decision for War with India in 1962” Stanford University Press, Ed. Robert Ross and Alastair Johnston, (2005), 9-29. 6 Neville Maxwell, India’s China War, (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 1970), 189-288, Graver, “China’s Decision for War with India in 1962”, 32. 2 did not bring any
Recommended publications
  • FORTY YEARS of FOLLY What Caused the Sino-Indian Boundary Conflict and Why the Dispute Is Unresolved by Neville Maxwell [Publish

    FORTY YEARS of FOLLY What Caused the Sino-Indian Boundary Conflict and Why the Dispute Is Unresolved by Neville Maxwell [Publish

    N Maxwell from Critical Asian Studies March 2003. From http:// chinaindiaborderdispute.wordpress.com FORTY YEARS OF FOLLY What caused the Sino-Indian boundary conflict and why the dispute is unresolved By Neville Maxwell [Published in CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES March 2003] Provided by the author to the archive at http:// chinaindiaborderdispute.wordpress.com India’s distrustful animus towards China is a toxic element in world politics, preventing development of what might have been the fruitful and long-lasting entente to which the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru confidently looked forward in the early 1950s, and which could have been a powerful stabilising factor for Asia. The hostility derives from the Indian political class’s wounded memory of their country’s humiliation in the brief, fierce border war of 1962, which Nehru himself misled them into perceiving as the outcome of Chinese aggression. It is a tragic – or perhaps tragic-comic – underlying truth that the border dispute is factitious, and would be readily resolvable if only India would follow the example of all China’s many other neighbours, and submit the issues to the normal diplomatic procedures for boundary settlement. The fortieth anniversary of the border war has shown again how ill-served the Indian political class is by those of its intelligentsia who write on that subject. Decades after the full story of the dispute and conflict emerged most of them still hawk the old, disproved falsehoods about an innocent India, victim of a calculated surprise act of aggression by an expansionist China;1 others creep backwards towards the truth which previously they denied, but their progress is crippled and cut short by their obligation of repeated prostrations to the memory of Nehru.2 Still others show a curious fickleness in their approach.
  • Britain and the Sino-Indian War of 1962

    Britain and the Sino-Indian War of 1962

    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Repository@Nottingham The Long Shadow of Colonial Cartography: Britain and the Sino-Indian War of 1962 PAUL M. McGARR Department of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham, UK ABSTRACT This article examines British responses to the Sino-Indian border war of 1962. It illustrates how, in the years leading up to the war, Britain’s colonial legacy in the Indian subcontinent saw it drawn reluctantly into a territorial dispute between Asia’s two largest and most powerful nations. It analyses disagreements in Whitehall between the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Relations Office over the relative strength of India and China’s border claims, and assesses how these debates reshaped British regional policy. It argues that the border war was instrumental in transforming Britain’s post-colonial relationship with South Asia. Continuing to filter relations with India through an imperial prism proved unsatisfactory; what followed was a more pragmatic Indo-British association. KEY WORDS: India, China, Sino-Indian border, Foreign Office, Commonwealth Relations Office. If two giant countries, the biggest countries of Asia, are involved in conflict, it will shake Asia and shake the world. It is not just a little border issue, of course. But the issues surrounding it are so huge, vague, deep-seated and far-reaching, inter-twined even, that one has to think about this with all the clarity and strength at one’s command, and not be swept away by passion into action which may harm us instead of doing us good.
  • Myth and Misrepresentation in Australian Foreign Policy Menzies and Engagement with Asia

    Myth and Misrepresentation in Australian Foreign Policy Menzies and Engagement with Asia

    BenvenutiMyth and Misrepresentation and Jones in Australian Foreign Policy Myth and Misrepresentation in Australian Foreign Policy Menzies and Engagement with Asia ✣ Andrea Benvenuti and David Martin Jones In 1960 the deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party, Gough Whitlam, declared that Australia “has for ten years missed the opportunity to interpret the new nations to the old world and the old world to the new na- tions.”1 Throughout the 1960s, Labor spokesmen attacked the foreign policy of Sir Robert Menzies’s Liberal–Country Party coalition government (1949– 1966) for both its dependence on powerful friends and its alleged insensitivity to Asian countries.2 This criticism of Liberal foreign policy not only persisted in later decades but also became the prevailing academic and media ortho- doxy.3 As we show here, Labor’s criticism constitutes the basis of a tenacious political myth that demands critical reevaluation. Menzies’s political opponents and, subsequently, his academic critics have claimed that his attitude toward Asia was permeated by suspicion and conde- scension. From the 1970s, an inchoate Labor left and academic understand- ing contended that conservative Anglo-centrism “had placed Australia on the losing side of almost every external engagement from the Suez Crisis to Viet- nam.”4 A decade later, analysts writing in the context of the Labor-driven doc- trine of “enmeshment” with Asia reinforced this emerging foreign policy or- 1. Gordon Greenwood and Norman Harper, eds., Australia in World Affairs 1956–1960 (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1963), p. 96. 2. See, for instance, Mads Clausen, “‘Falsiªed by History’: Menzies, Asia and Post-Imperial Australia,” History Compass, Vol.
  • 1 Curriculum Vitae of MELVYN C. GOLDSTEIN (Revised 4-6-2020)

