ABSTRACT
Tibet occupies a unique position within the array of Asian security concerns. Situated between India and China (with a portion of its border encompassing Nepal and Bhutan), Tibet’s boundaries have been a cause of conflict between India and China, up to the point of actual war in 1962. But Tibetan issues are not limited to conflicting frontier claims. Instability and intense nationalism within Tibet also constitute a serious internal security problem for the Chinese state. Regardless of China’s decades-long insistence on calling it a “Peaceful Liberation,” Tibet’s annexation to China in 1950-51 was accomplished by force of arms. But that liberation was contested from the beginning and Tibetan desires and attempts to restore a lost independence have bedeviled China since the 1950s. As recently as spring 2008, Tibet was wracked by a cycle of protests and demonstrations that convulsed the larger swath of territory on the Tibetan Plateau inhabited by Tibetans. At the beginning of 2009, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Hu Changming asserted that “ … Tibetan independence and other separatist forces form a major security threat to the unity of the nation and a challenge to our security organs … On these issues there can be no compromise and no tolerance.”1
