pop (2000e) 2 448 000; area 1 221 600 km²/471 500 sq mi. Designated by Chinese as an autonomous region in SW China; S and W border includes Bhutan, India, and Nepal; in the Tibet Plateau, average altitude 4000 m/13 000 ft; Himalayas in the S, on borders with India, Nepal, and Bhutan, rising to 8848 m/29 028 ft at Mt Everest; Kunlun Shan range in the N; major farming area in S valleys; several rivers and lakes (largest salt-water lake, Nam Co, NW of Lhasa); capital, Lhasa; wheat, peas, rape seed; sheep, yak and goat raising, forestry, medicinal musk, caterpillar fungus, textiles; mining of chromium, iron, copper, lead, zinc, borax, salt, mica, gypsum; Tibetans originated in China, c.2500 BC; dominated N China, 4th-c AD; N Tibet conquered by Sui dynasty, 6th-c; first King of Tibet, 630; TibetanChinese royal marriage link in 641, with introduction of Buddhism and Chinese culture; Tangut Tibetans conquered W China, 990, and established rich civilization, but overrun by Mongols, 1227; ruled by Mongols, 12791368; dominant religion Lamaism (Tibetan Buddhism) from 7th-c; semi-independent from 14th-c; Chinese protectorate, following defeat by Qing army, 1720; dispute with Britain caused by defeat of Nepal by Chinese army from Tibet, 1791; total separation of China and Tibet demanded by Britain, 1912, rejected by China; Chinese ethnic penetration during World War 2; invaded by China, 1950, against Indian protests, and full control asserted after 1959 revolt, with suspected atrocities; declared an autonomous region of China in 1965; Dalai Lama given refuge in India; most monasteries and temples now closed or officially declared historical monuments, but many people still worship daily; thought to be fewer than 1000 monks now in Tibet, compared to over 100 000 monks in 2500 monasteries prior to 1959; further uprising in 1993; QinghaiTibet line, the world's highest railway (height reaching 5072 m, length 1140 km/710 mi), linking Lhasa with the NW province of Qinghai, opened 2006.
This article is about historical/cultural Tibet.Definitions
When the Government of Tibet in Exile and the Tibetan refugee community worldwide refer to Tibet, they mean a large area that formed the cultural entity of Tibet for many centuries, consisting of the traditional provinces of Amdo, Kham (Khams), and Ü-Tsang (Dbus-gtsang), but excluding areas outside the People's Republic of China (PRC) like Arunachal Pradesh (or South Tibet), Sikkim, Bhutan, and Ladakh that have also formed part of the Tibetan cultural sphere.
When the People's Republic of China refers to Tibet, it means the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR): a province-level entity which, according to the territorial claims of the PRC, includes Arunachal Pradesh (presently under the administration of India).
Tibet was once an independent empire, and is today administered mostly under the People's Republic of China. The Chinese government and the Government of Tibet in Exile, however, disagree over when Tibet became a part of China, and whether this incorporation into China was legitimate.
Name
In Tibetan
Tibetans call their homeland Bod (བོད་), pronounced pö in Lhasa dialect.
In Chinese
The modern Chinese name for Tibet, 西藏 (Xīzàng), is a phonetic transliteration derived from the region called Tsang (western Ü-Tsang). The pre-1700s historic Chinese term for Tibet was 吐蕃 (Tufan, Medieval Chinese pronuncation: /t'obwǝn/), which comes from the Turkish word for "heights" and is also the origin of the English term "Tibet."
The government of the People's Republic of China equates Tibet with the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). In order to refer non-TAR Tibetan areas, or to all of cultural Tibet, the term 藏区 Zàngqū (literally, "ethnic Tibetan areas") is used. However, Chinese-language versions of pro-Tibetan independence websites, such as the Free Tibet Campaign, the Voice of Tibet, and Tibet Net use 西藏 ("Xizang"), not 藏区 ("Zangqu"), to mean historic Tibet.
Some English-speakers reserve "Xizang", the Chinese word transliterated into English, for the TAR, to keep the concept distinct from that of historic Tibet. Some pro-independence advocates duplicate the situation into the Chinese language, and use 土番 (Tufan) or 图伯特 (Tubote), which are both phonetic transcriptions of the word "Tibet", to refer to historic Tibet, this is still used for research area and is known and accepted by most of the Chinese. The Chinese character 藏 (Zàng) has also been generalized to refer to all of Tibet, including other concepts related to Tibet such as the Tibetan language (藏文, Zàngwén) and the Tibetan people (藏族, Zàngzú). The two characters of Xīzàng can literally mean "western storehouse", which some Tibetans find offensive and indicative of what they see as Chinese colonial attitudes towards Tibet.
In English
The English word Tibet, like the word for Tibet in most European languages, is derived from the Arabic word Tubbat.
