Tibet is one of the most unique places on earth. This region consists of the highlands of the Himalayan Mountains, which has a higher elevation than any other place on earth, which means it has the highest mountains on earth – including Mount Everest. The climate is severely dry nine months of the year, and extremely cold for much of the year, with only about 18 inches of snowfall per year. Today, there are about 3 million people living in the Tibet Autonomous Region, with about 90% of the people ethnic Tibetans.
The Tibetan people have a long history, much longer than the history of the United States, or other nations in North America, which started to be recorded around the 7th century AD, although there is evidence of people having lived in the region for the last 21,000 years. They once had an empire that united the whole region under a single domain and which introduced Buddhism to the region. Later, the Tibetans lived in divided kingdoms for different periods of time, were invaded by the Mongols at one time, and were, at other times, controlled by Chinese dynasties. Their history is long and complicated.
The area consisting of modern-day Tibet, which is considered a province in China called Xinjiang, does not include all areas that are ethnically Tibetan, but a little over half that entire area, the rest being part of other Chinese provinces. This land area of the province of Tibet is about twice as large as the state of Texas, or a little smaller than Alaska. In 1950, the People’s Liberation Army, under the Chinese’s Cultural Revolution, invaded Tibet and forced the people to sign an agreement with the Chinese government, creating the Tibetan Autonomous Region, with the Buddhist Dalai Lama at its head, although the Chinese later created a communist system of administration, which forced the Dalai Lama, and his government, to flee to another country.
Should the Tibetan people be given independence? In my opinion the answer is yes. It would be good if they were given back their independence. The fact that the Chinese forcibly took over Tibet should make people realize, that, in the name of justice, China should give them back their independence. Let the Dalai Lama come back and establish his own government again. Of course, we could also argue that it would be possible for China to allow Tibet to be self-governing and semi-autonomous while within the larger framework of the Chinese nation, but China would need to take away their communist control before that can happen.
Even if Tibet got back its independence, it would need to have close ties to both China and India, since their own economy might need to rely on those connections with their neighbors, and because they would be a landlocked country. As for the governments of other countries around the world, such as the United States government, getting involved in trying to secure freedom and independence for Tibet, in my opinion we are not really in a place to get involved and mediate the issue, since that would mean having a hostile stand towards China, a country that holds much of our nation’s debt at the present time.
