Propaganda campaign as violent clashes continue.
From Bill Allan in Beijing

IDON'T understand why they've done this, when we've done so much for them," says Beijing office worker Zhao Qian after she watches state television footage of Tibetan rioters overturning cars and setting fire to shops in Lhasa.

Zhao's view is shared by most Han Chinese, who make up more than 90% of China's 1.3 billion people. They are influenced by the ruling Communist Party's constant claims to have rescued Tibetans from "feudal serfdom" under a Buddhist theocracy, and built them homes, roads, schools and factories. In recent days, the government has mounted a strong campaign to show the Chinese and other non-Tibetan victims of the two weeks of violent protests that have claimed scores of lives, according to Tibetan exile groups.

China says only 19 people died in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Most were apparently non-Tibetans who were burned or stabbed to death by rioters, with another 625 police and civilians injured.

On Friday, the government said for the first time that police had opened fire on protesters in self-defence last Sunday in the town of Aba, where local residents said at least 18 Tibetans were shot dead. Police said only four protesters had been injured and had fled after the shooting.

In the rioting in Lhasa on March 14, violence was directed at Han Chinese and Hui Muslim migrants, as well as paramilitary police.

Tibetans were told to mark their shops with scarves to avoid damage, one witness told US-based Radio Free Asia.

An article on the Indian-based Phayul website last week asked: "What better way to live but to live for your country and what better way to die but for the freedom of your country?" The article ran under the headline "It's now or never" and was apparently removed after about one hour.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader who fled to India in 1959 after troops quashed an uprising against Chinese rule, has renounced independence for Tibet in favour of greater political autonomy and religious freedom.

He accuses China of "cultural genocide" in Tibet, and today there are few outsiders there to examine his claim.

Last week, the Dalai Lama threatened to resign if Tibetans continue to use violence. Yet China calls him a "wolf in monk's robes", claiming he is still fighting for independence and has stirred up the recent violence.

Like Zhao, state media and most Chinese people ignore the economic and political reasons behind the unrest and portray pro-independence Tibetans as ungrateful children who fail to appreciate the economic development brought by nearly 60 years of Communist Party rule.

Prime minister Gordon Brown entered the fray last Wednesday when he said he planned to meet the Dalai Lama in May, following in the recent footsteps of other world leaders such as US President George W Bush and German chancellor Angela Merkel, but drawing predictable anger from a "seriously concerned" China. Robbie Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Programme at Columbia University in New York, said that China's leaders are making a mistake by not meeting the Dalai Lama.

"Perhaps the saddest thing about this is that the Chinese have created a system with no Tibetan or other leaders with any local popularity or mandate, and so it's hard to see how they are going to resolve this other than by using force," said Barnett. "The one person who could solve this problem immediately is the Dalai Lama, but the unrest has almost certainly been triggered by the Chinese renewal in 2006 of their public campaigns against him."

Activists are now focusing their attention on the Olympic torch relay, which is due to start on April 1 and includes a controversial leg to the summit of Mount Everest in Tibet in early May.

The International Tibet Support Network, representing 150 groups worldwide, last week appealed to a major Olympic sponsor, Coca-Cola, to put pressure on the organisers to cancel the sections of the torch relay which will pass through Tibetan areas of China.

"Tibet is a central theme to China's Olympics propaganda," said Matt Whitticase, of the London-based Free Tibet Campaign. "Taking the torch through Tibet is intended to underscore its bogus sovereignty claims to Tibet."

If the latest campaigns do force the cancellation of a section of the torch relay, or even a boycott of the Olympics, it could prove a major loss of face, that would be a great challenge for China's diplomacy," says Zhao.