Tibet’s Name is Being Erased Slowly by China

The Chinese government is gradually dropping the name “Tibet” in official English-language references in favor of the region’s Mandarin Chinese name—”Xizang”—with experts saying the move is in line with Beijing policies aimed at erasing Tibetan culture.

The propaganda department of China’s State Council, its central government, last week released a white paper on “Governance of Xizang in the New Era.” Though the term “Tibetan” is used to refer to the region’s people and geographical features like the Tibetan Plateau, Xizang is used exclusively when referring to the southwestern region’s official name.

The document comes on the heels of a Chinese forum in October in the Tibetan city of Nyingchi, where Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi rebuffed Western human rights concerns and invited international visitors to another government-organized showcase of ethnic culture in the heavily policed region. “Xizang” was reportedly displayed in lieu of “Tibet” for the English translation of his opening speech.

“The Chinese government was desperate enough to propagate Xizang to create a Tibet of Chinese characteristics which is unknown to the world,” Tenzin Lekshay, a spokesperson for the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile, said of Beijing’s report.

“This time, the Chinese government is rigorous in changing the name in all the official records and communications, which is strictly designed to fulfill their political ambition of legitimizing their claim over Tibet by dividing and annihilating Tibet,” he told Newsweek.

Lekshay said the Sino-Tibet conflict was long-running and that changing the name would complicate rather than improve the situation.

Beijing says its policies have improved the lives of those living in the sparsely populated region.

The recent white paper lauded the Chinese Communist Party’s policies and said state-directed development had achieved “victory in the battle against extreme poverty that had plagued Xizang for thousands of years.”

On the cultural front, the paper said it had helped people of all ethnic backgrounds in the region to “develop a sound understanding of our nation and our country, and of history, culture and religion.”

Many in the Tibetan diaspora, however, say Beijing is bent on sinicizing the former Buddhist monarchy, which was annexed by China in 1951.

In February, members of an independent fact-finding mission mandated by the United Nations Human Rights Office found the vast majority of children in Tibet, or about 1 million, were placed in boarding schools, as opposed to the Chinese national average of 20 percent.

The curriculum was almost exclusively taught in Mandarin, with a learning environment based on the culture and experiences of China’s Han ethnic majority.

“As a result, Tibetan children are losing their facility with their native language and the ability to communicate easily with their parents and grandparents in the Tibetan language, which contributes to their assimilation and erosion of their identity” the fact-finders said.

“China’s leaders are acutely aware their occupation of Tibet, including a coercive system of residential boarding schools now housing one million Tibetan children, is viewed as a serious problem by the international community and so they are literally trying to erase Tibet from global consciousness by replacing the name Tibet with the Chinese word ‘Xizang,'” Lhadon Tethong, director of the Tibet Action Institute, a rights advocacy group, told Newsweek.

“Language matters, and it’s critical the international community does not comply with China’s effort to hide its crimes in Tibet through this cynical and manipulative ploy,” she said.

“Beijing’s strategy in Tibet is that of a gradual cultural genocide,” German scholar Adrian Zenz, who has written extensively about forced labor and forced assimilation in China’s western Xinjiang region, told Newsweek.

The strategy spans both linguistic assimilation and “targeted separation of children from parents through the expanding boarding school system,” Zenz said.

In August, the U.S. State Department announced visa restrictions on officials allegedly involved in forcibly assimilating Tibetan children in government boarding schools.

“We urge [People’s Republic of China] authorities to end the coercion of Tibetan children into government-run boarding schools and to cease repressive assimilation policies, both in Tibet and throughout other parts of the PRC. We will continue to work with our allies and partners to highlight these actions and promote accountability,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said of the sanctions.

Blinken also raised the issue of human rights in Tibet, as well as in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, when he met with Foreign Minister Wang during the latter’s visit to Washington in late October to pave the way for this week’s meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Joe Biden.

“Renaming a country is so obviously a move from the colonial playbook that I think most international governments and institutions would recognize it as such and be unlikely to easily go along with China,” Tethong said of Beijing’s new naming convention.

However, she said Chinese authorities clearly saw it as a priority and would thus exert pressure to reinforce it where they can.

China has been accused of threatening and harassing dissidents or the families of dissidents who have fled Tibet—or Xinjiang, Hong Kong and elsewhere—and speak out against Chinese government activities back home.