    1 Curriculum Vitae of MELVYN C. GOLDSTEIN (Revised 4-6-2020)

    Curriculum Vitae Of MELVYN C. GOLDSTEIN (Revised 4-6-2020) Personal Background Education B.A., 1959, University of Michigan, history M.A., 1960, University of Michigan, history Ph.D. 1968, University of WAshington, anthropology Employment 1991-present: John Reynolds HArkness Professor of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University 1991-present: Professor of International HeAlth, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University (secondary appointment) 1991-present: Co-Director, Center for ReseArch on Tibet, Case Western Reserve University 1987-1991: Director, Center for ReseArch on Tibet, Case Western Reserve University 1975-2002: ChairmAn of Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University 1978-present: Professor of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University 1974-1978: AssociAte Professor of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University 1968-1971: AssistAnt Professor of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University 1 -- Professional Activities and Honors Distinguished University Professor, Case Western Reserve University, 2020. Elected Member, National Academy of Sciences, Section 51, Anthropology, 2009- present. Distinguished Research Award, Case Western Reserve University, 2016 The AssociAtion for AsiAn Studies’ Joseph Levenson Prize for best monograph on Twentieth-Century China in 1989: Honorable Mention: ("A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-51: The Demise of the LAmAist StAte"). This monumental study is a path-breaking contribution to our understanding of modern Tibet. Melvyn Goldstein has marshalled an impressive array of documentary, archival and interview sources to provide critical new insights into the political and diplomatic history of Tibet during its independence of Chinese domination. Particularly important is the author’s use of Tibetan sources to go beyond the question of Tibet’s relation to China, and narrate in detail the conflicts within Tibetan society: between monastic and lay elements, between reformers and conservatives, between rival regents’ cliques.
  • British Newspaper Coverage of the Tibet Issue Over Time, 1949

    British Newspaper Coverage of the Tibet Issue Over Time, 1949

    British Newspaper Coverage of the Tibet Issue over Time, 1949-2009: Representations of Repression and Resistance by Chunyan Wu A Doctoral Thesis Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University June 2018 © by Chunyan Wu 2018 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My deepest gratitude goes to my supervisor, Professor James Stanyer, who has given me the most precious intellectual inspirations, valuable advice and help on this long road. Without his generous supports, encouragements, discussions and comments, this dissertation may never appear. I appreciate the help and support from the whole faculty of Social Sciences Department at Loughborough University, especially the administrator Deirdre Lombard who is always willing to help under all conditions. I am also very grateful for the support from all my personal friends at Loughborough, including Lingqi Kong, Mingxi Yin, Hui-Ju Tsai, Xue Li, Zhijia Yang, Edward Winward, Miaoshan Pan, Jiacheng Zhen, Fabia Lin and Harry Gui. In the process of this research, they not only kept with me very insightful academic communications but also shared with me their warmest friendship which helped me move on in the darkest moments. My PhD life at Loughborough would be very dull and colorless without them around. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my parents for their selfless love, understanding, and endless support for me for my entire life, without which I could impossibly achieve what I have accomplished today. i TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  • Hu Jintao: the Making of a Chinese General Secretary Richard Daniel

    Hu Jintao: the Making of a Chinese General Secretary Richard Daniel

    Hu Jintao: The Making of a Chinese General Secretary Richard Daniel Ewing ABSTRACT Chinese Vice-President Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin’s heir apparent, has risen to the elite levels of Chinese politics through skill and a diverse network of political patrons. Hu’s political career spans four decades, and he has been associated with China’s top leaders, including Song Ping, Hu Yaobang, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin. Though marked early as a liberal by his ties to Hu Yaobang, Hu Jintao’s conservative credentials were fashioned during the imposition of martial law in Tibet in 1989. Those actions endeared him to the Beijing leadership following the 4 June Tiananmen Square crackdown, and his career accelerated in the 1990s. Young, cautious and talented, Hu catapulted to the Politburo Standing Committee, the vice-presidency and the Central Military Commission. Despite recent media attention, Hu’s positions on economic and foreign policy issues remain poorly defined. As the 16th Party Congress approaches, Hu is likely to be preparing to become General Secretary of the Communist Party and a force in world affairs. The late 1990s witnessed the extraordinary rise of Vice-President Hu Jintao from obscurity to pre-eminence as one of China’s most powerful politicians and President Jiang Zemin’s heir apparent. If Hu succeeds Jiang, he will lead China’s 1.3 billion people into a new era. Over the next decade, he would manage China’s emergence as a global power – a leading country with one of the world’s largest economies, nuclear weapons and a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
  • Coping and Resilience in the Tibetan Exile Community

