Time to break the silence and stop appeasing China on Tibet

Its sovereignty claim to Tibet has no legal basis and rests solely on a fabricated historical narrative. According to that narrative, Tibet has been part of the Chinese multinational state since antiquity. This was not the case; quite the contrary. As a matter of fact, the very notion that there should have been a Chinese multinational state since antiquity is fabricated. But Beijing has pushed this narrative so persistently and forcefully that the world is gradually buying into it. With few exceptions, our governments today treat Tibet as China’s internal affair, beyond their purview, and are self-censoring to accommodate Beijing’s self-proclaimed sensitivities in the hope this will serve their interests. The world has grown largely silent on the PRC’s occupation of Tibet.

We believe that it is high time we took a hard look at the implications of our silence on the illegitimacy of China’s presence in Tibet. As our governments appease Beijing and we have become passive bystanders to an unfolding tragedy, China has become an entitled bully, aggressively pursuing strategic goals including territorial expansion. Do appeasement and silence – and the precedent this sets considering our governments’ legal obligations– serve Europe’s interests?

With the international rules-based order coming under severe stress as the world’s major powers self-servingly flaunt or question its fundamental norms, test their limits and seek to change them to serve their own interests, international relations are becoming more overtly power driven and transactional and less principled. Bullying is being normalized as governments test how to get away with seizing others’ territory by force, while UN organs and agencies are being paralyzed or sidelined. An emboldened Russia is on our doorstep. We argue that no, appeasement and silence do not serve Europe’s interests. We need to speak up.

We find support for our argument and are encouraged by the ministers of foreign affairs of the three Baltic states, as well as those of the Czech Republic, Poland, Moldova and Ukraine, in their ‘Lessons from World War II to avoid World War III’[1] published in the New York Times on May 8th, the day of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Addressing Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine as well as its shattering effect on our international legal order and the security it is meant to provide, the authors emphasize among other things that appeasing the aggressor does not lead to peace but rather to more aggression; that concessions on unlawful territorial claims are a disastrous mistake; that a truthful assessment and profound understanding of history form the foundation of a society’s democratic resilience, and that historical manipulation must therefore be corrected. Our article addresses China’s illegal occupation of Tibet, but the same lessons apply, and acting upon them will in our opinion strengthen both our international legal order and Europe’s security.

As our governments appease Beijing and we have become passive bystanders to an unfolding tragedy, China has become an entitled bully, aggressively pursuing strategic goals including territorial expansion.

Fortunately, there is ample opportunity for governments, parliamentarians and civil society to question and oppose Beijing’s sovereignty claim to Tibet and to contest its historical narrative. The narrative is not just for the history books. Beijing actively uses it. Firstly, it has made negotiations with the Tibetans dependent on the Dalai Lama publicly accepting it. Secondly, it is putting a lot of pressure on all governments—and not just governments but also the UN, museums, academics and academic institutions, and media outlets—to not contradict it. Beijing knows that it has no legitimacy to rule Tibet—that the PRC took it by force in 1951—and has created a historical narrative to solve that problem. Once the world believes that Tibet was already part of China when the PRC came to power in 1949, Beijing’s mission will have been accomplished. Its first step is mandating that we not contradict its narrative and this is where we are today: self-censuring and silent.

Thirdly, the PRC demands that our governments state publicly that they consider Tibet to be a part of China, thereby endorsing the PRC’s sovereignty claim over Tibet. And some have done so. All these instances of pressure by Beijing are opportunities to speak up.

Silence and absence of effective opposition to the narrative and compliance with the demand to make statements will over time turn into acquiescence, to buying into it. This will make any effort to resolve the Sino-Tibetan conflict fruitless. This is our main concern. For negotiations to have a chance, the world needs to be aware of and act upon the true nature of the conflict. And that has everything to do with the nature of relations Tibet had with its Asian neighbors, and indeed with the question whether Tibet was or was not historically a part of China. Unfortunately, very few people are knowledgeable on this subject, and many are misinformed.

So as to facilitate governments, parliamentarians and civil society in their roles of speaking up and taking appropriate action on the Sino-Tibetan conflict, we extensively researched the subject with the help of about a hundred scholars and published our findings in two books, the most recent Tibet Explained; Legal Status, Rights and State Responsibility[2], answers the question whether Tibet can be considered to have been a part of China at any point in time before the PRC invaded it in 1950; presents, unpacks and assesses Beijing’s claim and narrative; and looks at the international legal consequences of the research findings for Tibet and the Tibetans, for the PRC and for the international community. We share our main conclusions below, but before we do, we need to address a common misconception.

