China launches education drive in Lhasa

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Communist Party has launched a political education drive in Tibet's restive capital, Lhasa, vowing a long campaign to attack pro-independence sentiment and support for the Dalai Lama.

China has blamed recent unrest in Tibetan areas on a "clique" of the Dalai's followers pressing for independence and seeking to upset Beijing's preparations for the August Olympics.

Over a month has passed since monk-led protests against government control gave way to deadly anti-Chinese rioting in Lhasa on March 14, but security forces have wrestled with continued unrest there and across other Tibetan areas.

In a bid to reinforce control in Lhasa, Party authorities have launched an education drive focused on officials and Party members, the official Tibet Daily reported on Monday.

The campaign to "fight separatism, protect stability and promote development" would focus on "unifying the thinking and cohesive strength of officials and the masses, deepening the struggle against separatism and counter-attacking the separatist plots of the Dalai clique", said the paper.

Party members and officials would be assessed on their "performance" in the two-month drive, which will include television programs and organized denunciation sessions.

The Dalai Lama has denounced violence and said he supports Beijing holding the Games in August, but also accused Beijing of perpetrating possible "cultural genocide" in Tibet.

China has called him an irrelevant exile.

But the huge paramilitary build-up across Tibetan areas, bans on much travel and tourism there, and now the education campaign suggest the government fears wider bases of discontent, including among officials and Party members.

"They never would have expected the protests to last a month and a half," Wang Lixiong, a Beijing writer who has long studied Tibet and backs its self-determination, said of China's leaders.

"The scale of resistance was a shock, because they believed their own propaganda about Tibet, believed everything was under control."

As China moves to bolster controls in Tibet, it is also treading carefully to tame public anger directed at the Dalai Lama and Western media and companies.

Over the weekend, Beijing slightly eased its usually strict ban on protest to allow angry citizens to denounce the Dalai Lama and urge boycotts of businesses accused of supporting him, especially the French supermarket giant Carrefour.

Chinese state-run media have been awash with accusations of bias and outright inaccuracy in Western media reports of the unrest and of Tibet protests that dogged the Olympic torch relay in London, Paris and other capitals.

But while Chinese news reports have praised the patriotic upsurge, they have also reflected growing official unease over the anti-Western anger.

"To their mind, this discontent could easily turn against them and accuse the government of being too soft," said Wang.

The China Youth Daily warned that protests against Western targets could spoil the country's image ahead of the Olympics.

"For a successful Olympic Games, the country must certainly be stable," said the paper. "We should maintain an extremely cautious attitude towards boycotts and protests."

(Editing by Nick Macfie and Valerie Lee)