From this map you can see what China has stolen by force, while the world looked away. Millions of inner and central Asians have been killed since then by the occupiers in order to make room for Chinese settlers. Manchuria was the first to fall as its rulers, who at the time were the rulers of China as well, looked away and encouraged genocide against their people.
Inner Mongolia was next to fall in the 1930s, as China fought a brutal civil war between nationalists and communists. Mongolian resistance proved so harsh that Chinese armies of the communist side massacred thousands of the people and moved in Chinese settlers to ensure that there would be no more resistance. As the Chinese nationalists fell to the communists, the communists agreed that they would enforce the old Manchu Empire's boundaries, but this time not only would it include the Manchurians' directly ruled territory, but also all of the lands the Manchus had relations with.
In late 1949, China invaded Tibet. Within months the Tibetan army of the east had collapsed and China controlled over half of Tibet. They forced an agreement with the Dalai Lama's government under threat of more violence. When the Tibetan government declared they would honor the agreement, Tibet exploded in an armed uprising that was not fully crushed until 1974. That Uprising started in east Tibet - known as Kham and Amdo in Tibetan - thousands of PLA soldiers and Tibetan resistance fighters died.
By 1959 the uprising had spread to Lhasa, in Central Tibet - U-tsang in Tibetan. Lhasa at that time was in an uproar of protests over the Tibetan government allowing Chinese troops to make camps outside of the city. This is what is commemorated every March 10th by Tibetans. On March 10th, the flash spark hit the gas can and Lhasa exploded. Amidst the fighting, the Dalai Lama and many senior government officials escaped to India with the help of the resistance they looked down upon. From March to October the PLA estimated that they killed 80.000 Tibetan fighters in and around Lhasa.
Remember this the next time someone tries to tell you that Tibetans pacificistically rolled over for China. Tibetans fought every step of the way. The sacrifices of the resistance are the reason why the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans could escape. By October of 1959, PLA soldiers, angered at the people they believed they were giving a chance to become "liberated" (which is Maoist slang for "Chinese") for fighting against them, went on an orgy of destruction. Drepung Monastery, at that time the largest educational institution in the world, was shelled and destroyed, with thousands of its scholars and monks killed. The ruins are still there today. This is only one example of the destruction China wrought in Tibet. (Thousands of monasteries, libraries, and schools were destroyed...this years before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution came to Tibet on the backs of the Red Guards, who like all Chinese since, believe they have a right to Tibet.)
The nature of the Tibetan resistance is ignored by many Westerners who prefer to view the Tibetans as lotus-eating monks who have nothing better to do than teach spoiled overfed people how to become spiritual. This resistance is also ignored by Chinese people who are today taught that Tibetans greeted the Chinese with open arms as liberators from a "feudal theocracy." What a dishonor to the Tibetan dead, those who bled, cried and died for their country...to be ignored and forgotten like this, especially by Westerners who always go on about "freedom" and "dignity." I will tell you this, there is more dignity in a Khampa fighter who fought against increasingly devastating odds, but who never gave up, then there is in some overfed American who cries about the price of gas rising. I have met some of the former...they'll set your ass straight about what matters.
-Hugh, designation Kunsang
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