The creation of the myths underlying the PRC’s historical narrative

Beijing’s historical narrative is Sino-centric, partly false, partly inaccurate and highly misleading. The extent to which it is all of these things gets obscured by a widely held belief – especially in Europe and the West – that we wish to spotlight and debunk here.

It is commonly assumed that China has existed for centuries, millennia even. Strictly speaking, this was not the case, but more to the point, it is important to be mindful of exactly what is attributed to this ‘China’ pre-1912. Yes, there was a place where the Han[3] lived through the centuries and where their culture and civilization developed and thrived. What did not exist was a continuous Han political entity or state, and certainly not a state by the name of ‘China’ in the period before 1912, the year the Republic of China (ROC) was founded. This is an important distinction to make, especially when considering the legitimacy of the PRC’s sovereignty claim to Tibet.

Unfortunately, we commonly think of historical places with our current concept of a country in mind. This plays right into what the PRC wants us to believe, namely that there was continuity of Chinese rule up till today, and moreover continuity of Chinese rule over territory stretching far beyond that populated by the Han. This was not the case. The notion of a ‘Chinese multinational state since antiquity’ was created and launched by the conceptualizers and the founders of the Republic of China. For a reason. Zooming in on the back story of the creation of the ROC will shed light on the myths that were created for purposes of paving the way for the incorporation of large swaths of foreign territory, including Tibet.

The Republic of China was conceptualized in the late 19th/early 20th century by Han reformers who advocated for the modernization and Westernization of the Manchu Qing empire, and revolutionaries who were intent on overthrowing it and creating a new Han state in its stead. It was modeled on the modern European style nation-state as well as – astonishingly – on the Western notion of ‘China’[4]. Bill Hayton demonstrates in The Invention of China that the evolution of thinking and debate that led to the conceptualization of the Republic of China was spearheaded by Han elites and intellectuals stationed or exiled in the treaty port Shanghai, Japan or Europe. There they developed an understanding of modern European concepts of statehood and relations between states, but also learned of a state that did not actually exist except in the Western imagination: China. «Over the centuries, Europeans had developed a vision of a place they called ‘China’ based upon scraps of information sent home by explorers and priests and subsequently amplified by storytellers and orientalists. In European minds, ‘China’ became an ancient, independent, continuous state occupying a defined portion of continental East Asia.»[5] In reality, there was no state called ‘China’ during the period since the first Europeans set foot in East Asia, or before it, nor was there a continuous state—let alone Han state—by any name. «Until the very end of the nineteenth century, rulers in Beijing would not even have recognized the name ‘China’. More significantly, they would not have understood the meaning that was represented by foreigners’ use of the word».[6] Yet the future Han state was conceptualized in its image.

Beijing knows that it has no legitimacy to rule Tibet—that the PRC took it by force in 1951—and has created a historical narrative to solve that problem.

A state modeled on the European style nation-state and the Western notion of ‘China’ would constitute a radical departure from the type of political entities that had ruled the territory where the Han lived for centuries; their ideologies, their sources of legitimacy, how they related to those they ruled and those they didn’t. It called for radical new thinking and innovation. To make the political project relatable and debatable, new words needed to be created for concepts such as ‘country’ and ‘nation’ that were fundamental to European nation-state thinking but non-existent in East Asia.

Moreover, to create a nation-state modeled on European ones, a nation had to be imagined, which the state that was being envisioned would naturally embody. Had the conceptualizers chosen to create a state consisting of the territory where the Han lived (constituting the bulk of the territory of the earlier Ming dynasty)—which is what the leading revolutionaries initially set out to do[7]—this would have been relatively straightforward. The Han had for centuries identified as a group to the exclusion of others who did not belong to it. They self-identified as the ‘hua’—the people endowed with the superior ‘radiating culture’, moral qualities and political system, the creators and transmitters of the highest civilization. This in contrast to the ‘yi’, the outsiders, the ‘other’, the less- and un-civilized.[8] A Han state consisting of the Han, a Han nation, would have corresponded to the ideal of a nation-state as conceived in Europe.

Instead, their goal became to appropriate for the future Han state all of the territory the Manchu emperors had conquered, controlled or overseen at the height of their imperial reach in the eighteenth century,[9] that is, more than twice the territory where the Han lived. They reimagined the Manchu Qing empire as a Han nation-state, replacing the imperial notion of sovereignty that entailed direct rule over some and indirect rule over others and that allowed simultaneous overlapping sovereignties, with the modern notion of exclusive territorial sovereignty requiring all the territory to be an integral part of the state.

