“It (the pre-1959 Tibet’s government) was a state apparatus run by aristocratic, nepotistic monks that collected taxes, jailed and tortured dissenters and engaged in all the usual political intrigues.”

“The government set up in exile in India and, at least until the 1970s, received $US1.7 million a year from the CIA.”

“The Dalai Lama himself was on the CIA’s payroll from the late 1950s until 1974, reportedly receiving $US15,000 a month ($US180,000 a year).”

“The government was involved in running 24 businesses in all, but decided in 2003 that it would withdraw from these because such commercial involvement was not appropriate.”

“It is not clear how donations enter its budgeting. These are likely to run to many millions annually, but the Dalai Lama’s Department of Finance provided no explicit acknowledgment of them or of their sources.”

“Certainly, there are plenty of rumours among expatriate Tibetans of endemic corruption and misuse of monies collected in the name of the Dalai Lama.”

“The Dalai Lama has been remarkably nepotistic, appointing members of his family to many positions of prominence. In recent years, three of the six members of the Kashag, or cabinet, the highest executive branch of the Tibetan government-in-exile, have been close relatives of the Dalai Lama.”

“Contrary to widespread belief, he is not a vegetarian. He eats meat. He has done so (he claims) on a doctor’s advice following liver complications from hepatitis. I have checked with several doctors but none agrees that meat consumption is necessary or even desirable for a damaged liver.”

“A sister-in-law served as head of the government-in-exile’s planning council and its Department of Health.”

“A younger sister served as health and education minister and her husband served as head of the government-in-exile’s Department of Information and International Relations.”

“Their daughter was made a member of the Tibetan parliament in exile. A younger brother has served as a senior member of the private office of the Dalai Lama and his wife has served as education minister.”

The Tibet Autonomous Region, in southwest China, covers an area of 1.22 million square kilometers, or one-eighth of the total land area of China.

Tibet has various complex landforms such as high and steep mountains, deep valleys, glaciers, bare rock and the Gobi Desert. The region has an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters, earning it the nickname “the roof of the world.”

Tibet had a population of 2.87 million by the end of 2008, more than 95 percent of whom are Tibetans and other ethnic minorities like Hui, Monba, Lhoba. Nearly 20 percent of the population live in towns and the rest live in agricultural and pastoral areas.

Currently, there are more than 1,700 religious venues in Tibet, with more than 46,000 resident monks and nuns.

On May 23, 1951, the “Agreement of the Central People’s Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” was signed.

In an attempt to perpetuate the old social system, the upper ruling strata in Tibet publicly abandoned the agreement and staged an armed rebellion on March 10, 1959.

The Central People’s Government and the Tibetan people foiled the rebellion, to safeguard the unity of the nation and the basic interests of the Tibetan people. Meanwhile, the Chinese government launched a vigorous democratic reform to overthrow the feudal serfdom system and liberate about 1 million serfs and slaves.

On March 28, 1959, the State Council announced the dismissal of the original local government of Tibet, and gave power to the Preparatory Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region, with the 10th Panchen Lama as its acting chairman. After that, serfdom-based feudal regimes were toppled and the people’s democratic rule was established.

In September 1965, the First People’s Congress of Tibet convened, at which the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region was proclaimed.

From 1959 to 2008, a total of 201.9 billion yuan (29.5 billion U.S. dollars) from the central budget went to Tibet. The local Gross Domestic Product (GDP) soared from 174 million yuan to 39.591 billion yuan during that period. The per-capital GDP grew from 142 yuan in 1959 to 13,861 yuan in 2008.

In 2007, 96.4 percent of Tibet’s voting residents participated the process to elect some 34,000 deputies to the grassroots-level people’s congresses. More than 94 percent of the elected deputies were Tibetans or other ethnic minorities.

In 2008, nearly all counties in Tibet became accessible with highways. About 2.1 million residents, or 73 percent of Tibet’s population, now have access to electric power.

The average life expectancy in Tibet has increased from 35.5 years in 1959 to 67 years at present.

The Tibetan language is widely used in school teaching, government work and judicial proceedings, mass communication, and computer software development.

Tibet now is the first place in China to enjoy free compulsory education in both urban and rural areas. By 2008, all 73 counties in Tibet had implemented six-year compulsory education among school-age children.

Why do western commentators idolise a celebrity monk who hangs out with Sharon Stone and once guest-edited French Vogue?

Has there ever been a political figure more ridiculous than the Dalai Lama? This is the “humble monk” who forswears worldly goods in favour of living a simple life dressed in maroon robes. Yet in 1992 he guest-edited French Vogue, the bible of the decadent high-fashion classes, which is packed with pictures of the half-starved daughters of the aristocracy modelling skirts and shirts that most of us could never afford.

He claims to be the current incarnation of the Tulkus line of Buddhist masters, who are “exempt from the wheel of death and rebirth.” Yet he’s best known for hanging out with clueless western celebs like Richard Gere and Sharon Stone (who is still most famous for showing her vagina on the big screen). Stone once introduced the Dalai Lama at a glittering fundraising ball.

The Dalai Lama allows himself to be used as a tool by western powers keen to humiliate China. Between the late 1950s and 1974, he is alleged to have received around 15,000 dollars a month, or 180,000 a year, from the CIA.

He has also been remarkably nepotistic, promoting his brothers and their wives to positions of extraordinary power in “his fiefdom-in-exile in Dharamsala, northern India.”

He poses as the quirky, giggly, modern monk who once auctioned his Land Rover on eBay for 80,000 dollars and has even done an advert for Apple.

Yet in truth he is a product of the crushing feudalism of archaic, pre-modern Tibet, where an elite of Buddhist monks treated the masses as serfs and ruthlessly punished them if they stepped out of line.

The Dalai Lama demands religious freedom, yet he persecutes. Those who defied his writ were thrown out of their jobs, mocked in the streets and even had their homes smashed up.

When worshippers complained about their treatment, they were told by representatives of the Dalai Lama that “concepts like democracy and freedom of religion are empty when it comes to the wellbeing of the Dalai Lama.”

The Dalai Lama has effectively been turned into a cartoon good guy. In America and western Europe, the Dalai Lama has been embraced as a living, breathing representative of unsullied goodness.

Just as earlier generations of disillusioned aristocrats fell in love with a fictional version of Tibet (Shangri-La), so contemporary un-progressives idolise a fictional image of the Dalai Lama.

Most strikingly, the Dalai Lama is used as a battering ram by western governments in their culture war with China. The reason he is flattered by world leaders and bankrolled by the CIA is not because these institutions care very much for liberty in Tibet, but rather because they want to ratchet up international pressure on their new competitors in world politics: the Chinese.

At least one reason why the Dalai Lama can pose as “the ultimate spiritual authority” and all-round supreme leader of Tibetans and their future is because influential elements in the west have empowered him to play that role. In doing so, they have been complicit in the infantilisation of the Tibetan people.