Established in 1965, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is a contemporary administrative unit of China that includes the cultural regions of Western and Central Tibet, as well as parts of Eastern Tibet, and spans an area of more than 1,200,000 km². As part of the Tibetan Plateau, the TAR contains several of the world’s highest mountains (Mount Everest), lakes (Yamdrok Yumtso), and rivers (Yarlung Tsangpo). With its capital of Lhasa the region supports a population of over 3 million.