The initial People's Liberation Army invasion of Tibet in 1950 met little resistance in the heart of the country. The 14th Dalai Lama, on the urging of his elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, proposed reforms including limitation on the land holdings of the monasteries, abolishing of debt bondage, and other government and tax reforms as a response to the invasion. These were designed to forstall expected revolutionary initiatives of the Communists. However these ideas found little support among the entrenched Tibetan power structure. The Chinese leadership were wary of being able to control Gyalo but had determined to support him as a vehicle to advance consolidation of their control of the region. Their plan was to re-educate him in Beijing. Seeing that he would fail in his project he fled to India in 1952 eventually locating in Darjeeling near Kalimpong on the, now Chinese, Tibetan border.

Gyalo Thondup has represented that he appealed to the Nationalist Chinese and the United States for aid in resisting the Communist Chinese occupation and together with others in the Darjeeling/Kalimpoing area formed a small resistance group. Other leaders included Tsipon Shakabpa, who participated in the 1947 trade delegation and Khenchung Lobsang Gyaltsen, a monk who was the Tibetan trade representative in Kalimpong. Communications were established with the Tibetan officials in Lhasa and with the aid of its publisher, the Tibetan language newspaper, The Tibetan Mirror, began to cover events within Tibet. The CIA whose contacts in the area were through the Royal family of Sikkim is sceptical about Gyalo's claims but was in contact with him in August, 1952. Gyalo was also in contact with Bhola Nath Mullik, director of the India's intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau from 1953 on.

The United States, engaged as it was in a war with the Chinese who had intervened in the Korean War, was receptive to aiding any Tibetan resistance movement. When in the summer of 1956 rebellions broke out in Amdo and Kham the CIA got back into contact with Gyalo. There was a small group of refugees from the fighting in Kalimpong, mostly from wealthy trading families, who were eager to resist the Chinese. In early 1957 Gyalo selected eight candidates from the group for CIA training for scouting missions into Tibet in order to assess the nature of Tibetan resistance. They were trained at the CIA's training facility on Saipan, the Saipan Training Center, and dropped in two groups by parachute back into Tibet in 1958. The first group, dropped near Lhasa, traveled there and requested that the Dalai Lama request aid from the United States for their movement. That request was refused by the Dalai Lama but the CIA continued their support. The second group was inserted near Litang in Kham and made contact with a Tibetan resistance group. However that group was soon attacked and all but one of the inserted group killed. He managed to find his way to central Tibet where a resistance force was mobilizing.

The Tibetans' tendency was to form large groups complete with their herds and families and were an easy mark for the People's Liberation Army Air Force. They also welcomed battles with large deployments of Chinese soldiers during which they suffered heavy casualties. Thus they were unsuccessful in conducting traditional guerrilla warfare. This failure led to their ultimate retreat into India in 1959 .