For foreign visitors, travel to and within Tibet is heavily restricted. Arriving alone is not allowed, and pre-approved tourist groups must present passports and permits in order to enter. At entry points, security personnel—uniformed soldiers and riot police armed with weapons and fire extinguishers—stand on alert and stare visitors down with an intensity unusual elsewhere in China.

Within Lhasa, tourists caught taking a picture of a police checkpoint are immediately approached and ordered to delete it. Even visitors on organized tours attract scrutiny: At the Ganden Monastery just outside of the city, policemen reported our group’s positions to each other on walkie-talkies, unaware that we could speak Chinese. Closed-circuit video cameras—high-tech, 360-degree-view devices mounted on horizontal beams that resemble streetlights—blanket Lhasa’s streets. These, at least, are an improvement over what used to be there: rooftop snipers.

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The Chinese government claims that Tibet has been an integral part of China since the Yuan Dynasty invaded the territory in the 13th Century. For much of the ensuing centuries, Tibet, though received in Beijing as part of successive Chinese empires, was not subject to the same laws. After the Qing dynasty fell in 1911, Tibet established diplomatic relations with other countries and was largely separated from the turmoil within China until the Communists arrived in 1951. In 1959, following a failed uprising, The Dalai Lama fled across the border to India, from where he has led the Tibetan government in exile ever since. Over the years, as he became an international icon, The Dalai Lama has moderated his political demands: He no longer wants independence for Tibet but simply greater autonomy. Nevertheless, the Chinese media still assails him as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,”—a separatist unworthy of Tibetan adulation. Images of the Dalai Lama have been banned in the region since 1996. The conventional Chinese belief toward Tibet is that the Communist Party liberated Tibetan people from an oppressive, feudal government under the Lamas and, through development, have improved their material welfare and provided them with opportunities in the modern world. Beijing’s investments in the territory are substantial: In 2011, China announced a five-year plan that includes $21.4 billion in infrastructure projects such as road, rail, and hydropower. Tibetans argue that these improvements have come at a great cost to their culture and way of life, and that the migration of Han Chinese settlers—lured by government incentives—is turning once-traditional Lhasa into an ordinary Chinese city.

Tibet’s strategic importance to China is great. The territory is the source of Asia’s most important waterways, including the Yangtze, Yellow, and Mekong Rivers, which irrigate China’s fertile central plain and most of Southeast Asia. It also serves as a buffer between the country and an emerging rival, India. Beijing feels that any compromise with Tibetans would encourage separatist movements elsewhere, particularly among the Uighur population in China’s far-west Xinjiang region. It is essential to China’s domestic security that Tibetans come, eventually, to regard themselves as Chinese.

Meanwhile, the Tibetans have grown increasingly desperate. Over the last two years, tensions have led to a spike in self-immolations, resulting in over 120 deaths, and the possibility that people may set themselves on fire explains Lhasa's tense police presence. In Jokhang Square, the physical center of ancient Lhasa and a holy Buddhist pilgrimage site, soldiers carry fire extinguishers instead of guns. At gas stations, everyone must register and report exactly how much gasoline they take, and to which destinations. The government monitors siphoning—after all, it may be a possible prelude to self-immolation.