"[5] For decades, the content of this report remained hidden from all but the very highest levels of the Chinese leadership, until one copy was obtained by the Tibet Information Network (TIN) in 1996.

[6][Note 1] The report was based in part on research undertaken in Amdo by an assistant, the 6th Tseten Zhabdrung, Jigme Rigpai Lodro, after China's brutal retaliation and reforms which followed a massive anti-communist uprising in 1958.

[8] The document was initially known as the Report on the sufferings of the masses in Tibet and other Tibetan regions and suggestions for future work to the central authorities through the respected Premier Zhou Enlai but took on the shorter sobriquet because of its length in Chinese characters.

"[citation needed] In Beijing, he asked Mao directly to "put an end to the abuses committed against the Tibetan people, to increase their food rations, to provide adequate care for the aged and the infirm, and to respect religious liberty."

He criticized the Great Leap Forward and a multitude of "inept orders" on the part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which had caused chronic food shortages.

[citation needed] The report by the Panchen Rinpoche deals with the Tibetan situation in plain terms, taking his cues from Mao's project: "Even if on paper and in speeches there has been a great leap forward, it's not clear that this has translated to reality.

"[citation needed] The Panchen Lama began writing his petition in the monastery of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse, Tibet, continued in his residence in Lhasa, and finished it in Beijing.

[16][page needed] The essay covers three main themes - religion, cruelty, and famine - in eight parts: In his conclusion, the Panchen Lama denounced the majority leftist tendencies in Tibet.

[17] In his preface for the English translation, Robert Barnett observed that "in no other document does someone of such high rank attack so explicitly and with as much detail the policies and practices of Chairman Mao.

"[citation needed] Some excerpts:[2] The Panchen Lama explained that anyone who openly practiced their religious faith in Tibet was persecuted and accused of superstition.

"They even ordered the killing members of rebel families... Officials deliberately put people in jail under draconian conditions, so there was a lot of unjustifiable deaths."

The Panchen Lama denounced the famine in Tibet, criticizing the Great Leap Forward because a multitude of "inept orders" by the Chinese Communist party caused chronic food shortages.

[27] According to Joshua Michael Schrei, member of the administrative council of the independent association Students for a Free Tibet, the petition is considered by serious historians to be one of the only trustworthy documents of the period.

[23][page needed][Note 5] According to professor Dawa Norbu "no Chinese (with the possible exception of Peng Dehuai) and certainly no leader of a national minority ever dared to defy the Communist policies so fundamentally in the interior of the People's Republic since its creation in 1949, as the Panchen Lama did in 1962 and in 1987.

[29] Laurent Deshayes et Frédéric Lenoir view the analysis given by Hu Yaobang, secretary general from 1980 to 1987 of the CCP during his inspection of the Tibet Autonomous Region as approaching those of the 10th Panchen lama in his 70,000 Character petition and that of the Tibetan Government in Exile: the Chinese policy towards Tibet seems to resemble colonialism, the Tibetans are under-represented in the regional administration, their standard of living has fallen since the liberation of 1951–59, and their culture is threatened with extinction unless there is an effort to teach the language and the religion.