Tethering Tibet: Recent Chinese Historiography and Liu Shengqi in Lhasa, 1945-1949

Before Liu Shengqi (柳陞祺) became the early PRC’s foremost historian of Tibet, he was an English-language secretary in Lhasa for the Nationalist Government’s Commission on Mongolia and Tibet. His travels and assessment of Han-Tibetan relations in and around Lhasa provide a unique perspective on Tibet’s tenuous relationship with the Chinese central government from 1945 until 1949. With the 2010 publication of Liu's recollections in Lhasa (in Chinese), a new window is opened on the literature on Tibet's history -- and assertions of Guomindang power in the region -- in the period just preceding the traumatic collision with Maoism.