    Coping and Resilience in the Tibetan Exile Community

    Spacious Minds, Empty Selves: Coping and Resilience in the Tibetan Exile Community Sara E. Lewis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Sara E. Lewis All rights reserved ABSTRACT Spacious Minds, Empty Selves: Coping and Resilience in the Tibetan Exile Community Sara E. Lewis Mental health in the Tibetan refugee community has been studied extensively; but like most research on political violence, these studies focus almost exclusively on trauma. We know little about those who manage to thrive and what kinds of sociocultural practices enhance their resilience. This dissertation, “Spacious Minds, Empty Selves: Coping and Resilience in the Tibetan Exile Community” investigates how Buddhism and other sociocultural factors support coping and resilience among Tibetan refugees living in Dharamsala, India. In contrast to other work that focuses exclusively on trauma, the aim of this project was to examine the broad range of reactions to political violence, exploring how people thrive in the face of adversity. Drawing on 14 months of extended participant observation and 80 in-depth interviews conducted in the Tibetan language, this project investigates how communities through social processes cope in the context of political violence and resettlement. The study draws upon and aims to extend theory in three distinct but overlapping areas: 1) trauma and resilience; 2) the anthropology of memory and temporality; and 3) the transferability of interventions across cultures. The dissertation argues that the Tibetan concept of resilience is more an active process than a personality attribute.
  • Fifty Years After the Sino-Indian Conflict, Will the “Asian Century” See a New Confrontation?

    Fifty Years After the Sino-Indian Conflict, Will the “Asian Century” See a New Confrontation?

    25 October 2012 Fifty Years after the Sino-Indian Conflict, Will the “Asian Century” See a New Confrontation? Balaji Chandramohan FDI Visiting Fellow Key Points The fiftieth anniversary of the 1962 war comes at a time when India, now a rising power, is enhancing its hard power through military acquisitions and soft power through increased diplomatic initiatives. Naval diplomacy is being employed. For India, the anniversary provides an opportune time to review the legacy of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cold War Non-Alignment policy in favour of a judicious use of realpolitik. Both India and China might further spread their “Spheres of Influence” in the Indo-Pacific region with the US willing to support New Delhi as part of its own forward policy in the region. As the two powers become more economically interlinked, war is increasingly likely to be viewed as a secondary or last resort option by decision-makers in both New Delhi and Beijing. Summary If it is agreed that, in the twenty-first century, there will be a geo-political shift from the North Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, then by extension it could be argued that China and India will dominate events in the region. If that dominance were to lead to a classic case of great power competition, then such a future might be better understood by returning to 1962 and the first Sino-Indian border clash and considering the dramatic changes that have occurred since then. Analysis Fifty years have now passed since the Sino-Indian conflict. The war was a result of tensions that arose during the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when India granted asylum to the Dalai Lama after the capture of Tibet by the People’s Liberation Army and India adopted a “Forward Policy” intended to demonstrate its control of the disputed areas.
  • Congressional-Executive Commission on China Hearing on “From All

    Congressional-Executive Commission on China Hearing on “From All

    Congressional-Executive Commission on China Hearing on “From All Angles”: Protecting Human Rights, Defending Strategic Access, and Challenging China’s Export of Censorship Globally February 14, 2018 – 10:00 a.m. 301 Russell Senate Office Building Statement for the Record of The Honorable James P. McGovern Representative in Congress from the State of Massachusetts I thank the Congressional-Executive Committee on China for convening this critically important hearing on the eve of the anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising, in which 87,000 Tibetans were killed, arrested or deported to labor camps, and which led His Holiness the Dalai Lama to flee to India, along with tens of thousands of other Tibetans. I appreciate the opportunity to provide a statement for the record. I admire the courage and perseverance of the Tibetan people. I have stood in solidarity with them for years in their struggle to exercise their basic human rights -- to speak and teach their language, protect their culture, control their land and water, travel within and outside their country, and worship as they choose. Dhondup Wangchen embodies that struggle. I join my colleagues in welcoming him to Washington and to the halls of Congress. But as the Dalai Lama ages, and as China doubles down on its deeply authoritarian practices, I worry that time is running out to make sure that Tibetans will be able to live their lives as they wish. China has a terrible human rights record. Whatever hope once existed that China would become more open, more ruled by law and more democratic as it became wealthier has faded over the years – especially under the rule of President Xi Jinping.
  • Recent Publications (Articles, Books, Journals)

