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The Economist says that China’s found and following the absolutely wrong solution to the Tibet problem:

So China persists in seeing the Dalai Lama as the embodiment of its “Tibet problem”. In fact, he offers the only plausible solution to it. China’s strategy for dealing with him is to wait for his death, and install a pliable successor. Last year it even passed an edict giving the government a role in approving new incarnations of such “living Buddhas”. But this strategy is doomed. No successor will command such veneration. And so none will be as persuasive an advocate of non-violence and of a “middle way” for Tibet, short of the full independence many Tibetans believe is their birthright.

… Serious talks with the Dalai Lama, and the possibility of his returning home for the first time since fleeing to exile in India after an uprising in 1959, might help assuage Tibetan anger. It would also help vindicate those who argued that the staging of the Olympic games in Beijing would make China less repressive. It would give China the chance, belatedly, to honour the promise of autonomy it gave Tibet in 1951, in an agreement foisted on the young Dalai Lama. It would boost its image around the world, and even in Taiwan, which might become less averse to the idea of Chinese sovereignty.

Also of note, their correspondent’s most recent reporting.