ABSTRACT
The Seventeen Point Agreement (1951)1 is one of the most controversial and significant documents in the history of Sino-Tibetan relations since the 821 treaty. In 1951 the Tibetan plenipotentiaries were compelled or coerced, as we shall find out later, to sign and surrender Tibetan sovereignty for the first time in more explicit terms than any other Tibetan authorities had done under any Chinese regime, itTIperial or republican. The treaty has now become a quasi-legal instrument by which the Chinese Marxist missionaries sought to legitimate their takeover of Tibet and to integrate systelnatically with China in the name of Marxism.