    Recent Publications (Articles, Books, Journals)

    HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 7 Number 1 Himalayan Research Bulletin Article 7 Spring 1987 Recent Publications (Articles, Books, Journals) Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation . 1987. Recent Publications (Articles, Books, Journals). HIMALAYA 7(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol7/iss1/7 This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "The Coming of Macchendranath to Nepal: Comments from a Comparative Point of View." By N.J. Allen. Vol. I, Oxford University Papers on India. Edited by N.J. Allen, R. Gombrich, T. Raychaudhuri & G. Rizvi. Delhi: O.U.P., 1986. pp.75-102. "Mating Patterns among the Dirang Monpa of West Kameng District, Arunachal Pradesh." By Saumitra Barua. In Current Anthropology, April 1986, vol. 27, no. 2. pp. 188-190. "Himalayan Polynandry: Bondage Among Women in Jaunsar Bawar." By Jayoti Gupta. In Chains of Servitude: Bondage and Slavery in India. Edited by Utsa Patnaik and Manjari Dingwaney. New York: Apt Books, Inc., 1986. pp. 258-28l.ISBN 0-86131-490-5. $40. "Tooth Size Variation in Prehistoric India." By John R. Lukacs. In American Anthropologist, vol. 87, no. 4, December 1985. pp. 811-825. "Natural Background of the Yak: Transhumance in the Langtang Valley, Nepal Himalaya." By Yugo ono and Ayako Sadakane.
  • Tibetan Youth Activism: Role of Government-In-Exile, 1959-1976

    Tibetan Youth Activism: Role of Government-In-Exile, 1959-1976

    Tibetan Youth Activism: Role of Government-in-Exile, 1959-1976 Dissertation submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University for the award of the degree of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY FWJAKHANG BRAHMA CENTRE FOR INNER ASIAN STUDIES SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY NEW DELHI-110067 2018 Tibetan Youth Activism: Role of Government-in-Exile, 1959-1976 Dissertation submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University for the award of the degree of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY FWJAKHANG BRAHMA CENTRE FOR INNER ASIAN STUDIES SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY NEW DELHI-110067 2018 Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 1-25 Chapter 2: Tibetan Youth Struggle in Exile 26-56 Chapter 3: Role of Tibetan Youth and Religion 57-73 Chapter 4: Changing Dimension of Tibetan Youth Activism and the Role of Government- in-Exile 74-100 Chapter 5: Conclusion 101-108 Bibliography: 109-119 List of Abbreviations ATPD Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies BRDL Bhod Rangwang Denpai Legul CPPCC Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference CTAO Canadian Tibetan Association of Ontario CRCT Central Relief Committee for Tibetans CIA Central Investigation Agency CTA Central Tibetan Administration CTPD Commission of Tibetan People’s Deputies CIA Central Investigations Agency CTE Council for Tibetan Education CTPD Commission of Tibetan People’s Deputies GOI Government of India ITSN International Tibet Support Network NWC National Working Committee PAP People’s Armed Police PLA People’s Liberation Army PSB Public Security Bureau PRC People’s Republic of China
  • Tibet: Problems, Prospects, and U.S

    Tibet: Problems, Prospects, and U.S

    Order Code RL34445 Tibet: Problems, Prospects, and U.S. Policy Updated July 30, 2008 Kerry Dumbaugh Specialist in Asian Affairs Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division Tibet: Problems, Prospects, and U.S. Policy Summary On March 10, 2008, a series of demonstrations began in Lhasa and other Tibetan regions of China to mark the 49th anniversary of an unsuccessful Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. The demonstrations appeared to begin peacefully with small groups that were then contained by security forces. Both the protests and the response of the PRC authorities escalated in the ensuing days, spreading from the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) into parts of Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai Provinces with Tibetan populations. By March 14, 2008, mobs of angry people were burning and looting establishments in downtown Lhasa. Authorities of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) responded by sealing off Tibet and moving in large-scale security forces. Beijing has defended its actions as appropriate and necessary to restore civil order and prevent further violence. Still, China’s response has resulted in renewed calls for boycotts of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony on August 8, 2008, and for China to hold talks with the Dalai Lama. China sees itself as having provided Tibet with extensive economic assistance and development using money from central government coffers, and PRC officials often seem perplexed at the simmering anger many Tibetans nevertheless retain against them. Despite the economic development, Tibetans charge that the PRC interferes with Tibetan culture and religion. They cite as examples: Beijing’s interference in 1995 in the choice of the Panchen Lama, Tibet’s second highest- ranking personage; enactment of a “reincarnation law” in 2007 requiring Buddhist monks who wish to reincarnate to obtain prior approval from Beijing; and China’s policy of conducting “patriotic education” campaigns, as well as efforts to foster atheism, among the Tibetan religious community.