It was originally created during the Qing Dynasty in 1636 as Mongolian Bureau as a subsection of the Lifan Yuan, and oversaw the relationship of the Qing court to its Mongolian and Tibetan dependencies. During Kangxi Emperor rule, the bureau was renamed to Minority Affairs Council and renamed again to Ministry of Minority Affairs under Guangxu Emperor rule. Following the 1911 revolution and collapse of the Qing dynasty, the section was replaced by Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Agency under the Ministry of the Interior in April 1912. In July 1912, the agency was again renamed as Bureau of Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs and placed under the State Affairs Yuan. In 1914, it was reorganized and being placed directly under the supervision of President. On 1 February 1929, it was finally changed to Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission with accordance to the Nationalist Government Organizational Law. After the Communist revolution in China, and the Republic of China's relocation to Taiwan, the MTAC ceased its activities in Tibet and Mongolia, although it served as a governmental body which assisted in the relationship between ethnic Mongols and Tibetans in Taiwan and increasing the communication between the Taiwanese and the Mongols as well as the Tibetans. After the 1959 Tibetan uprising, Chiang Kai-shek announced in his Letter to Tibetan Compatriots that the ROC's policy would be to help the Tibetan people overthrow the People's Republic of China's rule in Tibet. The MTAC sent secret agents to India to disseminate pro-Kuomintang and anti-Communist propaganda among Tibetan exiles. From 1971 to 1978, the MTAC also recruited ethnic Tibetan children from India and Nepal to study in Taiwan, with the expectation that they would work for a ROC government that returned to the mainland. In 1994, the veterans' association for the Tibetan guerrilla group Chushi Gangdruk met with the MTAC and agreed to the KMT's One China Principle. In response, the Dalai Lama's Central Tibetan Administration forbade all exiled Tibetans from contact with the MTAC. On August 14, 2017, the Executive Yuan announced that the MTAC would be dissolved by the end of the year. No budget was allocated to the MTAC for 2018. Employees and responsibilities of the commission were re-assigned to two places; the Mongolian and Tibetan Cultural Center under the Ministry of Culture, and the expanded Department of Hong Kong, Macao, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet Affairs under the Mainland Affairs Council.
