Did previous UK policy recognise Tibets independence?
TS: Tibet’s independence? I wouldn’t say that, but suzerainty yes. And most other governments for a very long time have not come out openly and said: ‘We recognise Tibet as part of China.’ It’s over the years that it has been developing and unfortunately these days the Chinese government is very aggressively going after each government. As I’ve said before, they tried to put that pressure. One of the problems of the Chinese government has always been the legitimacy of their presence in Tibet. This is a big question mark.