Cities
Lhasa is Tibet's traditional capital and the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region.
During this period, Tibet had a population of 10 million with 3 million Tibetans and an army of comparable strength facing the two Tang armies of Southern Xinjiang (24,000 soldiers) and of the Silk Road (75,000 soldiers).
According to the Tibetan book Historic Collection of the Han and Tibet (Han Zang shi ji) “In the reign of the Tibetan King Chidusongzan [Khri ‘Dus sron] (676-704), the Tibetan aristocracy started to drink tea and use the tea-bowl, and tea was classified into different categories.”
After the downfall of the Tibetan Dynasty, the Tang recovered the Silk-road (848). This form of society was to continue into the 1950s, although Tibetan themselves claim that this is not an accurate description and that Tibetans consist of many different background and not just monks, masters, and serfs. The principal motivation for the British mission was a fear, which proved to be unfounded, that Russia was extending its footprint into Tibet and possibly even giving military aid to the Tibetan government. But in his way to Lhasa, Younghusband killed 1300 tibetans in Gyam-Tse(as written in "The Great Game" of Peter Hopkirk), because the natives were in fear of what kind of unequal treaty the English would offer to the Tibetans. The treaty made provisions for the frontier between Sikkim and Tibet to be respected, for freer trade between British and Tibetan subjects, and for an indemnity to be paid from the Tibetan Government to the British Government for its expenses in dispatching armed troops to Lhasa.
A Nepalese agency had also been established in Lhasa after the invasion of Tibet by the Gurkha government of Nepal in 1855.
In the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1906 which confirmed the Anglo-Tibetan Treaty of 1904, Britain agreed "not to annex Tibetan territory or to interfere in the administration of Tibet" while China engaged "not to permit any other foreign State to interfere with the territory or internal administration of Tibet". The official position of the British Government was that they would not intervene between China and Tibet, and it would only recognize the de facto government of China within Tibet at this time. In Bell's history of Tibet, he would write of this time that "the Tibetans were abandoned to Chinese aggression, an aggression for which the British Military Expedition to Lhasa and subsequent retreat [and consequent power vacuum within Tibet] were primarily responsible". The new Chinese Republican government wished to make the commander of the Chinese troops in Lhasa their new Tibetan representative, but the Tibetans were in favour of having all of the Chinese troops return to China Proper. During the convention, the British tried to divide Tibet into Inner and Outer Tibet. When negotiations broke down over the specific boundary between Inner and Outer, the British demanded instead to advance their line of control, enabling them to annex 90,000 square kilometers of traditional Tibetan territory in southern Tibet, which corresponds to most of the modern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, while recognizing Chinese suzerainty, but not sovereignty, over Tibet. however, the Chinese view since then has been that since China, which was sovereign over Tibet, did not sign the treaty, the treaty was meaningless, and the annexation and control of southern Tibet Arunachal Pradesh by India is illegal.
The subsequent outbreak of World War I and civil war in China caused the Western powers and the infighting factions of China proper to lose interest in Tibet, and the 13th Dalai Lama ruled undisturbed. At that time, the government of Tibet controlled all of Ü-Tsang (Dbus-gtsang) and western Kham (Khams), roughly coincident with the borders of Tibet Autonomous Region today.
Rule of the People's Republic of China
Neither the Republic of China nor the People's Republic of China has ever renounced China's claim to sovereignty over Tibet. In 1951, the Seventeen Point Agreement was forced upon by PLA's military, by representatives of the Dalai Lama and Beijing affirming Chinese sovereignty over Tibet with a joint administration under representatives of the central government and the Tibetan government. Most of the population of Tibet at that time were serfs ("mi ser"), often bound to land owned by monasteries and aristocrats, the Tibetans-in-exile claim that the Serfs and Masters were only small part of Tibet and that Tibetans are from vast different backgrounds such as nomads, merchants, farmers, traders, thieves, bandits, aristocrats, Tibetan doctors, teachers, monks, nuns, beggars, artists, singers, musicians, and many more, just like any other civilization. Argument has always made by Tibetans that Tibet would modernized by itself without the unnecessary intervention by China. Tibetan exiles claim that during this campaign, tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed.
Although the Panchen Lama remained a virtual prisoner, the Chinese set him as a figurehead in Lhasa, claiming that he headed the legitimate Government of Tibet since Dalai Lama has fled to India because of the 1959 riots and established the traditional head of the Tibetan government.
The PRC continues to portray its rule over Tibet as an unalloyed improvement, and foreign governments continue to make occasional protests about aspects of PRC rule in Tibet because of frequent report of human rights violation in Tibet by many Human rights group such as Human rights watch (hrw.org). All governments, however, recognize PRC sovereignty over Tibet, and none has recognized the Dalai Lama's government in exile in India. Smith made from census reports of Tibet which show 200,000 "missing" from Tibet. Even The Black Book of Communism expresses doubt at the 1.2 million figure, but does note that according to Chinese census the total population of ethnic Tibetans in the PRC was 2.8 million in 1953, but only 2.5 million in 1964.
