by John Avedon
By early spring, advance units of the PLA had climbed up from the plain of China deep into the highland gorges of eastern Kham, until then nominally controlled by the Nationalists. Similar moves occurring in late 1949 had already secured much of Amdo. On April 16, Lin Biao, China’s famed “Red Marshal,” led his Fourth Field Army across the narrow strait separating mainland China from the island of Hainan in the Gulf of Tongking, and within a few days defeated its Kuomintang command, thereby fulfilling the second of the PLA’s “goals” for 1950. Radio Peking’s May Day message now mentioned only Taiwan and Tibet as remaining to be “liberated.” Broadcasts three weeks later proposed “regional autonomy” and “religious freedom” if the Tibetans would agree to “peaceful liberation.” Within a few days of the message, however, the PLA launched a probing attack across the Yangtze and took the poorly defended town of Dengkog. Two weeks later seven hundred Tibetan troops, led by the capable Muja Dapon, recaptured Dengkog, their overzealous Khampa recruits slaughtering to a man the Chinese force of around six hundred soldiers. Though victorious, the outcome of this first and bloodiest engagement of the burgeoning conflict—taking place little more than a week before the onset of the Korean War—could not dispel the confusion that plagued Tibet’s outnumbered and disparate ranks.
Even before news of the attack on Dengkog reached Chamdo, headquarters of Tibet’s eastern front, the city had been plunged into chaos. A Central Tibetan soldier had forced his affections on a Khampa girl, resulting in a demonstration by hundreds of Khampa irregulars before the army barracks. Distinguished by their robust stature and independent bearing, the men of Kham had always, despite their Buddhist convictions, been quick to avenge a wrong—a trait that had kept Kham embroiled in clan rivalries and bitter vendettas for much of its history. Brandishing their long swords and rifles, they now demanded that the army come out and settle the issue en masse. The two colonels in command had actually ordered bayonets fixed in preparation for a melee when a senior government official, in the good graces of the Khampas, arrived to defuse the crisis. Dispersing for the time being, the Khampa recruits nonetheless redoubled their daily habit, as Ford described it, of galloping through Chamdo “firing shots into the air, flourishing their swords and letting out bloodcurdling screams. The girls were kept indoors, and some of the Lhasa officials also kept out of the way.”
Regional rivalry threatened more than just the municipal peace of Chamdo. The very roots of Tibet’s defense were precariously pinioned on it. Nowhere was this more evident than in the choice of the city itself for the army’s headquarters. Roughly one hundred miles from the border of Sikang, the eastern portion of Kham (appended to China as a province in 1939), Chamdo lay on a promontory at the confluence of the Dzachu and Womchu rivers which, joining at the town’s base, formed the headwaters of the Mekong. Chinese forces had been driven from it in October of 1917; since then, Kham’s taxes to Lhasa had paid for the presence of regular troops—the principal service received from the central government. Politically, therefore, Chamdo’s defense was indispensable, being intimately linked with the allegiance of Kham. Yet strategically it was a useless point for resistance. Outflanked from the north, it could easily be cut off from Lhasa. To deal with this dilemma, Kham’s Governor-General, Lhalu Shapé, resolved to hold Chamdo until the last moment. Then, assuming that at first the Chinese would not attack in substantial numbers, he would withdraw—the Khampa allegiance held intact—to the high, easily defended passes by Riwoché, fifty miles to Chamdo’s rear on a tributary of the upper Salween.
In theory, the plan made the best of a bad situation. However, being solely defensive, it failed to utilize Tibet’s most effective option: guerrilla warfare. Ironically, the possibility had already been offered in the person of Rapga Pomdatsang, a powerful Khampa leader regarded warily by Lhasa for his attempts at making Kham independent. While Rapga arrived in Chamdo in June to offer his private army for hit-and-run attacks east of the Yangtze, his brother Topgye was already in Dartsedo, the Chinese base of operations, proffering the same troops as guides in return for the same assurances of freedom. Because Lhasa would not undercut its authority with such an arrangement, it failed to recruit the Pomdatsangs, sending their ferocious fighters into the arms of the Communists and with them Tibet’s only real military hope. As one Tibetan summarized the situation in hindsight: “If we Tibetans had fought together from the first day of the Chinese attack, we could never have lost. Our mountains are impregnable. There were no roads. The Chinese had no supply lines. Their soldiers were helpless for days, marching snow-blind one behind another. No army on earth could have conquered that country with the people united against it, but because of our own confusion, they just walked in.”
