Cultural appropriation as a weapon of the state
I travelled across China recently. It's nothing like other countries on Earth in some respects and remarkably similar in others.
If you've spent any time in a major Chinese city, you've likely seen the "dress up": young ladies in culturally distinctive garb suited to the region simply going about their business. If you're in Xi'an, you'll see ladies of the Tang Dynasty court. If you're in Beijing, you might see Ming Dynasty dress, complete with hair and makeup, with entire malls to facilitate it. This is a fact I stumbled across in search of a bathroom once. Never have I seen such a motley crew of plainly dressed, disgruntled partners awaiting such a throng of cosplayers.
There's nothing inherently problematic about people dressing up in historical gear, or dressing up generally. The issue arises when the "dress up" in a national reserve like Jiuzhaigou is turned to traditionally worn, present-day Tibetan garb, for instance. Government signs make merry of cartoon Tibetans frolicking under the hammer and sickle. Photos depict Han Chinese wearing faux-Tibetan clothing, all manufactured elsewhere. Domestic tourists flock in their thousands, with a non-trivial subset trotting through the national park in "costume".
Some readers might wonder what the problem is, but I found it quietly depressing. It speaks to one of the ways modern China wields power. Gone are the days of overt carnage and famine familiar to mid-20th century China. It's far easier, after all, to simply assimilate conquered populations. With every empty-minded tourist donning the clothes of a Uyghur or Tibetan, their distinctiveness dies a little more. This can be extrapolated to any and all cultural artefacts, whether cuisine or religion. It seems all part of the wider CCP agenda: to assert that China is one monolithic people, united in cause and spirit over thousands of years. It's as though anything that has taken place within the borders of present-day China over the last 3000 years is fair game to be reclassified as "Chinese". Division is incompatible with this idea. It can't bear the notion of difference.
I don't resent any of the domestic tourists dressing up. They neither have access to the necessary contravening education, nor the means to even come to the conclusion they need it. I'm not even sure "cultural appropriation" is the right word, as this portion of Chinese domestic tourism is state-sponsored to at least some extent. I travelled from one part of the country to the other and "dress up" was ubiquitous. Imagine if the Canadian or American governments actively campaigned to have Caucasian people dress up in First Nations/ Native American dress when they go on holidays to other states and provinces, and built the infrastructure to both manufacture and supply this demand.
I suppose the next logical question is: what do Tibetans, Uyghurs or the many other downtrodden ethnic groups under Communist rule think of their cultures being abused in this way, and not even benefitting from it? There's no way to tell. I didn't have the guile, language skill, or lack of worldly attachment to ask. All we can do is speculate. For all we know, it doesn't matter to the affected groups. But I doubt it.