To invoke a nation that would justify this territorial extent, the conceptualizers had to come up with one that comprised not only the Han, but all the diverse peoples that lived on this greater territory—notably the Manchus, the Mongols, the Tibetans, and the Uyghurs and other Turkic populations. This is precisely what they did. And to deal with the fact that those peoples had little, if anything, in common with the Han, did not identify with the Han, and belonged to very different civilizational worlds than that of the Han, they fabricated a dual myth: the myth of common (racial) descent or ancestry with the Han of all the Inner Asian peoples just mentioned, and the myth of voluntary, nay, natural and inevitable assimilation of these peoples with the infinitely superior Han to form a united nation. This dual myth was later reinforced by the Republic of China. We say ‘fabrication’ and ‘myth’, because neither the common descent nor the assimilation story is truthful. The foundational ploy in the conceptualization of a Han state to include vast Inner Asian territories – including Tibet – was the launching of the notion of a single nation consisting of not only the Han, but also the Manchus, the Mongols, the Tibetans, and Turkic populations.

This fabricated group was given a fabricated group history, the intellectual foundations of which were laid by Han intellectuals debating and writing various ideas at the turn of the century. Liang Qicao’s ‘History of China Introductory Essay’, written in 1901, was particularly influential. In line with how Europeans wrote their national histories and had conceived of ‘China’, Liang constructed a history of a nation with ancient Han roots into which non-Han peoples progressively merged with the Han, drawn by the latter’s superior culture and civilization, and inevitably faced complete assimilation.

In reality, there was no state called ‘China’ during the period since the first Europeans set foot in East Asia, or before it, nor was there a continuous state—let alone Han state—by any name.

«It is important to understand», Hayton reminds us, «that in 1901 Liang was not describing an already existing Chinese nation but was actually creating one by writing its history.»[10] Liang effectively reimagined the Qing empire as embodying a single nation with the Han at its center driving the nation’s evolution and the other peoples assimilating.[11] His historical narrative was designed both to legitimize the fabricated group and concomitant borders. It greatly influenced other leading writers of that time, informed the conceptualization of the future Han state, became engrained in the official ideology of the Republic of China, and endures to this day.

The essence of the PRC’s historical narrative unpacked and debunked

Insight in the backstory of the conceptualization of the ROC makes it easier to see what is at play in the narrative Beijing uses today. As the PRC needs a story to legitimize its occupation and incorporation of those very same territories that the ROC was aspiring to include at the time of its inception, it borrows from and perpetuates the myths that were created for this purpose.

Concretely, the PRC’s narrative projects today’s Chinese state, with its current borders that include territory it obtained by conquest, like Tibet, far into the past, and appropriates foreign empires by indiscriminately using the terms ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’ for both Han empires, like the Tang and Ming dynasties, and non-Han empires, like the Mongol and Qing empires.

The Mongol and Qing empires were both Inner Asian—Mongol and Manchu respectively—and not Han or ‘Chinese’. Their rulers conquered, occupied and ruled the Han and their homeland for centuries as part of their vast dominions. Not the other way around. During these times, the Han identified politically as subjects of those foreign ruling dynasties. Again, not the other way around. This reality is being obscured by the PRC’s intentional indiscriminate use of the labels ‘Chinese’ and ‘China’, which gives the impression that there was a Han political actor, a Han state or country, throughout history, and moreover one that exercised authority over large swathes of non-Han populated territory in Inner Asia. This is the world upside down.

By calling the Mongol and Manchu empires ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’ and so appropriating their territorial scope and reach, the PRC is laying the foundation for its argument that it simply inherited sovereignty over Tibet from its predecessors. It couldn’t be further from the truth.

Tibet was historically never part of ‘China’ and is an occupied country today

Careful historical examination reveals that Tibet was in fact historically never a part of ‘China’. This does not mean that Tibet was always an independent state in the modern sense of the term. To be sure, Tibet’s relations with the Mongol, Manchu and British empires entailed different forms of dependency. But none of those relations entailed the incorporation of Tibet into the territory where the Han lived and that we commonly think of as ‘China’.

The Mongols did exercise authority over the Tibetans, but they did so separately from their conquest and rule of Han populated territory and never joined the two.

