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China’s Tibet policy is a subject of intense and diametrically opposed representations. While the Tibetans portray the Chinese take-over in 1950 as an invasion and continuing rule as a repressive occupation, Beijing calls it “liberation” of a historically “integral” part of China from imperialists and Tibetan feudal forces and emphasise its modernising mission and records. In such a politically charged context, dispassionate analyses of Beijing’s Tibet policy are few and far between. This paper addresses the question: what drives Chinese policies in Tibet and positions towards the Dalai Lama? It hypothesises that insecurity drives Beijing’s Tibet policy. Tibet, with its combination of a restive domestic population and an active Diaspora, led by a charismatic and internationally engaged leader, the Dalai Lama, induces insecurities that relate to the territorial, institutional, ideational (ideology and national identity) and regime components of the Party-State. In security studies parlance, China’s insecurities in Tibet fall under political security, societal security and military security. China’s state building drive in Tibet (integrating Tibet with China economically, politically and culturally) in the Communist and reform era has been efforts to mitigate these insecurities. China’s state building in Tibet is analytically organised around infrastructure-building, institution-building and nation-building. This paper finds that while China has had considerable, yet qualified, success on the infrastructural and institutional sides, nation building, i.e. making the Tibetans feel Chinese, has largely failed in the face of a strong Tibetan national identity. While China’s policies inside Tibet can be characterised as positive state building in that they push forward the integration of Tibet with China, its positions vis-à-vis the Dalai Lama are intended to prevent the reversal of the gains made in state building in Tibet since 1950. This paper, therefore, explains China’s policies inside Tibet and positions towards the Dalai Lama. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]