> The US was invading a foreign country. China is not.
That is certainly Beijing's line, and there's even an argument for it, but it is an outrageous oversimplification.
Chiang Kai Shek agreed with you though. In the many years that his gov't occupied the China seat at the UN and was on the Security Council, they only vetoted one motion. (Usually they voted with the US, so it was not a veto.) They vetoed the otherwise unanimous motion censuring Mao et al for invading Tibet.
> I await blather about how Tibet is really a foreign
> country.
Different language, ethnicity and culture, their own government. What happened to self-determination? Isn't it Tibetans who get to decide if they're part of China?
Historically, Tibet was never part of the Chinese system in the sense of having a governor appointed by Beijing, people there being eligible to take exams and become mandarins, Chinese legal code, and so on.
Like Korea, Vietnam and Xinjiang, they sometimes paid tribute to the Chinese emperor, but that's a different thing.
-- Sandy Harris, Nanjing, China