The McMahon Line- a Century of Discord

by J J Singh

  China aggressively pushed through its plan of ‘Sinification’ of Tibet by ruthlessly eliminating whatever little opposition the Tibetans confronted them with. Busy safeguarding their imperial interests, the world powers kept looking the other way, despite the desperate and fervent pleas of the exiled Dalai Lama. The forsaking of Tibet did not carry a price tag anywhere close to that of having free ports and favourable trade terms with China. Subsequently, in 1915, a dismayed Lord Curzon gave vent to his strong feelings that the Russian Convention was deplorable: ‘It gives up all we have been fighting for for years ... Ah me! It makes one despair of public life and the efforts of a century sacrificed and nothing or next to nothing in return.’4

  The Chinese had subdued most of the area of the Marches along eastern Tibet; but it was only when the Chinese army’s westward push crossed Chamdo, towards Lhasa, and when Chang Yin Tang’s blatant violations of the trade agreements between British India and Tibet made the functioning of British agents at the trade marts in Gyantse, Yatung and Gartok almost impossible, that the British government sat up and took notice. By then the Chinese ambitions of complete overlordship of Tibet had been laid bare, and the sagacity of the advice and warnings conveyed to Whitehall by the ‘frontier boys’ of British India proven beyond doubt. This led to Britain reviewing its Tibet policy.

  China Swoops on Tibet

  The Chinese Ch’ing Empire got a rude shock from the apparent ease with which the Younghusband expedition advanced into the guts of Tibet from the exposed and vulnerable southern direction. All the Chinese officials and the Amban could do was to watch helplessly as Tibet’s sovereignty was being violated. It resulted in a severe loss of face for the Chinese and deepened the scorn with which the Tibetans traditionally viewed them. The Amban, while refusing to sign the treaty that Younghusband was able to extract from the Tibetans in 1904, otherwise facilitated the proceedings and negotiations that took place during its formulation. His presence at the signing ceremony did not help the Chinese cause and showed them in a poor light as a suzerain power. The Chinese failed to protect the Tibetans or to come to their aid in any manner, thus ending the choe-yon relationship between them.5 The facade of Chinese claims of sovereignty over Tibet was in tatters. As the events of 1911–12 and later years unfolded, the extremely dubious role played by the Chinese in fomenting problems between the Dalai Lama’s regime and the British through the intrigues of the Amban in Lhasa was exposed. The Chinese actions in Tibet were two-faced and opportunistic, to say the least.

  Incensed by the turn of events in Lhasa during 1904, the shaken Manchu regime in Peking, notwithstanding their weak condition, undertook urgent corrective measures to assert their authority over the semi-independent fiefdoms and tribal territories in the Marches along Tibet’s eastern and south-eastern frontiers. The Manchu Empire unleashed a wave of terror to subjugate the Kham and Amdo regions in the first phase of their campaign. The Chinese strategy of destroying monasteries or curtailing their financial freedom and revenue-generation activities, and of executing the lamas and tribal leaders who did not fall in line, struck at the very roots of the Tibetan way of life and the religious beliefs of the people. As a policy, this Chinese approach may have succeeded in the short term, but as we shall see later, it sowed the seeds of conflict for years to come. This mission of pacification, colonization and assimilation of the Marches in eastern Tibet into the Chinese fold commenced as early as October 1904, on the heels of the withdrawing British expedition.

  The task of bringing to heel the rebels in the Kham region was spearheaded by a set of specially selected officials. Energetic and overzealous, the newly appointed officials like Feng Ch’ang, who was appointed assistant Amban of Chamdo, and who was succeeded by Chao Erh-feng, went about their task in a ruthless and not infrequently ham-handed manner. The Tibetans, both the lamas and the laity, took great offence when Feng Ch’ang passed orders transgressing the religious and administrative tenets and rights of the monasteries, the lamas and the people. Stipulations were laid down by the Chinese restricting the number of monks that could live in the monasteries and banning fresh recruitment of monks for twenty years.6

  Besides this, Feng’s interference in the Tibetan administration of the gold-mining area in the vicinity of Ta Chien-lu heightened Tibetan resentment of the Chinese manifold. Eventually, these actions resulted in an outbreak of lawlessness, violence and disturbances in the areas around Batang and Litang, which resulted in the brutal murder of Feng and his entire Chinese escort in April 1905. Such a fate also befell a few French missionaries and many of their Christian converts, who were tortured and killed in and around Batang. This monk-led backlash against the Chinese administrators and soldiers took the form of an uprising that engulfed the region. Many more Chinese were killed in the smaller settlements and in the countryside as the rebels gained control of the area.

