Will Tibet abandon the 'Middle Way'?

Tibetans fed up with Beijing's intransigence gathered today for a summit that could see them abandon the Dalai Lama's moderate "Middle Way" to push for full independence from China.

"Everybody is in the mood that the dialogue has come to a standstill, there is no headway and people are rethinking their policies," said Tseten Norbu, an MP in the Tibetan government-in-exile at Dharamsala, a hill station in northern India. "We've been talking for 30 years and there has been no result at all. This is the big question mark. Now we have to think and strategise."

The Dalai Lama's envoys have met Chinese representatives for eight rounds of talks since 2002 on the Tibet issue without any progress. At the most recent talks, this month, Beijing again rejected out of hand the Tibetan movement's long-standing demand for autonomy, and the Dalai Lama, in a stark acknowledgment of his frustrations, admitted that his efforts had failed. "As far as I'm concerned, I have given up," he said. The 73-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate, who had a gallstone removed last month, is not attending the Dharamsala meeting, prompting speculation that he wants to step back from the day-to-day political leadership and is paving the way for a possible successor.

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Beijing blames the Dalai Lama for inciting anti-Chinese riots in the region in March, when protests in the capital, Lhasa, erupted into violence against Han Chinese settlers and spread to other areas of western China with Tibetan populations. Tibet's government-in-exile said more than 200 Tibetans were killed in a subsequent Chinese crackdown.

"The majority want a peaceful way but as we saw in March, some people are demonstrating," said Tsering Lama, from the Jawalakhel refugee camp for Tibetan exiles in Nepal.

For the Chinese, Tibet is, was and always will be China, and Beijing says it is freeing the people of Tibet from the yoke of a malevolent theocracy that enslaved the people in the territory for hundreds of years. It also says that it is helping the territory by investing billions of yuan in the local economy, though Tibetans say that the Chinese are sending ethnic Han Chinese to the region to exploit its resources.

The debate in Dharamsala – where the Dalai Lama and his supporters set up their government-in-exile in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule – will focus mainly on whether to continue with the compromise strategy of autonomy or whether to risk China's wrath by striving for independence. But factions within those camps have an array of ways to achieve their aims, from more and angrier protests to upping the pressure on the West to intervene, with some even touting sabotage of Chinese infrastructure in the disputed region.

The speaker of the Tibetan government-in-exile said the cabinet had consulted some 17,000 Tibetans inside Tibet. Almost half said they would follow any decision by the Dalai Lama, more than 5,000 said they wanted Tibetan independence and 2,000 preferred the "Middle Way" approach.

Karma Pangring, the leader of Tibet's exiles in Switzerland, said: "The older generation is loyal to the Middle Way and wants to strengthen it, but the younger groups want a different way and their voices are getting louder. But what can we do? What form will that take? This meeting won't decide that question."