Until recently, a dialogue between the Chinese government and representatives of His Holiness the Dalai Lama had been going back and forth since the late seventies. Between 2002 and January of 2010, there were nine meetings between envoys of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his Chinese counterpart, mainly the United Front, which is an extension of the Communist Party of China. So there were nine formal meetings, and they discussed all aspects of Tibet and how to address the issue.
The Tibetan side put forward the definition and explanation of what we mean by “genuine autonomy”. A document called “Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy” is available, where you can see we have clearly illustrated what we mean by “genuine autonomy” and its correspondence to provisions in the Chinese constitution. Essentially what we're saying is if the Chinese government implements their own laws, we could take that as genuine autonomy. Unfortunately, the Chinese government refuses to address that document; in fact, through a press conference, they rejected it.
Since January 2010, there have been no meetings between the envoys of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his Chinese counterpart. In June 2012, after two and a half years, two envoys submitted their resignation out of utter frustration because of lack of progress in the dialogue. Regretfully, I accepted their resignation. But at the same time, we issued a statement, whereby we made it very clear that we are ready to enter into dialogue any time, anywhere.
Also, most importantly, we have specified that we consider substance to be primary and process to be secondary. In that sense, if the Chinese government finds some technicalities or political issues as part of the complexities, we are willing to consider that. For us, what is most important is the substantive dialogue to solve the issue of Tibet. In that sense we are willing to consider options to the process so we can have substantive dialogue. Unfortunately, as of now, we have yet to have reciprocity from the Chinese government to enter into formal dialogue, and this is the state we are in.