Opinions

The new Chinese leadership has just taken over the reins of the most populous nation in the world. Already many dark clouds are appearing in the sky of the Middle Empire. With the Iraq war nearing its end, what is going to happen during the next few months is anybody's guess.

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His cosy little basement office is lined with rows and rows of books, mostly on religion and spirituality; photographs of the Dalai Lama share a comfortable space all over with those of Ramakrishna Paramhansa's and yet, filmmaker Rajiv Mehrotra prefers to call himself an "undeserving spiritual aspirant".

One hundred tour guides from different Chinese provinces have been assigned to Tibet each year for the next decade, representing a further threat to the livelihoods of Tibetan guides, who have been under increasing political pressure for several years.

A few days ago, there was a news item quoting the Dalai Lama as having said that he wished to be the last of his line, and that he would like the position itself to be abolished after his death. This is a significant reiteration of something the Dalai Lama has been talking about for quite some time.

High on the Tibetan Plateau, the city of Lhasa is threatened with submersion, but not by its neighboring river. With the large influx of Han Chinese over the past several decades, the character of this once exotic and isolated city is changing rapidly.

On January 26, 2003, in Sichuan province, China executed Lobsang Dondrup, a Tibetan political prisoner, on allegations of having been involved in bombings aimed at supporting Tibetan independence.

The imposition of Chinese urban and industrial models on traditional modes of production amongst Tibet¹s nomads is leading to increasing poverty and contributing to grassland degradation, according to the findings of recent surveys of

The February 2003 edition of the Hong Kong magazine 'Contend' (Zheng Ming) featured an article by mainland writer Zhang Yao Jie, commenting on the drama 'I Will Wait for You in Heaven'.

Xinhua and several other official Chinese sources have recently released a spate of reports on rapid economic growth in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) over the last two years. These reports are consistent with the pattern observed since the late 1990s