Enter the Dragon: Chinese Invasion
of Tibet continues..

Meanwhile, the Tibetan central government in Lhasa had been doing its own act of cravenness. While Kham was being invaded, it was the picnic season in Lhasa, and the Tibetan government carried on with the festivities as if nothing had happened. It did not even announce that Kham had been invaded by China. It was partly a matter of the scant concern that aristocratic Lhasa society had for distant Kham, and partly a matter of cowardice.

While the Tibetan government desperately wanted American or British help to repel the Chinese, and had even sent an appeal to the U.N., it did not want the Chinese to know it. It was more afraid that Mao would use it as an excuse to send his troops into Central Tibet and crush the central government. Lhasa's self interest was a major reason for the silence. But silence and an inability to defend oneself were no protection. As Claude Arpi states: ‘This Shangri-la was another world, a world of picnics and brocades, a world of great harmony despite the difference in living
standards between different sections of society. The monasteries still believed that it would be enough to increase the number and intensity of their daily prayers to avert the looming crisis.’

To be continued....