Opinions

Ngawang Sangdrol, the nun who served ten years in prison for peaceful protest before being released nine years before the end of her 21-year sentence on "good behaviour" parole last October, has been allowed to leave Tibet and arrived in Chicago in the US on Friday afternoon (28 March).

Several recent national-level appointments on Party committees for Tibetan leaders and the transfer of the former head of Sichuan province to the important post of Minister of Public Security in Beijing are an indication of the Party's current priorities on Tibet under the new Presidency of Hu Jintao

The US policy toward Iraq is an example of hypocrisy in action. Among the reasons put forward in favour of invasion, US President George W. Bush has stressed the need to free the Iraqi people from the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein.

Boycotting French and German products is silly. If Americans really want to make a political statement at the mall, try avoiding Chinese goods. A lot of Americans are calling for a boycott of French and German products as

Zhu Rongji, who retired as China's premier on Tuesday, is usually a very frank man. A few years ago he admitted the Chinese system was flawed by two plagues: incorrect figures sent by regional leaders about the development in their respective

There aren't many places where you can rack up so much good karma in so little time. Walking the one-mile-plus clockwise loop around the Labrang Monastery complex in north-central China, you can spin 1,174 brightly painted Tibetan prayer wheels

Turning the 1,174 prayer wheels at the Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, China. (AFP)

A stupa, or Buddhist shrine, stands before Mount Kailas in Tibet. (Lonely Planet Image)

Mount Kailas, a white pyramidal mountain in western Tibet, is a mystical locus of four religious groups of Asia: Buddhists, Jains, Hindus and Bonpos, who practice the shamanistic, pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet.

For centuries, Tibet has occupied a unique place in the Western imagination: romantic, mysterious, a remote mountain kingdom of incarnate lamas and nomadic herdsmen, of gold-roofed monasteries and hidden valleys.