After the Dalai Lama left Lhasa, about 7,000 rebels gathered towage a full-scale attack on the Party, government and military institutions early in the morning on March 20, 1959. The PLA, driven beyond forbearance, launched, under orders, a counterattack at 10 a.m. the same day. With the support of all ethnic groups in Tibet, the 1,000-odd PLA troops completely put down the armed rebellion in Lhasa within two days. Before long, the PLA rapidly quelled the armed rebellion in other places in Tibet.
Just as Chairman Mao Zedong pointed out, "The Dalai Lama's plotting to launch a rebellion started just after his return from Beijing in 1955. He prepared this rebellion for two years -- from early 1957, when he returned from India, to 1958." After he fled from China in 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama and his clique went further and further down the road to splitting the motherland. They established the so-called "Tibetan government-in-exile," publicly declared "Tibetan in-dependence," reorganized rebel forces to carry out military harassment along the Chinese border for many years, engaged in long-term inter-national anti-China activities, and instigated many riots in Tibet and other Tibetan-inhabited areas.
The armed rebellion in Tibet was supported from the very beginning by foreign anti-China forces. According to a Western media report on January 26, 1971, a certain country's intelligence agency trained members of the "Four Rivers and Six Ranges" in February 1957 on a certain Pacific island. From 1956 to 1957, the above-mentioned intelligence agency handpicked some 170 rebels, and sent them to the "Kamba guerrilla training base" in that country. Several hundred trained "Kamba guerrillas" were air-dropped into Tibet, carrying sub-machine guns, and small gold boxes containing the portrait of Dalai Lama. This intelligence agency trained 2,000 Tibetan guerrillas in total. From July 1958 to February 1959, it launched two weapon air-drops to rebellious armed forces, including 403 rifles, 20 sub-machine guns, 60 boxes of hand-grenades, and several bags of Indian rupees. In November 1958, it transported 226 loads of weapons to the Shannan rebel army via the Indian-occupied area to the south of the "McMahon Line." In January the following year, it transported 40 loads of goods to Shannan rebel army via Nepal and Shekar. It launched more than 30 air-drops to the Kham rebel army, and dropped over 250 tons of goods, including approximately 10,000 M1 Garand Rifles, assault rifles, 57 mm recoilless guns, and antiaircraft machine guns. According to another Western media report on August 16, 1999,a certain Western country air-dropped more than 400 tons of goods to Tibetan guerrillas from 1957 to 1960. This country "spent 1.7 million U.S. dollars on such operations in Tibet annually."
While the Dalai Lama was fleeing, the above-mentioned intelligence agency re-equipped a plane and air-dropped goods for him and his companions on the way, keeping contact with the rebel army and nearby intelligence stations via radio, and recording the whole course of the flight. Based on a Hong Kong media report on February 11, 1974, according to participants in the operation, the Dalai Lama's flight from Lhasa was planned by the Western intelligence agency. The country's spy planes sneaked hundreds of miles into Tibet, providing protection for the Dalai Lama clique from air, air-dropping food, maps, radios and money, as well as strafing Chinese installations and taking photos of the operation.