Gyalo Thondup

Background

In 1928, Gyalo Thondup was born in Ping"an District, Qinghai province.

Career

He often acted as the Dalai Lama"s unofficial envoy, and was involved in various political controversies around the Tibetan diaspora. In 1939, he moved with his family to Lhasa. In 1942, at the age of 14, Thondup went to Nanjing, the capital of Republican China, to study Standard Chinese and the history of China.

He often visited Chiang Kai-shek at his home and ate dinner with him.

In 1949, before the Communist revolution of that year in China, Thondup left Nanjing for India via British Hong Kong. In 1951, he traveled to America and became the main source of information on Tibet for the United States Department of State.

America"s Central Intelligence Agency promised to make Tibet independent from China in exchange for Thondup"s support in organizing guerrilla units to fight against the People"s Liberation Army, an offer which Thondup accepted. Thondup maintains that he did not inform the 14th Dalai Lama about the Central Intelligence Agency"s actions, and this support ended after the 1972 Nixon visit to China.

With the permission of the Dalai Lama, Thondup met Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979 for open political talks, which Thondup terminated in 1993, feeling them to be useless.

In the 1990s, Thondup made several official visits to China, acting as the Dalai Lama"s unofficial envoy. In 1998, the Central Tibetan Administration (the political arm of the Dalai Lama"s anti-China diaspora faction) criticized Thondup for not letting the Dalai Lama know about the Central Intelligence Agency"s involvement in Tibet.

Achievements

• In recent years, Thondup has repeatedly stated that dialogue is the only way to achieve progress with China.