What are the effects of colonization?

What are the effects of colonization of Tibet by China?

• I understand that China invaded Tibet in 1959 and ever since has colonized Tibet. So what changes do we see in Tibet ever since that fateful year?

• Answer:

  http://www.asiaquarterly.com/content/view/34/1/ Justifying the Chinese Occupation: "Peaceful Liberation" The Chinese Government maintains that Tibet was "peacefully liberated" in 1951 from both imperialism and a brutal feudal system that was "hell on earth."3 According to this argument, Tibet has been transformed into a "Socialist Heaven" through the introduction of revolutionary socialist measures. This justification of the invasion of Tibet is no different from the age-old argument of Western colonialism: invasion is good for the social and economic development of the occupied colony. If this charge is true, then the Chinese seem to be not only supporting, but also practicing the very imperialist policy they have long condemned, one of the foundational anathemas of the communist revolution. Moreover, this sort of justification echoes the claims Japan used when it invaded China and other East Asian countries during World War II ­ that it was creating a "Greater Asian Co-prosperity Sphere." If Chinese justifications for invading Tibet are legitimate, then it is hard to see how the British takeover of Hong Kong and the Japanese invasion of China were unjustified. More to the point, I believe, one should question the claim that the level of oppressiveness of a government, in this case, Tibet's supposed brutal feudal system, justifies invasion and occupation by another nation. If that logic held true, one could in theory argue that the Soviet Union or the United States would have had the right to occupy China during the Cultural Revolution, a period most Chinese would agree was a period of extreme oppression and bad governance. Looking closer at this Chinese justification, an even more blatant disconnect with reality is clear. By any objective standard the "liberation" of Tibet could hardly be described as "peaceful." In the immediate aftermath of widespread Tibetan national uprising against Chinese in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), approximately 87,000 Tibetan "enemies" were "eliminated" from March to the beginning of October 1959 alone.4 This figure does not include the number of people who have lost their lives in eastern Tibet since the early 1950s. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile estimates that a total of 1.2 million Tibetans have died as a result of the Communist Chinese occupation as of the 1980s.5 This is a remarkably high number considering the size of the Tibetan population is currently only roughly six million, by Tibetan estimates.6 It is also a fact that Tibetans went through a period of famine as a result of the Great Leap Forward in 1958-61 and experienced even worse suffering during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Throughout this period of Chinese rule, Tibetans had no reason to feel "liberated." As late as 1980, Communist Party Secretary General Hu Yaobang acknowledged during his official visit to the TAR that "the Communist Party had failed in Tibet. Far from eradicating poverty, in many areas the people's living standards had declined" compared to pre-1950s condition.7 Still, there remains the oft-repeated nationalist argument that Tibet was never independent and has always been part of China. In 1951, shortly after the People's Republic of China was formed, Tibet was forced to sign "the Seventeen Point Agreement," the first and only legal document in which Tibetan sovereignty was surrendered to China.8 On the issue of independence, by now, however, this point has been more or less settled in academic and legal studies on Tibet; with the exception of mainland Chinese scholars, almost all Tibet experts agree that at least during the period of 1913 to 1951, Tibet was either an independent, or de facto independent, country.9