The Tibetan crisis has brought tragedy to everyone—except, possibly, the ideologues in China's ruling party and military who will now feel free to press for a harder policy line. Here's a commentary from my colleague in Shanghai, Duncan Hewitt, who's lived in China continuously for more than a decade (he first lived here as a student in 1986) and is author of "Getting Rich First: Life in a Changing China":

What happened in Lhasa is a tragedy for all sides. It is a tragedy for the Han Chinese settlers, unwitting participants in the great political game of control over Tibet, who had moved there for economic reasons. Their government encouraged them to do so by opening up the railway and the economy and they can now be seen on Chinese state TV grieving for relatives killed and businesses destroyed in the riots.

It is a tragedy for the ordinary Tibetans, whose family members now face stiff punishment  after their frustrations with Chinese rule led them to take part in the violence, whatever its specific causes, or who were struck by the bullets which China now admits police fired in at least one ethnically Tibetan area in Sichuan province.  (China says 19 people were killed, while exile sources now say there are an estimated 140 deaths.) And a tragedy too for the broader population of Tibet who now face a reinvigorated hard line from Tibet's Chinese rulers, summed up by the region's Communist Party boss's denunciation of the Dalai Lama in the kind of undiplomatic language not heard publicly from Chinese officials for years:  'a wolf in monk's robes, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast," was how Zhang Qingli described the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

It's also a tragedy for the Dalai Lama himself, whose decades of dedication to a non-violent and conciliatory approach to China seem to have fallen on deaf ears among some younger Tibetans inside and outside Tibet - and whose chances of progress in the dialogue with China on which he has long pinned his hopes now look more forlorn than ever.  And it may also look rather tragic from the point of view of China's leaders, who had believed that years of channeling economic growth and investing in infrastructure and 'modernization' in Tibet would dilute the power of religion and traditional culture, and help them put behind them the anti-Chinese anger dating from Beijing's full takeover of Tibet in 1959, and the anti-religious brutality which followed in the Cultural Revolution.

It could also be a tragedy for ethnic harmony in China. The pictures shown on state TV may fuel traditional Chinese suspicions that the Tibetans (and by implication others in remote western regions) are wild and primitive: when, as a student in China in the 1980s, I told people that I was planning to go to Tibet, many looked alarmed and said "don't go - it's very dangerous, they all have guns."   This month's events will reinforce such attitudes, and risk overriding the relative progress in recent years, which have seen growing interest in traditional Tibetan culture among Chinese intellectuals and reports that a few people within the Chinese regime have been willing to countenance a more tolerant approach to the Dalai Lama.  (This was hinted at by the exiled Tibetan leader in his Newsweek interview, when he spoke of Chinese officials sending him messages of support even in the past week.)  

Now more conservative forces are likely to have the upper hand: the military, for whom Tibet's main importance is as a protective buffer against India and other neighboring countries, and the ideologues, who seek to impose Chinese patriotism on the teaching of Tibetan Buddhism.

Perhaps this situation will be welcomed by the hardliners.   Certainly the recent violence may be a sign that the Chinese authorities are reaping what they have sown; for years they appear to have been intent on marginalizing the Dalai Lama, denouncing him as a separatist, and replacing his choice for the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's second most important religious figure, with their own. True, there have been sporadic back-channel talks between representatives of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese authorities. But these have yielded little, fuelling the perception that policy makers in Beijing may have resolved simply to wait for the Tibetan spiritual leader to die - at which point China will, through its control of Buddhism in Tibet, be able to supervise the selection and appointment his successor. It's always been a high-risk strategy, one which would quite likely lead to a schism, with exiled Tibetans nominating their own alternative candidate for Dalai Lama. But China may have calculated that a split Tibetan community would be easier to deal with. Yet if this marginalization of the Dalai Lama is the Chinese approach, then recent events suggest it may already have sent a message to some in Tibet that the Dalai Lama's path of negotiation and conciliation is getting them nowhere, contributing to the anger and frustration which boiled over so violently in Lhasa.

There's no doubt that there would be great obstacles to success in any talks between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, not least in the definition of the geographical area for which the Dalai Lama seeks full autonomy (with several million ethnic Tibetans living in areas which are now part of other Chinese provinces). But in not talking to him, and in apparently intentionally ignoring his repeated comments that he does not seek independence (while adding an extra test of his loyalty—after he angered Beijing by visiting Taiwan in 1997—by demanding that he accepts that Taiwan is part of China) Beijing may be missing the last chance of finding a peaceful long term choice for the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's second most important religious figure, with their own.  

True, there have been sporadic back-channel talks between representatives of the Dalai Lama and Chinese authorities.  But these have yielded little, fuelling the perception that policy makers in Beijing may have resolved simply to wait for the Tibetan spiritual leader to die - at which point China will, through its control of Buddhism in Tibet, be able to supervise the selection and appointment his successor.   It's always been a high-risk strategy, one which would quite likely lead to a schism, with exiled Tibetans nominating their own alternative candidate for Dalai Lama.  But China may have calculated that a split Tibetan community would be easier to deal with.  Yet if this marginalization of the Dalai Lama is the Chinese approach, then recent events suggest it may already have sent a message to some in Tibet that the Dalai Lama's path of negotiation and conciliation is getting them nowhere, contributing to the anger and frustration which boiled over so violently in Lhasa.

There's no doubt that there would be great obstacles to success in any talks between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, not least in the definition of the geographical area for which the Dalai Lama seeks full autonomy (with several million ethnic Tibetans living in areas which are now part of other Chinese provinces).   But in not talking to him, and in apparently intentionally ignoring his repeated comments that he does not seek independence (while adding an extra test of his loyalty - after he angered Beijing by visiting Taiwan in 1997 by demanding that he accepts that Taiwan is part of China) Beijing may be missing the last chance of finding a peaceful long term resolution to the situation of Tibet. And to its exiles who could, if they were to return home, bring significant expertise and wealth to the region.

Those who banked on economic prosperity resolving the issue smoothly in China's favor are now facing the possibility that the coming decades may be a time of greater friction than they had anticipated -- and the tougher line they are likely to take towards religion and patriotic education in Tibet as a result of the recent unrest may only exacerbate the situation.