In October 1950, Communist China invaded Tibet. After nine years of difficult co-habitation with the occupiers, the Dalai Lama, the young temporal and spiritual leader of the Tibetans, had no choice but to flee his country to take refuge in India. It took 20 years for the Tibetans to renew a dialogue with the leaders in Beijing. Soon after Deng Xiaoping’s return to power in 1978, the first contacts were made. Using rare documents, this is the story of thirty years of encounters between the Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala and Beijing. Today the stalemate continues; Beijing refuses to offer any sort of concession to the Dalai Lama’s demand for a genuine autonomy for Tibet. Just like the border ‘talks’ between India and China, the negotiations with Dharamsala have never really started. Reading through this book one understands how the relations between India and China are inextricably linked to the status of Tibet. Further, the present unrest in Tibet renders China unstable and increasingly belligerent towards India which gave refuge to the Tibetans.

This volume is an updated and expanded version of the author’s original book, first published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and based on his cum laude doctoral dissertation. That volume discussed how the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence drowned in the first war between a communist and a non-aligned state. This new edition reproduces the original text, but supplements it considerably in light of subsequent developments and official records and reports only later released or leaked to the public. It places Sino-Indian relations in the wider, current context of the rise of China, the position of Tibet and the disorganised state of Asia. The border dispute did not prevent substantial economic relations developing between the two countries and visits taking place at the highest political level. But it still gives rise to almost daily incursions, and in the current climate, the risk of a clash is growing, as forces have been strengthened and most of the Line of Actual Control has not been demarcated. This thought-provoking volume sheds light on what is still a complex and uneasy relationship.

As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of China’s 1959 invasion of Tibet—and the subsequent creation of the Tibetan exile community—the question of the diaspora’s survival looms large. Beijing’s foreign policy has grown more adventurous, particularly since the post-Olympic expansion of 2008. As the pressure mounts, Tibetan refugee families that have made their homes outside China—in the mountains of Nepal, the jungles of India, or the cold concrete houses high above the Dalai Lama’s monastery in Dharamsala—are migrating once again. Blessings from Beijing untangles the chains that tie Tibetans to China and examines the political, social, and economic pressures that are threatening to destroy Tibet’s refugee communities. Journalist Greg Bruno has spent nearly two decades living and working in Tibetan areas. Bruno journeys to the front lines of this fight: to the high Himalayas of Nepal, where Chinese agents pay off Nepali villagers to inform on Tibetan asylum seekers; to the monasteries of southern India, where pro-China monks wish the Dalai Lama dead; to Asia’s meditation caves, where lost souls ponder the fine line between love and war; and to the streets of New York City, where the next generation of refugees strategizes about how to survive China’s relentless assault. But Bruno’s reporting does not stop at well-worn tales of Chinese meddling and political intervention. It goes beyond them—and within them—to explore how China’s strategy is changing the Tibetan exile community forever.

"China Briefing, 1990" approaches the events of the previous year differently from past volumes in the series, providing a long-term perspective on the dramatic developments of spring and summer 1989. Senior China specialists examine the student demonstrations and their aftermath in the larger context of the 40-year history of the People's Republic

This major study analyses the traditional modes of Sino-Tibetan relations in order to unearth general patterns beyond partisan points of view. It sheds light on contemporary issues in the Sino-Tibetan dialogue, and discerns possible future structures for conflict resolution in occupied Tibet. With its economic reforms, China is changing and will ch

A history of modern Tibet, discussing the efforts of Tibetan leaders to maintain the country's independence in the face of increasing political pressures.

Beyond Shangri-La chronicles relations between the Tibetans and the United States since 1908, when a Dalai Lama first met with U.S. representatives. What was initially a distant alliance became more intimate and entangled in the late 1950s, when the Tibetan people launched an armed resistance movement against the Chinese occupiers. The Tibetans fought to oust the Chinese and to maintain the presence of the current Dalai Lama and his direction of their country. In 1958, John Kenneth Knaus volunteered to serve in a major CIA program to support the Tibetans. For the next seven years, as an operations officer working from India, from Colorado, and from Washington, D.C., he cooperated with the Tibetan rebels as they utilized American assistance to contest Chinese domination and to attain international recognition as an independent entity. Since the late 1950s, the rugged resolve of the Dalai Lama and his people and the growing respect for their efforts to free their homeland from Chinese occupation have made Tibet's political and cultural status a pressing issue in international affairs. So has the realization by nations, including the United States, that their geopolitical interests would best be served by the defeat of the Chinese and the achievement of Tibetan self-determination. Beyond Shangri-La provides unique insight into the efforts of the U.S. government and committed U.S. citizens to support a free Tibet.

Born in 1941, Tubten Khétsun is a nephew of the Gyatso Tashi Khendrung, one of the senior government officials taken prisoner after the Tibetan peoples' uprising of March 10, 1959. Khétsun himself was arrested while defending the Dalai Lama's summer palace, and after four years in prisons and labor camps, he spent close to two decades in Lhasa as a requisitioned laborer and "class enemy." In this eloquent autobiography, Khétsun describes what life was like during those troubled years. His account is one of the most dispassionate, detailed, and readable firsthand descriptions yet published of Tibet under the Communist occupation. Khétsun talks of his prison experiences as well as the state of civil society following his release, and he offers keenly observed accounts of well-known events, such as the launch of the Cultural Revolution, as well as lesser-known aspects of everyday life in occupied Lhasa. Since Communist China continues to occupy Tibet, the facts of this era remain obscure, and few of those who lived through it have recorded their experiences at length. Khétsun's story will captivate any reader seeking a refreshingly human account of what occurred during the Maoists' shockingly brutal regime.

China's transformation in the last few decades has been perhaps the most remarkable - and most controversial - development in modern history. Barely a century removed from the struggling and outdated Qing Empire, China has managed to reinvent itself on an unprecedented scale: from Empire, to Communist state, to hybrid capitalist superpower. Yet the full implications of China's rapid march to modernity are not widely understood - particularly, the effects of China's meteoric rise on the nation's many ethnic minorities. "China: A Modern History" is the definitive guide to this complex contemporary phenomenon. Deng Xiaoping's 1980s policy of 'reform and opening', which saw China enter the world market, is only the most recent in a series of dramatic shifts that have transformed Chinese society over the past 150 years. "China: A Modern History" explores these contrasts in detail, while also highlighting the enduring values which have informed Chinese identity for millennia. Michael Dillon's "China: A Modern History" is essential reading for those interested in the past, present and future course of one of the world's great nations. Clearly and compellingly written, this will stand as the best introduction to this spectacular and still-unfinished story.