112 years ago today, on October 6, 1913 (September 7, 1913 lunar calendar), China and the United Kingdom met in Shimla to discuss the "Xizang question". Group photo of the delegates attending the Shimla Conference On October 6, 1913, the Sino-British Conference opened in Shimla, India, and began its first working meeting on the 13th. The location of the meeting was chosen by the British side in order to control the process of the meeting. The British representative was McMahon, the foreign secretary of the British and Indian governments, and the "Xizang representative" was the pro-British nobleman Shayza Bien Kyaw Dorji. The Chinese representative was Chen Yifan, the envoy of Xizang. During the meeting, the Chinese representative "sent people to accompany all actions, called hospitality, which is no different from monitoring". The meeting took place in an atmosphere of "coordination and conspiracy" between the British and Tibetans. The "Tibetan side" first proposed six draft articles, including: Xizang independence; Xizang territory should include Qinghai, Litang, Batang, and the arrow furnace, etc.; China should not send personnel to Tibet; Britain and Tibet amend the trade charter, and China should not intervene. Not only should Xizang be independent, but also large tracts of land in Qinghai and western Sichuan should be transferred to Xizang. Even the British minister to China, Zhu Erdian, said: "No one can convince me that the arrow furnace and the batang do not belong to the Chinese."