Beijing sees Tibet as an internal domestic issue, so it probably will not engage in direct dialogue with the exiled Tibetan leader. China accuses the Dalai Lama of conspiring to incite violence to force concessions on Tibetan independence during the politically sensitive period ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

The U.S. statement fulfills dark expectations in Beijing. And it is the timing of Rice’s statement, not the call for talks itself, that the Chinese will take note of.

Alarm is rising in Beijing that the United States, India and other nations — including the United Kingdom — are actively supporting the Dalai Lama in an attempt to force policy changes in China. Protecting its territorial integrity is of utmost concern to China, as its absorption of Tibet and regions such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia have created buffer zones protecting China’s core population centers. Beijing is hypersensitive to real or perceived threats to these buffers, always assuming the worst about outsiders’ motives.

India’s decision to allow the Dalai Lama to seek refuge in northern India in 1959 has perturbed the Chinese government ever since. Beijing believes India could control him more effectively if it wished to — and as New Delhi has in the past — but is simply choosing not to.

In reality, granting the Dalai Lama asylum does not constitute an active bid by New Delhi to undermine Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, given that India has no desire to see a separatist movement spring up on its doorstep — though India might offer additional autonomy for Tibetans in the region. India in fact recently has clamped down on Tibetan protests within its borders. Overall, while the Dalai Lama enjoys tacit support from many countries, Tibetan independence campaigners have not received outside offers of a launchpad for a Tibetan independence campaign.

Despite this fact, the Rice meeting will only stoke fears in China that the United States is seeking to bolster India as a counterweight to China. Chinese fears of a U.S.-Indian alliance stem from historically rooted fears of an international conspiracy against China’s rise on the world stage. But the United States is not actively supporting such a confrontation, and has no interest in doing so. Washington is interested in maintaining ties with India less to counter China than to counter Pakistan, and to maintain stability within the Indian Ocean basin.

But any U.S.-Indian cooperation that touches on Chinese sovereignty will encourage the two-against-one mentality that will be a persistent feature of Chinese-Indian-U.S. relations for years to come. In reality, this is not a clear-cut game. In the last decade, India and China have stepped up defense, trade and political cooperation on multiple fronts, even conducting joint defense exercises in each other’s backyards. China is working hard to keep India out of the U.S. orbit, and India itself does not want to be completely subsumed within Washington’s grasp. Nevertheless, China will continue to fret about India and the United States exploiting the Tibet issue to force political change in Beijing.

At the same time, it also is useful for Beijing to portray such a conspiracy, which helps to undercut the legitimacy of the Tibetan protests and to increase nationalism among the Han Chinese. There is much domestic and foreign advantage for China to portray itself as the victim of foreign intrigue as opposed to the victimizer of Tibet. And Beijing is genuinely concerned about the potential spread of “color” revolutions — which have swept former Soviet republics in recent years — to Tibet.

In the short term, China will continue to face much more international pressure on the Tibet issue (more than it did during the days immediately following the Chinese troop deployment around Buddhist monasteries March 14, when protests in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa turned violent). Beijing’s probable response at home will not be to ease up on crackdowns on protesters, but to consolidate security. If China is swift and firm, the protests may die down soon and international attention to the issue will subside in a few months (though Tibet activists and international human rights groups will certainly bring up the issue until the Olympics).

While the United States and India have no interest in rising unrest along the Indian-Chinese border, they do have an interest in maintaining some leverage over Beijing. But Beijing’s paranoia over the Tibet issue will remain unchanged; if anything, it will increase. This may result in intensified Chinese public relations campaigns overseas, increased oversight of local and foreign interest groups inside China, and intensified use of economic leverage to lobby foreign governments and businesses to see their own interests as tied to a successful Beijing Olympics.