“The PRC utilizes a wide variety of tactics, including online harassment, exit bans on or imprisonment of family members of targeted individuals, the misuse of international law enforcement systems such as Interpol, and pressure on other governments to forcibly return targeted individuals to the PRC,” Uzra Zeya, the under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights—and America’s special coordinator for Tibetan issues—said in September at a congressional hearing on transnational repression.

Before APEC, pro-Tibetan demonstrators at Moscone Center hoist an anti-China banner.

Pro-Tibet protesters on Friday hung a sign from the roof of San Francisco’s Moscone Center denouncing Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “dictator” ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. 

The banner, which briefly appeared above the entrance to Moscone North, went up around noon Friday. The group Students for a Free Tibet claimed that three of its activists were behind the incident.

The banner read: “Dictator Xi Jinping, Your Time is Up! Free Tibet.”

A woman working at Moscone Center, who refused to give her name, told The Standard she witnessed the incident and said the activists yelled “Free Tibet” for about a minute before apparently taking down the banner of their own accord. 

No activists were detained by police.

“I don’t think anyone had a chance to even contact them,” said an officer near Moscone Center. “It was there for two minutes, as soon as we saw it, they rolled it up.”

Tenzin Namgyal, a 17 year-old Tibetan-American activist who was part of the unfurling, said that the group is hoping President Biden speaks out against Tibetan assimilation.

“Since China’s President Xi last visited the U.S. Tibetans have witnessed our language, religion and culture come under direct attack from Xi’s genocidal policies and we are facing the elimination of our distinct Tibetan language, culture and identity, if the world doesn’t act,” Namgyal said.

The APEC summit, starting Saturday, will bring together Xi, President Joe Biden and leaders of other countries, including Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Protesters and activists concerned about climate change, trade policy, the Israel-Hamas war and other international issues are planning multiple demonstrations during the summit, which is expected to draw tens of thousands of people to San Francisco, including a large contingent of international media.

The Secret Service is imposing a security zone around Moscone Center starting Saturday, limiting pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the area.

Howard Street at Third Street and Fourth Street at Mission Street were blocked Friday afternoon because barriers are being stored in the area ahead of the summit, according to Nate Herring, spokesperson for the United States Secret Service.

Herring said people should expect some traffic and lane closures ahead of and during the installation of barricades around Moscone Center and near the Fairmont Hotel in Nob Hill. The barriers will be installed overnight between Nov. 14 and Nov. 15.

Students for a Free Tibet advocates for Tibet’s independence from China, arguing that the region has historically been an independent country. China maintains that Tibet is an inalienable part of its territory.

U.S., Chinese Officials Meet Friday
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met in San Francisco on Friday with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng. Yellen said she and her Chinese counterpart agreed to work toward a “healthy economic relationship,” during two days of talks that she said helped lay the groundwork for a productive meeting next week between Biden and Xi.

Yellen said many disagreements remain between the two countries, but she and He committed to working together “on global challenges, from debt issues to climate change-related economic issues.”

And both countries, she said, “welcome the objective of a healthy economic relationship that provides a level playing field for companies and workers in both countries and benefits the two peoples.”

Biden and Xi will meet Wednesday, the first engagement in a year between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies.

Their finance chiefs held talks in San Francisco this week with the aim of making progress on a slew of economic and trade issues at a time when competition has markedly intensified between their countries.

Yellen has met with a host of Chinese officials throughout this year.

Chinese officials have announced that a Buddhist monk in Tibet has been seized.

He was arrested for allegedly contacting people outside the region.

Chinese authorities have arrested and detained a Tibetan Buddhist monk from Tashi Monastery in Gansu province for allegedly contacting people outside the far-western region, two people with knowledge of the situation said.

Kunchok Dakpa was taken in during the last week of October from the monastery in Thewo county, the sources said.

“Kunchok Dakpa traveled to India in the past and studied at the Kirti Monastery in Dharamsala,” said a Tibetan from inside Tibet, adding that his whereabouts are unknown.

Kirti Monastery in Dharamsala, India, is the home of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and the Tibetan government in exile.

“Though Chinese authorities frequently summoned and interrogated him in the past, this time he has been arrested and detained,” he said.

Dakpa’s arrest comes amid ongoing restrictions on freedoms of religion, expression, movement, and assembly by Chinese authorities in the Tibet Autonomous Region and Tibetan areas of nearby Chinese provinces.

RFA previously reported that China has been tracking Tibetans in Tibet communicating with those in exile to shut down the flow of information to the outside world, according to sources inside the autonomous region who provide information to communities abroad.