Peace was finally lost on the morning of October 7. Rowing across the Yangtze in small skin coracles, 84,000 troops of the First and Second Field Armies, under the overall command of General Liu Bating, invaded at dawn, assailing six locations from Tsakhalo in the south to Dengkog in the north. There having been no substantial contact since the previous raid on Dengkog four months earlier, the attack took Tibet’s four Dapons, or “Lords of the Arrow” commanding the army’s forward line, by surprise.
At the center of Tibet’s defensive arc, Khatang Dapon remained unaware of the onslaught until, having wiped out the frontier ferry post of Kamthog Druka, the PLA assaulted his unfortified headquarters at Rangsum. Routed, the Tibetans retreated to the sole viable defensive position, a high pass west of the town. Night fell and, rather than pressing on, they decided to camp behind a hastily dug earthwork defile on a plain at its base. During the night the Chinese, who had not paused for sleep, attacked. The battle was soon over, Khatang Dapon captured, literally without his boots on.
Although Tsakhalo, the southernmost town, held out, its defenders lost one of three key passes to the north, permitting the PLA to cut it off. Markham Gartok, the large town southwest of Rangsum fell with equal speed. Its commander, the Prince of Dergé (posted there by Lhasa from his semi-autonomous kingdom further north), heroically rode out to surrender himself to the advancing Chinese in an attempt to save his now vastly outnumbered troops. Thus, within a few days the PLA had gained an unobstructed approach to Chamdo, from both the south and the east. Two hundred and fifty miles north, however, Dengkog held. Having maintained strict discipline among his troops, Muja Dapon, the general in command, was able to throw the Chinese back across the Yangtze, inflicting heavy losses. When finally forced to withdraw, outflanked by units who had crossed the river farther north, he did so fighting each step of the way, bent on protecting Riwoché, the key garrison guarding Chamdo’s rear. For the first week of the war, Riwoché, indeed, remained quiet, but it was known that Jyekundo, just north of it, had been occupied, making an assault—and with its success the fall of Kham—inevitable.
It took four days for news of the invasion to reach Chamdo. When it did, the city was hurled into disarray. Throughout the summer Lhalu Shapé had dutifully continued to arm and recruit Khampa levies. At the end of August, though, his three-year tenure as Governor-General expired. Incredibly, given the knowledge that the Chinese attack must come before winter, the Cabinet in Lhasa went ahead, according to routine procedure, and replaced him with a second of its ministers. Ngabo Ngawang Jigme arrived in Chamdo to assume command of an unfamiliar situation, only a few weeks before the invasion struck. Compounding the error, he spent the entire month of September attending the customary reception parties. Ngabo himself was a poor choice for such a delicate task. Though he had served one tour of duty in Kham already, he was regarded by many as more of a showman than an able leader. Described by Ford as a “tall and stately man, long-jawed and with a dignified but cheerful face,” he benignly assured all on his arrival, “There will be no local surrender as long as I am in Chamdo.”
