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Enter the Dragon: Chinese Invasion
of Tibet continues...
The Khampa resistance to the Chinese invasion and occupation has passed into modern Tibetan folklore, and thus needs to be put into perspective in any examination of the Chinese conquest of Tibet.
While there were many instances of Khampa resistance to Chinese incursions into Kham since the time of Zhao Erfeng’s 1905 offensive, these were invariably local reprisals against isolated Chinese garrisons, not coordinated with any Tibetan government military resistance, if and when there was any. The Khampas, i.e., the people of Kham, were no doubt fiercely independent-minded and warlike in defence of their home territories, and also had a history of banditry, but were an agripastoral society, with no professional standing army.
The leaders of the community were also big traders, sending trade caravans into the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces of China, where selling horses was a major commercial activity for the Khampas.
These same big trading families also traded with central Tibet and with India, buying manufactured goods and agricultural commodities grown in India, from the market at Kalimpong, situated just above the eastern end of the north Indian plains in north Bengal.
These trading families were thus widely-travelled and well-connected, and received information from everywhere. The Khampas and their neighbours the Goloks , another Tibetan community along the Sino-Tibetan frontier, could and did fight, unlike the central Tibetans.
What the Khampas could not do, was to fight a regular army on a continuous basis. The socio-economic requirements of their life had to be carried out, the farming and the livestock herding, and their home villages, agricultural lands and herds of livestock were always vulnerable to reprisals.
To be continued...