When one opens a biography of the Dalai Lama written by the Communist Party of China, one already knows one is about to read several hundred pages of pure and utter nonsense. However, one might expect the aforementioned Party, as the leaders of the world's second-largest economy, to be mature enough and professional enough to at least make some token effort to make said nonsense believable, and not brazenly insult the intelligence of the reader.
According to China Intercontinental Press's 2013 "biography," if this apparent work of alternate history could rightly be called that, one who held this expectation would be sorely disappointed.
The propaganda begins with guns blazing in the first paragraph, which includes two sadly insecure (glaringly shoehorned) "remember, it's the Chinese government who chooses the Dalai Lama and grants him his authority, and it's always been that way" moments.
On July 6, 1935, Lhamo Thondup was born to a farming family in Qijiachuan, now part of Ping'an County in Qinghai Province, but then under Huangzhong County. Three years later, he was confirmed as the reincarnated soul boy of the 13th Dalai Lama, and becoming the 14th Dalai Lama after Central Government confirmation. How was it that a child from an ordinary farming family could be confirmed as the soul boy? How did he obtain the title of 'Dalai Lama' conferred by the Central Government? What was his life like in those early years?
-P. 1 (Emphasis added by reviewer, grammar errors left by author)
The intent here is not subtle. The authors (who, as CIP is state-owned, are de-facto employees of the Chinese Party-State) wish to ham-fistedly affirm right from the beginning that there is no Dalai Lama except by the will of the Chinese government (which can be debunked by even a cursory glance at Tibet's history (Szczepanski), and to paint the Dalai Lama as a poor peasant who owes his wealth and prestige to the aforementioned State, whus setting the stage for the oft-repeated implication that comes later: namely, that he should be grateful to the Communist Party for "lifting him out of poverty."
To this assertion of Chinese governmental authority over an internal Tibetan matter (and a religious one at that), the book adds an additional layer of arrogance on page 19.
The Tibetan party planned to debase the status of the commissioner of the Central Government and thus estrange Tibet from the Central Government, which was of course refused with Stern words by the patriotic commissioner.
For clarification, the ritual of enthroning the Dalai Lama had gone on for centuries with no participation (or even awareness in most cases) by China, and nothing vaguely defined as "China" had even token authority in Tibet until the Qing Dynasty (which was Manchurian, not Chinese) invaded Tibet in the 1600's. So, here we have a Chinese author not only claiming to know the motives of Tibetans who lived nearly a century prior, but also being scandalized because the Tibetans dared have the audacity not to grant the Chinese State representative his "appropriate status" in a religious ceremony that had bupkus to do with China.
These desperate attempts to remind the reader "China has authority over Tibet... China has authority over Tibet... China has authority over Tibet..." drone onward in rather rapid succession throughout pages 18 - 24, with ever-increasing arrogance. It's clear that the book's authors were aware that the book's target audience (who, as the book's original language is English, could not have been Chinese) were disinclined to recognize Chinese authority over Tibet and they sought to establish their claim early on. Interspersed with these blatant claims are more subtle references to the Tibetan government's international relations as "foreign influence in Tibet," declaring that China had power over the Tibetan people's foreign affairs but the Tibetans did not. What makes it ironic is that there is not a single citation or reference explaining whence cometh this alleged sovereignty over Tibet: merely repeated insistences that it is so. Apparently in Chinese thinking, if you emphasize something often enough and emotionally enough, that makes it true. Well, if you're China, anyway.
The desperate emotional appeals (seemingly proliferated throughout the book to compensate for an absence of believability or even a token effort to provide citations or evidence) do finally reach a point where one can at least give the authors credit for creativity. On pages 42 & 43 they include background information on two of the Dalai Lama's early tutors: Hugh Richardson of Great Britain, and Heinrich Harrier, a squadron leader in the 38th Schutzstaffel who was Germany's de facto ambassador to Tibet. The authors don't simply imply that the presence of a German in the Dalai Lama's court in the early 20th century left a Nazi influence upon the Dalai Lama, they openly declare it three times within these two pages. Curiously though, no actual evidence is presented, other than the fact that Harrier was a high-ranking German. The book revisits this on pages 178 - 180 with an aside that has nothing to do with the titular figure, spending two pages giving background information of the film and novel Seven Years in Tibet while trying (rather unconvincingly) to claim the Dalai lama is a Nazi sleeper agent still, due to the alleged influence of Heinrich Harrier
The author also states on page 43 that Harrier taught the Dalai Lama English (which is questionable, considering that an Englishman was right there on-hand), and I have to wonder, given the resentment Chinese educators hold toward their waijiao counterparts, if this was an attempt to try and draw a connection in the reader's mind between Nazis and English teachers in China, though upon reflection I find it unlikely that the authors were capable of that level of subtlety.
One of the creepiest factors of the book (along with its attempt to gloss over the Tiananmen Square Massacre by painting it as a minor political disturbance cheaply exploited by both the Dalai Lama and the West as part of an eeeeeevil plot to defame China (p. 40 & 141)) is the way every single mention of the PLA's entry into Tibet (by tank) is referred to using the euphemism "Peaceful Liberation of Tibet." It is this phrase, verbatim, every time, and I tried counting how many times I saw this phrase used. I stopped counting after the twenty-first (page 127). Making this even more chilling is how the book does not even bother hiding that these were the same tanks that "peacefully" shelled the Potala Palace. Indeed, this very fact is praised on pages 117 & 118, during the PLA's slaughter of the "rebellious" Tibetans who fought to defend the Dalai Lama against an assassination attempt by the Central government (more on that later).
