Democratic leader of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, made a rare visit to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet and met with the Communist Party chief of the region during the second week of November 2015 when she came to Beijing to meet some officials there.
US lawmaker Ms. Pelosi and her colleagues were on an official trip to China and the Chinese leaders allowed her the rare opportunity to make a tightly controlled visit to the Tibet Autonomous Region, which is usually off limits to foreign officials and journalists. The visited region includes Lhasa and the central Tibetan plateau, as well as areas bordering Nepal.
Ms. Pelosi is a very good close friend of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader vilified by China. She has spoken out strongly against Chinese repression in Tibet.
Pelosi described the visit as highly controlled, estimating that more than 30 Chinese security officers accompanied the delegation of seven. Though she could not be sure just how Potemkin what they saw was, she noted, for example, that what China “wanted us to see was housing. And we did. Did we see families? I’m not sure.”
Still, she called the trip “very valuable,” adding: “The difference between seeing and not is vast – no matter how they show you what they want you to see.”
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