ABSTRACT
This article argues that Tibet, stateless in law yet persistently present in practice, is a critical test case for International Relations. It combines historical analysis with theory to trace how Tibet’s de facto polity, government-in-exile, diaspora networks, and “Third Pole” ecology generate agency without recognition. Examining realism, liberalism, constructivism, postcolonial and English School approaches, the article shows how Tibet troubles Westphalian assumptions about sovereignty, legitimacy, and membership in international society. It concludes by proposing a spectrum-based conception of sovereignty and an IR research agenda that takes liminal actors, para-diplomacy, and narrative power seriously for theorizing contemporary order beyond the territorial nation-state.
KEYWORDS
Tibet, sovereignty, stateless actors, para-diplomacy, non-state actors.
How should International Relations (IR) study a political community that lacks recognised statehood yet shapes the world’s diplomacy, security debates and global norms? Tibet sits at the heart of this question. On paper, it is an autonomous region within the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In practice, it sustains a government-in-exile, a large and organised diaspora, and a distinctive international profile. Because mainstream IR privileges sovereign states, Tibet has often been treated as peripheral—important to great-power politics or as a troubled internal affair of China, perhaps, yet not an actor in its own right.
Here, we review Tibet’s international status and explore how states and international organisations have handled Tibet. Tibet should not be an outlier to be footnoted in our discipline. It can be a test case that exposes the limits of IR’s state-centric and Westphalian-dictated habits. It can help IR refine its understanding of sovereignty, legitimacy, and agency beyond formal statehood.
If our theories cannot explain why Tibet keeps resurfacing in legislation, border crises and rights debates, they are missing something fundamental about how sovereignty, legitimacy and agency work today. We will then map out how the leading IR theories—realism, liberalism, constructivism, and postcolonialism—can or cannot explain the Tibet question in IR.
Historical Context: From De Facto Statehood to Incorporation
Between the collapse of Qing authority in 1912 and the early 1950s, Tibet operated as a de facto polity with its own government in Lhasa, maintained foreign contacts of limited scope, and even issued passports. No major power, however, gave it de jure recognition. Diplomatic formulas defaulted to Chinese “suzerainty” or sovereignty.[1] Two early twentieth-century arrangements cemented this pattern. The 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention pledged that both empires would deal with Tibet through China.[2] The 1914 Shimla Convention, negotiated by British India, acknowledged a special Chinese position, but the convention failed to produce a ratified settlement acceptable to all the parties involved.[3] Other foreign governments avoided endorsing Tibetan independence while keeping working channels in Lhasa. Hence, the outcome was deliberate ambiguity.
However, that ambiguity ended in 1950-51, when the People’s Liberation Army ruthlessly invaded Tibet and the region was incorporated, later formalised as the Tibet Autonomous Region.[4] The Lhasa government’s authority collapsed. The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 along with many officials and more than 80,000 commoners.[5] Over time, governments around the world converged on recognising that Tibet is part of China. No country recognises the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), which is the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala, India.
In diplomatic shorthand, Tibet became an internal matter of China. But Tibet never exited from global politics. Diaspora activism, disputes along the India-China frontier, human-rights campaigns, and great-power signalling kept Tibet present in international affairs, albeit through channels that traditional interstate models fail to capture.
Tibet in Practice 1950: Realpolitik, Rights, and Diaspora Diplomacy
Tibet briefly surfaced at the United Nations after the 1959 uprising. The UN General Assembly passed resolutions in 1959, 1961 and 1965 that voiced concern about human rights and cultural-religious freedom in the region.[6] These were symbolically important but diplomatically limited. Member states were unwilling to directly challenge Beijing’s claim.
India’s position shows the realist calculus. India’s civilizational and cultural ties, especially Buddhism across the Himalayas with Tibet, are deep. However, New Delhi still chose to accept Chinese sovereignty, focus on border management and security, and avoid internationalising Tibet’s political status. India’s former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao reflected on the trade-off: India’s choices ended up advantaging a rising China rather than Tibet’s political aspirations.[7]
Washington also treated Tibet through the lens of major-power competition.[8] During the Cold War, it covertly supported Tibetan resistance as part of a broader anti-communist strategy. When rapprochement with Beijing gathered pace in the 1970s, that support waned. As Dawa Norbu once put it, Tibet became an instrument through which the United States managed a larger China policy. Useful for a time. Dispensable when priorities shifted.[9]
From the 1980s onwards, Tibet’s global profile shifted from sovereignty to rights.[10] The 14th Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, and Tibet’s cause gained new momentum. Transnational advocacy networks mobilised. Celebrity activism amplified the cause. Western parliaments grew more vocal. This reframed the Tibet question in terms of human rights, religious freedom, cultural preservation, and meaningful autonomy within China.