By October 1961, the PLA had fully eliminated rebellious activities in Tibetan areas and the liberal revolution it practiced brought freedom to hundreds of thousands of serfs (emphasis added by reviewer).
For clarification, the "liberal revolution" in question was the slaughter of 1.2 million Tibetans (a fact which the book lter admits on page 143), and the annihilation of the Tibetan way of life (admitted on page 158, and supported by the same publishing company's earlier publication China's Ethnic Groups and Religions by Zheng Qian (125, 129, 130 & 139)).
The part where the book branches unabashedly into the realm of absolute fiction is in its description of the Dalai Lama's escape from occupied Tibet. First, let's examine what happened in this universe, and then we'll visit whatever parallel dimension the authors live in.
On March 1, 1959, the Dalai Lama received an odd invitation to attend a theater performance at PLA headquarters near Lhasa.
The Dalai Lama demurred, and the performance date was postponed until March 10. On March 9, PLA officers notified the Dalai Lama's bodyguards that they would not accompany the Tibetan leader to the performance, nor were they to notify the Tibetan people that he was leaving the palace. (Ordinarily, the people of Lhasa would line the streets to greet the Dalai Lama each time he ventured out.)
The guards immediately publicized this rather ham-handed attempted abduction, and the following day an estimated crowd of 300,000 Tibetans surrounded Potala Palace to protect their leader... Tibetan troops were able to secure a route for the Dalai Lama to escape into India on March 17.
(Szczepanski)
Now then, for China Intercontinental Press's "unique" version.
The armed rebellion was launched in Lhasa on March 10, 1959 on the pretext of not allowing the Dalai Lama to see the show in the auditorium of Tibet Military Area Command amid fears for his safety, even though the Dalai Lama himself had asked to attend. On February 7, he took the initiative and told Deng Shaodong, deputy commander of the Tibet Military Area Command, and other officer, 'I was told that after it return from studies in the hinterland, the Song and Dance ensemble under the Tibet Military Area Command has a very good repertoire. I would like to see its show. Please arrange it for me.' (p. 102; emphasis added by reviewer)
The reasons to doubt this are manifold. First and foremost, there is absolutely NO account, anywhere, of the Dalai Lama making this request, except the sayso of a PLA Officer known for his repeated calls for the Dalai Lama's indefinite detention prior to this occasion (corroborated by other junior officers under his command who would have been subject to execution if they disputed his statements). Secondly, "please arrange for me to see a performance of an art I have little interest in, by an army I'm on tense terms with, in their local headquarters, without my bodyguards, at a time of cold relations between the local authorities and the Central Government," seems an odd request for the Dalai Lama to make in the first place, especially so soon after returning from a trip to India wherein he discussed with frankness the fact that Tibet had more common history with India than with China. Thirdly, to be blunt, in 3,500 years the Chinese have never refined their assassination tactics. 'Invite the target to a ceremony with no guards, surrounded by your own men, and kill him there' is the standard-issue 'political assassinations 101' textbook that runs throughout Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian and every discussion of Chinese political intrigue since. The only thing surprising is that the Chinese actually thought this would fool anyone.
So Is It Worth Reading
Well... it's entertaining. I'll give it that much credit. The authors' narrative style is so juvenile (repeatedly making bold statements and then offering nothing to back them up other than repeated emphatic declarations of their alleged veracity) that it reads almost like a parody. "What I say is true because I said that it's true, and to prove it's true I ask 'why would I say it if it wasn't true?' So you know it must be true, and I'll prove that it's true by insisting solemnly that it is true, ergo it must be true because if it wasn't true than I would be wrong, and that can't be true," is the basic format of the entire book. As a historical or biographical text though, it's not of much use. Even if one knows nothing of the Tibet issue (as I did when I read it last year), the claims made by the authors are still glaringly transparent and childishly emotion-based, with a repeated and annoying tendency to use opinions as evidence of alleged "fact."
Then again, given that all three authors are members of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, perhaps that's to be expected.
All-in-all, the book's only real value, much like Xi Jinping's The Governance of China, is its ability to show a reader just how deep China's delusional history goes, and how they bizarrely cling to it even in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary. Though to be honest, one can get an idea of that by reading Dr. Christopher Ford's account of the 4th Xiangshan Forum. I suppose if one wants a good laugh at the expense of the Communist Party of China, reading this book will provide that for a few afternoons. Beyond that, I'd say it makes a good gag gift for a Tibetologist, but not much else.
Works Cited
Ford, Christopher. "Sinocentrism for the New Age: Comments on the 4th Xiangshan Forum." New Paradigms Forum. 13 Jan, 2013. Web. 21 Sep, 2018
http://www.newparadigmsforum.com/NPFtestsite/?p=1498
Szczepanski, Kallie. "Tibet and China: History of a Complex Relationship." Thoughtco.com. 23 May, 2019.
https://www.thoughtco.com/tibet-and-china-history-195217
Zheng Qian. Trans. Hou Xiaocui, Rong Xueqin & Huang Ying. China's Ethnic Groups and Religions. Beijing, 2010. China Intercontinental Press.
ISBN 978-7-5085-1685-1