  The Chinese retaliation did not take long in coming. A large Chinese force under General Ma Wei-ch’i laid waste the rebel-held towns and monasteries. ‘So successful was General Ma in his operations and so vindictive were his punitive measures that the districts through which he passed were thrown into a state of panic, and numbers of rebels turned against their leaders.’7

  At this stage of affairs in 1905, Chao Erh-feng was appointed as the replacement for the luckless Feng. ‘Energetic, honest and ruthless to his enemies and intolerant of incompetence or misbehaviour on the part of his subordinates,’8 he set about the implementation of administrative reforms, including the launch of projects for colonization, agricultural development, improvement of road networks and establishment of military outposts. He set up thirteen administrative centres and restored order up to the Yangtze river, including in towns such as Tachienlu, Litang, Batang and the important monastery of Sangpiling (Chantreng Gompa)9 in the district of Hsiang Cheng. This monastery, built like a fortress, was captured after a siege of almost six months, from January to June 1906. In this siege, ‘nearly all the monks were slaughtered by Chao’s troops. The monastery was demolished’.10 Soon Chao earned the ignominious epithet of ‘the butcher’.

  The ‘Sinification’ of this area had commenced with the introduction of a ‘fifteen-point programme’, the Batang Regulations, by Chao. This transformation programme for the Tibetans mandated adoption of Chinese surnames, wearing Chinese style of clothing, shaving their face and wearing pigtails, among other orders. The purported Chinese aim was to impose an alien but supposedly superior culture on the ‘barbaric Tibetans’—the Khampas and other tribes. Great incentives were given to Chinese settlers to colonize the region, and they were even encouraged to marry local tribal women who, it was advertised, were ‘extremely hard-working’. Yet there were not many takers, and only 200 Chinese made their homes in the Batang district. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, only a handful of them remained.

  Before he could finish his mission of ‘reforming’ the Batang area to bring it on the lines of regular Chinese districts, Chao Erh-feng was appointed as acting viceroy of Szechuan province in early 1907. A year later he was assigned the post of imperial commissioner of the Marches along the frontiers of Szechuan and Yunnan. Coincidentally, his brother, Chao Erh-hsun, was appointed viceroy of Szechuan. The synergy between the two brothers and the power vacuum that resulted from the absence of the Dalai Lama from Tibet facilitated the effective spread of Chinese control over the whole region of the Marches (as shown in Figure 8). This was achieved by early 1910 when Chao’s forces secured Chamdo, an important communication node. The exceptions were some volatile areas of the Kham region, which were brought under control only by late 1911.

  The traditional system of governance in this region placed each family under the allegiance and overlordship of a particular native chief. There was a well-defined arrangement for collection of taxes and transport levies, also called ula, directly by the chieftains or through the deputies appointed by them. This administrative set-up was overturned and replaced by Chinese-type hsiens, or dis
tricts, under a Chinese magistrate during the period from 1904 to 1911. All the native chiefs were deposed and their territories reorganized into new districts. Some were executed for their perceived misdeeds while others were exiled along with their families and retinues. Most of the ‘harmless’ inhabitants, denuded of all power, were allowed to live in their estates. According to a Tibetan account, ‘Chao Erh-feng and Ma Thi Thai, two Chinese officials, put to death the Batang Deba Nya-ngo, the Dechen Kangsar Deba, and the Litang Tseshag Deba appointed and installed by the Tibet Government … The Chinese officials plundered the property of these three Debas and sent down their children and adherents to Szechuan.’11

  Though the people of Tibet had more or less reconciled themselves to their fate, they had not given up hope: ‘Wait,’ they said to each other, ‘Chao will go some day and then our turn will come.’12 Fortunately, they did not have to wait too long for it to happen as he met with a tragic end in 1910!

