Tibet: An Unfinished Story

Lezlee Brown Halper

In 1950, Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, succumbed to Chinese invasion, the Dalai Lama was unseated and the region was ‘absorbed’ into the People’s Republic of China. Since then, Tibet’s enduring myth has been one of inspirational fantasy, a modern morality play about the failure of brutality to subdue the human spirit. This book traces the origins and manifestations of the Tibetan myth, and discusses how, after World War II, Tibet – isolated, misunderstood and with a tiny elite unschooled in political and military realities – misread the diplomacy between its two giant neighbours, India and China. Drawing on declassified CIA and Chinese documents, the authors go into the murky depths of the Tibet story – Mao’s collusion with Stalin to subdue Tibet, double-dealing by Nehru, and a covert CIA programme to support the Dalai Lama and resist Chinese occupation – to provide the most comprehensive account so far of a region ravaged by violence and controversy.