'Shangri-la complex' stymies rational perception

Since British novelist James Hilton introduced the fictional Shangri-la to Western readers eight decades ago, foreign minds have often thought of Tibet as a mystical but harmonious paradise.

They believe the mythical Himalayan region, isolated from the outside world, has been a permanently happy land where most inhabitants are meditative lamas clad in crimson robes, holding prayer beads and chanting scriptures.

But scholars and journalists from China and abroad attending a forum on the development of Tibet in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region, said that Westerners' "Shangri-la complex" is hampering and limiting a rational understanding of the autonomous region of China.