Beijing's Intensifying Campaign to Ensure That Tibet Remains a Part of China

Although historic ties between dynastic China and Tibet were at times quite acrimonious, there was enough ambiguity within their relationship to give both sides the space to wax and wane without subsuming one another.¹ In contrast, during the later stages of the Qing Dynasty, and following its collapse, the importation of the Westphalian concept of sovereignty, and the sense of nationalism that came with it, transformed Sino-Tibetan relations.

As modern China grew stronger over the course of the twentieth century, the Chinese placed increasing emphasis on incorporating Tibet into their country. However, many in Tibet have never accepted the legitimacy of such rule. Thus, Tibetans have periodically protested against the Chinese takeover of their land. Most recently, in March of 2008, Tibetans carried out large-scale anti-Chinese demonstrations and followed these protests with a wave (which peaked from 2012 to 2013) of self-immolations intended to call attention to Tibet's plight.

These latest acts of defiance initially caused the Chinese establishment to reflect upon what had gone wrong in Tibet and to consider the utility of governing the region with a lighter hand.² However, this potentially progressive moment proved to be short-lived as it was quickly eclipsed by the implementation of a harsher policy line, which Jampel Gyatso, a prominent Tibetan scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, characterized in 2015 as "bearing poisonous fruit" (jiē chū dú guǒ) for Tibetans.³ This approach has also intensified in recent years as evident in the expanding campaign to "Sinicize Tibetan Buddhism" (zàng chuán fó jiào zhōng guó huà). This evolving Chinese stance seeks to valorize only those Tibetan Buddhist practices that are consistent with Beijing's own vision of the region (loyal to China) while denigrating non-Sinicized traits and beliefs within the religion (those that fail to acknowledge China's role in its development). Such a turn reveals that Beijing is not only looking to control Tibet, but also to reshape its cultural core (Tibetan Buddhism). This move constitutes a significant escalation in China's effort to ensure that Tibet remains a part of the People's Republic of China (PRC), and has profound implications for Beijing's approach to other restive regions on the country's periphery.

Making Tibet Part of China

Sino-Tibetan relations began down the path that led to this stance in October of 1950

when the People's Liberation Army entered Tibetan territory en masse. The following year, Chinese gains from this move resulted in the signing of the Seventeen Point Agreement. In its pages, Tibet's leaders ceded their claim to Tibetan independence in return for a Chinese promise not to interfere with how the region was governed.⁴

The Seventeen Point Agreement established a temporary truce between Tibet and China. However, it soon became clear that Beijing and Lhasa disagreed over how to interpret and implement its terms; Lhasa viewed it as a guarantee of non-interference in all Tibetan regions, while Beijing took a less strict interpretation of the limits it placed on policymaking and the territory to which it applied. Thus, it was unsurprising that over the following years simmering Tibetan discontent led to a string of armed conflicts concentrated in the eastern Tibetan region of Kham, an area that Chinese leaders considered to fall outside of the scope of Tibet covered by the agreement. By 1959, the fight between the two sides came to Lhasa. In March of that year, the Dalai Lama fled for India and the city was engulfed in violence.⁵ Subsequently, Beijing acted to bring Tibet to heel by moving forward with the establishment of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) in 1965.

Such an approach brought Tibet under Beijing's control. However, after the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) in particu lar, it also hardened Tibetan opposition to Chinese rule. In the early 1980s, in implicit acknowledgement of the persistence of such sentiments, China's leaders implemented a series of partial reforms in Tibetan regions intended to allow a limited degree of religious freedom and spur economic...