John Garnaut reports in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Australian officials were recently stunned to hear a senior Chinese policy maker give an honest diagnosis of why China’s Tibet policies had gone so badly wrong. At that point four weeks ago it was hard to find clear-eyed analysis anywhere.
Chinese leaders were railing against Tibetan terrorists, foreign provocateurs and an “evil” Dalai Lama. Tibetan exile groups and their Western supporters were accusing China of cultural genocide. Both groups talked in simplistic dichotomies that largely overlooked what was actually making those rioting Tibetans so angry.
But the Chinese official departed from the script to argue Tibet was an economic development problem. He told Australian diplomats and academics in Beijing that rivers of money from the Chinese Government had ended up with ethnic Han migrants, leaving an angry class of unemployed Tibetans.