Beyond Shangri-La: America and Tibet's Move into the Twenty-First Century.

Gao, Jie

Beyond Shangri-La: America and Tibet's Move into the Twenty-First Century by John Kenneth Knaus. American Encounters/Global Interactions Series. Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 2012. xvii. 355 pp. $25.95 US (paper).

Given the dearth of works on the relationship between the United States and Tibet, a monograph with the scope of John Kenneth Knaus' Beyond Shangri-La--which begins at first contact and runs through to the present--is a welcome addition. The author brings a wealth of invaluable personal experience, having long been acquainted with Tibet since his days training rebels there for the CIA beginning in the 1950s. As an historian, Knaus previously authored Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival (New York, 2000).

Aside from works from this author, see: Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence, Kansas, 2002); Melvyn C. Goldstein's exhaustive three-volume history of Tibet, A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State (Berkeley, 1989); A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 2: The Calm Before the Storm, 1951-1955 (Berkeley, 1997); and, A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 3: The Storm Clouds Descend, 1955-1957 (Berkeley, 2013); and, Carole McGranahan, Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War (Durham, North Carolina, 2010).

Historically, on the infrequent occasions when Americans took notice of this sprawling, sparsely-populated corner of China, they have shown warm feelings toward the Tibetan people and sympathy for their long-standing struggle for autonomy. Though Tibetans practice Buddhism rather than Christianity, Americans admire their deep spirituality. Politically, Americans often subconsciously superimpose their nation's own anti-colonial struggle on the region, casting the Chinese as the oppressive British Redcoats and the Tibetans as the brave revolutionaries.

When China went through an abortive democratic revolution in 1911, the country subsequently fragmented and regional warlords asserted their rule. This upheaval created an opportunity for Tibet to secure de facto independence with British support. This meant that Americans first took notice of Tibet at one of the relatively brief intervals over the past millennium when it was not under Chinese rule. During this period, the conservative religious authorities who held real power foiled the thirteenth Dalai Lama's attempts at reform and modernization, yet Americans often assume that Tibet could and should be independent.

That said, at no point, however, has Washington been willing to provide the sort of political or material aid required to fulfill the aspirations of Tibetan nationalists. Knaus' overarching theme is that America has been in the right when it has supported Tibetan autonomy, but that it has never developed a coherent, sustained strategy that could deliver it. The first official contact was made between the United States and Tibet in 1908, when President Teddy Roosevelt's envoy to China, William Woodville Rockhill, travelled to Tibet to meet the dispossessed Dalai Lama. Rockhill personally admired the Dalai Lama, but informed him that it was the official position of the American government that Tibet should respect Chinese authority and hope for better government to come. Washington felt that Tibetan independence would destabilize China and this would in turn harm American commercial interests there. This basic view has held through to the Obama presidency, with a brief interregnum in the early Cold War years.

There was very little official American interest in Tibet, which was considered under the British sphere of influence, before the Chinese Communist Party emerged victorious at the end of the Civil War in 1949. Chairman Mao, America's new Cold War foe, was determined to reassert Chinese rule over Tibet and sent in the battle-hardened People's Liberation Army to pacify it the following year. Tibetans chafed under communist rule and launched a bloody and ultimately futile CIA-supported rebellion in 1956. The current fourteenth Dalai Lama, who accepted CIA money and was aware of its activities, was driven into exile in India in 1959 and has not since been able to return to his homeland.

Knaus demonstrates that low-level American covert operations in Tibet were motivated by a desire to contain Chinese communism rather than a push for Tibetan independence. Thus, President Richard Nixon cancelled American aid and training for Tibetan rebels just before flying to Beijing for the historic 1972 meeting with Chairman Mao that paved the way for Sino-American rapprochement. Washington subsequently returned to its old role of non-interference in Sino-Tibetan affairs and has since tread more carefully here than it does with Taiwan to avoid offending Chinese sensibilities. Americans took a renewed interest in Tibet after the CCP made it clear after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 that it had no intention of acknowledging the sort of human rights that westerners take for granted, but American interest manifested itself in more superficial individual demonstrations --such as paying to see the Beastie Boys at a Tibetan Freedom Concert--rather than concrete political action. More importantly, every American president over the past quarter century has dodged public meetings with the Dalai Lama that might be construed as American recognition of his political authority over Tibet.

Beyond Shangri-La succeeds in the sense that it provides a thorough, though straightforward, narrative where none existed before. Knaus's insight into and thorough explanation of the CIA's machinations in Tibet from the early 1950s to the early 1970s are the work's greatest strength. Its greatest weakness, however, is that as active participant in Tibet's drive for autonomy, Knaus is either unwilling or incapable of telling China's side of the story. This partisanship does a great disservice to the lay reader, who still lacks a comprehensive account of the Sino-American-Tibetan triangle over the past century.

Jie Gao

Carroll University