FACTBOX-Key figures behind the future of Tibet

(Reuters) - China has launched a crackdown in Tibet after protests and rioting racked the regional capital Lhasa this week. How events unfold will closely involve four key men -- the Dalai Lama and three Chinese officials -- whose backgrounds are explained below:

* The Dalai Lama is the focal leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the religion that binds the vast majority of the mountainous region's traditional inhabitants.

The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, lived uneasily alongside the Chinese Communist Party after it sent its army to occupy Tibet in 1950. But he fled on horseback to northern India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 and now lives in exile there.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

China accuses him of seeking independence for Tibet. But the 72-year-old spiritual leader says he only wants greater autonomy for his people. China has also accused him of engineering the protests in Lhasa, a claim he has rejected as completely baseless.

* Chinese President Hu Jintao has not publicly commented on the latest unrest in Tibet, but especially with his long experience in the region he is sure to be one of the dominant decision-makers behind the scenes.

A water project engineer by training, Hu spent many years working in Gansu, the western province neighbouring Tibet, and he earned his political stripes in dirt-poor Guizhou and then Tibet, where he was Communist Party boss from 1988 to 1992.

As Tibet's top official, Hu oversaw a harsh crackdown on the last major wave of protests to shake the region in 1988-89. His longtime political patron, the reformist Communist Hu Yaobang -- no relation of Hu Jintao -- fell from office partly because Party elders blamed his more relaxed policies toward Tibet for stoking unrest.

Earlier this month, Hu said that stability in Tibet has a bearing on the stability of China as a whole.