China invaded Tibet in 1949 and was able to defeat the small Tibetan army. Through the next fifty years of Chinese occupation, the Tibetans' religious identity has been swiftly disappearing. More than 1.2 million Tibetans have died as the result of the 1949 takeover. Today, Tibet's religious culture has been devastated. More than six thousand monasteries have been demolished and the practice of their religion has been severely restricted. The Chinese suppression of religion in Tibet is largely due to its motivation to annex Tibet. The result is the destruction of a religious culture and the repression of its members, the Tibetan Buddhists.

It may be instructive to compare this to the Holocaust. In the Holocaust, the Jewish people were persecuted simply because of their faith and culture; in other words, they were singled out to persecution because they were members of a certain group. However, in Tibet, the Chinese government had a different goal than the Nazis in Germany. China did not invade Tibet to exterminate the Tibetan Buddhists. Another interpretation would be that the persecution of Tibetan Buddhists undermined the strength of the country to defend itself, making it easier for China to annex the land. Instead, China wanted to annex the land and if a religious group was annihilated in the process, it was of no consequence.