There was a time about 20 years ago that the Yellow Hat dalai lama Tenzin Gyatso, gave a long interview where he stated his views that the spirit of Buddhism would survive even if there was no Tibet, or no humans. In all ways, the human component of belief wasn't important at all. That buddhism was an eternal universal principle. Then he received a huge amount of funds from the US Government and started talking about how unique and irreplaceable and special Tibetan culture and Tibetan buddhism was, and how endangered it all was, and how the Chinese, building roads, highways, train lines, schools, hospitals etc were so cruel. Then there was a spike in monks immolating themselves in public places in China and the Dalai Lama never really condemned that at all. Martyrs. The only people who actually did anything about that problem, was the Chinese Government who set up mental health clinics for the buddhist youth...and gave them appropriate therapies, medications, jobs and scholarships to Beijing University. The Dalai lama is a character of duplicity. One day he will say 'oh no, we do not want to be a separate state from China, as the Chinese have in many ways been very good'..then more funds arrive from the US and he's setting up 'a government in exile in Dharamsala'...not a democratic government of course...not a government in exile that actually wants to be a government in reality, at all, no, just an autonomous theocratic grouping of non elected friends and family of the Dalai Lama to generally rule and own property, and buy and sell the resources, apply taxes, etc etc. It is not going to happen. There is far more chance of the200 million highly educated separatist Manchurian Neo-coms in the militarily rich and well resourced North East of China ceding from the Peoples Republic and absorbing North Korea, chunks of Siberia, and launching effective nuclear attacks on Japan. That is far more likely in this real world.