The occupation of Tibet by the People’s Republic of China is one of the largest cases of the effacement of political identity in the modern era. From the year 1951 to the current time, the Chinese government has dismantled the infrastructure that made it possible for the Tibetans to govern themselves, adopting an authoritarian system of governance with administrators who are loyal to the Chinese government to turn the semi-autonomous Tibet into a subordinate administrative unit.

Prior to 1950, Tibet enjoyed the status of a self-administering entity with legitimacy deriving from the long history of Buddhist administration. Starting with the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1911, the Chinese government held only token control over Tibetan affairs. The Tibetan administration controlled the taxation system, internal security and international relations. In 1909, the Tibetan administration established the Board of Foreign Affairs that carried out Tibetan diplomatic missions with Britain, the United States of America, Nepal and independent India. Starting in 1920, the Tibetan administration had a Central Post and Telegraph Office in Lhasa that organised the Tibetan postal system using local stamps designed by the Tibetan artisans through hand-printing. Tibet had its own currency in the form of the srang coin that was imprinted with Buddhist designs and the seals of the Tibetan government. This continued until the initial Chinese military incursions, only ceasing when the Dalai Lama fled to India in March 1959.

These organisations encapsulated Tibetan nationhood. These were not mere administrative adjuncts; they represented shared sovereignty. Stamps, money, and diplomacy represented the visible machinery by which a state asserts its role in international society. The mere fact that these existed was enough to prove that what the Tibetan people and other external powers recognised was true—that Tibet had the machinery for state........

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