Gyalo Thondup (; ), born c.1927, is the second-eldest brother of the

14th Dalai Lama The 14th Dalai Lama (spiritual name Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, known as Tenzin Gyatso (Tibetan: བསྟན་འཛིན་རྒྱ་མཚོ་, Wylie: ''bsTan-'dzin rgya-mtsho''); né Lhamo Thondup), known as ...

. He often acted as the Dalai Lama's unofficial envoy.

Early life

In late fall of 1927, Gyalo Thondup was born in the village of

Taktser Taktser or Tengtser (; meaning 'Place on the Heights'") or Hongya Village () is a village in , Ping'an District, Haidong, in the east of Qinghai province, China, (also known as Amdo or Kokonor). Tibetan, Han and Hui Chinese people populate the vil ...

, Amdo (

Ping'an District Ping'an District () also known as Ping'anyi (), is an administrative district and the seat of the city of Haidong, in the east of Qinghai province of the People's Republic of China, located about east from Xining. Its postal code is 810600, and it ...

Qinghai Qinghai (; alternately romanized as Tsinghai, Ch'inghai), also known as Kokonor, is a landlocked province in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It is the fourth largest province of China by area and has the third smallest po ...

province). In 1939, he moved with his family to

Lhasa Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Region in Southwest China. The inner urban area of Lhas ...

. In 1942, at the age of 14, Thondup went to

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

, 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 fact, young Gyalo Thondup ate his meals at the Chiang family table, from April 1947 until the summer of 1949, and tutors selected by Chiang educated the boy." In 1948, he married

Zhu Dan Zhu or ZHU may refer to: * Zhu (surname), common Chinese surnames *Zhu River, or Pearl River, in southern China *Zhu (state), ancient Chinese state, later renamed Zou * House of Zhu, the ruling house of the Ming dynasty in Chinese history *Zhu (st ...

, the daughter of a

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

general.

Political involvement

In 1949, before the Communist revolution of that year in China, Thondup left Nanjing for India via British Hong Kong. "Gyalo Thondup... was the first officially acknowledged Tibetan to visit Taiwan since 1949. Taipei Radio announced the meeting between President Chang Kai-shek on 21 May 1950." Fluent in Chinese, Tibetan and English, he "later facilitated semi-official contacts between the Tibetan-government-in-exile and the Republic of China (ROC) as well as with the People's Republic of China (PRC) government in 1979."

United States activities

In 1951, he traveled to America and became the main source of information on Tibet for the

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

. America's

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

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

about the CIA's actions, and this support ended after the

1972 Nixon visit to China The 1972 visit by United States President Richard Nixon to the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations betwe ...

Later career

With the permission of the Dalai Lama, Thondup met Chinese leader

Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. After CCP ...

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 recent years, Thondup has repeatedly stated that dialogue is the only way to achieve progress with China. In 1998, the

Central Tibetan Administration The Central Tibetan Administration (, , ), often referred to as the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, is a non-profit political organization based in Dharamshala, India. Its organization is modeled after an elective parliamentary government, comp ...

in exile criticized Thondup for not letting the Dalai Lama know about the CIA's involvement in Tibet. Over a decade later, Thondup accused his sister-in-law's father of embezzling money from the

Publications

* (with Anne F. Thurston), ''The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of the Dalai Lama and the Secret Struggle for Tibet'', PublicAffairs, 2015

References