During the past few years, the government has tightened controls on online communications, claiming it undermines national unity, and detained some Tibetans for alleged online offenses.

Another Tibetan said local authorities have constantly harassed and interrogated the monk, though it is unclear whether Chinese police or government secret agents arrested him.

“Kunchok Dakpa has always been a law-abiding individual and has never been involved in political activities that may create chaos,” he said. “He is someone local Tibetans respect and admire.”

After completing his monastic studies at Kirti Monastery, Dakpa worked in the administrative office there for about five years. In 2012, he returned to Tibet and worked as a teacher at Tashi Monastery in Gansu’s Yipa township.

In Kolkata, West Bengal, the Fifth Janjagaran Cycle Yatra, entitled “Free Tibet, Save India,” gets underway.

New Delhi: Sandesh Meshram aka Samten Yeshi, a longtime friend of Tibet, currently serving as one of the Regional Conveners of the Core Group for Tibetan Cause – India (CGTC-I) and also a member of India Tibet Friendship Society (ITFS), Nagpur initiated his 5th Janjagaran Cycle Yatra with the message of ‘Free Tibet, Save India’ including the campaign for the release of Tibetan environmentalist and philanthropist Karma Samdrup on 5th November, 2023 from Kolkata, West Bengal.

The inaugural programme of the yatra was held at the Buddhist Monastery in Kolkata attended by Adv. Ruby Mukherjee, Tibet Supporter and former CGTC-I member; local Indian supporters and the members of Tibetan community in Kolkata including the Tibetan sweater sellers’ association members. Sandesh Meshram briefed the members about his janjagaran cycle yatra and its importance for the cause of Tibet. Taking the blessings of Lord Buddha, he embarked on his janjagaran cycle yatra with the members offering him khatak and bidding him with words of gratitude and wishes for his good health and a successful yatra.

The 5th Janjagaran Cycle Yatra starting from Kolkata, West Bengal covering a distance of 2500 km approximately passing through the cities and towns of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi will conclude on 10th December, 2023 at the national capital New Delhi.

The main purpose of the cycle yatra is to create awareness among the general Indian masses about Tibet and the critical situation prevailing inside Tibet under the oppressive policies of the Communist Chinese regime. This cycle yatra is also carrying out a campaign for the release of Tibetan environmentalist and philanthropist Karma Samdrup who is sentenced to 15 years in prison on false charges by the Chinese authority. The campaign also calls for the release of all Tibetan political prisoners sentenced falsely and being tortured in prisons.

Prior to this, Shri Meshram had organised four such cycle yatras. The first cycle yatra was in 2014 titled “Save Tibet Cycle Campaign” from Nagpur – covering a distance of 4000 km, crossing through five states including Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana. This was then followed by his second cycle yatra in 2016 titled “Cycle Rally to Save Tibet” from Nagpur, crossing through Madhya Pradesh; Uttar Pradesh and reached Bodh Gaya, Bihar – covering 1200 km.

The third cycle yatra was in 2017 that begun on 20th October to mark the Sino-Indian War from Bodh Gaya to Nathu-La Pass, Sikkim covering 1270 km. The fourth cycle yatra had to be carried out in two phases due to his health problem in-between the yatra. The first was from Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh to Mundgod, Karnataka in Dec. 2019 to Feb. 2020 covering 7500 km approx. and the second from Mundgod, Karnataka to Bengaluru, Karnataka from 10th Dec. 2021 to 10th January, 2022 covering a distance of 2000 km approx. passing through the major cities, towns and villages of Uttara Kannada, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

During the writing of this report, Sandesh Meshram had covered a distance of 92 km in five days with halts at Kharagpur and Nayagram in West Bengal and Jamshedpur and Bundu in Jharkand.

Filed by ITCO, New Delhi

Sandesh Meshram with common Indian people on the way during his cycle yatra.

Sandesh Meshram in Kharagpur, Nayagram, jamshedpur and Bundu.

Anthony Albanese, the prime minister of Australia, was urged to bring up the Tibet issue while in China.

Canberra, Australia: Representative Karma Singey of Tibet Information Office in Canberra wrote to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the eve of his visit to China, urging him to raise Tibet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Chinese Communist Party leaders.

