The riots in Tibetan-inhabited areas in our country in March are not as simple as some members of the Western media seem to think. People will see that the so-called "Tibet issue" is a "pawn" in the United States' game of keeping China in check and is closely linked to Washington's China policy. All they have to do is look back at the international backdrop since the end of Cold War and especially the evolution of the China policy of the US.

The wartime alliance between the US and the Soviet Union was quickly replaced by a state of cold confrontation after the World War II ended. The emergence of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 symbolizes the start of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union.

When the People's Republic of China was founded in October 1949, the US chose to continue supporting Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang regime and implement a containment strategy against the Chinese nation.

Washington built up what it called a line of blockade around China, stretching along the country's coasts and southwestern neighbors all the way to its northwestern border region to trap the newly risen people's government. In the 1950s and 1960s, the US maintained a dual strategy of "helping Chiang (Kai-shek) against communist China" strategy off our southeastern coastal regions, and "using Tibet against China" in the southern inland area. Thus the Tibet issue in Sino-US relations has been deeply associated with the "anti-China, anti-Communism" Cold-War thinking from the very beginning.

In 1947, the separatist clique among the upper-class Tibetans started seeking "international recognition" and gaining international support for their cause of "Tibet independence" by sending a "delegation of goodwill" to wartime allies such India, Britain and the US.