Tibet Falls to PLA: China Claims the Roof of World

The People's Liberation Army seized the Tibetan town of Chamdo, overwhelming the small Tibetan garrison in what became known as the "Invasion of Tibet." The swift military action eliminated effective resistance and forced Tibet's government to accept Chinese sovereignty under the Seventeen Point Agreement the following year. The attack came on October 7, 1950, when 40,000 PLA troops crossed the Yangtze River at multiple points and converged on Chamdo, the administrative center of eastern Tibet. The Tibetan army, numbering roughly 8,000 poorly equipped troops with no air force, no artillery, and no modern communications, was surrounded within days. Governor-General Ngabo Ngawang Jigme, cut off from Lhasa by severed telegraph lines, surrendered on October 19 after most of his army had been killed, captured, or scattered. The Dalai Lama, just fifteen years old, learned of the invasion from a radio broadcast. Tibet appealed to the United Nations, but Cold War politics prevented any meaningful international intervention. India, newly independent and seeking peaceful relations with China, discouraged the appeal. Britain, the only Western power with historical treaty relations with Tibet, declined to act. Facing no external support and no military option, the Tibetan government sent a delegation to Beijing that signed the Seventeen Point Agreement in May 1951, formally accepting Chinese sovereignty in exchange for promises of autonomy and religious freedom that were never honored. The Dalai Lama would flee to India in 1959 after a failed uprising, beginning an exile that continues to this day.