In a bloody prelude to China's August self-celebration as a mature superpower at the Beijing Olympics, its government brutally suppressed a series of street demonstrations by hundreds of Buddhist monks in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in March. Chinese troops killed a still-unknown total of monks, and days later ethnic Tibetans rioted in several cities, killing ethnic Chinese before a suspiciously delayed government crackdown. World sympathy swung back to China shortly afterward when it sustained a huge earthquake. But the uprisings and government response further poisoned Chinese-Tibetan relations and may have convinced the Dalai Lama to allow younger activists to more openly voice their argument that negotiating for Tibetan autonomy within China is a fool's game.