China in Tibet

From The New York Times:

To earn the right to play host to this summer's Olympics, Beijing promised to improve its human rights record. As its behavior in Tibet - and the recent arrest of the human rights advocate Hu Jia and others - demonstrates, China does not take that commitment seriously.
.....
China had a chance to shine for its Olympic coming-out party and is blowing it.

According to this column, however, what the regime mainly cares about is its domestic audience:

Although international opinion is important, particularly as Beijing prepares to hold the Olympics in August, all politics are local, even in China. And for the party, maintaining its monopoly political grip on its far-flung empire is central to its strategy and continued existence, underscoring its vow that Tibet will never be allowed independence.

(And more on that internal dimension here.) H.D.S. Greenway in the Boston Globe:

Buddhism remains undaunted in Tibet, and with it, as the Chinese always feared, the seeds of a resistance.

Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has said that the Tibetan protesters 'wanted to incite the sabotage of the Olympic Games in order to achieve their unspeakable goal'. But the goal seems straightforwardly speakable (football being an Olympic sport): freedom for Tibet.