Now the question is are most of the comments on this thread examples or are they the social conditioned response of Chinese citizens abroad showing the flag. It can get pretty creepy how aggressive students - for example - get supporting their government. That flash mob behavior isn't as effective as the Russian's conflict stoking troll farms, but man does it drown out conversation, and god help you if you run into i…
Yeah I remember I had a colleague, a Chinese student, very nice person, we were going along nicely, until one day I mentioned the Dalai Lama, and he exploded. It seems like the brainwashing was very successful - he believed that the DL was a monster, killer, some demonic being aiming at the destruction of China and so on. I couldn't believe my ears. This person seemed otherwise completely normal.
Although, the Catholic Church have also killed gigantic amount of people anyway, modern day priests seems to continue the habit of raping little boys regardless. Those organizations still exist, and will keep existing, so whatever, that's just this world. I'm forever a non-believer for instituionalized religion for those reasons alone.
(Also note DL never did reform Tibet to democratic society on his own, so regardless, I don't think he should be the symbol of Tibet, or as a leader. Afterall, the theme for these last centuries was that ALL despots must be abolished unless they made democratic reforms.)