d to be little more than ticket collectors, and none of them wanted to talk. Their job was to deal with the busloads of Chinese tourists, cheerful with their suits and cameras, who came to look at the monastery. It was rumored that many were not monks at all, but spies,ö (232).
The facts typically provided to Western authorities with respect to the impact of the Chinese on Tibet are often exaggerated, according to French. While Tibetan officials routinely argue that more than one-fifth of the population died as a direct result of Chinese rule, French (2003) was given access to secret records at Dharamsala that were not credible. He claims no more than half a million people died as a result of Chinese rule, but he admits this is ôa devastating enough figure,ö (282). Chinese occupation ha
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