Everything about Kham totally explained
» Kham Magar refers to an ethnic minority in the Himalayan foothills of western Nepal.
Kham (
Tibetan:
ཁམས;
Wylie transliteration:
Khams;
Simplified Chinese: 康;
Pinyin: Kāng), also referred to as the Kingdom of Kham, is one of the three traditional provinces claimed by the
Tibetan government-in-exile and the
International Tibetan Independence Movement. During the
Republic of China's rule over mainland China (
1911-
1949), most of the region was called
Xikang Province (西康省
Xīkāng Shěng). It held the status of "special administrative district" until 1939, when it became an official Chinese province. Its provincial status was nominal and without much cohesion, like most of China's territory during the Japanese invasion and civil war.
Linguists and anthropologists refer to Kham as the 'Ethnic Corridor of Southwest China', as its vast and sparsely populated territories are inhabited by over 14 culturally and linguistically distinct ethnic groups. For reasons of simplicity, the Chinese government combines the various ethnic groups of Kham together with the
Tibetans to form one big nationality, called the "Tibetan Nationality". There are, however, significant differences in traditions and beliefs--even physical appearance--between the peoples of Kham and
Lhasa. At least one-third of Kham residents are speakers of
Qiangic languages, a family of twelve distinct but interrelated languages that are unrelated to the
Tibetan language. Many Khampas are members of the
Bön religion or 'Black sect' of
Tibetan Buddhism, a group that had been largely marginalized and stigmatized by other Tibetan sects.
Kham comprised a total of 50 contemporary counties, which have been incorporated into the Chinese provinces of
Sichuan (16 counties),
Yunnan (3 counties), and
Qinghai (6 counties) as well as the eastern portion of the
Tibet Autonomous Region (25 counties).
Kham has a rugged terrain characterized by mountain ridges and gorges running from northwest to southeast. Numerous rivers, including the
Mekong,
Yangtze,
Yalong Jiang, and the
Salween flow through Kham.
History
Kham was traditionally referred to as
chuzhi gangdruk, for example 'four rivers and six ranges'. The peoples of Kham have endured a tumultuous past, their sovereignty often encroached upon and marginalized by both
Tibetans to the West and the
Han Chinese to the East.
Kham itself was never controlled by a single king, but was generally a patchwork of two dozen or more kingdoms, tribes, and chiefdoms that were constantly at war with each other. Since the collapse of the
Tibetan Empire in the mid-
9th century, the peoples of Kham had aggressively maintained their independence from
Lhasa. Local chieftains ruled their respective territories with hereditary titles bestowed by Chinese emperors. Chinese control was minimal, however, and chieftains were able to rule with a large degree of independence from both China and Tibet.
In 1717,
Dzungar tribes of Mongolia invaded Tibet, and a period of internal strife and civil war followed. The
Kangxi emperor sent armies into the area for a period of 20 years, and local leaders were forced to pledge their allegiance to the
Qing Empire. In 1724, the regions of
Amdo and Kham were made into the province of
Kokonor, with parts of Eastern Kham incorporated into neighboring Chinese provinces.
Tibetan control of the
Batang region of Kham appears to have continued uncontested from the time of an agreement made in 1726 until soon after the invasion of Tibet under
Francis Younghusband in 1904, which alarmed the
Qing rulers in China. They sent an imperial official to the region to begin reasserting Qing control, but the locals revolted and killed him. The
Qing government in
Beijing then appointed
Zhao Erfang, the Governor of
Xining, "Army Commander of Tibet" to reintegrate Tibet into China. He was sent in 1905 (though other sources say this occurred in 1908) on a punitive expedition and began destroying many monasteries in
Kham and
Amdo and implementing a process of sinification of the region:
» "He abolished the powers of the Tibetan local leaders and appointed Chinese magistrates in their places. He introduced new laws that limited the number of lamas and deprived monasteries of their temporal power and inaugurated schemes for having the land cultivated by Chinese immigrants.
Zhao's methods in eastern Tibet uncannily prefigured the Communist policies nearly half a century later. They were aimed at the extermination of the Tibetan clergy, the assimilation of territory and repopulation of the Tibetan plateaus with poor peasants from
Sichuan. Like the later Chinese conquerors, Zhao's men looted and destroyed Tibetan monasteries, melted down religious images and tore up sacred texts to use to line the soles of their boots and, as the Communists were also to do later, Zhao Erfang worked out a comprehensive scheme for the redevelopment of Tibet that covered military training reclamation work, secular education, trade and administration."
In
1910, the Qing government sent a military expedition of its own to establish direct Chinese rule and deposed the Dalai Lama in an imperial edict. The Dalai Lama once again fled, this time to India. "By going in and then coming out again, we knocked the Tibetans down and left them for the first comer to kick," wrote
Charles Alfred Bell, a British diplomatic officer stationed in
Sikkim and a
critic of the Liberal government's policy. The situation was soon to change, however, as, after the fall of the Qing dynasty in October 1911, Zhao's soldiers mutinied and beheaded him.
The 13th Dalai Lama fled to
British India in February 1910. The same month, the Chinese Qing government issued a proclamation deposing the Dalai Lama and instigating the search for a new incarnation. While in India, the Dalai Lama became a close friend of the British Political Officer
Charles Alfred Bell.
The official position of the British Government was it wouldn't intervene between China and Tibet and would only recognize the
de facto government of China within Tibet at this time. Bell, in his history of Tibet, wrote of this time that "the Tibetans were abandoned to Chinese aggression, an aggression for which the British Military Expedition to Lhasa and subsequent retreat [andconsequent power vacuum within Tibet) were primarily responsible". Later, Britain defined the Indo-Tibetan border at the 1914
Simla conference with the
McMahon Line. China's delegation initialled the convention but the government repudiated it.
In
1932, an agreement signed between Chinese warlord
Liu Wenhui and Tibetan forces formalized the partition of Kham into two regions: Eastern Kham, which was administered by Chinese forces, and Western Kham, which was administered by Tibet. Eastern Kham subsequently became the actual area of control of China's Xikang province. The border between eastern and western Kham is the
Yangtze River -
Dri Chu in Tibetan and
Jinsha Jiang, or
Chang Jiang respectively, in Chinese.
In
1950, following the defeat of the
Kuomintang rulers of China by communist forces in the
Chinese Civil War, the
People's Liberation Army entered western Kham. Western Kham was then set up as a separate
Qamdo Territory (昌都地区), then merged into
Tibet Autonomous Region in
1965.
Meanwhile,
Xikang province, comprising eastern Kham, was merged into
Sichuan province in
1955. The border between Sichuan and Tibet Autonomous Region has remained the Yangtze River. The northernmost region of Kham,
Yushu, has been a part of
Qinghai province since the 18th century.
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Kham'.
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