Escape from the Land of Snows by Stephan Talty Read Free Book Online Page B

Tokyo. “What is meant by independence here,” wrote one Chinese official from Lhasa, “is in fact to turn Tibet into a colony or protectorate of a foreign country.” Steeped in the powerful tradition of Chinese victimhood, Mao and his followers sincerely believed that Tibet belonged within the new China. Every move toward independence was regarded by the Chinese as the first crack in a dam that would result in national disintegration. Traditionally known as “the treasure house of the west,” Tibet also held vast quantities of copper, lead, gold, and zinc, along with million of acres of forests and—unknown to Mao at the time—reserves of oil, uranium, and borax. It had resources that China could use to grow.
    For Mao, it was essential that the Tibetans be reunited with the homeland, along with the Mongolians, the Uighurs, and the rest of China’s far-flung minorities. “The relationship between Tibet and China would be like brothers,” he said. “The oppression of one nationality by another would be eliminated. All nationalities would work for the benefit of the Motherland.” The Communists acknowledged the deep cultural differences between the twonations—they were hard to ignore—but they insisted that the two societies had grown together over centuries. The Tibetans, on the other hand, believed that the relationship had been one of equals, and that Tibet had kept control of its own internal affairs, its cultural institutions, and its political independence.
    Each side hid uncomfortable truths behind their interpretations of history: The Chinese failed to acknowledge that they’d forced a civilized Tibet to accept their protection at the point of a spear and that their control over their neighbor often slipped into a ceremonial façade as the dynasties in Peking faltered. And when the Tibetans painted the relationship as a primarily spiritual bond, they ignored China’s military and political influence. But the Tibetans carried the deeper point: over centuries of intense contact, their nation had never willingly assimilated into Han society.
    In 1950, none of that mattered. China had taken Tibet. After the invasion,
Life
magazine asked the question that was on the minds of Tibet-watchers everywhere: would the Dalai Lama now become “one more in the succession of Moscow-pulled puppets?”
    The Dalai Lama, and the world at large, knew little about Mao in 1950. The Chinese leader was unquestionably a political genius, a supremely magnetic personality who was unmatched in his ability to get his followers to do the unthinkable for him. Mao promised the Chinese people deliverance from the chaos that had racked the nation since the breakup of the Qing dynasty in the mid-nineteenth century. Mao reversed a century of Chinese history and unified the country. And he promised to end the intrusions by foreign powers that were regarded by the average citizen as a deep and lingering humiliation.
    But the Great Leader, as he came to be known, also conductedone of the most ruthless campaigns in history, not only against the armies of Chiang Kai-shek but against his own cadres. He believed himself to be one of history’s great upsetters, the men who shatter existing societies and remake them through terror. “When Great Heroes give full play to their impulses,” he wrote, “they are magnificently powerful, stormy and invincible.” Thousands of his own followers were killed or driven mad in campaigns carefully planned by the Communist leader himself. His cadres used new techniques to get confessions from “rightists,” such as “angel plucking zither,” where a wire was run through a man’s penis and then up around his ears, and his interrogators strummed the line, causing intense anguish. Mao even composed the posters for rallies in which rich peasants were executed after torture sessions in front of baying crowds:
    Watch us kill the landlords today
.
    Aren’t you afraid
?
    It’s knife slicing upon