The most damaging evidence against Rinpoche’s claims come from the October 1912 issue of The National Geographic Magazine (I have a copy—it cost me $20 on e-bay). Since the earliest evidence of Communists in China was about 1920, and it wasn’t until 1949 that the Communists came to power under Mao, there is no way the Chinese doctor who wrote that 1912 piece could have lied for the Communists.
Ming Dynasty 1368-1643
On page 979, Dr. Shaoching H. Chuan wrote, “Tibet is governed by the Dalai Lama as politco-religous head and two “Ambans” as the political dictators. The Ambans are appointed by the Chinese Emperor every four years. All governmental affairs have to undergo examination by the two Ambans, and all government policy must be sanctioned by them before it can be put into operation. Literally, the Dalai Lama is under the authority of the two Ambans…” (Page 979)
Go to Tibet Inside China – Part 4
_______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
iLook China 
Mr Lofthouse, please do not use the hack journalist’s trick of quoting out of context.
Dr Chuan goes on to state “he [the Dalai Lama] sometimes can issue commands which are beyond the control of the two Ambans.” [page 979].
Also, on page 959, Dr Chuan states “Two highways go out from the entrances [of Lhasa]… the one on the east leading to China.”
Tibet was always of a “priest / patron” relationship to China. China was never more than suzerain over Tibet and Tibet was not integral with mainland China. It was always a loose relationship which only ended in 1950 when China used overwhelming military force to fully subjugate Tibet,
The same advice goes to you about quoting out of context in addition to leaving out many details. The Dalai Lama was supposed to only rule on matters of religion and not political. But he often stepped beyond those rules.
Yes, it was a loose relationship and as Hart says, difficult for China’s emperor to manage. You also have neglected to mention that this relationship started with the Tang Dynasty more than a thousand years ago. The good doctor who wrote the article for National Geographic goes into detail about that too.
Before a Mongol king brought Buddhism to Tibet, the Tibetans were a very warlike culture that often raided into Imperial China from Tibetan fortresses.
Then the Mongols under Kublai Khan conquered and occupied Tibet about the same time that he conquered and ruled over China as the Yuan Dynasty keeping military garrisons in Tibet. When the Ming Dynasty was established after driving out the Mongols restoring rule to the Han Chinese, Tibet was the last territory the Ming Emperor sent his army to drive out the Mongols and then a Ming garrison was kept in Lhasa to support the appointed governors—appointed from Beijing.
But the Tibetans have never been easy to rule and it has been the custom in China to allow minorities of all kinds (there are about 52 minorities in China) to have some autonomy in ruling themselves. Tibet was no different. Even the CCP allows minorities some autonomy. For example, the one-child policy only applies to Han Chinese and not to minorities and that includes Tibetans.
By the time the United States was waging wars against Native North Americans in the 19th century to take their land away from them and force them onto federally managed reservations with some autonomy to this day, Imperial troops from China (Mongol, Han or Manchu) had been station in Lhasa for more than five-hundred years.
In addition, China’s government style has always been decentralized and ruled mostly from the provinces and not Xian or Beijing or any other capital of China. In the provinces and the minority areas, appointed governors had the responsibility to make decisions without consent of the Emperor and these governors often had to financially support their own provincial/territorial military.
[…] Which issue of National Geographic magazine provides proof that Tibet was part of China for centuries before Mao’s invasion and […]