Regarding the claim that "Tibet has been part of China since the Yuan dynasty", the following are some relevant extracts from "Imperial China 900-1800" (Harvard, 1999), by the late Emeritus Professor Frederick W. Mote of Princeton. Chapter 20: China under Mongol Rule Section I: Yuan Government Tibet: (pp. 483-485) The most important of the unprecedented special agencies was the Commission for Tibetan and Buddhist Affairs, the Xuanzhengyuan, rank I.B. It managed the entire Buddhist clergy throughout the realm, and supervised all temples, monasteries, and other Buddhist properties, at least in name. It was also responsible in a curious way for administering Tibet. That is, this office was given responsibility for administering the Buddhist establishment in Tibet, which was tantamount to giving the persons in charge of that office the dominant role in local governing. During his reign Khubilai’s interest shifted away from Chan Buddhism, then the dominant trend in Chinese Buddhist teachings (but not a separate sect, as was Chan, or Zen, in Japan). Lamaist Buddhism from Tibet came to supersede Chan in his religious life. The Tibetan monk Phagspa (P’ags-pa, 1235-1280) was named the National Preceptor, subsequently elevated to the title of Imperial Preceptor by Khubilai in the 1260s. He was concurrently named the director of the Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs. Phagspa is one of the more remarkable figures in Yuan history; he was an intellectual figure of undoubted genius, and administrator, and a spiritual leader and writer of great influence. After his death he became something of a Buddhist patron saint of the Yuan government. He used his very close relationship with the emperor not only to promote Tibetan Buddhism in China but also to advance the interests of his sect of Lamaism in Tibet. His close relatives and other leaders of the Sa-skya sect were appointed, on his advice, either to act as the khan’s viceroy or to staff the crucial Pacification Commission for Tibet. In this way the Yuan court found eager surrogates to govern Tibet for them. Those measures, however, clearly did not bring Tibet under Beijing’s rule. The Mongol army did not invade and conquer that country, not did it maintain any regular military presence there, although on a few occasions it did attempt to coerce dissidents and rebels by limited military actions or by stationing intimidating forces on the borders. Chapter 27: Ming China’s Borders Section III. Tibet and the Western Borders (pp. 698-700; see map p. 699) 1 China’s western frontier in Ming times extended from the arid loess region of Gansu in the northwest, southward along the edges of the Himalayan upland, then into the subtropical jungles of western Yunnan and Burma. The northwest was administered under a sprawling Shaanxi Province that included much of later Gansu and supervised the military government of the Gansu Corridor that then lay beyond the provincial boundaries. That northwest extension of Ming local administration was surrounded by autonomous Mongol tribal federations whose leaders had been given the honorific Ming titles of Pacification Commissioners. Important among them were groups called Dada (Tatar), and some known as constituents of the Oyirat Mongol federation (i.e., the Khoshut tribe), along with other tribal groups. During Ming times the northwest thus contained a broad array of Chinese, Mongol, and Turkic peoples that included some Uighur and other Islamic communities. And there were Tibetans. Most of the western border zone, from the northwest corner of China southward, was dominated by a range of peoples usually identified as Tibetans. They were the most numerous and historically the most important of China’s western neighbors. In Ming times we can think of them as the Tibetans of central Tibet, or Tibet Proper (Xikang), with its capital at Lhasa, and the Tibetans of the eastern extension of the Himalayan upland along the western border of China (Amdo and the Kham region adjacent to western Sichuan) (Map 18). These northern and eastern Tibetans were often called the Qiang people in history. Tibet developed a literate high culture in the sixth and seventh centuries C.E. (about the same time as Japan and Korea). That also is when it accepted both Buddhism and literacy through its southwestern borders with Indian civilizations. The still earlier culture is now thought to have arisen in far western Tibet, in Central Asia. The first well-organized state in Tibet Proper, however, controlling central Tibet where present-day Lhasa is located, took form in the seventh century. That was a vigorously expansive period; Tibetan armies pushed out to conquer widely in all directions. On their east and northeast they made serious incursions into Tang China’s western boundaries. We know a great deal about this formative period in Tibet’s history because Chinese historical records clearly document the Tang involvement with the Tibetan kingdom of that time. Cultural relations with Tang China began to develop, and in 641 the Tang emperor acceded to the demand of the Tibetan king to forumulize their relationship by sending him an imperial princess to wed. The power of that secular kingdom subsequently disintegrated; after the ninth century, Tibet gradually came to be ruled by local leaders of its Buddhist church. Cultural links with China were greatly diminished thereafter while Tibet turned its attention to its southern and eastern borders. Profound involvement with Indian culture through several centuries produced the great age of Tibetan religious and philosophical writing and of religious poetry. 