The policy response followed. In the United States, the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002,[11] the Tibet Policy and Support Act of 2020,[12] and most recently the Resolve Tibet Act,[13] embedded Tibet in statute. These laws encourage dialogue between Chinese authorities and Tibetan representatives and help preserve Tibetan identity. High-profile visits and honours (for example, the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2006) signalled political sympathy.[14]
Beyond the U.S., a range of pro-Tibetan political developments has bolstered Tibet’s profile. European institutions have been notably vocal. The European Parliament has passed multiple resolutions condemning human rights abuses in Tibet and calling for Sino-Tibetan dialogue (for example, its 2008 and 2013 resolutions on Tibetan protests and autonomy. Several national parliaments have likewise shown support. In Canada, motions in 2010[15] [16]and 2015 [17]honoured the Dalai Lama and urged China to negotiate with him. In 2019, the German Bundestag’s Human Rights Committee called for protecting Tibet’s linguistic and religious freedoms, linking Tibet’s treatment to Germany’s values.[18]
Smaller states have also joined in, as in 2021, the parliament of Lithuania hosted Tibet’s exile leader in its chamber and urged a tougher EU stance on Tibetan rights.[19] In Asia, where states are far more cautious, instances of solidarity have been shown. Mongolia, China’s neighbour, in 2016, allowed a visit by the Dalai Lama on religious grounds.[20]
Symbolically, at the local level, Paris[21] and Rome[22] have made the Dalai Lama an honorary citizen, despite Chinese protests. Notably, some governments have officially received the Dalai Lama (albeit in a private capacity): UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s 2012 meeting[23] with him and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2007 meeting[24] both prompted Beijing to freeze high-level contacts temporarily.
But there is a trade-off here. As the international agenda tilted toward human rights, religion and culture, Tibet’s harder political claims about nationhood and self-determination or even greater autonomy receded from mainstream debate. For its part, Beijing has consistently drawn red lines, treating Tibet as strictly an internal affair and has deployed economic and diplomatic pressure to discourage official engagement with Tibetan leaders abroad.
China signalled to the world that meeting the Dalai Lama would have real costs. China uses economic and diplomatic levers to enforce its internal affairs red line. The Chinese froze bilateral talks and delayed loan talks in 2016,[25] and briefly sealed the border and cancelled flights in 2002[26] and 2006 with Mongolia.[27] In the mentioned years, Mongolia has hosted the Dalai Lama. China also cancelled a French-Chinese summit in 2008 after President Nicolas Sarkozy met the Dalai Lama.[28]
Even so, Tibet continues to shape bilateral frictions. India’s asylum for the Dalai Lama and the presence of a large exile community remain a constant in India–China relations. U.S. statutes and hearings that mention Tibet reliably draw protests from Beijing. Tibet, in other words, is a persistent variable in regional and great-power politics.
Lately, due to worsening conditions of the Tibetans and a rise in proactive support measures, Tibet has seen a resurgence in international attention. China’s forced assimilation policies in the region were brought to the limelight in 2023-2024. In February 2023, UN human rights experts sounded the alarm over Beijing’s residential boarding schools for Tibetan children.[29] An estimated 1 million Tibetan kids have been separated from their families. They are then placed in state-run schools aimed at eroding the Tibetan language and identity. Reports also emerged on the coerced relocation of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan nomads into low-skill vocational training centres. This program is seen as undermining Tibetans’ traditional lifestyle and diluting their culture.[30]
These findings again prompted some diplomatic responses. In late 2022, the U.S. had also sanctioned two top Chinese officials for gross human rights violations in Tibet.[31] The U.S. then, in 2023, imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials who were involved in Tibetan child separation policies.[32] Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated these coercive Sinicisation policies “seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural and religious traditions”, urging Beijing to halt the assimilation drive.[33] In the landmark Resolve Tibet Act, passed in 2024, the U.S. Congress declared for the first time formally that Tibet’s status remains unresolved and that Tibetans have a right to self-determination, repudiating China’s historical claims. This commits the U.S. government to press for negotiations between Beijing and the Dalai Lama’s envoys. These developments give the Tibet supporters a hope that could revitalise dialogue.