  The next objective of the Manchu Empire was subjugation of central Tibet and Lhasa, which appeared defenceless. The question that arose was—conquest at what cost? The unceasing military campaign in Tibet not only exhausted the Chinese army, but bled the Szechuan treasury dry. This was one of the major factors that precipitated the Revolution of 1911, and, consequently, the fall of the Manchu Empire and the end of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet.

  While Chao Erh-feng and his lieutenants were subduing the area of the Marches between the Yangtze and Salween rivers with an iron hand, the Chinese set into motion steps for ‘Sinification’ and re-establishment of their long-lost authority over central and southern Tibet, including the Lhasa area. The British unwittingly became facilitators in consolidating Chinese power in Tibet by entering into ‘self-denying’ conventions and agreements with the Chinese and the Russians (the Adhesion Agreement of 1906 with China, the Convention on Tibet, Afghanistan and Persia with Russia in 1907 and the Trade Agreement with China and Tibet, albeit with a subordinate status, in 1908). Besides these factors, the absence of the Dalai Lama made the Tibetans leaderless and vulnerable.

  Chinese administrators led by Chang Yin-tang, the newly designated Chinese commissioner in Tibet, and the Amban, Lien Yu, practically took over the affairs of the state from the Tibetans. Chang had arrived in Lhasa during the autumn of 1906 via Calcutta and Darjeeling (the quickest, most convenient and safe route for Chinese officials travelling from Peking to Lhasa). Lien Yu travelled overland and assumed his appointment as assistant Amban at Lhasa during the same year in September. He took over as Amban a few months later.

  Chang was like a man possessed; his principal aim was to eradicate every vestige of British power and presence from central Tibet. He was equally determined to take to task and humiliate all those who had collaborated with or supported the Younghusband expedition, including the Amban, Yu T’ai, who was not only arrested but sent back to China in chains. Chang’s wrath also fell on the Panchen Lama, who was isolated from British influence and cautioned against seeking assistance from Britain against China. The administrative apparatus in Tibet was reorganized on the lines of the regular provinces of China and run by Chinese officials, with a token presence of Tibetans. The ragtag Tibetan army was to be replaced by a 40,000-strong new force.13 As described by Hugh Richardson, the last British political officer in Lhasa:

  The Tibetan ministers who had taken part in the 1904 negotiations were dismissed; direct contact between the British and Tibetans was prohibited; obstructions were raised to the acquisition of property at the new Trade Marts by British subjects, to trade across the Sikkim border, and to postal communication with Gartok. Approaches were also made to Nepal and Bhutan in an attempt to detach them from the British sphere of influence.14

  The meek acceptance by the British of these violations by the Chinese and Tibetans of the treaties and agreements they had made with them laid bare the impotence of Britain’s flawed Tibet policy. The loss of face of the British was not confined to Tibet but also spread along the Himalayas to Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. The Chinese stock rose in the region as a consequence. Unfortunately, the home government and their officials in faraway London were impervious to these developments, and the hard-won gains of the Younghusband mission were surrendered or diluted one by one. The rationale trotted out by the mandarins of the Foreign Office in London, particularly during Lord Morley’s time, was that since Tibet was incapable on its own to provide a stable buffer between the Russian and British empires, a Chinese-controlled Tibet was the only viable option. This policy of non-interference or ‘laissez-faire’ gave the Chinese free rein to consolidate their position in Tibet.

