I'm not sure it would be quite so cut and dried, but there are all sorts of formal and informal blockages to true autonomy.
Let me give an example, not in terms of the political sphere but the economic sphere. Most of the investment into Tibet—and, yes, there are statistically higher rates of GDP growth in Tibet—is the result of investment from outside Tibet, often through state-owned enterprises. This has created, some say, a closed loop of economic benefit. The Tibetans themselves, who had been at least provisionally and historically nomads, are cut out of that economic loop.