The article said the Dalai clique asks for financial aid from the West in the name of religion and human rights. However, instead of spending money on those badly in need of help, the leading members in the clique buy golden watches and luxurious cars for themselves with donations from the West while their sponsors know nothing about these deeds.

It pointed out that the best approach to resolving the Tibetan issue is the real, lawful autonomy granted by the Chinese Government in the spirit of accelerating Tibet's economic development and improving the living standards and education levels of Tibetans. Anti-China propaganda will result in the Chinese Government's tightened control of foreigners' access to Tibet. This will not only hinder the development of tourism but also make it more difficult for foreign countries to carry out welfare programs, worsening the situation of the local Tibetans, it said.

A hopeless cause

India's Frontline biweekly magazine published a cover story by N. Ram tilted "Future Tibet" on July 14. The story was based on the author's second visit to Tibet this year. The "reality check" showed that China is in firm control and "Tibetan independence" is a hopeless cause, he wrote. He said the effects of economic reform are conspicuous on Lhasa's streets, with their fast moving traffic, rising modern buildings and commercial complexes. However, the "real test" is in the countryside. He said there is visible evidence of economic development in the villages he visited.

The most dramatic change since 2000 has come with the Qinghai-Tibet Railway system, the article said. The railway symbolizes the right of Tibetans to seek development, catch up with the rest of rising China, and open themselves more to the outside world. The author believes apprehension about the railway's adverse effects on the environment and wildlife have proved exaggerated. The real threat to Tibet's environment comes not from the railway but from global warming.

The Chinese leadership has fashioned and finessed its strategy of dealing politically with the Dalai Lama and his followers over the past three decades, according to the article. Given the unprecedented economic growth, inclusive and nuanced sociopolitical and cultural policies in China, serious international political support for "Tibetan independence" is non-existent, it said.

The article called on the Dalai Lama and the "Tibetan Government in Exile" to modify their stands on two core issues. First, the concept of "high-level" or "maximum" autonomy in line with the "one country, two systems" principle is different from what the Chinese constitutional framework and the law on national regional autonomy stipulate. The kind of autonomy that the Dalai Lama demanded in 2005 cannot possibly be accommodated within the Chinese Constitution. Second, in responding to the demand for "one administrative entity" for all ethnic Tibetans, the Chinese Government makes the perfectly reasonable point that the Tibet Autonomous Region parallels the area under the former Tibetan regime. Acceptance of the demand for "Greater Tibet" means doing ethnic reengineering and causing enormous destabilization and damage to China's state, society, and political system.

A miserable failure

Australia's The Age newspaper published a bylined article titled "Behind the Dalai Lama's Holy Cloak" on May 23. The article pointed out that the Dalai Lama is no mere "spiritual leader." He was the head of Tibet's Government when he went into exile in 1959. It was a state apparatus run by aristocratic, nepotistic monks who collected taxes, jailed and tortured dissenters and engaged in all the usual political intrigues, according to the article.

"The government" set up in exile in India and, at least until the 1970s, received $1.7 million a year from the CIA. The money was to pay for guerilla operations against the Chinese, notwithstanding the Dalai Lama's public stance in support of non-violence, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, the article said.

The Dalai Lama himself was on the CIA's payroll from the late 1950s until 1974, reportedly receiving $15,000 a month ($180,000 a year). The funds were paid to him personally, but he used all or most of them for the activities of the "Tibetan Government in Exile," principally to fund offices in New York and Geneva and to lobby internationally.

The article said there are certainly plenty of rumors among expatriate Tibetans of endemic corruption and misuse of monies collected in the name of the Dalai Lama. Many donations are channeled through the New York-based Tibet Fund, set up in 1981 by Tibetan refugees and U.S. citizens. It has grown into a multimillion-dollar organization that disburses $3 million each year to its various programs. Part of its funding comes from the U.S. State Department's Bureau for Refugee Programs.

"What has the Dalai Lama actually achieved for Tibetans inside Tibet?" it asked. "If his goal has been independence for Tibet or, more recently, greater autonomy, then he has been a miserable failure."