In a letter dated 30 October 2023, Representative Karma said, “The situation inside Tibet is critical. Tibet’s national identity is facing an existential threat under China’s repressive policies and security apparatus. The Tibetan people are being systematically subjected to cultural assimilation, political repression, economic marginalisation and ecological destruction. Due to these oppressive conditions and an absence of civic space in Tibet, at least 157 known Tibetans have resorted to tragic self-immolation protests calling for more freedom in Tibet and the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet.”

He further said, “It has been reported that around 1 million Tibetan children have been separated from their families and forced into Chinese colonial boarding schools. The Tibetan language has been systematically replaced by Mandarin and Tibetan medium schools are forcibly shut down. Over two million Tibetan nomads have been forcibly removed from ancestral lands in the name of “development” and “poverty alleviation”. The continued enforced disappearance of Tibet’s 11th Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, is a cause of major concern for not only Tibetans and Buddhist practitioners but for human rights advocates around the world.”

He also drew the Prime Minister’s attention to China’s coercive system of harvesting mass DNA collections inside Tibet transforming the nation into an Orwellian Surveillance State, remarking that such would have negative implications not just for Tibetans but for the wider humanity.

The Representative concluded his letter by stating that “At this critical juncture, I call on you during your visit to China to make a strong public statement highlighting Australia’s concerns regarding the situation in Tibet and calling on the need for dialogue between the Representatives of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Chinese Government to resolve the longstanding Sino-Tibet Conflict. A solution to the Tibet issue will be a major step towards greater peace in the world and securing a stable and prosperous future for not only the Tibetan people, but also China and the region.”

The Australia Tibet Council, the largest Tibet Support Group in Australia, also urged the Prime Minister Albanese to raise the human rights abuses occurring in Tibet at the hands of the Chinese Government with Chinese Government counterparts while in China.

In a media advisory released on 2 November 2023, Zoe Bedford, Executive Officer of Australia Tibet Council , said, ” Recent polling of Australians via Essential Media found that two-thirds (66%) felt that trade resumption with China was less important than action on China’s human rights abuses.”

She further added,” Australian do not want to see Australian values compromised when negotiating trade with China, failing to raise Tibet allows China to believe they have the tacit approval of their trading partners, Australians have an expectation our values will be represented by the Prime Minister and that he will raise China’s human rights abuses in Tibet.”

The living aid the dead on their journey from Tibet to Taiwan and India.

Many people see death as a rite of a passage: a journey to some new place, or a threshold between two kinds of being. Zoroastrians believe that there is a bridge of judgment that each person who dies must cross; depending on deeds done during life, the bridge takes the deceased to different places. Ancient Greek sources depict the deceased crossing the river Styx, overcoming obstacles with the help of coins and food.

But the dead cannot make this transition alone – surviving family or friends play key roles. Ritual actions the living perform on behalf of the dead are said to help the deceased with their journey. At the same time, these actions give the living a chance to grieve and say goodbye.

As a scholar of South Asian religions specializing in death and dying, I have seen how much surviving family depend on these rituals for peace of mind. Traditions vary widely by region and religious tradition, but all of them help mourners feel that they have given one last gift to their loved one.

Fire, water and food
Some Hindu death rituals have roots in ancient Vedic rites as old as 1,500 B.C.E. The survivors’ goal is to ensure that a dead person separates from the realm of the living and makes a safe transition to a blessed afterlife or rebirth.

Death rites typically use fire, water and food in a sequence of three stages.

Stage one is cremation, the fiery incineration of a corpse on a stack of wood infused with flammable oils. Cremation is considered the dead person’s willing, final gift to the god of fire, traditionally officiated by the oldest son of the deceased.

Stage two is the immersion of cremated remains in a flowing body of water, such as the Ganges River. There are many sacred rivers in India where the ashes of a loved one can be immersed, and Hindus regard them as goddesses who carry off impurities and sins, assisting the soul on its journey.

Many Hindus believe the ideal place to immerse a loved one’s ashes is in the sacred city of Varanasi, in northern India, where the Ganges flows in a broad stream. Families carry corpses in festive processions to the cremation site, hopeful that their rituals will help loved ones move to another state of existence.

Stage three is entrance into the realm of the ancestors. Ancient Hindu belief depicts relatives who have died living in a realm where they are maintained by offerings given by their living descendants, whom they assist with fertility and wealth.

Hindu beliefs and practices are extremely diverse. In many communities, however, descendants perform rites that offer nourishment to the dead person, represented in the form of a ball of rice. Through these offerings, which can be performed after the death or during certain holidays and anniversaries, the deceased spirit is said to gradually become an embodied ancestor, reborn thanks to the ritual labor of their offspring.