The government of Tibet in Exile also says that, fundamentally, the issue is that of the right to self-determination of the Tibetan people. While refusing to agree to China's demands that he renounce the idea that Tibet was once an independent country, the Dalai Lama has stated his willingness to negotiate with China for "genuine autonomy" (over the objection of those Tibetans who push for full independence). The Dalai Lama sees the millions of Han immigrants, attracted to the TAR by economic incentives and preferential socioeconomic policies, as presenting an urgent threat to the Tibetan nation by diluting the Tibetans both culturally and through intermarriage. Supporters of the Dalai Lama argue that comparisons between the theocracy before 1950 and the Tibet of today are false because, if China had not invaded, the Dalai Lama would have worked to improve the material lot of the people, their political rights, and in doing so has disturbed the natural process of a legitimate nation. But monks and nuns are still sometimes imprisoned, and many Tibetans (mostly monks and nuns) continue to flee Tibet yearly. At the same time, many Tibetans view projects that the PRC claims to benefit Tibet, such as the China Western Development economic plan or the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, as politically-motivated actions to consolidate central control over Tibet by facilitating militarization and Han migration while benefiting few Tibetans; They note that Tibet is still behind the rest of the PRC: for example, the first big hospital in Tibet was not built until 1985;
Evaluation by the People's Republic of China
The government of the PRC says that the population of Tibet in 1737 was about 8 million, and that due to the backward rule of the local theocracy, there was rapid decrease in the next two hundred years and the population in 1959 was only about 1.19 million. Today, the population of Greater Tibet is 7.3 million, of which, according to the 2000 census, 5 million are ethnic Tibetans. instead the PRC says that the border for Greater Tibet drawn by the government of Tibet in Exile is so large that it incorporates regions such as Xining that are not traditionally Tibetan in the first place, hence exaggerating the number of non-Tibetans.
The government of the PRC also rejects claims that the lives of Tibetans have deteriorated, pointing to rights enjoyed by the Tibetan language in education and in courts and says that the lives of Tibetans have been improved immensely compared to the Dalai Lama's rule before 1950. The China Western Development plan is viewed by the PRC as a massive, benevolent, and patriotic undertaking by the eastern coast to help the western parts of China, including Tibet, catch up in prosperity and living standards.
Geography
Tibet is located on the Tibetan Plateau, the world's highest region.
Historic Tibet consists of several regions:
Amdo (A mdo) in the northeast, incorporated by China into the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan. Western Kham, part of the Tibetan Autonomous Region U (dBus), in the center, and Tsang (gTsang) in the center-west, part of the Tibetan Autonomous Region Ngari (mNga' ris) in the far west, part of the Tibetan Autonomous RegionTibetan cultural influences extend to the neighboring states of Bhutan, Nepal, adjacent regions of India such as Sikkim and Ladakh, and adjacent provinces of China where Tibetan Buddhism is the predominant religion.
On the border with India, the region popularly known among Chinese as South Tibet is claimed by China and administered by India as the state of Arunachal Pradesh. For instance, Tibetan opponents contend that it would only draw more Han Chinese residents, the country's dominant ethnic group, who have been migrating steadily to Tibet over the last decade, bringing with them their popular culture.
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Historically, the population of Tibet consisted of primarily ethnic Tibetans.
The issue of the proportion of the Han Chinese population in Tibet is a politically sensitive one. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile says that the People's Republic of China has actively swamped Tibet with Han Chinese migrants in order to alter Tibet's demographic makeup, while the People's Republic of China has denied this. The Government of Tibet in Exile gives the number of non-Tibetans in Tibet as 7.5 million (as opposed to 6 million Tibetans), and considers this the result of an active policy of demographically swamping the Tibetan people and further diminishing any chances of Tibetan political independence, and as such, to be in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1946 that prohibits settlement by occupying powers. The Government of Tibet in Exile questions all statistics given by the PRC government, since they do not include members of the People's Liberation Army garrisoned in Tibet, or the large floating population of unregistered migrants. The PRC also does not recognize Greater Tibet as claimed by the government of Tibet in Exile, saying that the idea was engineered by foreign imperialists as a plot to divide China amongst themselves, and that those areas outside the TAR were not controlled by the Tibetan government before 1959 in the first place, having been administered instead by other surrounding provinces for centuries. The PRC gives the number of Tibetans in Tibet Autonomous Region as 2.4 million, as opposed to 190,000 non-Tibetans, and the number of Tibetans in all Tibetan autonomous entities combined (slightly smaller than the Greater Tibet claimed by exiled Tibetans) as 5.0 million, as opposed to 2.3 million non-Tibetans.
