Why does an auction in London scare the CCP? The answer is that it doc — Tibet

"In the seventh century of our era the enlightened warrior, Srong-tsan Gampo, established an able government in Tibet, annexed Nepal, built Lhasa as his capital, and made it rich as a halfway house in Chinese-Indian trade. Having invited Buddhist monks to come from India and spread Buddhism and education among his people, he retired from rule for four years in order to learn how to read and write, and inaugurated the Golden Age of Tibet. Thousands of monasteries were built in the mountains and on the great plateau; and a voluminous Tibetan canon of Buddhist books was published, in three hundred and thirty-three volumes, which preserved for modern scholarship many works whose Hindu originals have long been lost. Here, eremitically sealed from the rest of the world, Buddhism developed into a maze of superstitions, monasticism and ecclesiasticism rivaled only by early medieval Europe; and the Dalai Lama (or “All-Embracing Priest”), hidden away in the great Potala monastery that overlooks the city of Lhasa, is still believed by the good people of Tibet to be the living incarnation of the Bodhisattwa Avalokiteshvafa."

"Nehrus absolute refusal to support the Tibetans even at the diplomatic level when they were overrun by the Chinese army, cannot just be attributed to circumstances or the influence of collaborators: his hand-over of Tibet to communist China was quite consistent with his own political convictions."

"Today, China uses history to recast its invasion and occupation of Tibet as not anything of the sort. In the view of the Chinese government, it simply reasserted its historical rights, which had been established over the centuries. Taiwan, at least to the Chinese, presents a similar case. As Zhou Enlai said to Henry Kissinger in 1972, “History also proves that Taiwan has belonged to China for more than a thousand years—a longer period than Long Island has been part of the U.S.” In fact, history proves no such thing. In the case of Tibet, it is true that Dalai Lamas from time to time recognized the mandate of heaven of the emperor in far-off China, but for most of the time, the remote mountain land was left to its own devices. Taiwan has even looser ties with China. It was too far across the sea for most Chinese dynasties to bother with. Only the last dynasty, the Qing, tried to assert some control, partly because the island had become a refuge for pirates and rebels."

"Sardar Patel warned Nehru: ‘Even though we regard ourselves as friends of China, the Chinese do not regard us as friends.” He wrote a famous letter in which he expressed deep concern over developments in Tibet, raising several important points. In particular, he noted that a free and friendly Tibet was vital for India’s security, and everything including military measures should be considered to ensure it.’"

"Tibetans have been arrested for speaking with foreigners, possessing the autobiography of the Dalai Lama, or video-and-audiocassettes of his speeches, preparing a list of casualties of Chinese crackdowns, and advising friends to wear the traditional Tibetan costumes on the Chinese national day. In 2005, two monks were sentenced to eleven years in prison for hoisting the banned Tibetan flag. Incommunicado detention is routine. Torture is the expected form of interrogation. There is no right to trial in an open court; defense is permitted for mitigation of punishment, not for pleading innocence. Tibetans call judges "sentencing officers." The Chinese government vets all applicants for the monkhood and prohibits the performance of traditional rites. In July 2005, the Chinese chairman of the Tibetan Autonomous Region announced that China would choose the next Dalai Lama. The boy the Dalai Lama identified in 1995 as the next Panchen Lama (#2 in the Tibetan hierarchy) is under virtual house arrest, probably in Beijing. The Chinese government chose a different boy and, in June 2005, ordered monks to publicly greet him."

"We have done no better thing than this [agreeing that Tibet belongs to China] since we became independent."