Yes, an autonomous Tibet Autonomous Region

How are Tibetans to proceed with Tibet, now that the 'cause' has slowed to a crawl? The Khampa uprising of the 1960s and 1970s is but a fading memory now, ready for fictionalising films. The misty-eyed insurgents who survived are now aged and on their way out. The incredible rise of Tibetophilia in the West, underpinned by the humane spiritual politics of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, has fed the world's need for a spiritual anchor more than it has provided political basis for bringing freedom or true autonomy to Tibet. Southasia's own governments, overawed by China's economic rise and intimidated by its reactive insularity, prefer not to rile the dragon.

The government-in-exile in Dharamsala has gone more than halfway to meet Beijing. There have been several rounds of talks between the two, which indicate that the latter at least recognises the Tibet issue as a political issue, whatever its harsh propoganda. But there has been nothing more forthcoming from Beijing over the half-decade that the talks have been held. Beijing seeks to overwhelm the Tibet question through the sheer weight of its power and certitude. One would wish it were otherwise, but it seems that the future of Tibet is hostage to the slow pace of democratisation within China. Those who had hoped that the Chinese economic boom of the 1990s would lead to magnanimity on, say, the identity demands of Xinjiang or Tibet, have come to realise that such magnanimity will be a long time coming. Or, alternatively, it will come all of a sudden, in a way that cannot be planned.