The signing in Peking on May 27, 1951, of the 17-point Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet marked the end of Tibet's latest forty-year interlude of de facto independence and formalized an arrangement which, although in some respects differing from the earlier relationship between China and Tibet, in principle but reimposed the former's traditional suzerainty over the latter. Since then, the course and pattern of relations between the Central Government and the so-called Local Government of Tibet have undergone a series of drastic reappraisals and readjustments, culmi...