Few, it seemed, believed him. As word of the invasion spread through the city a long procession wound down from Chamdo’s monastery to the shore of the Womchu. There, amidst a cacophony of c
ymbals, horns, conch shells and Khampa warriors firing their ancient muzzle-loading rifles, the monks cast fearsome effigies into a pyramidal pyre, exorcising the Chinese evil. In the next few days, a growing line stretched along the street from the door of Chamdo’s most prominent fortune-teller, rooftops were freshly strung with prayer flags and thousands turned out to circumambulate Chamdo’s Lingkhor or Holy Walk, fervently turning prayer wheels and prostrating. The agitation of the inhabitants was such that three vowed to undertake the five-hundred-mile pilgrimage to Lhasa prostrating every foot of the way—and set out immediately to do it. “In general, we Tibetans are very religious-minded and there are many who are good practitioners as well,” commented the Dalai Lama. “But believing the country would be saved without human effort, through prayers alone, resulted from limited knowledge. From this point of view religious sentiment actually became an obstacle.”
A more serious hindrance was the central government’s inefficiency. On receiving news of the invasion, Ngabo immediately wired a coded message to the Cabinet. All of Lhasa’s senior officials were attending a five-day-long party at the time, offered annually by the cabinet to the bureaucracy. Dice, mah-jong, drinking chang or barley beer and dressing in one’s finest silks were temporarily uppermost in people’s minds—not the PLA. Accordingly, there was no immediate reply to the cable, and though one eventually was sent out, the invasion itself was kept secret for nine days while the Cabinet deliberated on what course to pursue.
In Chamdo time ran out. Receiving word that the Chinese were only a day away in the east, while to the rear Riwoché was being surrounded, Ngabo lost his nerve. He radioed Lhasa for permission to surrender. When it was denied, he packed his belongings, took off the long gold and turquoise pendant earring hanging from his left ear, changed his yellow silk robes for the plain gray serge of a junior official and decamped in the middle of the night. With the discovery, soon after dawn on October 17, that the Governor had fled, Chamdo erupted in panic. Ngabo had neglected to secure transport from nearby villages so that his troops could undertake an orderly retreat. He had, therefore, simply abandoned them, not even bothering to divvy out the existing animals with his own bodyguard. His sole order, issued to one of the garrison’s two colonels, was to destroy the ammunition dump—shells and cartridges of inestimable value to the Khampas, who were compelled to remain and defend their homes. As a result, while great explosions rent the air and officials from Lhasa, their army and families fled the city on foot, Khampa tribesmen went on a rampage, looting and rioting, in a vain search for someone upon whom to vent their rage at betrayal.
Ngabo’s capitulation did not end there. Fleeing west down the trail to Lhasa, desperately hoping to outdistance the Chinese advance from the north, he encountered a column of reinforcements, armed with artillery, dispatched from the capital weeks before. To their utter astonishment, he ordered the men to throw their arms into a deep ravine and join the flight. Soon scouts reported that a small party of Khampas working for the Chinese had already cut the route. Rather than fight his way through—which, with the entire garrison of Chamdo at his command, would not have been difficult—Ngabo sought refuge in a nearby monastery, believing that within its hallowed precincts he would be safe from the Khampas. Following his arrival on the afternoon of the eighteenth, Muja Dapon, falling back from Dengkog with his entire force of almost five hundred battle-tried and well-armed cavalry—without doubt, the best soldiers in the eastern command—rode in. Hearing that an advance party of one hundred Chinese was not far behind, Ngabo ordered Muja’s troops to lay down their arms and surrender. While the soldiers’ wives set up camp, unloading yaks and mules, pitching tents, preparing cooking fires and tending their babies, the men watched incredulously as a small contingent of PLA set up field artillery and then, in the company of Khampa guides and translators, walked in to accept surrender from a force twenty times their number. With that, eleven days after the war between China and Tibet had begun, it ended.
One week later, on October 25, the People’s Republic of China announced for the first time that its troops had entered Tibet, “to free,” as Radio Peking stated, Tibetans from “imperialist oppression.” Protesting the invasion the following day, India was met with a stern reply in which the PRC maintained that “the problem of Tibet is entirely the domestic problem of China. No foreign interference will be tolerated.” Twelve days later Tibet’s Cabinet cabled an impassioned appeal to the United Nations, pleading for intercession to “restrain Chinese aggression.” Nothing of China’s intent was actually known in Lhasa, however, until two officials, dispatched by Ngabo, arrived to say that he had been imprisoned—along with his four generals—in Chamdo. He wished to be empowered to discuss peace terms, the Chinese commanders having assured him that, for the time being, their advance would be confined to Kham. With the reality of defeat finally at hand, the government in Lhasa made its most important decision to date in the crisis.
