THE DRAGON IN THE LAND OF SNOWS: A History of Modern Tibet since 1947
By TSERING SHAKYA
New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 608 pages, $29.95

John M. Lundquist

Tsering Shakya's exhaustively researched, well-written, utterly convincing book, The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet since 1947, could not be more timely. Shakya, who was born in Tibet, attended the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and is a research fellow in Tibetan Studies at that institution, reminds us that in his homeland, the hope and optimism that are supposed to accompany the turn of the millennium are sadly dampened by the brute-force politics of the ruling regime of the People's Republic of China (PRC), fueled by the implacable totalitarian ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
While the book is not a history of the PRC, that regime is, nonetheless, the main actor in the narrative, casting its shadow ominously over the landscape of Tibet beginning in May 1950 and launching a full-scale invasion that October. The book is a primer on PRC policy toward its own people, and particularly toward minority peoples, especially those who dwell in regions which are within the traditional realm of Chinese control but whose territorial borders and integrity were ill-defined and that had not been definitely established as autonomous, independent states in the eyes of the world before these events began to unfold.

One of the many tragic aspects of the PRC takeover of Tibet in 1950 is that it occurred around the same time as other international crises or world-changing transitions and the major powers were unprepared and unwilling to move vigorously in support of Tibetan independence. India had become independent on August 15, 1947, an event that eliminated Britain as the prime moving force in Indian foreign policy and thus cost Tibet one of her closest, most sympathetic friends. On June 25, 1950, the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. The PRC's invasion of Tibet took place barely four months later. In the face of this crisis, the sixteen-year-old Dalai Lama assumed full powers as the political and religious leader of Tibet on November 17, 1950.
Once the People's Liberation Army (PLA) occupation of the Tibetan plateau was complete, the process of "socialization" (meaning communization according to the Mao Zedong thought) began. Tibet then took its place in the tragic, topsy-turvy course of modern PRC history, with purges, liberalizations, "struggle sessions," "reforms," the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the "liberalizations" of Deng Xiaoping. The one constant was the underlying utter, absolute, and brutal domination of all aspects of life by the CCP, which, whenever necessary, called in the PLA to enforce its will.
On March 30, 1959, the Dalai Lama crossed into India, where he formed a Tibetan government-in-exile at Dharamsala. Thereafter, his stature as a world leader and man of principle increased, culminating in his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. Although a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning the PRC for its brutal suppression of Tibet was passed in the fall of 1959, very little of note, and nothing of substance have occurred in the intervening years that could assist Tibet in gaining any real autonomy or actual independence. There are four underlying reasons for this state of affairs: the failure of Tibet to attain universal recognition as an autonomous, independent country during the twentieth century, before the PRC's rise to power; article 2 (7) of the U.N. charter, which forbids the United Nations from interfering in the internal affairs of a member country; concern by U.N. member nations about setting a precedent by which one nation or a regional coalition can decide to attack another country because of human rights abuses or in support of the desires of an ethnic group within that country to attain independence; and the West's overwhelming interest in the economic potential of the PRC, and its attendant unwillingness to do anything that would displease the PRC regime.
Shakya's book finally gives us the documentation to refute various claims regarding Tibet that have been central to the PRC propaganda apparatus. Among these are the idea that pre-PRC Tibet was a "feudal," priest-driven, slave-holding, economically backward, "primitive" polity. The Tibetans were themselves well on the way toward various forms of modernization, within a Tibetan cultural context, during the late 1940s, before the PLA invasion. According to Shakya, Deng Xiaoping's reforms of the 1980s only brought Tibetans back to the standard of living that they had enjoyed before the Chinese "liberation." Another myth of PRC propaganda is that the Dalai Lama is only a "religious" leader and that his role has been assumed and overtaken by CCP cadres-that his role and presence in Tibet are no longer necessary. A related myth arises out of a fundamental dogma of communism, namely that "religion is the opiate of the people." We have now seen that fifty years of CCP and PLA depredations, destructions, humiliations, imprisonments, and attempts at thought reform have utterly failed to destroy the Tibetan people's devotion to Buddhism, their unquenchable thirst for freedom, and their devotion to the Dalai Lama.

A matter of great historical and human concern is just how much destruction the PRC regime has wreaked upon the Tibetan people, their religion and culture. Shakya documents this in considerable detail. For example, he quotes a document by the vice chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) in 1987 which states that "there were 2,700 monasteries in the TAR, 80 percent of which were destroyed by 1965. The rest, apart from thirteen, were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution." This is an amazing declaration, since we usually attribute the massive destruction that took place all over China to the "aberration" of the Cultural Revolution. Because of Communist antipathy to religion, the destruction, attempts at thought reform, and attempts to eradicate Buddhism in Tibet were ushered in from the beginning by CCP cadres. Shakya also points out that there were, and still are, Tibetan members of the CCP, and that Tibetan cadres took part in the destruction and attempted eradication of Buddhist culture in Tibet.
The Buddhist religion is central to Tibetan civilization, and nothing can or will change this. The CCP cannot offer any truly liberalizing policies in Tibet because of the unbridgeable chasm that exists between communism and Buddhism. The Tibetans cannot be, and never will be, "socialized" in the CCP sense, nor will they be "integrated within the Motherland." No one knows what the future holds regarding this terrible situation. One can only hope that the viselike grip on the Tibetan people of this last great tyranny of the twentieth century can somehow be broken.

John M. Lundquist, the Susan and Douglas Dillon Chief Librarian of the Oriental Division in The New York Public Library, is the author of The Temple, Meeting Place of Heaven and Earth. He has traveled extensively in Tibet, written Tibet-related travel articles, and published and exhibited his photographs of Tibet.