Seth'n'Spectrum: Peaceful protest (this counts, right?) really only works when your target audience can be shamed into sympathizing with you. Right now, the Han majority is largely utterly shameless (I have definitely met exceptions, but they are rarer than in most societies).

At best, they are apathetic. At worst, they are nationalistic, Darwinistic assholes -- true relics from the nineteenth century.

I wouldn't necessarily go that far. There's a stew of things at work in the Han Chinese mind.

On the one hand, throughout their entire schooling they're taught a version of Tibetan life/culture that's basically equivalent to our vision of Indians sitting around campfires in front of teepees in feather headdresses, smoking peace pipes and saying "How". This is regularly reinforced by insipid "harmonious society" crap on Chinese TV showing smiling ethnic minorities doing cartoon versions of their traditional dances. For most people in China this is as close as they will come to ever meeting an actual Tibetan person in real life.

On the other hand, they're taught that before the Communist Party came along,Tibet was a violent, backward, utterly impoverished place (which is not entirely untrue). News of self-immolations is heavily censored in China, but of the few people that do hear about it, a lot of them are genuinely baffled why Tibetans would be upset when, in their eyes, modern China has brought so much development and progress to them.

On the third hand, there is a deep-rooted sense that "these people aren't Han Chinese like us anyway, so meh." And unlike less-Communist, more religious countries in Asia,Tibetan monks hold no special place in Chinese society - most would regard them with curiosity the way we might regard an Eskimo shaman.

So basically, all these self-immolations are doing is a.) getting a rise out of Westerners who are largely powerless to change the situation in Tibet, b.) causing the Chinese government to crack down even more, and c.) between censorship and indifference, having little to no impact among ordinary Chinese. Sad really.