On the ground, Tibetans continue to resist the Chinese influence in subtle ways. Monks secretly teach the banned Tibetan language. Nomads preserve religious practice despite state restrictions.[34] In today’s age of social media, each act of cultural resilience or protest, like the demonstrations by young Tibetans in Lhasa in 2022, reverberated across the globe.[35] Tibet, as in many spaces around the globe, has become a litmus test for the international community’s commitment to principle over power.
Taken together, these episodes show that Tibet exercises real agency through diasporas, parliaments, and rights regimes. That is exactly the kind of influence mainstream IR struggles to code and often relegates to “background noise.”
What IR Theories Say, and What They Miss
Realism[36] explains why Tibet lost formal sovereignty but not why it never disappears. A realist would say the Tibet story is an unsurprising outcome of power symmetry. Realists, such as Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer, would argue that states rarely sacrifice core interests for moral principles. A weak polity beside a consolidating great power gets absorbed, and other states will not incur costs to reverse that outcome.
Realism fits India’s and America’s choices in the 1950s and 1970s. Once Washington sought rapprochement with China in the 1970s, it terminated CIA support for Tibet’s resistance, which was a covert program that had helped Tibetan guerrillas in the 1950s-60s. The Dalai Lama put it plainly; once U.S. policy towards China shifted, the help stopped.[37] Likewise, India’s 1954 Panchsheel Treaty points towards the same way. The treaty formalised Tibet as part of China in exchange for peaceful border ties, reflecting New Delhi’s enlightened national interest in stability over ideology.[38] These predictions would support the realist claims that material power and security dictate policy.
Yet pure realism cannot explain Tibet’s enduring salience: the soft power of the Dalai Lama; the domestic politics of democracies where Tibet resonates with voters; or the way norms generate legislative action even when executives prioritise stable ties with China. Analysts also argue that the Chinese armed takeover of Tibet was essentially one of the last times territory was taken by force and accepted; since then, international norms of territorial integrity and self-determination have hardened against such conquests. If Tibet were only about material power, it would have vanished from view.
Liberal[39] and institutionalist lenses show how a “stateless” Tibet still matters by turning norms and networks into leverage. Liberal theories redirect attention to law, institutions, and transnational actors. Liberal theorists, such as Robert Keohane, note that norms and institutions can empower non-state actors.[40] And, in Tibet’s case, a web of transnational advocacy networks filled the vacuum.
Tibet lacks the legal standing and memberships that enable classic institutional recourse. Even so, liberal accounts capture the “boomerang” pattern that Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink describe: NGOs and diaspora groups mobilise publics abroad, which in turn pressure their governments to act.[41] Liberal scholars such as Peter Haas and Thomas Risse would add that epistemic communities and human rights regimes helped institutionalise the attention.[42] Human rights reports by NGOs (e.g. Amnesty International,[43] Human Rights Watch[44] and interventions by UN special rapporteurs have repeatedly put China’s Tibet policy under multilateral scrutiny. Institutional avenues, though limited, were not futile: Tibet-related resolutions in the European Parliament and the UN General Assembly (in 1959, 1961, 1965) condemned Beijing’s abuses and affirmed Tibetan rights.
The CTA’s democratic institutions, like regular elections, separation of spiritual and political roles, and codified procedures for the Sikyong, function as a democratic experiment without sovereignty.[45] This generates sympathy, funding and policy niches in education, culture and refugee support.
And despite China’s UN clout blocking any binding action, the Tibet cause rooted in universal principles has been legitimised by these resolutions and continued debates. The liberal theories help us capture how sentiments become statute.
Constructivists[46], more than realists or liberals, help us see how Tibet’s agency is built through meaning and representation. Constructivists care about ideas, identities and the social construction of international relations. They would point out that Tibet’s international profile owes much to how it has been imagined. It has influenced how citizens and lawmakers understand the issue, which in turn shapes policy space; how the Tibet story has been framed matters here as well. Human rights and religious freedom mobilise broader coalitions than calls for independence.
The friction between Tibet’s claim for norms of self-determination and China’s territorial integrity is pretty evident here. In the Chinese state discourse, Tibet has been framed as an “inseparable part of China” and its 1951 annexation is cast as a “peaceful liberation”, which creates a Chinese narrative of sovereignty as non-negotiable.[47]
Tibet’s advocates have adjusted their language to align with global normative currents. There has been a shift from overt independence rhetoric to emphasising human rights, cultural preservation, and genuine autonomy. Calls to protect an ancient culture and religious rights resonate more with the global audience. Marth Finnermore would note how Tibetan activists act as “norm entrepreneurs”;[48] indeed, the Dalai Lama has been described as “the epitome of norm entrepreneurs”[49] for globalising Tibet’s moral appeal. His persona of compassion and non-violence animated a transnational consensus that Tibet’s struggle is about peace and justice and not separation rooted in violence. Meanwhile, China has invested in counter-narratives emphasising unity, development, and non-interference.
The struggle over meaning is not a mere sideshow. It affects budgets, laws, and diplomatic choices. Many countries now publicly urge Beijing to respect Tibetans’ cultural rights, and the U.S. 2024 Resolve Tibet Act explicitly calls Tibet’s status “unresolved” and urges negotiated solutions. Public empathy for the “Land of the Snow” as a spiritual sanctuary (a notion popularised in Western imagination as “Shangri-La”) has proven remarkably potent.[50]
But this romantic imagery, especially from the West, comes with Orientalist tropes. Something that the constructivists, as well as the post-colonial scholars, critique.
Postcolonial[51] and critical[52] IR reveal that Tibet is not only a moral case but also a colonial one—and that IR’s categories themselves help marginalise it. Postcolonial scholarship presses on IR’s blind spots. The post-colonial theorisation of the Tibetan cause compels us to interrogate who is framing Tibet’s story and to what effect. Dibyesh Anand’s work demonstrates how Eurocentric categories—sovereignty, nation, and state—have constrained the way Tibet is perceived and studied, often exoticising it or relegating it to a case study in someone else’s narrative.[53]
Edward Said would recognise in Western depictions of Tibet a classic Orientalist pattern. Tibet is often portrayed as a mystical, timeless “Other,” or it has been presented as a fabled Shangri-La —a pure, spiritual utopia sealed off from modernity. This exoticisation, as Donald S. Lopez Jr. argues in Prisoners of Shangri-La, has obscured the complex realities of Tibetan society, often romanticising the Tibetans as noble savages.[54]
A postcolonial lens recenters Tibetan voices and histories, reads the PRC–Tibet relationship through the politics of empire and representation, and resists the urge to force the case into Cold War templates.
This understanding of the issue is beyond a moral correction. It produces more nuanced analysis by revealing the layered politics of rule, identity, and resistance that state-centric models often overlook. This means acknowledging Tibetan scholars and exiles who articulate their own history of colonisation and resistance. The works of Tsering Shakya[55] and Jamyang Norbu,[56] which chronicle Tibet’s 20th-century struggle not as an exotic tale but as a people’s fight against imperial dominance. This also means viewing the PRC’s rule in Tibet as an imperial project and exploring the Chinese expansion in Tibet as a part of the Leninist state-building process that inspired Mao.
Critical historians note that China, despite anti-imperialist rhetoric, inherited Qing Dynasty claims and has governed Tibet in a manner comparable to internal colonialism.[57] This can be seen as China’s attempt to improve its image in the minds of Chinese leaders and the general public after the Century of Humiliation.
There is evidence to support this. Beijing’s massive “Tibet Aid”[58] development scheme pairs Chinese provinces with Tibetan areas.[59] Researcher James Leibold describes this as a “settler-colonial enterprise”.[60] Han Chinese settlers and values have been injected to cement control over Tibet’s land and identity.[61] Chinese state media[62] even celebrates Han officials who “sacrifice” by working in Tibet’s harsh conditions, invoking a civilising mission or “Han man’s burden”[63] narrative eerily reminiscent of colonial tropes.
Post-colonial theory helps us unveil the power imbalances and the often-overlooked racialised narratives at play. We have a better lens to understand who writes the Tibet story- the coloniser or the colonised, and the Tibetan efforts to write back against the empire. The exiled Tibetan writer Woeser challenges Chinese depictions by documenting suppressed Tibetan histories and dissent, reclaiming the narrative from Chinese state propaganda.[64]
By foregrounding Tibetan self-representation and comparing China’s policies to other colonial contexts (settler schemes, cultural and linguistic erasure, resource extraction), this approach enriches IR analysis. It uncovers layers of oppression and resilience that mainstream state-centric theories often overlook.
Beyond the state: liminal sovereignty and para-diplomacy. Fiona McConnell’s research on “sovereign articulations” and “liminal geopolitics” maps how exile institutions perform state-like functions while building diplomatic repertoires at the UN and in capitals despite zero recognition.[65] Elections, curricula, documentation, external representation: these are not mere symbols. This perspective complements English School[66] debates about the composition of international society: are states the only legitimate members, or can nations without states have a place in its normative architecture?
Transnationalism and the “Third Pole.” Tibet’s plateau is a hydrological engine often called the Third Pole. Scholarship on the Himalayan region argues that statist framings (e.g., predicting conflict/cooperation between India and China) often obscure how culture, ecology, and local political economies knit the borderlands together.[67] Climate stress interacts with migration, water governance and identity politics. Leave those out, and one might misread risk.
The “Stateless” Puzzle: What Tibet Reveals About IR—and a Way Forward
Tibet clarifies a wider disciplinary issue in IR. If the sovereign state is the default unit of analysis, any community that does not fit neatly inside the Westphalian model naturally becomes an outlier. This results in a double loss. IR under-theorises sovereignty’s gradients— like de facto vs. de jure[68], recognition vs. legitimacy, authority vs. control; and practitioners overlook how in-between actors influence outcomes. Here are three shifts that can help, among many others.
Treat sovereignty as a spectrum, not a switch. Tibet demonstrates that non-recognised actors can wield real agency through para-diplomacy, legal and cultural capacity building, and moral authority. Treating sovereignty as layered clarifies why Tibet continues to matter even in a world that formally accepts Chinese rule and is caught in a strict association of territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Centre representation and narrative power. The frames that dominate a debate often decide which policies are even thinkable. Occupied nation, oppressed culture, integral homeland: each frame creates different coalitions and different costs. IR should track why and who crafts these narratives, how they travel, and when they harden into law and practice. Decentering Eurocentric frames and prioritising Tibetan voices is both normatively sound and analytically useful.
Connect borderland geopolitics to human-environment systems. The Himalaya is a densely interdependent zone of ecology, livelihoods, and culture. Climate change on the plateau interacts with migration, water governance, and identity politics in ways that classic security models miss. Integrating environmental IR, political ecology, and borderland studies with mainstream strategic analysis will yield a more comprehensive understanding of how and why Tibet continues to resurface in regional diplomacy.
Bridging Theory and Practice
State policies have often treated Tibet as a side variable inside larger equations such as U.S.-China relations or India-China border management. There’s hope that formal silence equals resolution. But that hope hasn't worked. As long as Tibetan identity and institutions persist, the issue remains live: in diaspora politics, parliaments, university campuses, streets in capitals across the globe and the practices of development and security along the Himalayan rim. Practical statecraft benefits from recognising this persistence.
A more capacious IR can help here. Recognise liminal actors and the politics of narrative. Integrate environmental interdependence into security analysis. See how para-diplomacy, legislative activism and public opinion interact with executive choices. You get a picture that is less brittle, more accurate, and better suited to the long haul.
Manashjyoti Karjee is a Researcher in Security and Society at the Advanced Study Institute of Asia. With a postgraduate degree in International Relations & Area Studies from Jamia Millia Islamia and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Ramjas College, University of Delhi, he brings a strong academic foundation to his work. Manash has contributed extensively to publications on security dynamics, Indian political developments, cross-border terrorism, the geopolitics of the Arctic, and global geopolitical shifts. He has also collaborated with leading Risk Management firms, applying his expertise to real-world challenges. Beyond his academic and professional pursuits, Manash is passionate about sports journalism and grassroots development, reflecting his diverse interests and commitment to making an impact across multiple sectors.
[1] Sovereignty usually means full, supreme authority over a territory, including both internal governance and external relations. Suzerainty describes a looser, hierarchical relationship in which an overlord controls a polity’s external affairs (and often defence), while the subordinate entity keeps limited internal autonomy but lacks independent international legal personality.
[2] Whitelaw Reid, “Ambassador Reid to the Secretary of State,” Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, 1910, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1907p1/d415.
[3] Tibet Justice Centre, “Anglo-Tibetan Trade Regulations (1914),” Tibet Justice Center — Legal Materials on Tibet, n.d., https://www.tibetjustice.org/materials/treaties/treaties17.html.
[4] Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is the PRC’s administrative unit covering most of central and western Tibet on the high plateau north of the Himalayas, including Lhasa. Geographically it does not include many Tibetan-inhabited areas in today’s Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan, which are often counted as part of “cultural” or “greater” Tibet.
[5] Tenzin Dorjee, Tsewang Rigzin, and Tenzin Dorjee, “Article: South Asia's Tibetan Refugee Community .. | migrationpolicy.org,” Migration Policy Institute, 2024, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/tibetan-refugees-india.
[6] United Nations General Assembly, “Question of Tibet (Resolution),” Refworld, 1965, https://www.refworld.org/legal/resolution/unga/1965/en/7127.
[7] Tibet Policy Institute, “Recentering Tibet in India’s Approach to China,” Tibet Policy Institute, 2023, https://tibetpolicy.net/recentering-tibet-in-indias-approach-to-china.
[8] Carole McGranahan, “Tibet’s Cold War: The CIA and the Chushi Gangdrug Resistance, 1956–1974,” Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder, 2006, https://www.colorado.edu/anthropology/sites/default/files/attached-files/mcgranahantibetscoldwar.pdf.
[9] Dawa Norbu, China's Tibet Policy (N.p.: Curzon Press, 2001).
[10] Robert Barnett, “Biography, Memory and Modern Tibet: Oral History on the Tibetan Plateau,” Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, 2015, https://exeas.weai.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Barnett-Biography-and-Oral-History-in-Modern-Tibet.pdf.
[11] United States Congress, Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003 (Public Law 107-228), 2002, U.S. Congress / GovInfo, https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ228/PLAW-107publ228.pdf.
[12] Kelsang D. Aukatsang, “Displaced and Stateless People in South Asia: The Tibetan Story and Perspective,” Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, 2023, https://www.freiheit.org/sites/default/files/2023-04/policy-paper-tibet.pdf.
[13] United States Congress, Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet–China Dispute Act (Resolve Tibet Act), 2024, GovInfo, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-118publ70/pdf/PLAW-118publ70.pdf.
[14] Office of the Press Secretary, White House, “President Bush Attends Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony Honoring the Dalai Lama,” 2007, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071017-3.html.
[15] House of Commons of Canada, “Order Paper and Notice Paper, 41st Parliament, 2nd Session, Sitting 223: Page 12,” Parliament of Canada – House of Commons, 2010, https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/41-2/house/sitting-223/order-notice/page-12.
[16] Senate of Canada, “Debates, Issue 59 (October 26, 2010),” Senate of Canada, 2010, https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/403/debates/059db_2010-10-26-e.
[17] Peggy Nash, “M-616 His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” Parliament of Canada – House of Commons, 2015, https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/41-2/house/sitting-223/order-notice/page-12.
[18] Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, German Bundestag, “Declaration on Tibet (Ausschuss 19 / Menschenrechte),” German Bundestag (archival), 2021, https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/Ausschuesse/ausschuesse19/a17_menschenrechte/Erklaerungen/tibet-631402.
[19] Office of Tibet / Central Tibetan Administration, “Virtual meeting of members of Parliamentary Group for Tibet in the (Seimas) Lithuanian Parliament,” Tibet.net (Central Tibetan Administration), 2021, https://tibet.net/virtual-meeting-of-members-of-parliamentary-group-for-tibet-in-the-seimas-lithuanian-parliament/.
[20] The Associated Press, “Dalai Lama preaches in Mongolia, risking China’s fury,” AP News, 2016, https://apnews.com/article/0900814ceeb74674ba1998265dc18686.
[21] France 24, “Dalai Lama receives honorary citizenship in Paris,” France24, 2009, https://www.france24.com/en/20090607-dalai-lama-receives-honorary-citizenship-paris.
[22] Voice of America, “Rome Makes Dalai Lama an Honorary Citizen,” VOA News, 2009, https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2009-02-09-voa59-68810932/412773.html.
[23] Reuters, “China summons UK ambassador over Dalai Lama meeting with Cameron,” Reuters, 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/china-summons-uk-ambassador-over-dalai-lama-meeting-with-cameron-idUSBRE84E0K6/.
[24] Madeline Chambers, “China stops more Germany talks after Dalai Lama visit,” Reuters, 2007, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/china-stops-more-germany-talks-after-dalai-lama-visit-idUSL24731925/.
[25] Ankit Panda, “China Freezes Bilateral Diplomacy With Mongolia Over Dalai Lama Visit,” The Diplomat, 2016, https://thediplomat.com/2016/11/china-freezes-bilateral-diplomacy-with-mongolia-over-dalai-lama-visit/.
[26] Ganbat Namjilsangarav, “Dalai Lama preaches in Mongolia, risking China’s fury,” AP News, 2016, https://apnews.com/article/0900814ceeb74674ba1998265dc18686.
[27] Reuters, “Mongolia says Dalai Lama won't be invited again,” Reuters, 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/mongolia-says-dalai-lama-wont-be-invited-again-idUSKBN14B0N4/.
[28] Ian Traynor, “China cancels EU summit over Dalai Lama visit,” The Guardian, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/27/china-dalai-lama-nicholas-sarkozy.
[29] OHCHR, “China: UN experts alarmed by separation of 1 million Tibetan children from families and forced assimilation at residential schools,” OHCHR — United Nations Human Rights Office, 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/02/china-un-experts-alarmed-separation-1-million-tibetan-children-families-and.
