People take it so personally. What is going on in China is the key to Tibet's future. Beijing is losing its grip on its provinces. The economic disparity between the rich coastal areas and the poor inland areas is throwing up all sorts of problems. Farmers are leaving the countryside and moving to the cities.
Unemployment is high and there are fears of insurrection.
Tibetans in exile hope that China will disintegrate a la Soviet Union. New leaders in Beijing, they reason, will make negotiations easier. And then again, maybe not. A fair deal for Tibet may not feature at all on their list of priorities, although Tibetans in exile have been forging links with exiled Chinese dissenters such as Jan Jiaqi, who leads the Federation for a Democratic China. Meanwhile, according to one of the foremost experts on Tibet, US historian Melvyn Goldstein, the situation in Tibet right now is dangerously volatile.