Colorful processions

Buddhist death rituals differ considerably from culture to culture, yet one commonality is the amount of human effort that goes into sending off the dead.

Nine men in black outfits with brightly colored patterns on them hold a huge puppet of a dragon outside a building with Chinese characters on it.
Dragon dancers perform during a funeral for Taiwanese TV star Chu Ke-liang in New Taipei City on June 20, 2017. Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images

In Chinese and Taiwanese culture, it is thought best to send off the deceased with a well-attended funeral procession, full of pageantry for deities and mortals alike. Many people rent “Electric Flower Cars,” trucks that serve as moving stages for performers – even pole dancers are not uncommon. Fifty jeeps with pole-dancing women graced the funeral procession of a Taiwanese politician who died in 2017.

Though pole dancers are a newer phenomenon, Taiwanese funerals and religious processions have long showcased women and young people, including female mourners hired to wail. Scholars such as anthropologist Chang Hsun suggest that a combination of such traditions led to the inclusion of women dancing and singing in some modern funeral processions.

By the 1980s, scantily clad women were a fixture of rural Taiwanese funeral culture. In 2011, anthropologist Marc L. Moskowitz produced a short documentary called “Dancing for the Dead: Funeral Strippers in Taiwan” about the phenomenon.

Funeral performances show tremendous freedom and innovation; one sees drummers, marching bands and Taiwanese opera singers. Paper objects in the shape of things the deceased is believed to use in the afterlife are burned, from microwaves to cars. Likewise, specially printed money called “ghost money” is burned to provide the deceased with funds.

A man in a yellow monk's robe and someone wearing black stand behind what looks like a dollhouse, as the monk rings a bell.
A paper model of a villa, used as an offering for the dead during a ceremony in New Taipei City, Taiwan. Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images

Guiding the dead

In Tibet, Buddhists believe that the vital energy of a person who has died stays with the body for 49 days. During this time, the dead person receives instruction from priests to help them navigate the journey ahead.

This journey toward the next stage of being involves a series of choices that will determine the realm of their rebirth – including rebirth as an animal, a hungry ghost, a deity, a being in hell, another human being or immediate enlightenment.

Priests whisper instructions into the ear of the dead person, who is believed to be capable of hearing so long as they retain their vital energy. Being told what to expect after death allows a person to face death with equanimity.

A black and white photo shows a man seated in prayer on top of a mountain, as other people work in the background.
A Tibetan Buddhist priest chants prayers and repeats passages from religious scrolls while his helpers make a funeral pyre. Hulton Deutsch/Corbis via Getty Images

The instructions given to the dead are described in a sacred text called the “Bardo Thodol,” often translated in English as “The Tibetan Book of the Dead.” “Bardo” is the Tibetan term for an intermediate or in-between state; one might think of the bardo of death as a train that stops at various destinations, opening doors and giving the passenger opportunities to depart.

Tibetan Buddhists believe that these instructions allow the deceased to make good choices in the 49-day interim between their death and the next life. Different rebirth realms will appear to the person, taking the form of colored lights. Based on the karma of the deceased, some realms will seem more alluring than others. The person is told to be fearless: to let themselves be drawn toward higher realms, even if they appear frightening.

For several days before burial, the deceased is visited by friends, family and well-wishers – all able to work out their grief while assisting the dead in a postmortem journey.

Program for medical matching improves healthcare in Xinjiang and Tibet

Through years of medical assistance, hospitals in China’s Tibet Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have seen notable improvements in healthcare services, management, and human capital, said the National Health Commission (NHC).

In 2015, China initiated a national program of sending teams of medical and education personnel to offer support to Tibet and Xinjiang.

Since then, more than 3,100 high-caliber personnel from provinces and municipalities relatively advanced in the medical sector have been dispatched to hospitals in both regions, Xing Ruoqi, an NHC official, told a press conference held in Kashgar, Xinjiang, on Wednesday.

Xing said these healthcare workers, encompassing medical practitioners and managers, have guided over 1,000 local medical teams and trained more than 7,600 medical personnel.

TARGET-ORIENTED ASSISTANCE

Yan Xinjian, a doctor from southern China’s Guangdong Province, began assisting the cardiovascular surgery center at the First People’s Hospital of Kashgar Prefecture in April. His primary task is to develop the surgery of acute DeBakey type I aortic dissection, which carries high risks and is complex.

