Tibet is proving to be much more than a flash of unrest in a remote Chinese province. It may be the trigger for much greater dislocation and disruption (from "When China Derails"):
So, what happens when China's high performance, globally connected capitalist economy which is flying at dangerously high speeds hits the inevitable speed bump? The answer is: it will derail (hollow out and fragment). The chaos it will produce in SE Asia is the real threat we have to deal with. Predicting the black swan that kicks off the death spiral is impossible... In anticipation of this, the Chinese government is following the lead of many other nations by radically improving the capabilities of its paramilitary force for domestic security (to the tune of one million men). However, this many not be enough. Global guerrilla theory indicates that endemic corruption will combine with the same forces of anti-state guerrilla action we have seen in other places to disconnect portions of China from the central government.