this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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I want to correct a few misconceptions that are evident in your comment:
It wasn't an invasion, it was a liberation, and a peaceful one at that until reactionary forces, fearing the loss of their privileges if the serfs should be liberated, started a brutal armed insurrection.
The vast majority of the people of Tibet at that time were serfs and lived in miserable, inhumane slave-like conditions. Are you arguing that slaves would prefer to continue to be enslaved?
That was indeed not the primary reason why the PLA first entered Tibet. It was rather to preserve the territorial integrity and safeguard the sovereignty of China, of which Tibet was and is recognized as an integral part.
Tibet was not and is not a country. For a period of a few decades during which China was in chaos and turmoil following the fall of the Qing dynasty, the local government of Tibet had merely ceased to answer to the central government of China, but the region never formally declared Independence and never ceased to legally be a part of China.
Pro-independence forces fomented and backed by western imperialists who had already once invaded Tibet were however attempting to break Tibet away from China just like they are trying to do with Taiwan today. This created an urgent necessity for the PLA to intervene to protect Tibet and secure its borders.
Whether or not this was the primary motivation, this was still one of the main goals that the CPC openly declared needed to be accomplished sooner or later, as it was evident that the system of feudal-theocratic serfdom was halting virtually all social and economic progress in Tibet. The CPC emphasised the need for democratic reform as soon as the people of Tibet were ready to make that step.
All of this is explained in greater detail in the documentary which i linked in my other comment.
I did want to tack on, but the annexation of Tibet was absolutely not peaceful. After initial negotiations failed, the campaign opened with the Battle of Chamdo and resulted in several thousand casualties, the majority of which were on the Tibetian side. It was only after this that the PLA requested the Tibetan capitulation, to which the Dalia Lama agreed, and Tibet entered annexation negotiations.
Hmmm..... this makes it sound worse not better. Counties do not have ontological existence outside human opinion. Is Catalonia an integral part of Spain? Is Ireland an integral part of the Union? Is Ukraine an integral part of Russia? These positions have all been claimed by belligerents at various times.
You say it "was recognized" as China, but by whom? It is actually/ontologically part of China can never be a good justification, because countries don't have that sort of objective ontology.
In the Qing Dynasty, Mongolia was part of China. Debates on whether Xinjiang/Manchuria/Tibet are "really" part of China have gone on for centuries, and can't be settled by expressing an opinion on it.
You or i may think it's not a good justification but for a lot of people it is. China was subjected to a century of humiliation during which imperialist powers invaded China and attempted to rip it apart, to separate it from territories which had been a part of China for centuries. The restoration of China's national unity, integrity and sovereignty was and is viewed by a majority of Chinese people as a national imperative if China is to regain its dignity. It's why they will never accept "Taiwan independence".
It is very dangerous when westerners refuse to understand this and think that borders are meaningless and that this or that territory can be separated from China and they will just accept it. You have to understand that China is determined to never again allow to be done to them what was done in the 19th and early 20th century. (The same goes for Russia too, which is why we have the conflict in Ukraine which Russians view as an existential one and will never accept losing.)
All this fancy philosophical talk about objective ontology is meaningless when you ignore how a nation of a billion people feels.
There's lots of irredentist claims in every part of the world.
It's not a tenable claim to say the irredentist claim is valid just because it exists.
It's not a tenable claim to say the irredentist claim is valid just because the majority/big country supports it. By that logic no small country could ever become independent of a big one.
Tibet was separate from China before 1720. Then it was in China 1720-1912 (198 years). Then it was independent 1912-1950 (38 years). Saying "Well it actually is China" is just asserting a claim, no more.
Should Mongolia also be absorbed into China?
It formally wasn't. China never recognized it as independent and neither did the "international community" (however you want to interpret that term).
That's not for me to say. The PRC recognized Mongolia's independence and they have great and lucrative relations now. I don't currently see that anyone who matters has any material or ideological interest in changing that.
I'm not making a prescriptive statement. I'm telling you how things are and not how they should be.
Countries are not inert objects in a universal logical framework, they are made up of people and what the people of a country think and want and feel matters, even if that's subjective. And when that country is a civilization state like China that carries a certain weight.
They usually can't unless their independence is to the advantage of one of more big countries. For instance, although Mongolia being independent has more to do with Russia and the Russian civil war than it does with China, it is nevertheless a useful buffer state for both.
If it wasn't, it probably wouldn't be independent.
Yeah, no. I disagree. What I've been hammering on is that a territorial claim is NOT objective, but rather prescribed by human institutions. If you don't agree, that's fine. But the fact remains: there's no objective fact that determines whether Corsica belongs to France or itself: only human opinions. I can't make the point any more thoroughly than I already have.
That's correct. That's what i've been trying to tell you, that the subjective matters and that we can't just ignore it and pretend like we can establish an objective framework for everything where human relations are concerned, which is ultimately what international relations are just on a larger scale.
I have a question for you: do you think that the people of Tibet would be materially better off if they had been turned into an anti-China proxy by the imperialists like Ukraine is now for Russia? Do you not think that maybe being a part of China and enjoying the peaceful economic and social development that China has brought to Tibet has been to the advantage of the people living there?
What exactly would you hope to achieve by making Tibet "independent" (leaving them more vulnerable to imperialist meddling and exploitation) and how do you know that Tibetans actually want that? I'm trying to understand, why are Europeans so fixated on creating ethno-states everywhere? What is wrong with Tibet being a part of the multi-ethnic Chinese nation to which they have deep historic and cultural ties?
I don't know.
I don't know what Tibetans want, much less the Tibetans living in 1950. There's a few particularly vocal ones of course on both sides, but I don't have good information on the various opinions that exist their and their prevalence.