Whipping was not only legal, but also a common practice. Judicial mutilation, the gouging out of eyes, and cutting off of hands or feet, was not outlawed until 1913. In fact, Harrer saw many limbless Tibetans on the streets, who had been brutalized earlier.

Tashi Tsering, a critic of traditional Tibetan society, wrote an account of how he was whipped severely as a 13-year-old boy for failing to participate in a dance for the Dalai Lama in 1942. Harrer has said monks were especially cruel during the annual Losar Festival, which falls on March 4, when government officials granted permission to Buddhist monks to flog Tibetans, which frequently led to fatalities.

If the West insists on launching campaigns to improve human rights in Tibet, it must also more thoroughly examine the history of Tibet to determine if the Dalai Lama is as innocent as he appears to be. Does the Dalai Lama want the return of a theocratic Tibet?

Yet casting aspersions at the Dalai Lama will not garner the support of the West.

Instead, China must talk about its achievements in Tibet in terms of the progress that the region's economy and society has made. Beijing has to show that the new Tibet is better than the old, feudal Tibet.

It has to emphasize its plans for Tibet's future, too.

Changing the West's misconceptions about the central government's role in Tibet will be difficult. But it something that Beijing has to do if it wants to promote tourism and trade in the autonomous region.

Currently, China is dealing with the Tibet autonomous region in a constructive way, but the Dalai Lama and his fellow activists have a vested interest in keeping the West misinformed. Nowhere does this seem more pervasive than in the articles that Jamyan Norbu, a Tibetan writer, wrote in the Huffington Post on Jan 4, 2011. Norbu has said that for Tibetans "to engage China more constructively" is "to live within this lie".

But, it's Norbu who is being dishonest when he engages in a public relations campaign that calls for extremism and independence, rather than a system of collaboration and moderation with Beijing.

The author is a journalist with China Radio International and before that was based in the United States and later in South Korea.