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Hi, I've been wandering this forum for a while, reading some interesting alternate histories and now I had an interesting idea, where I guess you can help me.

A while ago, I read an article in a magazine, about how undemocratic and religious intolerant the Dalai Lama and his exile gouvernement is. In a nutshell, they are quite undemocratic and a few years ago the Dalai Lama requested Buddhists to stop praying to a certain saint. Everyone who would not obey to this was (and is still) accused of being a Chinese sympatisant and those who still pray to this one Saint still get trouble with him. For political decissions, the Dalai Lama apparently relies also on an oracle.
The article also featured a short look into the old Tibetan gouvernement, before the Chinese came. It was apparently a feudal government, with the power shared between the Dalai Lama, the monasteries and the nobles. They treated their people inhumane and punished small crimes and open critic with draconic punishments (example, a man who stole some kind of goblet from a monastery, got his hand chopped of, was put into a sack and thrown into a canyon).
In short it was horrible. Apperently, the Chinese at first tried to let themselves be celebrated as liberators (which failed, because they treated the Tibetans like shit and also suppressed their culture and religion)

Okay, that was longer than I intended...
Anyway, what I was thinking is:
What if the Chinese didn't want to reclaim Tibet, for example, if China didn't become Communist, so that Tibet is today still an independent state, but still feudal and inhumane (similar to North Korea). I think of a scenario, where Tibet is also listed in the Axis of Evil, and tries to get its hands on The Bomb.
So insteat of FREE TIBET demonstrations, there would be open critic. No big politician in a democratic country would want to be photographed with the Dalai Lama. Caricatures on the allways smiling Dalai Lama, similar to jokes about the misget Kim Jong-Il.
Also, far less Buddhists all over the Western World (I guess), and Buddhism wouldn't nessecarily be regarded as some kind feel-good religion, like it is today.

Well, your opinions. Plausible? Possible PODs? Other ideas how the global situation might look?
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