Until a decade or two ago Tibet was still very underdeveloped, meaning education was worse and life simply poorer, so any disinformation reaching to that place had much more chances to fool and trick people than today. Today everyone in touch with reality will just scoff at the suggestions that out there is an free and grand democratic India backed by the West where life is much better and their life in China is horrible and not give it a second of thought before going back watching Bilibili videos on his smartphone. Its as you said generally speaking largely incrompehensible from a modern point of view. But a lot of both disingenious political rethoric and ignorance are still lingering and left over from these times. Especially when people live in propganda bubbles like America where they are still missinformed by history revisionist education and regime propaganda preaching the same old lies about China as 50 years ago even after they have completely lost any touch with reality.