Dharamsala and Beijing: The Negotiations that Never Were

In October 1950, Communist China invaded Tibet, and after nine years of difficult cohabitation with the occupiers, the Dalai Lama, the young temporal and spiritual leader of the Tibetans, had no choice but to flee his country to take refuge in India. It took twenty years for the Tibetans to renew a dialogue with the leaders in Beijing. Soon after Deng Xiaoping's return to power in 1978, the first contacts were made. Using rare documents, this is the story of thirty years of encounters between the Tibetan administration in Dharamsala and Beijing. Today the stalemate continues; Beijing refuses to offer any sort of concession to the Dalai Lama's demand for a genuine autonomy for Tibet. This book explains how the relations between India and China are inextricably linked to the status of Tibet. Further, the present unrest in Tibet renders China unstable and increasingly belligerent toward India, which gave refuge to the Tibetans.