“Treating this disease is a race against time. Our center is making efforts to improve the surgery level,” said Yan, adding that it is important to cure patients locally and timely rather than referring them to more advanced hospitals in Urumqi, the regional capital over 1,400 km away.

“We send assistance teams oriented to the medical needs of the assisted regions,” said Wang Hongbin, deputy director of the Guangdong provincial health commission.

According to Zou Xiaoguang, deputy director of Xinjiang’s health commission, medical assistance has significantly improved the local treatment capabilities, with clinical specialty numbers increasing from 180 in 2016 to 258 in 2022.

“Furthermore, the program has also created positive spillovers to the county-level hospitals,” said Zou.

EMPOWERING LOCAL CAPACITY

“Many young local medical workers have now become ‘pillars’ in their departments,” said Ding Qiang when he revisited the People’s Hospital of Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture. He assisted the hospital from 2017 to 2019 and is currently a revered administrative staffer at the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Hospital.

Since 2016, medics from Jiangsu have supported over 30 clinical specialties and become tutors of over 300 healthcare workers in Xinjiang, Ding added.

Since the pairing assistance program was launched, the number of level-4 surgeries, which is of the highest risk in China’s classification, conducted in eight of Tibet’s assisted hospitals, had increased to 8.8 percent in 2022, allowing more seriously ill patients to receive better and more timely treatment.

As released in the press conference, over 4,300 healthcare professionals from assisted hospitals have received education and training in regions with relatively advanced medical resources.

The NHC has held training courses to promote health education in villages, families, and schools as an integral part of the program, according to Mi Feng, an NHC official, adding that free visits to clinics and free healthcare lectures have also been conducted to popularize health knowledge to the public in the two regions.

China displays a Tibetan boarding school that has drawn criticism.

First-grade students, hands folded on their desks, watch a teacher write a brush-like stroke on a blackboard in their Tibetan alphabet. Outside, craggy mountains climb toward the brightest of blue skies. The air is clean and crisp at 2,800 meters (9,100 feet), if a bit thin.


The Shangri-La Key Boarding School is an example of bilingual education, Chinese-style. Tibetan activists have a different term for it: forced assimilation. The issue is getting official attention this year, with UN human rights experts and representatives from the US and a handful of other Western governments condemning the system.

China has shuttered village schools across Tibet and replaced them with centralised boarding schools over the last dozen years. Many students come from remote farming villages and live at the schools. The practice is not limited to the region but appears to be much more widespread in Tibetan areas.


Activists estimate 1 million Tibetan children study at such boarding schools, though the number is difficult to confirm. They say the schools are part of a broader strategy to dilute Tibetan identity and assimilate Tibetans into the majority Chinese culture. School officials respond that the lessons include Tibetan-related material such as songs and dance, and that the boarding schools were born out of a need to deliver the best education in impoverished remote areas.


In ethnic areas, the population is scattered, and the government has put in a lot of effort to consolidate educational resources and provide an excellent teaching and learning environment for the students, Kang Zhaxi, the principal of the Shangri-La school, told about 10 foreign journalists recently as lines of students spilled out of the cafeteria at dinnertime. This is how it works. Kang Zhaxi, who was speaking in Chinese, gave the Chinese version of his name, which would be Kham Tashi in Tibetan.


China has long sought to eradicate any possibility of unrest in regions home to sizeable ethnic populations by imprisoning those who dare to protest while reshaping societies and religions including Tibetan Buddhism, Islam and Christianity to align them with the views and goals of the long-ruling Communist Party.
The approach has hardened in the past decade under leader Xi Jinping, notably in a brutal crackdown on the Uyghur community in the Xinjiang region north of Tibet.


In the battle for global public opinion, the government organized a tour for foreign journalists to a predominantly Tibetan region in Sichuan province. Officials showed off schools, economic development projects, Buddhist monasteries and a Tibetan medicine hospital. Many of these locations, including boarding schools, would normally be difficult for foreign media to access. All interviews were conducted with government officials listening in.

Chinese-style bilingual education for Tibetans

China shows off a boarding school in Sichuan that’s part of a system some see as forced assimilation

First-grade students, hands folded on their desks, watch a teacher write a brush-like stroke on a blackboard in their Tibetan alphabet. Outside, craggy mountains climb toward the brightest of blue skies. The air is clean and crisp at 2,800 meters, if a bit thin.

The Shangri-La Key Boarding School is an example of bilingual education, Chinese-style. Tibetan activists have a different term for it: forced assimilation. The issue is getting official attention this year, with UN human rights experts and representatives from the US and a handful of other Western governments condemning the system.

