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Until October 25, 1971, when the General Assembly of the United Nations passed the resolution to replace the Republic of China (today’s Taiwan) with People’s Republic of China (PRC), Chairman Mao’s Communist Government in Beijing had been desperately pleading before the world community to be treated as the ‘real’ China. Once this goal was achieved, Beijing’s campaign got focused on the world community to forget Taiwan as a separate country and believe in PRC as the only ‘One China’ with Taiwan as a part of it.
Later, as acceptance of PRC improved and Taiwan got pushed to the sidelines of international diplomacy, the Communist leaders of China shifted the gear to expand their definition of ‘One China’ policy to a new level. They started cajoling the world to apply the principle of ‘One China Policy’ also on China’s three latest colonies, namely Tibet, East Turkistan (renamed as ‘Xinjiang’) and South Mongolia (renamed as ‘Inner Mongolia’) and accept them as ‘integral parts of China’. After acquiring the new economic, military and diplomatic might at its command, Beijing has now started dictating the world governments and institutions to dance to its tunes.
While the first chapter explains why it matters whether Tibet was or was not historically part of China, the second one narrates why China makes such claims
China has now taken to the old Communist game of rewriting history – especially on Tibet. With the aim of fortifying Beijing’s claims over Tibet as ‘historically’ an ‘integral’ part of China, it has come up with a bizarre idea of claiming the rule of Mongol and Manchu conquerors of China as ‘seamless inheritance’ of today’s China.
After failing to win the hearts of its Tibetan colonial subjects in the past 74 years and ever increasing international concerns and sympathy over the grave human rights situation inside Tibet, Beijing now looks desperate about wiping out Tibet from the world memory by replacing the name of Tibet with its Chinese name ‘Xizang’. Thanks to the deep pockets of Beijing and its art of arm twisting, some governments and institutions have already started falling in line.
“Tibet Explained –Legal Status, Rights and State Responsibility”deals with all such Chinese narratives which Beijing uses to justify its forced occupation of these three countries which functioned as free nations before China colonised them. Part-1 of this book has three chapters which deal with PRC’s claim to Tibet, especially China’s narrative that ‘Tibet has always been a part of China’.
While the first chapter explains why it matters whether Tibet was or was not historically part of China, the second one narrates why China makes such claims. According to the authors, China’s claims over Tibet have a serious impact on India’s sovereignty as China’s claims over its Arunachal Pradesh parts of Ladakh purely on the basis of claiming Tibet as a part of China.
Chapter three stands out as one of the most important and impressive parts of this book as it logically and graphically exposes present day China’s real historic and legal status vis-à-vis Tibet or other colonies. Through a graphic chart, the authors have visually exposed the hollowness of Chinese claims as it explains the historic time line of all dynasties which ruled over China for 1,222 years from 690 AD till 1912 when the modern ‘Republic of China’ was declared and came into existence. In this chapter, the authors have exposed present day PRC Government’s claims over Tibet, East Turkistan and South Mongolia with clinical precision on the basis of the expansive footprint of Mongol and Manchu empires who ruled many other countries and regions in addition to China. “This makes very clear why the PRC insists on superimposing the label ‘China’ on the Mongol and Manchu empires, as it is only these empires that exercised authority in large regions of Inner Asia, not only the Chinese Ming Empire.” In other words, the present day communist Chinese rulers are laying their claims over Tibet, ‘Xinjiang’ and South Mongolia simply on the logic that since the Mongols and the Manchus ruled over China while the above mentioned regions were also under their influence; hence they belong to China of today. If such a Chinese logic is implied to other parts of the world then India can very well claim Australia as an ‘integral part of India’ or New Zealand would also be entitled to claim India as its part simply because all three were ruled once by Britain.
Through two detailed chapters on the question of Tibet’s right of self-determination in the Part-4 of this book, the authors argue and prove that since Tibetans qualify to be ‘a people’ hence they have a right to the full exercise of self-determination under the prevailing international laws. All Chinese governments since occupation of Tibet in 1951 have been resisting similar international demands by claiming that Tibet is an ‘integral part of China’.
However, Part-5 appears to be the main highlight of this book as it deals with the international community’s policies and approach towards Tibet. Here the authors have reminded the international governments about their obligations under the international law which include asking them “not to recognize the PRC’s unlawful seizure and annexation of Tibet’; and to desist from rendering any aid or assistance to the PRC government which helps it to maintain its unlawful occupation of Tibet.
But the most significant operative part of this chapter and the book is a list of nine policy recommendations by the authors to the world governments, institutions and media to stop using terminology and taking actions which end up promoting China’s false narratives on Tibet and other Chinese colonies. These points include: desisting from stating that “Tibet is a part of PRC”; refrain from stating that they oppose the idea of independence for Tibet; treat China-Tibet conflict as an international matter and not an ‘internal matter of China’; endorse Tibetan people’s right to self-determination; never use terms like ‘national minorities’ for Tibet, Uyghurs and Mongols because it reduces their identity to some minor Chinese ethnic groups whereas they have been independent ‘nations’ in recent history; and reject and contest PRC’s assertion that Tibet is a ‘core interest’ of China.
