Thank you for your interest and support of our nation and struggle for freedom. While the idea of improved economic circumstances may serve to distract and alleviate the traumatized people of Tibet, what beats most strongly in Tibetan hearts is a desire for national independence. As you know Tibetans have decades of brutal experience of Chinese rule, the harrowing nature of which has burned itself upon the minds of Tibetans. That cannot be erased by social and economic improvements, the bars would be gold-plated and Tibetans remain in China’s prison. Tibetans therefore desire independence, and when looking at the over one hundred nations which regained their independence since World War Two, ask themselves, why should Tibetans settle for anything less?

Still, I think if Tibetans were given a real stake in Chinese success–if they were profiting at least as much as Han Chinese from economic development in China’s west–that most Tibetans would be quite content with a kind of limited autonomy that gave them special rights within the Chinese state. A practical solution (which has been quite clear for some time) would be something like this description by Christian Le Mière in Foreign Affairs.