Beginning today, the Christian Science Monitor is running a five-part series, "Tibet Journal." Although access by foreign journalists is largely forbidden, the Chinese government has since 2002 been sponsoring groups of foreign journalists in controlled visits. Robert Marquand provides a context form the trip of 32 foreign journalist with which he travelled.

The trips, although controlled, show how confident China has become. Authorities say that Tibetan popular unhappiness has ended, Chinese infrastructure is firmly established, tourism is on the rise, and that time has exhausted the human rights outrage of a religious civilization overrun by a modernizing socialist state.

The issue isn't simple. Beijing has a story: In the past four decades China has raised Tibetan literacy from 2 to 95 percent. Radio and TV have been installed. A country with no roads previously now has 20,000 miles of them. Life expectancy has nearly doubled. Those are the claims, and over the next week our talks will often refer to the 19th century American west as a corollary.