[Rick Lee]

Tibetans are now a minority in their own land. China has made a huge effort to send as many Han there as possible. The mentality there among the Han is they can't understand why the Tibetans aren't thankful for the Hans' civilizing the place. I think this incident is the Tibetans realizing that this is their last chance to really get into the news while the world has its eye on China. However, Tibet was a bastion of feudalism before the PRC took it over and there really are plenty of Tibetans who are thankful for that. I stayed in a Tibetan community in the Sichuan countryside, not too far from Tibet proper. I was kind of stunned to see them selling all the Mao/Deng/Zhou Enlai memorbilia.