Quote, I read this book after a short trip to Lhasa, during which time I did a more limited and amateur version of what French has done in this book. As a college student I was familiar with the activist youth groups that have become standard fare on all U.S. campuses. As a student of East Asian studies I was also familiar with the Chinese counter-claims with respect to Tibet. When the opportunity presented itself to me I went to judge for myself. While there I reached a similar conclusion that French did during his own travels through China and Tibet.
Suffice it to say that French is dismayed by both sides. The Chinese are not telling the truth, we all knew this, but neither are the Tibetans in exile and their Tibetophile Western cohorts a trustworthy source from which to base opinion from. French is under no delusion, horrible things happened in Tibet, especially during the Cultural Revolution, and there are still shady happenings going on in Tibet. The thing to remember, and the thing that French has laudably included in this work, is that similar things, and sometimes worse things, happened in China at the same time, and a "Free Tibet" is not possible without a free China.
In this way French may anger many of those in the Free Tibet camp by forever linking the destiny of Tibetans with that of the nation of China. French even surprised me by speculating that perhaps the Western activist movement (A movement which French himself is, or at least was, involved in)has actually hurt, rather than helped the Tibetans, an opinion that had also started to form in my mind before reading this book.
All in all I can say without a doubt that this is probably the best book written yet on the political and social conditions regarding Tibet and the Free Tibet Movement. My only problem with the work is that it was not longer.
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Spyral