2 When the Muslim conquest of northeastern India took place about the year 1200, Tibet’s relations with India were reduced, but by that time Indian learning was well established in Tibet’s many monasteries; a Tibeto-Indian intellectual tradition continued to grow. During the Mongols' Yuan dynasty (1272-1368), Tibet came back into significant relationship with China; the Mongol emperors intended to control Tibet, but without conquering it. Khubilai Khan had marched southward along the eastern edges of the Amdo Tibetan border region on his way to invade Yunnan in 1253. In 1290 the Yuan government sent forces into the country to attack and suppress a sect threatening the hegemony of the Saskya-pa, whom the Mongols favored as their surrogates in Tibet. Otherwise, the Mongols seldom intervened militarily. Through Yuan times, the Mongol government in Beijing was content to exercise a loose authority through Saskya-pa lamas [such as the Buddhist teacher Phagspa, who was Khubilai Khan's preceptor]. It threatened to use military force while giving official titles such as viceroy to Tibetan spiritual heads, confirming them in both spiritual and temporal powers. In fact, the Mongols of the Yuan period maintained no presence in Tibet and allowed their surrogates, principally the lamas who headed the Red Hat (Saskya-pa) sect of Tibetan Buddhism, to rule as they pleased. In the early Ming the Chinese displayed still less concern about the country itself, content to keep the western frontier secure by diplomatic means such as extending courtesies to leading figures of the Lamaist church. The Yongle emperor (1402-1424), always seeking ways to legitimize his usurpation, was eager for heads of border states to acknowledge him. In the case of Tibet, he bestowed lavish gifts on Tibetan church leaders. In 1407-1408 the fifth reincarnation of the founder of the Black Hat Karma-pa sect, known in Chinese records as Halima, made the journey to Nanjing, where the Yongle emperor asked him to perform memorial services for his parents. At the same time performed many magical acts, earning the awe of the the Chinese capital. He was invited, however, as a miracle worker; political and other considerations were secondary. The Yongle emperor also heard about Halima's famous contemporary Tsong- kha-pa (1357-1419), the founder of the Yellow Hat or Gelug-pa sect, whose heads later became known as the Dalai Lamas. He entreated Tsung-kha-pa to visit the Ming capital, but was spurned. When later Ming emperors invited such dignitaries to visit the Ming capital at Nanjing or at Beijing, they declined, always sending lower-ranking monks as their envoys. Tibetan lamas (monks), often regarded as persons of extraordinary spiritual powers, were patronized by several of the Ming emperors and members of the imperial household, as well as by prominent members of the official elite, and were frequently in residence at Buddhist temples in the capital and elsewhere throughout the country. A 3 vivid image of the “western regions monk” appears in the mentality of Ming China, as also in present-day entertainment literature and cinema. Trade moved in considerable quantity in and out of Tibet through Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, and religious interaction in those border provinces was also lively. Historians of art see significant Chinese impact on Tibetan painting and woodcarving in Ming times. Although rare earlier examples exist, by the fifteenth century the Chinese technology for woodblock printing began to be widely used for reproducing Tibetan religious texts. Tibetan learning in fields such as medicine was admired in China. Chinese institutions, ethics, and sciences, however successfully exported on other frontiers, made little impact in Tibet. Politically, Ming China's relations with Tibet were distant and cool. Tibet's relations with Mongolia during Ming times were, by contrast, very close. Tsong-kha-pa’s third successor was identified as his reincarnation, and thereafter the leaders of the Yellow Hat sect all came to their position in that way. The Yellow Hat sect (Gelug-pa) achieved great stature in Tibet in the fifteenth century for the rigor of its monastic discipline and its systematic teachings. At a time when Tibet’s internal wars and conflicts among the older so-called Red Hat and Black Hat sects were often decided by Mongol intervention, the Yellow Hat sect had remained apart from politics.