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

On the night of October 16th/October 17th, the Tibetan governor of Kham, Ngabo Ngawang Jigme, decided to flee Chamdo, having made no arrangements whatsoever either to put up a fight with the troops at his disposal, or to evacuate Tibetan government staff and their families from the provincial capital. In a craven decision to avoid giving offense to the Chinese, in spite of orders from Lhasa to stand and fight, he ordered his troops to surrender, and even ordered reinforcements arriving from Central Tibet to throw away their weapons over a cliff and surrender. He was captured by the Chinese soon after his leaving Chamdo, and remained in Chinese custody thereafter.

On October 25th the Chinese themselves announced that Kham had been ‘liberated’, and that ‘PLA units had been ordered to advance into Tibet to free three million Tibetans’. On November 10, China’s Xinhua News Agency said that Mao and Zhu De were ‘deeply concerned about the prolonged oppression of the Tibetan people by the British and American imperialism’ and had accordingly decided to ‘move into Tibet to shake off the oppression for ever’.

To be continued...