Tibet's Administration During the Interregnum, 1954-1959

HE YEARS I95I-I954 witnessed the juridical and factual re-establishment of Chinese control and influence in the Tibetan region.1 Officially promoted under the guise of implementing the Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet (May 27, I951), Chinese penetration into Tibetan social, economic and political life in reality disregarded to a great extent the specific provisions of that accord, particularly the clause on internal regional autonomy. The resulting resistance of the Tibetan officialdom to Peking's infiltration tactics, coupled with the Chinese determination to secure firm control over the strategic Tibetan plateau, led to a long series of serious clashes between the Peking and Lhasa authorities, interrupted periodically by uneasy truces and compromises. The search for an over-all solution to the problem of relations between the Central Government and the national minorities and for a definitive modus vivendi between Peking and the ethnically non-Han border regions finally came to an end with the drafting of China's new constitutional system in 1954. With the promulgation of the Constitution a precise formal framework emerged for the first time defining, inter alia, the functions and powers reserved for the autonomous nationalities within the Chinese State. The period of vague, ill-defined relationships between the central powers and the outlying areas thus nominally came to an end and Tibet, along with other territories in the same category, was at last vested with a legally formalized status in the structure of the Chinese People's Republic. The Tibetan delegation which arrived in Peking in September I954 included the two Lamas and other high dignitaries of the Tibetan hierarchy. In the following weeks the group took an active part in the sessions of the Constituent Conference at which time repeated professions of loyalty, friendship and admiration for the Communist regime were publicly made by all the Tibetan leaders. As it finally emerged from the deliberations, the Constitution still stipu. lated that China was to be a unitary State (Art. 3), although it was also con

Administration (probate law) · Interregnum · Political science · Politics · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Chinese history and philosophy · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies