Talk:Tibetan sovereignty debate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject China, a project to improve all China-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other China-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
More information about this article... ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

Until modern means of travel had been invented, Tibet was basically a very inaccessible place at an average elevation of 14,000 feet. This calls into doubt the ability of anyone to truly command the territory. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magwep (talk • contribs) 16:48, 8 October 2006.

[edit] Third-Party views

I have quite significantly altered the final paragraph of this section. No references were given for the assertions about the specific nations which satisfy the Montivideo Convention criteria for statehood, and the author(s) also implied that all movements in the List of active autonomist and secessionist movements meet these criteria. This is misleading and untenable, and my instinct is that the rest of this section could also do with a similar reworking. Please note that I employed the word 'nation' in its broadest sense, i.e. divested of political connotations. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 60.229.154.45 (talk • contribs) 07:03, 6 November 2006.

Having more carefully examined the section and its references, I felt that the best move was to remove the entire section. The bulk of it rested on a single 1989 history of Tibet by Melvyn Goldstein, and the included quotation '...even today international legal experts sympathetic to the Dalai Lama's cause find it difficult to argue that Tibet ever technically established its independence of the Chinese Empire, imperial, or republican' is from 1969. The crux of the section was that the lack of international recognition of Tibetan sovereignty indicates international agreement that Tibet is not a sovereign nation. However, the same Melvyn Goldstein wrote in a 1998 Foreign Affairs article 'The Dalai Lama's dilemma' at page 93 that the international position is merely one of acceptance for strategic reasons rather than actual agreement. Ultimately, this section in its present state is misleading and unilluminating, and I have therefore chosen to remove it. Ketahuan 08:39, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

As I said, the "single source" referred to here is a solidly researched book of almost 900 pages; a seemingly contradictory journalistic piece by the same author does not invalidate that work. I hope we can agree on that.

If this article needs revision, then efforts should be applied to the section on "Chinese views" which is disproportionately larger than the section on "Tibetan views." Among other things, it contains bizarre claims, such as the statement that the Ming dynasty exercised sovereignty over Tibet. While I have no doubt that the PRC government believes that was the case, I very much doubt that anyone can cme up with a credible source backing that claim.--Niohe 03:34, 7 November 2006 (UTC)