本书为国外藏学研究成果，2015年先由法兰克福Zambon出版社以德文出版，作者阿尔伯特•艾廷格（Albert Ettinger）系卢森堡著名藏学家，该书系统梳理了“问题”由来，对其何以漫及国际的背景和历程做了独到叙述和分析，结合中国统一多民族国家的历史文化传统特点，展望所谓“问题”渐次式微的前景，公允得出西藏自古以来是中国领土一部分的客观结论。本书视角独特，言之有据，颇具学术水准，令人耳目一新。
This book lights up the historical, political and international law aspects of the Tibet conflict. Based on western scientific literature and on contemporary witnesses, it rebuts the largely dominant narrative that in 1950, the Chinese communists attacked and occupied an independent, peaceful country and, since then, tried to suppress Tibetan culture and even the Tibetan people itself.
On the contrary, it shows that “Tibetan independence” was a colonial project of the British Empire – a project later resumed, to some extent, by the USA within the context of the Cold War.
The author deals in detail with the first half of the 20th century, starting with the 13th Dalai Lama who rose later, with British support, to become a despot over an “independent Tibet“in which British agents pulled the strings. High officials and lamas loyal to China were killed then or had to flee, hole monasteries were razed to the ground. The Dalai Lama’s will for modernisation, though maintained by numerous western authors, confined itself to the creation of a "modern" army equipped and trained by the Britons. The death of the 13th Dalai Lama in 1933 led to embittered struggles for power, which the author tells in detail. The regent, who eventually came out on top, though being a lama, was corrupt and debauched. In the course of a renewed struggle for power with his equally corrupt successor, even a short civil war took place in Lhasa.