Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022. xix, 550 pp. (Maps, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 9781503615090.
Jianglin Li’s When the Iron Bird Flies borrows its title from a Tibetan prophesy often used to portray the globalization of Tibetan Buddhism or the creation of the Tibetan diasporic identity. Li uses the prophecy in a more direct sense: to allude to the advent of aerial warfare—specifically, bombing runs on monasteries—on the Tibetan Plateau in the 1950s.
This is Li’s second book on the subject. While her earlier work focused on the 1959 revolt, this study goes back to the origins of the Tibetan issue, tracing its development from the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the culmination of Tibetan resistance and the flight of the Dalai Lama. The “Iron Bird” in the title refers to the gift from Stalin to the Chinese of a number of Tupolev Tu-4s, a Soviet-built state-of-the-art strategic bomber that could transport troops and supplies. Though not detailed in the book, China’s military attack on Tibet was carefully coordinated with the Soviet leadership. When Mao met Stalin in Moscow In January 1950, he thanked Stalin for sending “the air regiment”—transport planes which enabled the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to move tens of thousands of troops onto the Tibetan Plateau later that year. On September 3, 1953, when Zhou Enlai presented Stalin with a list of equipment needed for the military campaign in Tibet, he asked for “twenty 4-engine planes.” These Tu-4’s were crucial to the PLA’s success in conquering the Tibetan Plateau.
The central questions posed in the book are why the Tibetan Plateau erupted in revolt in the 1950s, what was the cause of the revolt, who took part in it, and how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) responded. Li borrows British colonial Tibet expert Charles Bell’s distinction between “political Tibet,” meaning the area directly under the Dalai Lama’s government in Lhasa and “ethnographic Tibet,” the entire eastern Tibetan areas that are now parts of the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan; Tibetans in these areas may not share allegiance to Lhasa but have a religious, cultural, and kinship bond.
While Li poses these questions, she does not theorize or provide explicit, discursive answers to them, preferring the narrative approach as a storyteller, thus allowing the readers to reach their own conclusions. She notes rightly that the CCP’s approach and policies in the areas under the jurisdiction of the Dalai Lama differed significantly from those imposed in the ethnic Tibetan areas in the east. Central Tibet, under the rule of the Dalai Lama, was protected by the so-called “17-Point Agreement” of 1951, which stipulated that no land reform or socialist education campaign should be carried out; but this was not the case in the eastern Tibetan areas. Although the Chinese cadre at the local level and in Beijing debated the pace at which reform should be carried out in minority areas, the eastern Tibetan areas were subjected to the same campaigns as the rest of China, although conditions there differed vastly from the Chinese hinterlands. Li shows that the attempts of the CCP work teams to inculcate “class consciousness” or anger towards the “rich landlords” never worked: the masses there saw reform and revolutionary campaigns as intrusions into their way of life and remained largely indifferent .
When the Iron Bird Flies is organized according to geographic enclaves within the Tibetan area, starting with those in the eastern Tibetan areas known as Amdo and Kham where separate social-political organizations had emerged, governed by local kings and lamas. These polities, often fiercely independent, had always posed challenges to previous Chinese regimes, and the new Communist regime was no exception. Chapters 1 and 2 set the scene by describing these areas and their histories. The extent of the autonomy enjoyed by these areas is somewhat overemphasized since—while the communists did not have strong bases—all previous Chinese regimes had penetrated them and established control or influence to some degree. Indeed, it was in the Kardze region of Kham, during the Long March, that the CCP had first come into contact with ethnic Tibetans and managed to recruit a few into the ranks of the party. Also, when describing the social system in the region, Li cites Melyn Goldstein’s work on the social system in central Tibet, where the status of mi-ser or “serf” was prevalent; however, this category is not commensurate with trelpa (tax-payers) in the Kham regions. Subsequent chapters concentrate on how events unfolded in Lithang, Chatreng, Nyarong, Ngawa, Chamdo, and Golok, while later chapters examine how the revolt moved to Central Tibet and eventually to Lhasa.
The book’s strength is Li’s detailed account and descriptions of events based on rarely accessed Chinese sources supplemented by interviews with Tibetans living in exile. Li sees the book as a personal exploration in pursuit of truth. She notes that in the official ten-volume history of the PLA published in 2000, Complete History of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Tibet campaign occupies only a single paragraph, which she terms a cover-up. The book is written in the style of an investigation rather than a conventional history, focusing on events and details comprising those events, rather than on broader historical context. While CIA aid to Tibet and Soviet supplies are mentioned, Li does not situate events within the turbulent internal CCP politics or within in the international Cold War environment.
In the book’s final chapter, Li looks at what happened to the key Chinese and Tibetan protagonists during this period. Here, she adds valuable insight that the CCP and PLA cadres who were leading figures in the so-called liberation of Tibet later suffered from political reversals and were relegated to historical obscurity, joining the ranks of those dejected cadres who feel they played a crucial part in the “unification of China” but whose contribution was never recognized. Overall, Li tells a powerful story of the Tibetan resistance and provides vivid details about the clash between vastly different value systems that underlay that conflict.
Tsering Shakya
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver