where they were greeted by their old friend, Ilya Tolstoy, who introduced them around. They met with Lowell Thomas, who was interested in visiting Tibet, and Dwight Eisenhower, then president of Columbia University, and other eastern establishment personalities as well as Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark who had an interest in Tibet. In November the delegation set sail for Britain where they spent 3 weeks but were received coolly. Returning through India they were able to free up some foreign exchange for the purchase of gold and, adding money of their own, effected a purchase of $425,800 in gold which was transported to Tibet by pack animals. Being received more warmly in the United States than in Britain, with whom they had a long established relationship, set the stage for later expansion of the relationship with the United States as they attempted to deal with later Chinese efforts to reassert effective control. People's Republic of China Neither the Nationalist government of the Republic of China (and its successor in Taiwan) nor the People's Republic of China have ever renounced China's claim to sovereignty over Tibet. The PRC ascribes Tibetan efforts to establish independence as due to the machinations of "British imperialism" . According to the Chinese, the Tibetan cabinet, the Kashag, set up a "bureau of foreign affairs" in July, 1942 and demanded that the Chinese mission in Lhasa, the Office of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, deal only with it. The Chinese successfully withstood this. In 1950 the People's Liberation Army entered Tibet, meeting little resistance from the small and ill-equipped Tibetan army. In 1951 the 17 Point Agreement, signed under threat of a wholesale Chinese invasion by representatives of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, provided for rule by a joint Chinese-Tibetan authority. This agreement was successfully put into effect in Tibet but in June 1956, rebellion broke out in the Tibetan populated borderlands of Amdo and Kham when the government tried to impose the socialist transformation policies in these regions that they had in other provinces of China. Since Amdo and Kham had not been under the control of Lhasa in 1950 but under the control of Chinese warlords, they were not considered by the Chinese to be part of Tibet and thus not subject to the "go slow" agreement. This unrest provided the opportunity for the CIA to support an armed Tibetan rebellion