Calling the medium of the Gadong Oracle to the Norbulingka, an official trance was conducted. As the protective deity took possession, the medium’s body reared up from its seated position, hissing loudly and shuddering with tremendous force. Quickly attendants placed the ritual helmet on his head and fastened it tightly beneath his chin. The Oracle then approached the Dalai Lama’s throne to present a long white scarf in offering after which he resumed his seat. When the time came to submit questions to the deity, the Cabinet ministers humbly sought guidance, a secretary reading their formal request from a scroll. Once more the Oracle came before the Dalai Lama. “Make him King,” he clearly said, and collapsed, the trance concluded.
Tenzin Gyatso was filled with anxiety. He knew little of government and less of international affairs. Toward the end of that summer the National Assembly had moved from the Potala to the Jewel Park to facilitate communications with the young ruler. During this time the Dalai Lama had undertaken his first brief try at policymaking, one which had greatly impressed his advisers. At age fifteen, however, he was still three years short of the accepted point for a Dalai Lama’s ascension to secular power. Nevertheless, he had no choice. Despite Chinese assurances, the Red Army could move on Lhasa at any moment. The people themselves had already begged him to lead, posters all over the capital demanding that “the Dalai Lama be given the power.” Demurring at first, Tenzin Gyatso finally agreed. On November 17, 1950, in a stately ceremony enacted in the Potala, the Dalai Lama was invested as supreme temporal ruler of Tibet. Whatever his own reactions, history had forced itself upon him. “I could not refuse my responsibilities,” he later wrote. “I had to shoulder them, put my boyhood behind me and immediately prepare myself to lead my country.”
*Rinpoché is an honorific term given to revered teachers or incarnate lamas; it means “precious one.”
2
Occupation
1950–1959
EARLY IN NOVEMBER 1950 the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Takster Rinpoché, unexpectedly arrived in Lhasa. Since the Communist occupation of Amdo a year before, he had been held under duress, compelled to witness the dismantling of Kumbum Monastery and the centuries-old lifestyle of its surrounding villages. As China prepared to invade Kham, the new Communist Governor of Xining attempted to enlist his support in a scheme to overthrow the Dalai Lama. Takster Rinpoché was to persuade Tibet’s ruler not to resist the PLA’s entry; failing that, he was to assassinate him. In return, the Chinese promised him the governor-generalship of all Tibet.
Pretending to comply, the Dalai Lama’s brother secured his freedom and left Kumbum for the capital. Once there, he informed the Dalai Lama of Chinese intentions and filed a detailed report to the Cabinet, revealing for the first time the full scope of Peking’s plans, not only to annex Tibet but gradually to dismember both its secular and religious life, replacing them with a Marxist state. Soon after, even more discouraging news arrived. On the recommendation of India’s delegate, whose clear concern was to minimize friction with China, the United Nations had declined to conside
r Tibet’s case, deeming, moreover, as Great Britain’s ambassador maintained, that its international legal status was unclear. With the decision, all of Tibet’s options were exhausted. Fearing the Dalai Lama’s capture by the PLA, the National Assembly requested him to flee to the border town of Yatung, from where, if need arose, he could escape to India.
At 2:00 a.m. on the night of December 19, 1950, Tenzin Gyatso slipped from the Potala. Accompanied by forty nobles and two hundred select troops of his bodyguard armed with machine guns and howitzers, he mounted a gray horse and rode south down the Lhasan Valley toward the Indian border. At the column’s center flew the personal banner of the Dalai Lama, beside it the flag of Tibet: two snow lions holding the three jewels of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha (clergy) before a twelve-rayed sun rising above a snow-capped peak. By morning 1, 500 pack animals and a host of retainers followed behind.
