"The Chinese government, much as they have done in Tibet, have been trying to "update" the culture of that part of the world"

American Tibetologist A. Tom Grunfeld pointed out that, although some people claimed before 1959, ordinary Tibetan people could enjoy milk tea as they wished and a great deal of meat and vegetables, a survey conducted in eastern Tibet in 1940 showed that 38 percent of Tibetan families never had tea to drink, 51 percent could not afford butter, and 75 percent sometimes had to eat weeds boiled with ox bones and oat or bean flour. "There is no evidence to support the picture of Tibet as a Utopian Shangrila."

Indeed Tibet was described by many as being in a total state of 'serfdom' and, although many academics have questioned the applicability of the concept to Tibet (a recent example being Heidi Fjeld who in 2003 argued that feudalism and the use of the term 'serf' was misleading in relation to the social system of Tibet) at the least there existed "a caste-like social hierarchy"

The Code stipulated that people were divided into three classes according to their family background and social positions, each class was further divided into three ranks.
The upper class consisted of a small number of aristocrats from big families, high-rank Living Buddhas and senior officials; the middle class was composed of lower-ranking ecclesiastical and secular officials, military officers, and the agents of the three major kinds of estate-holders.
Serfs and slaves constituted the lower class, accounting for 95 percent of Tibet's total population

Wiki gives an outline of this pre communist caste system

"Human lease peasants (mi-bo) did not have heritable rights to land.

They were still obligated to their 'owning' estate under their status as mi-ser. In contrast with the taxpayer families and householders, they had the freedom to go wherever they wanted and could engage in trade or crafts

The relative freedom of the mi-bo status was usually purchased by an annual fee to the estate to which the mi-bo belonged. The fee could be raised if the mi-bo prospered, and the lord could still exact special corvée labor, eg for a special event.

The status could be revoked at the will of the estate owner. The offspring of the mi-bo did not automatically inherit the status of 'mi-bo', they did inherit the status of 'mi-ser', and could be indentured to service in their earlier teens, or would have to pay their own mi-bo fee

The ragyabpa or untouchable caste were the lowest level, and they performed the 'unclean' work.
This included fishermen, butchers, executioners, corpse disposers, blacksmiths and goldsmiths. Ragyabpa were also divided into three divisions: for instance a goldsmith was in the highest untouchable class, and was not regarded as being as defiled as an executioner, who was in the lowest.

They were regarded as both polluted and polluting, membership of the caste was hereditary, and escape from the untouchable status was not possible"

Social classes of Tibet

Add to this the brutal system of disfiguring and capital punishment and private jails described by David MacDonald in his book "The Land of the Lama" (1929) and observed by other foreign visitors in the early C20th and the 'updating' of the 'culture' doesn't seem to be inhumane