Published by: World Tibet Network News, Tuesday, October 8, 1996
Far East Economic Review October 10, 1996
By Trish Saywell
Lee Feigon, who teaches East AsianStudies at Colby College in Maine, devotes most of his book to analyzing Tibet's complex-and antagonistic-political relationship with China. His conclusion, which is neither novel nor controversial: China's claim that Tibet has long been part of the Middle King-dom is a recent "historical fiction."
Feigon argues that Tibet has never been dependent on China or, before 1950, even been part of China. In fact, it was only in the 20th century that the Chinese government first insisted that Tibet was part of its domain.
True, Tibet was loosely associated with the Mongols, who ruled China during the Yuan dynasty (1284-1368), and again from the 18th century to the early 20th century under Manchu rule. But in all other periods Tibet's history has been politically and culturally independent of any foreign power.
Towards the end of the book, Feigon details the destruction of Tibet under Chinese rule. Although Central Tibet has managed to preseve some of its old ethnic purity, outlying areas haven't been that lucky.
Amdo - birthplace of the late Panchen Lama and the present DalaiLama - was annexed to China in the early 1950s. The Chinese turned this area-now called Qinghai-into their gulag, storing atomic waste and political prisoners there.
Like most other recent surveys of Tibet, the book describes how China has chilled Tibet's political climate, destroyed its monasteries, flooded it with ethnic Han Chinese and wreaked havoc on its fragile environment. Before the 1950s, for example, Tibet had at least 2,500 monasteries and as many as one of every four adults was a monk or a nun. Today probably fewer than 1,0% of those monasteries remain. Writes Feigon: "After 1959 the country became like the Lhasa Holiday Inn in winter-a cold shell."
DEMYSTIFYING TIBET: UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF THE LANDS OF THE SNOWS BY LEE FEIGON. IVAN R DEE, 1332 N, HALTSTED STR., CHICAGO. $ 27.50
