Be cultural, dammit!

This article in the Times focuses on the way in which a Chinese-run Tibetan festival is a scene for a particular kind of subterranean resistance on the part of the Tibetans, but there's something else there which is more interesting to me - the way the Chinese, insist that the Tibetans "be cultural" (as they are surrounded by Chinese soldiers with guns and billyclubs) in order to create the illusion that Tibetans are happy about Chinese domination and to promote tourism as a kind of cultural development. Tibetan ethnicity, then, becomes a resource for China, and if the Tibetans don't want to to utilize it, the Chinese are damned sure to encourage them...