China has shuttered village schools across Tibet and replaced them with centralized boarding schools over the last dozen years. Many students come from remote farming villages and live at the schools. The practice is not limited to the region but appears to be much more widespread in Tibetan areas.

A teacher watches Tibetan students learn to write Tibetan words in a first-grade class at the Shangri-La Key Boarding School during a mediatour on Sept. 5 in Dabpa County, Sichuan, China.

Activists estimate 1 million Tibetan children study at such boarding schools, though the number is difficult to confirm. They say the schools are part of a broader strategy to dilute Tibetan identity and assimilate Tibetans into the majority Chinese culture. School officials respond that the lessons include Tibetan-related material such as songs and dance, and that the boarding schools were born out of a need to deliver the best education in impoverished remote areas.

“In ethnic areas, the population is scattered, and the government has put in a lot of effort to consolidate educational resources and provide an excellent teaching and learning environment for the students,” Kang Zhaxi (康扎西), the principal of the Shangri-La school, told about 10 foreign journalists recently as lines of students spilled out of the cafeteria at dinnertime. “This is how it works.”

Kang Zhaxi, who was speaking in Chinese, gave the Chinese version of his name, which would be Kham Tashi in Tibetan.

Tibetan students gather at the Shangri-La Key Boarding School during a media tour on Sept. 5 in Dabpa County, Sichuan, China.

RESHAPING SOCIETIES

China has long sought to eradicate any possibility of unrest in regions home to sizeable ethnic populations by imprisoning those who dare to protest while reshaping societies and religions — including Tibetan Buddhism, Islam and Christianity — to align them with the views and goals of the long-ruling Communist Party. The approach has hardened in the past decade under leader Xi Jinping (習近平), notably in a brutal crackdown on the Uyghur community in the Xinjiang region north of Tibet.

In the battle for global public opinion, the government organized a tour for foreign journalists to a predominantly Tibetan region in Sichuan province. Officials showed off schools, economic development projects, Buddhist monasteries and a Tibetan medicine hospital. Many of these locations, including boarding schools, would normally be difficult for foreign media to access. All interviews were conducted with government officials listening in.

Tibetan students line up as they head for their meals at the Shangri-La Key Boarding School during a media tour on Sept. 5 in Dabpa County, Sichuan Province, China.

China’s communists, after coming to power in 1949, overthrew the Buddhist theocracy running Tibet in 1951. The Dalai Lama, the head of the dominant school of Tibetan Buddhism, fled into exile during a failed uprising in 1959 and has not returned since.

Protests flared over the years, but after large demonstrations in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the government set out to quash dissent through arrests and intimidation, the reshaping of Tibetan identity into a more Chinese one, and lavish spending on infrastructure to develop the remote, mountainous region that borders northern India and Nepal along one flank of the Himalayas.

NO CHOICE

Kardze prefecture in Sichuan is a land of craggy mountains, rushing rivers, grazing black-haired yak and glittering pagodas and stupas. At 4,400 meters, one of its airports is the highest civilian one in the world. Journalists and government officials from Beijing were left short of breath, some finding relief in canisters of oxygen.

The boarding school opened in 2012 in a town that had been renamed Shangri-La a decade earlier to boost tourism. Hotels, including a Holiday Inn Express & Suites near the school, line the streets and steep cliffs rise above the valley.

It’s difficult to judge whether the students are happy, or if they are losing their Tibetan way of life, as they bounce basketballs on an outdoor court or try to repeat a simple passage on a keyboard in music class. Their parents were nowhere to be seen, though schools officials said they could visit anytime.

About three-fourths of the 390 students live at the elementary school. Kang Zhaxi, the principal, said many parents choose the boarding option for their children because of the distance from home.

Activists, speaking generally, say the parents have no choice, because village schools have been shut and they may be penalized if they don’t send their children to the larger schools that have replaced them. Kang Zhaxi taught in a village for eight years before moving to the Shangri-La boarding school. It wasn’t clear if his previous school had been closed.

“You just do not in good conscience take young children away from their parents and families and communities and put them in boarding school at the rate that they are in Tibet,” said Lhadon Tethong, the Tibetan Canadian director of the US-based Tibet Action Institute.

