A lot of people from my heratige tell their kids they are from Yunan. Even people in Yunan tell their kids this region was always Yunan. People in the west hear the word Tibet so much that even people from Yunan but raised in the US have no idea they have any relationship to Tibet.
I wanted to give an example of what would happen if any of the the other groups of people from the region claimed to also be from Tibet. They got the big guns out, so I hope people are getting the point that Tibet is a very narrow special interest group that has no reason to be interesting to any government and is basically regarded as like the IRA to the Chinese, except with a less legitimate claim as they represent a lot smaller group of people.
Of cource people like to play with figures to suit themselves, so if they want to make the Tibet issue seem important they claim all the population of Yunan and the Yunan diaspora as part of the tibtan group, but when it comes to who is served or controled by the Dalai lama and his group, then they get very specific about recorded liniage and ortodoxy of belief, which is basically just doing what they are told as they are not allowed to read anything or talk about anything.
