"The news is very grim."

That is how graduate student Tenzin Youdon describes the little she knows about the recent Chinese crackdown in her native Tibet.

Youdon, who is studying for her master's degree in community development, says the truth is not finding its way out of the Himalayan mountain society. Since protests for Tibet freedom and independence broke out March 10, spreading to other areas in China, the Chinese government has barred foreign journalists from Tibet, waged a heavy media offensive and interfered with Internet operations in that part of the world.

Like Tibetan exile groups, Youdon believes that Chinese security forces have killed more than 140 Tibetans, while the Chinese say the figure is much lower, under 20. For China, the Tibetan flare-up comes at a sensitive time — Beijing seeks to present itself as a gleaming new superpower at this summer's Olympic Games in China. But its response to Tibet may jeopardize those hopes for a new image, say UC Davis scholars.

China has ruled the country known as the "roof of the world" since 1951; the two cultures have had a difficult relationship going back more than 14 centuries.

"Influence and control over peripheral areas has been a major priority of China's statecraft for centuries," said Don Price, a UC Davis history professor emeritus who studies Chinese intellectual history. "In China, weakness (shown toward protests) is viewed as inviting large scale internal disturbances and foreign incursions."

As for the Tibetans, he said, the 1959 exodus of the Dalai Lama and his supporters "left very great bitterness among those who were repressed, and confirmed the idea among China's rulers that with sufficient force Tibet can be suppressed. There was fear that Tibet would become a proxy of England or later India, with which China did fight a war over the border," he said.

Also, the Chinese consider Tibetan Buddhism a threat to their brand of communism, he said.

"Tibetan Buddhism is a focus of loyalty, commitment and authority which rivals and potentially challenges the Communist Party, and serves as a rallying point for those who would like to see Tibet independent," he said.

The situation, says Price, is fluid. "It is conceivable that negotiations with the Dalai Lama, who has offered to negotiate, could to some degree mollify Tibetan rage, or tamp down the unrest until the Olympics are over."

Some good may result, he said. The Dalai Lama's strongest leverage at this point is world public opinion. In the best-case scenario, Tibet could emerge with some conditions of autonomy on a variant of China's "one country-two systems" arrangement while firmly renouncing independence, similar to Hong Kong's relationship with China.

Otherwise, Price expects "Chinese authorities to attempt to identify the most hostile Tibetans, sideline them, and establish unchallengeable police and military control."

One form of control involves shutting Tibet off from the outside world. And that is hard for overseas relatives like Youdon, who grew up in India but is ethnically of Tibetan origin with family still there.

"Most of my immediate family is in India, but there are some very far relatives in Tibet. We are not hearing anything from them, as the Chinese government taps all the phone lines and e-mail," said Youdon, whose immigration status is that of political refugee. She actually does not possess a passport.

The Chinese are not allowing "information to leave Tibet," she said. It is her understanding that Tibetans caught communicating with people outside their borders are "imprisoned and severely tortured." To make it difficult, she added, all the Web sites to upload videos are censored and all e-mails are filtered.

"A fellow Tibetan in the Bay Area is unable to call his parents in Tibet because he fears the consequences of even asking how they are doing," she said. "Another Tibetan called his parents in Tibet to ask if they were fine, but they would not answer his questions and kept talking about other things that were not related to his queries."

The Chinese are also waging a public relations war, said Youdon. "The Chinese have released videos of Tibetans breaking and burning shops in Lhasa, but not once have they shown how they are killing Tibetans."

Religion in Tibet is a taboo subject for the Chinese government, she said. Anyone having a photo of Dalai Lama could face "years of imprisonment and torture." It is this kind of restriction on freedom that drives Youdon to participate in the student-led Free Tibet movement (www.studentsforafreetibet.org), which has a UC Davis chapter of about 12 members.

On March 24, she and other activists were in San Francisco to call on city officials to ban the Olympic torch from being carried through the city on April 9.

"There were around 30 or more people who had come to participate," she said, "and to me that is a good number — they have been having these protests almost every day either in front of the city hall and the Chinese consulate, and every evening there is a candlelight vigil in Berkeley."

Youdon, who lives in Berkeley and is writing her thesis on the social welfare situation of Tibetans in India, said, "I find people coming more to the candlelight vigils than the day protests because most people have work in the morning."

As for protests at UC Davis, campus Free Tibet chapter president Tsokyi Choera said students held a candlelight vigil during finals week "for the people inside Tibet that lost their lives." Members are also active in the Olympic torch effort, said Choera, a senior in biotechnology.

Youdon said the Dalai Lama is "our only hope" and she prays that "something can be done peacefully without bloodshed" in the Tibet-China showdown.

Young and restless Tibetans

Like Youdon, many Tibetan observers say the Dalai Lama can play a pivotal role. UC Davis psychology professor Phil Shaver has a unique insight into the Dalai Lama and Tibetan culture. In 2005, he traveled to the Dalai Lama's compound in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas to present his work at a meeting of the Mind and Life Institute.

Shaver believes the present issue places the Dalai Lama in a delicate position. As the leader of Tibet's government-in-exile, he resides in neighboring India where he has since 1959. True to form and belief, the Dalai Lama has consistently renounced violence — by both the Chinese and the Tibetans — and he is careful to only seek autonomy, not outright independence, for Tibet.

However, Shaver says that non-violent approach — central to Tibetan spiritual life — is difficult for some of the younger generation of Tibetans to accept.

"They see no progress in their civil rights and religious freedom after years of waiting for a peaceful improvement of their condition," said Shaver, adding that until the recent outbreak of demonstrations and violence, there was no "forceful" Tibet resistance movement to China's hard-line occupation of Tibet.

However, if the Tibetan freedom movement turns violent, Shaver said, the Dalai Lama might resign as the Tibetan political leader. That would be a loss, for the Dalai Lama is a source of moral authority worldwide, representing an inner strength against the Chinese, who do not understand why the West reveres him so and values his religious importance.

"The Chinese communists under Mao viewed the Tibetans' reverence for monks and the Dalai Lama as a throw-back to feudal times," he said. "They had no respect for religion and probably genuinely believed that burning temples and jailing monks was a form of liberation."

Shaver is "hopeful but not optimistic about the outcome for the Tibetans," who have no weapons and very few resources, while China has almost unlimited resources and a huge army. Even the Dalai Lama's leverage with international opinion can go only so far, he added.

"Most governments are reluctant to embarrass or pressure the Chinese who have one of the largest and fastest growing economies in the world," said Shaver, noting, "Principle goes only so far under those conditions."

'Cultural genocide'

Meanwhile, conditions are changing within Tibet itself.

Youdon said the Chinese government is resettling millions of ethnic Chinese in Tibet, stripping the Himalayan forests, confiscating land from Tibetan nomads to build railroads, and scouring the countryside for natural resources, including oil.

In doing all this, she believes, the Chinese are committing a "cultural genocide" against Tibet, which is suffering a "dying culture." While she hopes for change after the most recent unrest, Youdon is realistic.

"We are fighting a giant country in China, and that is not easily done. The free Tibet groups talk about Tibetan independence, and the Dalai Lama talks about autonomy. Both of these are not on the table with China, which remains staunch that Tibet is a part of China — and that is a complete lie.

"I am not sure of what will happen next," she said. "All we can do is wait and see."

For a follow-up story on this issue, "Some Chinese on Campus Upset with Media's Tibet Coverage," see http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=10220