| Major ethnic groups in Greater Tibet by region, 2000 census | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | Tibetans | Han Chinese | others | ||||
| Tibet Autonomous Region: | 2,616,329 | 2,427,168 | 92.8% | 158,570 | 6.1% | 30,591 | 1.2% |
| - Lhasa PLC | 474,499 | 387,124 | 81.6% | 80,584 | 17.0% | 6,791 | 1.4% |
| - Chamdo Prefecture | 586,152 | 563,831 | 96.2% | 19,673 | 3.4% | 2,648 | 0.5% |
| - Lhokha Prefecture | 318,106 | 305,709 | 96.1% | 10,968 | 3.4% | 1,429 | 0.4% |
| - Shigatse Prefecture | 634,962 | 618,270 | 97.4% | 12,500 | 2.0% | 4,192 | 0.7% |
| - Nagchu Prefecture | 366,710 | 357,673 | 97.5% | 7,510 | 2.0% | 1,527 | 0.4% |
| - Ngari Prefecture | 77,253 | 73,111 | 94.6% | 3,543 | 4.6% | 599 | 0.8% |
| - Nyingtri Prefecture | 158,647 | 121,450 | 76.6% | 23,792 | 15.0% | 13,405 | 8.4% |
| Qinghai Province: | 4,822,963 | 1,086,592 | 22.5% | 2,606,050 | 54.0% | 1,130,321 | 23.4% |
| - Xining PLC | 1,849,713 | 96,091 | 5.2% | 1,375,013 | 74.3% | 378,609 | 20.5% |
| - Haidong Prefecture | 1,391,565 | 128,025 | 9.2% | 783,893 | 56.3% | 479,647 | 34.5% |
| - Haibei AP | 258,922 | 62,520 | 24.1% | 94,841 | 36.6% | 101,561 | 39.2% |
| - Huangnan AP | 214,642 | 142,360 | 66.3% | 16,194 | 7.5% | 56,088 | 26.1% |
| - Hainan AP | 375,426 | 235,663 | 62.8% | 105,337 | 28.1% | 34,426 | 9.2% |
| - Golog AP | 137,940 | 126,395 | 91.6% | 9,096 | 6.6% | 2,449 | 1.8% |
| - Gyêgu AP | 262,661 | 255,167 | 97.1% | 5,970 | 2.3% | 1,524 | 0.6% |
| - Haixi AP | 332,094 | 40,371 | 12.2% | 215,706 | 65.0% | 76,017 | 22.9% |
| Tibetan areas in Sichuan province | |||||||
| - Aba AP | 847,468 | 455,238 | 53.7% | 209,270 | 24.7% | 182,960 | 21.6% |
| - Garzê AP | 897,239 | 703,168 | 78.4% | 163,648 | 18.2% | 30,423 | 3.4% |
| - Muli AC | 124,462 | 60,679 | 48.8% | 27,199 | 21.9% | 36,584 | 29.4% |
| Tibetan areas in Yunnan province | |||||||
| - Dêqên AP | 353,518 | 117,099 | 33.1% | 57,928 | 16.4% | 178,491 | 50.5% |
| Tibetan areas in Gansu province | |||||||
| - Gannan AP | 640,106 | 329,278 | 51.4% | 267,260 | 41.8% | 43,568 | 6.8% |
| - Tianzhu AC | 221,347 | 66,125 | 29.9% | 139,190 | 62.9% | 16,032 | 7.2% |
| Total for Greater Tibet: | |||||||
| With Xining and Haidong | 10,523,432 | 5,245,347 | 49.8% | 3,629,115 | 34.5% | 1,648,970 | 15.7% |
| Without Xining and Haidong | 7,282,154 | 5,021,231 | 69.0% | 1,470,209 | 20.2% | 790,714 | 10.9% |
This table includes all Tibetan autonomous entities in the People's Republic of China, plus Xining PLC and Haidong P. The latter two are included to complete the figures for Qinghai province,
and also because they are claimed as parts of Greater Tibet by the Government of Tibet in exile.
P = Prefecture; (ISBN 7-105-05425-5)
Culture
Tibet is the traditional center of Tibetan Buddhism, a distinctive form of Vajrayana, which is also related to the Shingon Buddhist tradition in Japan. Tibetan Buddhism is practiced not only in Tibet but also in Mongolia, the Buryat Republic, the Tuva Republic, and in the Republic of Kalmykia. After the invasion of Tibet in 1959 a group of Tibetan Muslims made a case for Indian nationality based on their historic roots to Kashmir and the Indian government declared all Tibetan Muslims Indian citizens later on that year. Due to recent build up of some of the major monastery, Tibetans believe that this is attempt to portray false image of Tibet.
Since 2002, Tibet has allowed a Miss Tibet beauty contest in spite of concerns that this event is considered a Western influence.
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