Tibet was not a part of ‘China’ during the Mongol empire and did not become a part of the Mongol ruled Yuan dynasty—contrary to popular belief. The Mongols did exercise authority over the Tibetans, but they did so separately from their conquest and rule of Han populated territory and never joined the two. Tibet was not ruled by the Ming dynasty and was most certainly not incorporated into the Ming state. And the Manchu Qing emperors’ relations with the Dalai Lamas and Tibet also never resulted in Tibet’s incorporation into the eastern part of the Qing empire—its Han populated provinces. The religio-political relationship that did exist between the two leaders, known in Tibetan as chö-yön relations, need to be understood in the framework of the then applicable Tibetan Buddhist legal order and do not translate into modern-day territorial sovereignty. These conclusions are all corroborated in contemporaneous Mongolian, Manchu, Tibetan and Mandarin sources. Finally, the Republic of China, which unilaterally claimed Tibet as part of that republic from its inception, was entirely unable to establish any authority in or over Tibet, leaving its claim completely empty. In reality, Tibet was an independent state de facto and de jure throughout the Republic of China period before the PRC was founded in 1949. And it was independent when the PLA invaded Tibet soon after.

All of this informs the nature of the Sino-Tibetan conflict, the legality of the PRC’s presence in Tibet, and the obligations of both the PRC and the international community under international law.

Tibet is an occupied country and the Sino-Tibetan conflict is an international conflict, not China’s internal affair. Contrary to what Beijing wants us to believe, the PRC’s presence in Tibet is illegal because its armed invasion of Tibet in 1950 violated one of the most fundamental norms of modern international law—the prohibition of the use of force against another state. As a result, the PRC has not acquired sovereignty over Tibet since its invasion, and it is obligated under international law to end its occupation of Tibet and to permit the Tibetans to freely exercise their right to self-determination.

But not only the PRC has obligations. All states do. International law stipulates that all of our governments have the duty not to recognize the illegal annexation of Tibet by China, and not to cooperate with or assist Beijing in any way in maintaining its unlawful rule of Tibet. All states are also required to refrain from aiding and abetting the exploitation of Tibet’s natural resources without due permission of the Tibetans, since those resources belong solely to the Tibetan people. And finally, our governments have the positive duty to help bring about an end to the occupation of Tibet and to respect the Tibetan people’s right to self-determination.

Time to speak up

Behaving accordingly is not only about upholding the rule of law for its own sake, though this is also of the utmost importance today. It is a political and security imperative. Acting in ways that give credence to China’s claims to sovereignty over Tibet and not speaking up about the illegality of China’s occupation of it provide those claims and the PRC presence in Tibet with a semblance of legitimacy. This has tangible harmful consequences today.

Disregard for the UN Charter’s prohibition of aggression against any state disempowers smaller and weaker states, and it is they who in our opinion must not only insist on adherence to the crucial tenets of international law but must themselves live by them.

In the first place, the current attitude of appeasement, self-censorship and silence by the international community is detrimental to the resolution of the Sino-Tibetan conflict. It takes away all incentive for the Chinese leadership to obtain legitimacy for the PRC’s presence in Tibet from the Tibetans through negotiations. There simply is no need. Even the governments that have been most concerned about the situation in Tibet have relegated the issue to the realm of cultural and religious rights, playing right into the PRC strategy of casting Tibetans simply as one of its ethnic and religious minorities with no standing to even discuss devolution of power. Fortunately, there are small signs this may be starting to change, albeit timidly.

Secondly, regional peace and security are threatened by the international community’s apathy. China’s aggressive behavior towards Taiwan, India and Bhutan, its expansionism in the South China Sea, and its bullying and interference in Nepal, Mongolia and Southeast Asia, all accompanied by a strong sense of entitlement, are in our opinion directly related to how the international community has treated and still treats China’s invasion and occupation of Tibet. Beijing has learned that it can get away with territorial expansion over time if it consistently pushes a self-serving historical narrative and punishes those who challenge it. It is applying this model elsewhere too and in the case of Beijing’s territorial claims in Himalayan regions, these are directly tied to its historical narrative on Tibet.

Thirdly, other powers are watching and are emboldened to do the same. Taking neighboring countries’ land by force is on its way to become something that governments can get away with. And with it, our international legal order—which was put in place to prevent exactly what is at issue here: aggression by the more powerful—threatens to be irreparably damaged, even destroyed. Disregard for the UN Charter’s prohibition of aggression against any state disempowers smaller and weaker states, and it is they who in our opinion must not only insist on adherence to the crucial tenets of international law but must themselves live by them.

When European governments allow themselves to be bullied by Beijing into explicitly or implicitly endorsing China’s illegal occupation of Tibet by stating that they consider Tibet to be a part of China, they are contributing to the demise of the very tenets they created to protect their own states and peoples against would-be aggressors. It is time to course correct.

The need to course correct and step up; three recommendations

In order to achieve a negotiated resolution of the Sino-Tibetan conflict and end the occupation of Tibet, certain things need to be in place, for which the international community’s engagement is imperative. The engagement we call for is entirely in line with the legal obligations and responsibilities of states. It does not constitute impermissible interference in the PRC’s internal affairs, but does require a significant course correct by many governments. Our recommendations are not end goals, but preliminary steps to create the conditions for effective policy change.

Our first recommendation is to treat the situation in Tibet, Sino-Tibetan relations and the Sino-Tibetan conflict as falling squarely within the international community’s, and therefore every government’s purview and responsibility and not as China’s internal affair. This includes treating the Sino-Tibetan conflict as an international conflict in need of resolution.

A starting point would be to consistently use language reflecting that. This means, for example, referring to Tibet as an occupied country. Self-censoring has resulted in the frequent use of the euphemistic, non-committal and meaningless expression «the Tibet issue.» This is not helpful and can be harmful. Our language must convey that we are dealing here with an unresolved international conflict, not a Chinese domestic matter. We should also stop parroting Beijing’s choice terminology, including its reference to Tibetans as a ‘minority’ instead of a people or nation. Such terminology reinforces the Chinese narrative and denies the Tibetan people their proper status and implicitly their right to self-determination.

Here we are not just addressing governments and their policymakers and diplomats. The impact of language and how it is used in the press, television and other media is critical, as it largely determines how audiences understand China’s presence and actions in Tibet, as well as its claims to other territories.

Being mindful of using appropriate and truthful language may sound frivolous. It is not. Consider this: Beijing diligently uses the language and arguments of international law to persuade the world that its forceful incorporation of Tibet is lawful. It consistently deploys a carefully selected vocabulary when talking about Tibet and Tibetans. This vocabulary not only fits its historical narrative, it is chosen because it assigns legal consequences when that vocabulary is adopted by others. This is, to a large extent, happening today. And that is a hugely underestimated real problem that can only be solved by not adopting China’s vocabulary and by being mindful to use language that expresses the true nature of the conflict instead.

Importantly, treating the Sino-Tibetan conflict as an unresolved international conflict requires rejecting Beijing’s ‘core interest’ and ‘One China policy’ traps, and with them the imposition by the PRC of rules of behavior that dictate what governments must believe, what their officials must say, and who they must not meet. It requires being guided, instead, by facts and law, including international legal principles and norms. China has designated Tibet, Taiwan and Xinjiang as its ‘core interests’. It demands that its positions and interests regarding these regions must be accepted and respected by all governments as a prerequisite for friendly bilateral relations. Most recently, Beijing added the South China Sea to its list of core interests as well. The Chinese government uses this mechanism to instill fear of angering China, which has led many governments to comply with its demands and to self-censor.

We have contributed not only to China’s rise, but also to its bullying. The only way to stop bullying is to collectively no longer comply with the bully’s demands, first and foremost where those demands clearly violate international legal norms as well as moral ones.

The second recommendation is to actively counter the PRC’s false historical narrative on Tibet as it is part of its annexation strategy

An example of how these first two recommendations can be acted on by governments is contained in the Resolve Tibet Act, signed into law in July of 2024.[12] This law, adopted with overwhelming bipartisan support, binds the US government in its dealings with China and Tibet to pursue a resolution of the Sino-Tibetan dispute in accordance with international law, and mandates countering China’s disinformation on Tibet, including specifically its historical narrative. Similar measures should be incorporated also into the Tibet and China policies of European governments.

Our third recommendation is for governments to not recognize the illegal annexation of Tibet. Non-recognition of sovereignty over territory taken by force is a fundamental norm of international law, which follows directly from the prohibition of the use of force against states, a cornerstone of the UN Charter and of our World Order. Many governments succumb to Chinese pressure to state that they consider Tibet to be a part of China. If they stop doing so, as India has and some other governments have or have pledged to do, this will give efforts to resolve the Sino-Tibetan conflict a chance. And now is the time to do it. The world is waking up to the realization that we are actually paying a price for compliance with Beijing’s demands. We have contributed not only to China’s rise, but also to its bullying. The only way to stop bullying is to collectively no longer comply with the bully’s demands, first and foremost where those demands clearly violate international legal norms as well as moral ones.

Now more than ever, when the international rule of law is being trampled on, governments and civil society must rally to uphold its fundamental norms, in particular the prohibition of aggression—the attempt to acquire territory by the use of force. The world is small and interdependent, so that an attack on one country or people is an attack on the architecture that protects all of us. This is not the time to abandon international law but to strengthen and improve it so that it can protect especially the more vulnerable states and peoples against the greed, expansionism and whims of the powerful. It is time for Europe to step up.