China has viewed the last century and a half as non-stop efforts by Westerners to divide China. This looks like another.  The last century and a half of relations between China and the West have from the Chinese perspective been one long period of national dismemberment. In 1842 the British took control of Hong Kong after the first Opium war, and after its sequel, China lost control of Shanghai and its own customs service. Efforts were made to sever Manchuria, Taiwan from China in the 20th, and Korea and Vietnam were fully removed from Chinese authority.  As a consequence the Chinese are quite paranoid about outside efforts to divide Chinese territory, and support for the Tibetan Independence, due to the fact that the West has no clear interests in the region, is interpreted chiefly as an effort to divide and weaken China. [1]  As a consequence, western condemnation tends to be counterproductive, leading to public sentiment in China turning far nastier towards legitimate Tibetan demands.  These sorts of views on the part of the Chinese Public are far from unwarranted given the likely consequences of Tibetan independence, namely the creation of a Pro-Western, anti-Chinese state on their borders, and the Chinese are therefore likely to respond to future moves in favour of Tibetan independence the same way Americans would have reacted to Pro-Confederate moves on the part of Great Britain or France during the US Civil War.  [1] II. Origins of So-Called ‘Tibetan Independence’,