The Wall Street Journal
FEBRUARY 22, 2010, 10:52 A.M. ET

Much ado has been made about President Obama's chat with the Dalai Lama last week and the predictable response from Beijing. "The U.S. act grossly interfered in China's internal affairs, gravely hurt the Chinese people's national sentiments and seriously damaged the Sino-U.S. ties," said a government spokesman with the usual understatement. But the verbal barrage reveals more about China than it does about U.S. policy toward Tibet.

Beijing believes it can browbeat other nations into ignoring its human-rights violations in Tibet. In 2008, China canceled a trade summit with the European Union because of a planned meeting between the Dalai Lama and Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2007, shortly after the Dalai Lama received the Congressional gold medal, U.S. warships were turned away from Hong Kong. Similar petty retaliations have followed the Dalai Lama's meetings with leaders in European countries in recent years.

The fist-shaking has yielded short-term benefits for Beijing. President Obama postponed his meeting with the Tibetan leader until after his November trip to China, and his Administration has dealt with Chinese human-rights abuses in whispers. Leaders in Australia, New Zealand and other democratic nations have also declined to meet the Dalai Lama in recent years.

All this has given China a freer hand with which to pursue its crackdown on dissent in Tibet, which started in earnest after the March 2008 riots in Lhasa. The China-Tibet dialogue has stalled. Beijing is also pushing ahead with plans to develop the territory with little regard for Tibetan concerns over the influx of Chinese immigrants that will further stamp out the Tibetan way of life.

Yet for all that, China's tough stance will only draw more attention to the Tibetan cause. "Free Tibet" groups abound in France, Britain and other free nations. In the U.S. last week, the Dalai Lama was awarded a medal from the National Endowment for Democracy. He will spend the rest of the week touring California and Florida and addressing audiences at sold-out talks.

China's verbal barrages also sustain a vibrant and ever-more-angry Tibetan youth movement abroad. In the nearly two years since the Lhasa riots, Tibetan groups that support independence (which the Dalai Lama does not) have grown more vocal.

Much of the reason Tibet touches such a raw nerve in Beijing is that the unrest there goes to the heart of the Communist Party's lack of democratic legitimacy. The more the Party attempts to impose its will—on Lhasa and on those who dare to meet with its most famous son—the less legitimate its rule will seem, and the more support the Dalai Lama will receive around the world.