The article examines the subject field of the Tibetan conflict, its key issues, analyzes the environment of the conflict and the dominant forms of mutual perception and conflict interaction of its subjects. An analysis of the ethno-religious and cultural-linguistic aspects of the conflict reveals that the dominant type of interaction between the parties is the collective violence by the Chinese government against the Tibetan ethno-national group, which manifests itself in the cultural, spiritual and religious spheres, from the Tibetan ethno-national group there is a protest movement, the most extreme form of which is the self-immolation movement. The parties perceive each other in two diametrically opposite paradigms: Chinese and Tibetan. The relevance of the chosen topic is due to the fact that in the modern world, the leading trend of which is globalization, the issue of maintaining the identity of small peoples is an acute issue.