China’s Communist Party marked the 70th anniversary of its taking control of Tibet with a call for the region to embrace the regime’s all-encompassing rule. At the iconic Potala Palace, a sacred Buddhist site in Tibet’s capital Lhasa, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang on Aug. 19 spoke in front of a tightly-vetted crowd of 20,000, casting the Party as the savior who “peacefully liberated” Tibetan “peasant slaves”. “Tibet could only develop and prosper by adhering to the Party’s leadership and the socialist path,” said Wang, who also heads the regime’s mostly nominal political advisory body and is a member of the Party’s top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee. Chinese communist troops marched into the vast Himalayan region in 1951 forcing Tibetan leaders to accept a treaty that promised to uphold Tibet’s existing political system, regional autonomy, and religious freedom. The 14th Dalai Lama, who turned 86 this year, fled …