1934. National Geographic Magazine featured the flag in their 1934 “Flags of the World” edition. The caption reads, "Tibet.- With its towering mountain of snow, before which stand two lions fighting for a flaming gem, the flag of Tibet is one of the most distinctive of the East." Beginning in 1928, images of the flag were also widely published by companies in Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East, and Oceania in national flag collections on various forms of trading cards. The flag's first appearance at an international gathering was in March–April 1947 at the Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi. The Conference, organised by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, hosted Asian states and anti-colonial movements. The representative of the British government of India in Lhasa, Hugh Richardson, personally shared the invitation from the Indian Council of World Affairs with the Tibetan Foreign Office and advised that the conference was a good opportunity to show Asia and the world that Tibet was de facto an independent country. At the conference, leaders of each of the thirty-two delegations sat on a dais behind a plate with the name and flag of their country. American historian A. Tom Grunfeld asserts that the conference was not government-sponsored, and so Tibet's and the Tibetan flag's presence had "no diplomatic significance", adding that the flag was removed after representatives from the Republic of China protested to conference organisers who then issued a statement that Jawaharlal Nehru had invited the Tibetan delegates "in a personal capacity". A Tibetan delegate who attended the conference claims that this did not occur and the only existing photos from the conference show the flag displayed along with other participating countries' flags. After the People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet and the 17-Point Agreement was signed, the flag continued to be used in the 1950s under the Chinese government, although the flag's status was unclear. Many in the Chinese Communist Party felt that the usage of the flag indicated separatism, but the Tibetan local government at the time stressed that the flag was an army flag (the Tibetan army continued to exist parallel to People's Liberation Army infantries) and not a national flag. Phuntso Wangye claims that Mao Zedong discussed the flag in 1955 conversation with the 14th Dalai Lama. According to the story, Mao told the Dalai Lama that Zhang Jingwu, Zhang Guohua, and Fan Ming told him that Tibet had a