To be honest and this might sound a bit blunt, but I've always looked upon the Dalai Lama as the Pope of Buddhism.

Basically he is as much a political leader as he is a spiritual one and his image became very symbolic for Buddhism and Tibet. But... he basically does as he pleases, for example some time ago he suddenly forbid his followers to pray to one of the most popular Gods.

A quite selfish act and followers that literally love the Dalai Lama as their father and this particular God as their mother so to speak are having huge problems in Tibet now. They get excluded from a whole lot of things and became outcasts because they now believe in and pray to the wrong God (according to 'their father', just imagine what this means in practice for these people. They even have trouble getting jobs and so on now because of it.)...

According to the Dalai Lama he always got 'bad luck' from this particular God and therefore it's forbidden to pray to now, but basically the Dalai Lama is as power-hungry as any political or spiritual leader out there and wanted to press his mark on modern Buddhism. I mean, was it really necessary to exclude this popular God from the pantheon of Buddistic Gods? Heck no, not at all.

I'm not exactly pro-Chinese when it comes to Tibet, no country has the right to occupy territory that isn't somehow rightfully theirs and even then it's difficult to justify any kind of occupation.

But I do think the Chinese have a pretty valid point when it comes to having made Tibet more modern. Still, is that a good enough argument to simply claim total control over Tibet? I don't really think so, but I would have to dive more into the history of both Tibet and China to see who's 'more right' than the other.