> I remember looking up the Dalai Lama and seeing at the bottom: "Nationality: Chinese" which made me laugh, but on the other hand things like these make many people upset.
Out of curiosity, what do you believe to be the correct nationality?
I presume the Dalai Lama considers himself to be Tibetan.
Now, perhaps you would consider that we ought to demand people's "nationality" be an actual UN member state which counts them as a citizen and since Tibet isn't a member... That's a bit awkward though because the "One China" policy ensures neither the Republic (in Taiwan) nor the PRC will allow the other to be a UN member at the same time as them.
Also I find that I doubt we demand most people have documentary proof. Not taking their word for it is already a bit weird unless you're a border official. Is Samantha Bee really Canadian? I mean, she says she is so I just assumed...
> the "One China" policy ensures neither the Republic (in Taiwan) nor the PRC will allow the other to be a UN member at the same time as them.
Actually, 90+% of the population of the ROC, including their leaders, would be ecstatically happy to be an UN member separately from the PRC. The only reason they officially have a "One China policy" is that the PRC has made it clear that while they can tolerate the status quo of a rival government with zero prospects of actually challenging them controlling a small piece of their territory, they will very much not tolerate that piece of territory to become officially independant and provide an example for at least half a dozen others.
Tibetan, because before the so-called "Annexation" of Tibet (the word "occupation" is carefully avoided, even on WP), Tibet was an independent country (at least for a few decades). It's not like Manchuria or a few other geographic regions inhabited by ethnicities different from Chinese. So people born during that period in Tibet were Tibetans.
With the Dalai Lama this point is particularly interesting, because his life is an ongoing conversation with the Chinese (although at times they seem like two monologues).
There are millions of people currently living who were born in the Soviet Union and about 0% of them identifies or is identified as “Nationality: USSR”.
I think what matters is whether the existence of an independent country is contested. No one contests non-existence of USSR but Tibetan case is not closed.
Maybe because the USSR was an artificial construct very few people identified with? Even when it existed, people were calling themselves Russians, Latvian and so on, not really "Soviet."
Out of curiosity, what do you believe to be the correct nationality?