  In 1909, alarm bells began to ring again for the Dalai Lama as he finally inched closer to Lhasa after his long exile. He hastened his pace, arriving in Lhasa in December of that year. Aware that it would be no more than a cakewalk for the Chinese to advance to his capital from Chamdo, he desperately sought foreign intervention and reached out to the British, Russians and Americans, but to no avail. The Tibetans on their part offered no resistance to the Chinese army as the Amban, Lien Yu, had tricked the Tibetan authorities into believing that only a force of about 1,000 troops was coming to Lhasa and central Tibet for the purpose of providing protection to the trade marts and for policing duties.15 In the event, a Chinese force of 2,000 well-trained and equipped soldiers under a young and dynamic leader, Chung Ying, advanced rapidly over 1,000 kilometres in severe winter, crossing five or six snow-covered passes in record time. The leading elements of this force, comprising a mixed force of cavalry and infantry, heralded their triumphant arrival at the northern gates of Lhasa, entering the city on 12 February 1910. The soldiers marched on the streets, randomly firing on people; their intention was to turn the anxiety-filled but tranquil atmosphere into one of fear and awe. Unsure of their fate, the Dalai Lama and his ministers, accompanied by a small retinue, were compelled to flee in secret from the capital the same night; this time it was in the southern direction.

  Tibet was never invaded by the Chinese prior to this event. On the earlier occasions that they had entered Tibet, it had been in response to requests from the Tibetans themselves or from their government. To quote from Richardson’s authoritative work on Tibetan history:

  This was the first Chinese army to reach Lhasa against the will of the Tibetans. The expeditions of 1720, 1728, 1750 and 1792 all came to restore order and were not opposed by Tibetans … The Emperors on their side had been careful for nearly two centuries to do nothing to upset the ostensibly amicable basis of that relationship.16

  The Chinese assertiveness in eastern Tibet was propelled by their apprehension that the British might some day make Tibet a protectorate. Therefore the Chinese felt the need to make their presence felt right up to the southern and south-eastern frontiers of Tibet. One of the most important aspects of consolidation of the newly subdued semi-independent tribal areas of eastern Tibet and western China was the proposal to create a new Chinese province of Hsikang (‘Western Kham’). By 1911, Chao Erh-feng and his successor, General Fu Sung-mu, had established a firm grip over the entire region and had drawn up a blueprint for the new state. With thirty-three districts spread over a vast area west of the Yangtze, extending to both sides of the Salween all the way to Giamda and also including the areas of Pomed and Zayul bordering the cis-Himalayan tribal areas, this province would ably serve the purpose of a buffer between British India and the Chinese provinces of Szechuan and Yunnan. In the words of General Fu Sung-mu, as written in his book, History of the Creation of Hsikang, ‘If Tibet be the outer fence, Kham is the house door. This being the case, the Government of China and the people of Szechuan and Yunnan can assuredly not afford to ignore Tibet; Kham, however, is of incomparably more importance to them.’17

  During the latter period of Chao Erh-feng’s campaign, a telegraph line was constructed linking the Marches to the mainland. It was first built from Tachienlu to Batang, and later, during the autumn of 1911, extended westwards to Chamdo. However, during the Revolution
of 1911, this important and only link to Peking was completely destroyed by the Tibetans. There was no telegraph connectivity along the northern road or in any other region of the Marches for some time. It was later repaired during 1912–13 and put into action, but only up to Litang, beyond which messages were sent by couriers to Batang and beyond towards Lhasa. Along this route, instances were reported of Chinese postal couriers being abducted and ‘skinned alive’—such was the hatred that existed between the two peoples during that period.

  The Chinese grand design appears to have also provided for the worst-case scenario of an independent or fully autonomous Tibet in the future, and therefore China pushed hard to subdue and transform as much of eastern Tibet as possible and make it like any other province of the mainland. This would ensure that the Chinese frontier on the west would be pushed to the Mekong–Salween divide. And in south-eastern Tibet, where Lhasa’s control was practically non-existent, the Chinese endeavour was to gain a foothold in the Pomed and Zayul areas by having a presence at Pome, Pemakoi, in the Tsangpo bend area, and in the frontier outpost of Rima at the head of the Lohit Valley. This area would form part of the new Hsikang province that was being conceptualized so that the Chinese frontier here would be coterminous with the frontier along the eastern end of the Assam Himalayas. Thus, for the first time, the Chinese now came into close proximity to the north-eastern frontier of India.18