Tibet

The Kingdom of Bhutan, for over a hundred years an absolute monarchy under the Wangchuk Dynasty, held its first elections.

"All things," Lord Buddha reminds us, "are ephemeral." The two Buddhist autocrats who saw their power eroded this week in South Asia might have kept this advice in mind. From his Dharmasala lair, His Holiness the Dalai Lama lamented helplessly as the violent protests in Lhasa -- and the crackdown by Beijing -- proceeded apace, not obviously affected by his pleas for calm. And Jigme Khesar Namgyel, son of the Scourge of Thimpu, watched his subjects vote for a national assembly for the first time, in a ballot he himself decreed, but that still diminishes his authority. MORE

Violent protests against Chinese rule erupted in Tibet, and the government locked down the city of Lhasa.

In some ways the Chinese government is patient, subtle, and sophisticated. Although it never faces a judgment at the ballot box, in domestic affairs it often acts as if it were "accountable," trying to address and fend off whatever is the latest source of popular concern. Inflation, economic inequalities, pollution, snow-borne travel disasters -- these and other problems can lead to shifts in policy that rival those in any country. And when it comes to police-state controls, the government usually pushes just far enough to get what it wants, without pushing too far and generating too much backlash. But none of this is true when it comes to a part of Chinese policy now most in the world's eyes: how it will respond in Tibet. MORE