Enter the Dragon: Chinese Invasion
of Tibet continues...

A chronic impediment to the coordination of any defence measures to protect eastern Tibet from Chinese ingress was the mutual antipathy between the upper classes of central Tibet and the Khampas. The former considered the Khampas to be crude, uncultured boors, while the Khampas considered the central Tibetan aristocracy to be effete.

Both stereotypes had substance, but what was critical for the defence of eastern Tibet was that the central government in Lhasa had been largely indifferent to the fate of Amdo and Kham. They felt obliged to maintain an administrative and a token military presence in Chamdo, the capital of Kham, because of the taxes which the large monastery of Chamdo had been paying to Lhasa since 1917.

The Khampas and Goloks were otherwise mainly left to defend their own territories and villages, which they did as best they could, partly thanks to the difficult mountainous terrain. In Amdo, which was largely vast plains, the terrain made it difficult for village communities to defend themselves
against organized invaders, a perennial problem of plains-dwellers everywhere, whether in northern China or in the north Indian plains.

The only answer, as everywhere even today, was to have a professional standing army positioned there.

This, as we have seen, did not appeal to Lhasa, on account of both cost and the fact that an invasion of Amdo did not affect the lives or the estates of either the aristocracy or the monasteries of central Tibet.

To be continued...