For the history of the area before 1959, see History of Tibet.See also: History of the political divisions of China Before 1959, the present extent of the TAR (comprising Ü-Tsang and western Kham) was governed by the government of Tibet headed by the Dalai Lama. The Government of Tibet in Exile characterizes the area as an independent and sovereign nation, while the governments of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China characterize it as a self-governing region within China. Other parts of historic Tibet (eastern Kham and Amdo) were not under the administration of the Tibetan government during the twentieth century; today they are distributed among the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan.
Following Soviet practice, there is a convention that the governor of the TAR is an ethnic Tibetan from the TAR, while the general secretary of the local Communist Party committee is an outsider, usually Han Chinese. Notable general secretaries of the TAR Party committee include Hu Jintao, who served in the 1980s.
PRC police before Potala Palace in Lhasa.Neither the Republic of China nor the People's Republic of China have ever renounced China's claim to sovereignty over Tibet.[1]
In 1950, the People's Liberation Army invaded the Tibetan area of Chamdo, crushing minimal resistance from the ill-equipped Tibetan army. In 1951, the Tibetan representatives, under PLA military pressure, signed a seventeen-point agreement with the PRC's Central People's Government affirming China's sovereignty over Tibet. The agreement was ratified in Lhasa a few months later.[2][3]
Though some of the population of Tibet at that time were serfs ("mi ser"),[4][5] often bound to land owned by monasteries and aristocrats, Tibetans in exile have claimed that the serfs and their masters formed only a small part of Tibetan society, and argued that Tibet would have modernized itself without China's intervention. However, the Chinese government claims that most Tibetans were still serfs in 1951,[6], and have proclaimed that the Tibetan government inhibited the development of Tibet during its self-rule from 1913 to 1959, and opposed any modernization efforts proposed by the Chinese government.[7] This agreement was initially put into effect in Tibet proper. However, Eastern Kham and Amdo were outside the administration of the government of Tibet, and were thus treated like any other Chinese province with land redistribution implemented in full. As a result, a rebellion broke out in Amdo and eastern Kham in June 1956. The insurrection, supported by the American CIA, eventually spread to Lhasa. It was crushed by 1959. The 14th Dalai Lama and other government principals fled to exile in India, but isolated resistance continued in Tibet until 1969 when the CIA abruptly withdrew its support.
