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More from The Economist’s James Miles:

Mr Miles said that nothing he saw of the riots looked like organised action.

“No people were marching up and down chanting slogans, waving flags. I had seen people earlier on trampling on a Chinese flag… but that kind of overt political action was very much the exception,” he said.

“There was no evidence of monks at the forefront.”

He said authorities were describing the events as the March 14 riots but it was important to note that the unrest stretched into a second day.

“The longer this was going on the more need to explain why there wasn’t a serious deployment of security in this area,” he said.

He said that one factor that came through was a deep concern among people about prices.

“What I did hear that people had the impression or had been given the impression by officials that the[Beijing-Lhasa] train would bring prices down by bringing Chinese goods in more cheaply from other areas of the country but this simply hadn’t happened,” Mr Miles said.

“We may have been seeing the first real signs of price-related instability.

“Obviously a number of other factors, religious and political grievances are very much part of the mix… but the anger generated over very rapid price increases is not to be underestimated.”

Mr Miles said that he felt that the way the rioting began was so unusual in Lhasa and China generally that the security forces’ usual methods of control – to find those immediately responsible and remove them – didn’t work.

“For quite a long time things were happening outside Ramoche Temple without spreading far and wide and then something happened that caused it to spread,” he said.

“It may have been the withdrawal of security personnel from around the Ramoche area which then emboldened people.

“But then we were in a whole sort of new situation.

“From the point of commanders on the ground, instead of having to deal with a discrete group of people, they were suddenly dealing with rioting across a large area of the city without any clear central core that they can target and things on the ground changing very rapidly indeed to such a point that they would have found themselves referring up the chain of command and thus paralysing the decision-making process.

“Then other calculations may well have come into play. As the nature of the violence became clearer… it may well have become clear to [decision-makers higher up the chain]that given the highly unusual nature of this rioting… that had they sent people during the afternoon of the 14th it may well have rapidly escalated to widespread use of force which would have backfired on them internationally.”

Mr Miles said that officials made no attempt to persuade him to leave and his handlers contacted him late on the Saturday to express concern about his welfare and ask about the food supply at the hotel.

“But I think at that stage they may also have been calculating that there was indeed a purpose in having a foreign journalist there,” he said.

“It enabled them to say they had not shut down the city completely to the foreign media and it also enabled them to have one correspondent there who at least would confirm the extent of the violence directed at Han Chinese and Huis that has now become a central feature of their propaganda, without the risks associated with having a large number of foreign correspondents there.”

James Miles was on the spot when it counted. As unrest erupted in Lhasa last month, the Economist’s Beijing bureau chief was mid-way through an extraordinary eight-day stay in the Himalayan city in which he witnessed turmoil not seen in decades.

As an official said to him before the events unfolded, “Mr Miles you have come here at a very special time.”

During his permitted week in Lhasa, Mr Miles saw discriminate rioting, the results of an apparent paralysis in decision making by Tibet’s security agencies and what may be signs of price-related instability.

What he didn’t see was any evidence that the riots were organised.

The timing of the trip was partly by accident – it had originally been planned for January but scheduling conflicts intervened. When he eventually submitted proposed dates to authorities, he anticipated they would raise some “sensitivities” but officials raised no objections.

In 15 years of reporting in China, it was his first trip to Lhasa as a foreign correspondent and around 11am on Friday, March 14, as protests were reportedly occurring near Ramoche Temple, Mr Miles was on the edge of Lhasa visiting an economic zone, “an eerily empty expanse of land”. He went back to his hotel in the old quarter not far from Lhasa’s main thoroughfare, Beijing Road, just before 1pm and all seemed calm.

“I was delivered back [shortly before 1pm] to the hotel which I guess was only 200 or 300 yards from where the rioting was happening but without seeing any sign of it whatsoever… which implies that whatever was happening outside the Ramoche Temple from  11 o’clock had been going on for quite some time without any deployment of security along the road and somehow without any sign of disturbance among local residents.”

Then somebody in the hotel said something was happening in the street. People were shuttering their shops and others were running from the direction of the temple.

Taxis were doing sudden u-turns as people threw pieces of concrete at them and there was “not a single mob but rather groups of people here and there and everywhere”.

People hauled goods out of shops, torched the supplies and “very rapidly there were fires everywhere”.

There were “whoops of delight” as things were thrown into the fire. Han residents disappeared quickly.

Mr Miles headed towards Jokhang Temple where the day before he had seen numerous groups of police officers stationed apparently in response to demonstrations earlier in the week.

But “three hours after the protests began, there was no sign of security”.

By 6pm, Beijing Road was a scene of huge destruction, lavatory paper draped from telephone wires to resemble hada scarves and fires had consumed whole buildings. But still there was no sign of security personnel on the city’s main street.

Mr Miles said that not long after there were some security forces on Barkhor Square but they seemed not under orders to intervene. Instead, they appeared to have been sent to protect fire engines.

The next morning, the alleyways were clogged with debris.

“You could hardly walk through the alleyways,” he said.                                                                                                                                        

 “Pretty much everything that could be destroyed had been destroyed.

“[They] clearly selectively targeted Chinese and Hui shops.”

Troops of some kind outfitted in coats, soft caps and batons had begun deploying along Beijing Road during the night but they did not have firearms.

“These were the first people deployed on foot in key rioting area and they were not carrying guns,” Mr Miles said.

“The people were milling around and coming out to check how much damage to the premises and discovering that the main old quarter was still empty of security.

“So there were all these little alleyways free of any security so not surprisingly people in a limited sphere of activity somewhat but continued to be emboldened by the lack of security presence.”

People were still lighting fires near Jokhang Temple but armoured vehicles materialised along Beijing Road in the afternoon and troops with helmets and guns were moved through the alleyways.

“The riots had effectively fizzled out…. This was a mopping up operation.

“We heard the occasional single shot of gunfire.”

The aim of the operation was to get people off the streets and off the rooftops, which made “getting out and about late on the 15th and 16th pretty well impossible”.

On the 17th, the Monday, troops were everywhere. People were able to walk around outside again and Lhasa started to return to some degree of normality. Mr Miles said that as he moved about the city it was clear the damage extended beyond the old quarter into the Han areas. By Wednesday, his time was up and after refusing to extend his permit officials escorted him to the airport.