According to the International Campaign for Tibet, headquartered in Washington, 1.2 million Tibetans have died as a result of China's policies since 1959, and 6,000 monasteries and other cultural buildings have been destroyed. The Tibetan culture has been marginalized. He supports letting Tibetans inside Tibet choose their own destiny through a freely held referendum. To date the reaction from Beijing has been stony lack of interest. China reclaimed Portuguese Macao and British Hong Kong without a whimper of a reaction.
China fully intends to do the same with Taiwan, but Taiwan is a very different case.
By contrast, Tibet is undeveloped and remote, and no government of record contemplates coming to its aid to overturn a 50-year occupation by China. In February, the Chinese government announced plans to build a railway line from Golmud, in western China, to Lhasa, a distance of more than 2,000 miles. That warmth may be genuine, but if there is to be any new course in the sad, sad story of Tibet's anguish under China's rule, it will be dictated by Beijing, not Washington. It is a prospect that seems unlikely. John Hughes is a former editor of the Monitor, and currently editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret News in Salt Lake City.