This year was supposed to mark the coming of age for the People's Republic of China.

As the host of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China has been gearing up to showcase to the world the new dynamic country with its growing economic influence on the world and new standing as a world superpower in its own right.

But that was before its brutal crackdown in Tibet in response to the latest uprising of Tibetan nationalists who considered the continued presence of Chinese rule as a violation of their country's right to exist as an independent country.

China has always considered Tibet to be part of its national territory despite the clear ethnic difference between Tibetans and the Han Chinese who live in mainland China.

China is clearly taken aback by the sudden world awareness of the human rights question not only concerning Tibet, but also its turning a blind eye to the human rights violations and oppression carried out in Sudan over its policies in the province of Darfur where China has important economic links and its seem tolerance of the brutal military rulers in Myanmar (also known as Burma).

The Olympic flame was lit in its place of origin of the Games in Greece. The traditional marathon with the Olympic flame is carried by various runners through different countries until it reaches the host country of the Olympics, but this year's Olympic run has been met by a storm of protests over China's actions in Tibet.

Not only have there been loud protests along the route but several attempts have been made to put out the Olympic flame which in itself, if successful, would send a strong message of disapproval of China being the host of this year's Olympics.

So far calls for a boycott of this summer's Olympics have been met by rejection by the various national Olympic committees, followed by their governments, claiming that a boycott would only hurt the sporting aspirations of sports men and women.

But the real reason governments are not enthused about a sports boycott of the Beijing Olympics comes down to economics and trade links with China. As the leading emerging economic power in the world with a huge market for everything from military exports to cars and aeroplanes to Coca Cola, a market of more than a billion people is not something that the world's merchants can afford to ignore.

China is all too aware of its power and thus probably felt comfortable in handling the recent protest in Tibet in the usual way, i.e., by way of a brutal crackdown. The minority peoples of China are divided into 54 nationalities and account for about six per cent of China's overall population of 1.3 billion.

At first the Chinese followed the former Soviet style of ruling its different ethnic groups by creating a federation of separate republics with autonomous status within the Chinese state but could not opt for independence.

Tibet, however, has long considered itself separate from China, existing in one of the most remote regions of the world and sealed off from the outside world by the massive Himalayan mountains.

It has a territory that is almost as large as Western Europe but a very small population of about two million people, although millions more live in the nearby Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu. That is why during the recent protests you hear reports of outbreaks of Tibetan unrest in China itself.

Tibet itself had its own ruling class which had at its centre the Dalai Lama and a hierarchy of monks or lamas and members of the aristocracy. Tibetans believe that the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of Chenresi, the Buddha of Mercy.

The Dalai Lama begins his rule as a young boy who it is believed fits the description of the living Buddha. Sometimes such searches have taken years. No matter what the Chinese have done to try to modify this belief among the Tibetan people, even going so far as to claim that they have the real Dalai Lama after the current one was forced to flee and take up exile in India. Even so, the Dalai Lama and his status among Tibetans remain strong.

In 1950 the Chinese communists sent their army into Tibet, ending its nominal independence that was even recognised by leading nations of the day, including the United States and Britain. During its colonial rule of India Britain imposed a trading agreement on Tibet after it sent a military expedition to the Tibetan capital Lhasa. Later this was renegotiated with the Chinese giving them a sovereignty claim over Tibet.

In March 1959 a revolt against the Chinese rule broke out in Lhasa. It proved to be the most serious resistance to Chinese rule mounted by any of its minority groups. The Chinese claim that only 600 people lost their lives but the figure was probably much higher than that. Thousands were detained and thousands left their country following their leader the Dalai Lama into exile.

The Chinese claim that they had treated their minority groups much better than genocidal policies of Europeans against Native Americans when Europeans first went to North America and better than the British settlers treated Australian Aborigines and even those who suffered by the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israelis.

But in recent years that claim has been shown to be a lie with the advent of millions of Han Chinese sent in as immigrants. They soon took over the top posts in Tibet including the economy and control of the natural resources of Tibet. Tibetans soon found themselves second-class citizens in their own country.

The social explosion we just saw has all of this as its background, that is why Han Chinese found themselves the target of Tibetan anger. The Dalai Lama, espousing a philosophy of peace, has condemned the violence of both sides and has threatened to resign as the political head of the Tibetan people, but young Tibetans have grown tired of peaceful overtures towards the Chinese which they consider have gained them nothing.

Even the Dalai Lama's talk of peaceful solutions to the Tibetan problem have earned him nothing except Chinese accusations of him being behind the latest revolt.

Even if the people of the world demand that their governments take a tougher stance towards China, their calls will likely be ignored just like they were before the beginnings of the second Gulf War in Iraq.