Lhasa, China ? In a tidy, spacious factory that looks out to jagged Himalayan peaks, folk remedies from Tibet’s distant past are being packed up and shipped out by uniformed workers who are building China’s tomorrows.

The 270 employees of Tibet Pharmacy Joint Stock Co. Ltd. are part of Beijing’s multibillion-dollar effort to energize the isolated region and turn Tibet into a working part of modern China.

Tibetan Buddhist monks hold on to a huge silk portrait of the Sakyamuni Buddha on a hillside above the Drepung Monastery in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Tens of thousands gathered Thursday to view the 42-meter-high portrait, which was unveiled in a ceremony to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Buddha. China, which has controlled Tibet since the 1950s, is eager to change the world's view of its conquest.

“This is part of the future of Tibet’s economy,” Paba Samden, the company’s deputy general manager and Communist Party secretary, said during a rare visit to Tibet by a group of foreign reporters.

It’s a version of Tibet that China is eager to show the world a region throwing off poverty under what state media call the “loving care” of the Communist Party that nurtures Tibetan tradition and a distinctive identity as integral part of China.

Portrayed as Tibet’s oppressor since communist troops marched into the region in 1950, Beijing is in the midst of a charm offensive aimed at promoting a more benign image.

Foreign experts say Beijing also is keen to defuse Tibet as an irritant in relations with Washington and an obstacle to financing from the World Bank and other international agencies.

At least six Tibetan political prisoners all of them the subject of Western lobbying have been released this year. State media are filled with reports of official spending to preserve temples and other cultural sites. The government is appealing to tourists and investors to come visit.

This week, the government pushed its campaign a step further by taking more than 20 Western and Asian reporters a group usually barred from Tibet on a tour of factories, monasteries and the homes of selected Tibetans.

“We hope to show the true face of Tibet,” Guo Jinlong, the Communist Party secretary for the region, said Thursday.

Activists abroad say they welcome increased access to Tibet, but they complain that Beijing is offering a distorted view by taking journalists on a carefully scripted and carefully supervised visit.

Chinese officials chose the itinerary and the reporters traveled in a group, but were sometimes allowed to wander freely in public places. It was unclear how closely the reporters were watched or whether they were followed by plainclothes police. There was no indication of a covert police presence, however.

Activists say that while Beijing has indeed invested in building roads and other facilities, most benefits go to migrants from elsewhere in China. They contend development is aimed at binding Tibet more closely to the rest of China and exploiting its oil, gas and other resources.

At least 100 Tibetan monks, nuns and others are in prison or some other form of confinement, activists say. They say monasteries for centuries the heart of Tibetans’ deeply spiritual existence operate under strict government control.

Beijing’s campaign could be fueled by its need for foreign financing for multibillion-dollar plans to develop Tibet and other western regions, said Kate Saunders, a researcher for the Tibet Information Network in London.