For years, the Chinese Communist Party held up Tibetan artists as living proof that life under Beijing’s rule was working. Tsewang Norbu was one of those artists. On February 25, 2022, he set himself on fire outside the Potala Palace in Lhasa. He was 25 years old. He died from his burns approximately one week later.

Before he died, witnesses reported that Norbu shouted for Tibetan independence, the return of the Dalai Lama from exile, and freedom for Tibet. Those three demands represent the core of a political position that Beijing has spent decades telling the world no longer exists among Tibetans who have grown up inside the People’s Republic of China.

Norbu’s life had been built, in large part, inside the structures that Beijing uses to project that message. Born on October 9, 1996, in Nagchu in the Tibet Autonomous Region, he came from a family embedded in state cultural institutions. His father Choegyen was a composer and instructor at the Nagchu City Performance Arts Troupe. His mother Sonam Wangmo performed with the Song and Dance Troupe of the General Political Department of the People’s Liberation Army. Both parents operated within the........

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