Hardcover with DC, 296 pages, color illustrated, New York 1981, very good
Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme (Tibetan: ང་ཕོད་ངག་དབང་འཇིགས་མེད་, Wylie: Nga phod Ngag dbang 'jigs med, ZYPY: Ngapo Ngawang Jigmê, Lhasa dialect: [ŋɑ̀pø̂ː ŋɑ̀wɑŋ t͡ɕíʔmi]; Chinese: 阿沛·阿旺晋美; pinyin: Āpèi Āwàng Jìnměi; February 1, 1910 – December 23, 2009) was a Tibetan senior official who assumed various military and political responsibilities both before and after 1951 in Tibet. He is often known simply as Ngapo in English sources.
As a delegate of the government of Tibet sent to negotiate with the Chinese Government, he headed the Tibetan delegation to the Beijing peace negotiations in 1951, where he signed the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet with the Chinese Communist government in 1951, accepting Chinese sovereignty in exchange for guarantees of autonomy and religious freedom.
The validity of his acceptance on behalf of the Tibetan government has been questioned. The Tibetan exiled community claims that his signature of the Agreement was obtained under duress, and that, as only the governor of Chamdo, signature of the agreement exceeded his powers of representation and is therefore invalid.
In his biography My Land and My People, the Dalai Lama claims that in 1952, the acting Tibetan Prime MinisterLukhangwa told Chinese representative Zhang Jingwu that the Tibetan "people did not accept the agreement".
However, according to Sambo Rimshi, one of the Tibetan negotiators, the Tibetan delegation, including Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme, went to Beijing with the Dalai Lama's authorization and instructions. As Sambo Rimchi recalled, Dalai Lama's instruction to the negotiators clearly states:
Here are ten points. I have faith that you will not do anything bad, so you should go and achieve whatever you can.
According to Sambo, the young Dalai Lama also told the negotiators to use their best judgment according to the situation and circumstances and report back to the Kashag in Yadong. Sambo recalled that the negotiators brought a secret codebook so that they could establish a wireless link with Yadong and discuss issues as they arose. According to historians Tom A. Grunfeld, Melvyn C. Goldstein and Tsering Shakya, the young Dalai Lama did ratify the Seventeen Point agreement with Tsongdu Assembly's recommendation few months after the signing.
In 1959, the Dalai Lama on his arrival in India after he fled Tibet repudiated the "17-point Agreement" as having been "thrust upon Tibetan Government and people by the threat of arms".
Ngapoi Ngawang Jigmé was one of a small number of progressive elite Tibetans that were eager to modernize Tibet and saw in the return of the Chinese an opportunity to do so. They were in a sense a continuation of the movement for reform that emerged in the 1920s with Tsarong Dzasa as its main proponent but was stopped short by the 13th Dalai Lama under the pressure of conservative clerics and aristocrats.