[30] Human Rights Watch, “‘They Say We Should Be Grateful’: Mass Rehousing and Relocation Programs in Tibetan Areas of China,” Human Rights Watch, 2013, https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/06/27/they-say-we-should-be-grateful/mass-rehousing-and-relocation-programs-tibetan.
[31] Reuters, “China slams U.S. sanctions over alleged rights abuses in Tibet,” Reuters, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-slams-us-sanctions-over-alleged-rights-abuses-tibet-2022-12-12/.
[32] Nike Ching, “U.S. Enforces Visa Restrictions on Chinese Officials Over Tibet Policies,” VOA News, 2023, hdisappearedttps://www.voanews.com/a/us-enforces-visa-restrictions-on-chinese-officials-over-tibet-policies/7235795.html.
[33] Antony J. Blinken, “Announcement of Visa Restrictions to Address Forced Assimilation in Tibet,” U.S. Department of State, 2023, https://2021-2025.state.gov/announcement-of-visa-restrictions-to-address-forced-assimilation-in-tibet/?safe=1.
[34] Nicola Schneider, “The monastery in a Tibetan pastoralist context: A case study from Kham Minyag,” Études Mongoles et Sibériennes, Centrasiatiques et Tibétaines (EMSCAT), 2016, https://journals.openedition.org/emscat/2798.
[35] BBC News, “China Covid: Videos emerge of rare protests in Tibet,” BBC News, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63410339.
[36] In International Relations, realism is a family of theories that see the international system as anarchic (no world government), with states as the main actors seeking survival in a competitive, often hostile environment. Realists argue that power, especially military and material capabilities, matters more than norms or morality; states therefore rely on self-help, balance against threats, and focus on relative gains. Cooperation is possible but fragile, because distrust, security dilemmas, and shifting power distributions constantly pull states back toward rivalry and strategic calculation.
[37] Jonathan Mirsky, “The Dalai Lama on Succession and on the CIA,” ChinaFile (New York Review of Books Archive), 1999, https://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/dalai-lama-succession-and-cia#:~:text=rule%20in%20Tibet%20in%20order,to%20an%20end%20in%201974.
[38] K. Subrahmanyam, “Subcontinental Security,” Strategic Analysis, 1981, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09700168109427557.
[39] In International Relations, liberal theory challenges the realist focus on inevitable conflict by arguing that cooperation is both possible and common. Liberals highlight how international institutions, economic interdependence, and domestic regimes (especially democracies) can reduce war, create incentives for rule-based behaviour, and make absolute gains from cooperation more important than zero-sum competition.
[40] Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, “Transgovernmental Relations and International Organizations,” World Politics (Cambridge University Press), 1975, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/world-politics/article/abs/transgovernmental-relations-and-international-organizations/20537AED28891BEC0A7034DA83DC4E31.
[41] Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (1998), pdf, Stanford University — Department of Political Science Readings, https://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci243b/readings/v0002555.pdf.
[42] Peter M. Haas, “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” 1992, fbaum.unc.edu (UNC teaching materials), https://fbaum.unc.edu/teaching/articles/IO-1992-Haas.pdf.
[43] Amnesty International, The State of the World’s Human Rights: April 2025 (Amnesty International, 2025), https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WEBPOL1085152025ENGLISH.pdf.
[44] United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR), “UN experts alarmed by separation of 1 million Tibetan children from families and forced assimilation at residential schools,” Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/02/china-un-experts-alarmed-separation-1-million-tibetan-children-families-and.
[45] Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile, The Charter of Tibetans-in-Exile (Central Tibetan Administration, 1991), https://tibet.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/English-Charter-final.doc.pdf.
[46] In International Relations, constructivism is a theoretical approach that emphasises the role of ideas, norms and identities in shaping state behaviour and the international system. It holds that “interests” and “threats” are not given by material power alone but are socially constructed through interaction, discourse and shared understandings among actors.
[47] Information Office of the State Council, People’s Republic of China, “Sixty Years Since Peaceful Liberation of Tibet,” The State Council, PRC, 2011, https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/09/09/content_281474986284633.htm.
[48] Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” 1998, pdf hosted at Rochelle Terman, https://www.rochelleterman.com/ir/sites/default/files/Finnemore_Sikkink_1998.pdf.
[49] Jamie N. Brandel, “A Voice for the Voiceless: The UNPO and the Dalai Lama,” Trinity College Digital Repository, 2017, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/community.34031181.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A9ecf5f0bcbde19ce7b4352b14e8da2b5&ab_segments=&initiator=&acceptTC=1.
[50] Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Tibetan Culture: Beyond the Land of Snows – Program Guide, 2000 Smithsonian Folklife Festival (Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage, 2000), https://folkways-media.si.edu/docs/festival/2000_Tibet_Program_Guide.pdf.
[51] Postcolonial IR highlights how contemporary international politics is shaped by the histories and afterlives of empire, race and colonial domination. It critiques the Eurocentric foundations of mainstream IR and foregrounds the perspectives, knowledges and struggles of formerly colonised peoples.
[52] Critical IR is a broad family of approaches (including critical theory, Marxist, feminist and poststructural work) that questions taken-for-granted categories like “state”, “security” and “order”, and focuses on power, domination and possibilities for emancipation rather than treating existing structures as natural or neutral.
[53] Dibyesh Anand, “Strategic Hypocrisy: The British Imperial Scripting of Tibet’s Geopolitical Identity,” The Journal of Asian Studies (Cambridge University Press), 2009, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-asian-studies/article/abs/strategic-hypocrisy-the-british-imperial-scripting-of-tibets-geopolitical-identity/CEF73EBEF0D220FCC8CFC8EF98446DFE.
[54] Donald S. Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (University of Chicago Press, 2018), https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo26798165.html.
[55] Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 (Columbia University Press, 1999), https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-dragon-in-the-land-of-snows/9780231118149/.
[56] Jamyang Norbu, Warriors of Tibet: The Story of Aten, and the Khampas' Fight for the Freedom of Their Country (N.p.: Wisdom, 1986).
[57] Andy Hanlun Li, “From alien land to inalienable parts of China: how Qing imperial possessions became the Chinese frontiers,” LSE Research Online (London School of Economics), 2022, https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/113884/1/Li_from_alien_land_to_inalienable_parts_of_china_published.pdf.
[58] “Tibet Aid” (or the Tibet-Aid Program / Aid-Tibet scheme) refers to a long-running PRC development programme, launched in its current form after the 1994 Tibet Work Forum, that pairs Tibet Autonomous Region prefectures and counties with wealthier inland provinces, cities and state-owned enterprises. These “pairing assistance” projects were introduced with the stated goals to channel funds, cadres and enterprises into Tibet for infrastructure, poverty alleviation, education and health, while also promoting closer political integration with the Chinese party-state.
[59] Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in India, “China-India Economic and Trade Cooperation,” Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in India, 2015, https://in.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/xwfb/201506/t20150628_2223120.htm.
[60] James Leibold, “The Tibet-Aid Project and Settler Colonialism in China’s Borderlands,” Made in China Journal, 2024, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2024/11/12/the-tibet-aid-project-and-settler-colonialism-in-chinas-borderlands/.
[61] Sadia Hartzler, “Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development,” JSTOR, 2013, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt32b5wn.
[62] Xinhua News Agency, “Strengthen the Party’s construction and promote the ‘Old Tibet Spirit’ — On studying and implementing General Secretary Xi Jinping’s remarks at the 7th Tibet Work Symposium,” XinhuaNet, 2020, http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2020-09/02/c_1126445124.
[63] James Leibold, “The Tibet-Aid Project and Settler Colonialism in China’s Borderlands,” Made in China Journal, 12 November 2024, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2024/11/12/the-tibet-aid-project-and-settler-colonialism-in-chinas-borderlands/.
[64] Tsering Woeser, “Tibetans' voices will be silenced if RFA, VOA are shut down,” n.d., http://woeser.middle-way.net/.
[65] McConnell, “De facto, displaced, tacit: The sovereign articulations of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile,” 2009, accessed via ScienceDirect, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629809000432.
[66] In International Relations, the English School sees world politics as a “society of states” rather than just an anarchic system. It emphasises shared rules, norms and institutions (like diplomacy, international law and balance of power) that both constrain and enable states, and studies the tension between order, justice and power in that society.
[67] Mélanie Vandenhelsken, Aditya Kiran Kakati, and Bernardo A. Michael, “Introduction. Re-orienting Himalayan Borderlands: Beyond Spatial Fixations in South Asia,” South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (SAMAJ), 2024, https://journals.openedition.org/samaj/10043.
[68] In legal and political usage, de facto refers to a situation that exists “in fact” or in practice, whether or not it is formally recognised by law. De jure refers to what exists “by law” – arrangements that have formal legal or constitutional recognition, even if they are weak, contested or differ from practice on the ground.