Her group issued a report in late 2021 that used Chinese government documents and other research to estimate at least 800,000 Tibetan children, or nearly 80 percent of the school-age population, were in such boarding schools. Gyal Lo, a Tibetan education expert who left China in late 2020, estimates at least 100,000 preschoolers are boarding, bringing the total close to 1 million. China denies the number is that high.

Gyal Lo, who now works at Tibet Action, said he visited more than 50 boarding preschools for field research after seeing the impact one was having on his 4- and 5-year-old grand nieces in 2016. He called it an ideological conspiracy to pull children out of their culture as early as possible so they won’t want to speak or be Tibetan. “That’s their ultimate goal, I think,” he said.

WORLD REACTS

Human rights campaigns focused on China’s actions in Hong Kong and against the Uyghurs in northwest China’s Xinjiang region have generated more headlines in recent years, but the boarding school issue has helped nudge Tibet back onto the periphery of the international consciousness.

In February, the UN human rights office announced that three outside experts, acting as special UN rapporteurs, had sent a 17-page letter to China’s foreign minister in November last year detailing their concern about an apparent policy to assimilate Tibetan culture into China’s “through a series of oppressive actions against Tibetan educational, religious and linguistic institutions.”

A press release focused on the boarding schools, under the headline: “UN experts alarmed by separation of 1 million Tibetan children from families and forced assimilation at residential schools.”

The boarding schools then made it onto the agenda of a two-day hearing on China held in March by the UN experts committee on economic, social and cultural rights. Chinese officials responded to the criticism at the hearing, but the 18-member committee called on China in its final report to “abolish immediately the coerced residential (boarding) school system imposed on Tibetan children and allow private Tibetan schools to be established.”

Since then, a German Foreign Ministry official has said his government backs that call, and Czech and Canadian lawmakers have issued statements calling for an end to the boarding schools. The US went the furthest, announcing in August that it would put visa restrictions on officials involved in the schools, which it said “seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural, and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans.”

Halfway around the world, there were no signs of change as the sun set on another day at the Shangri-La Key Boarding School.

China has rejected the criticism outright. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the government would respond to the US action by placing visa restrictions on Americans “who spread rumors to smear China or have long meddled in Tibet-related issues.”

Beijing’s Sinicization act: Chinese business outlets face dictates to replace Tibet with ‘Xizang’

While China’s social, cultural, and religious engineering with its non-Han Chinese communities continues, Beijing has accelerated the process of Sinicization of Tibet so much so that even business firms dealing with Tibetan goods have been asked to use ‘Xizang’ in place of Tibet while marking their products from the region.   

Last week, China’s e-commerce giant Weidian which operates over 90 million online retail outlets with a trading volume of 100 billion yuan ($13.7 billion), issued a notice to all its platform merchants to either use word ‘Xizang’ in the place of Tibet or face rejection of their goods, South China Morning Post said.

Though no deadline has been issued for the acceptance of this transition, the management of the e-commerce company has asked its online retailers to display the word ‘Xizang’ on products sourced from Tibet, the Hong Kong-based daily said. No reason has been cited for the sudden decision to paint everything identified with Tibet with Chinese brush.

However, the process of calling Tibet as ‘Xizang’ received a renewed push after Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during the third Trans-Himalaya Forum for International Cooperation in Nyingchi city on October 5, called for using ‘Xizang’ as the official translation for Tibet, which was annexed by China in 1950, a year after the CPC won the civil war.

The two-day Trans-Himalaya Forum meeting was attended by representatives from 12 countries, including Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

At this meeting, as per media reports, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in his speech repeatedly used the word ‘Xizang’ while referring to Tibet, a region which is home to 3.5 million people. For example, he said, “China welcomes friends from all other countries to Xizang to personally witness Xizang’s tremendous achievements in its economic and social development.”

But push came to shove when Chen Wenqing, a Communist Party of China’s politburo member and Chief of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, in his address to a group of provincial security chiefs in Gannan in Gansu province on August 27 called for taking a clear stand to safeguard the unity of China, oppose ethnic separatism and ensure national security.

He said they “must take the initiative to prevent and control risks and resolutely maintain the long-term peace and stability of not only the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) but also of prefectures with Tibetan majorities in the surrounding four provinces,” state-backed Xinhua news quoted Chen Wenqing as saying. These provinces with Tibetan majority are: Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu, and Qinghai.

Analysts say such developments show Chinese leaders are not fully convinced about the stability of the Tibetan region despite years of harsh crackdown on the people of the region. In the Tibetan region, monasteries are subjected to monitoring, monks and nuns are harassed and often persecuted by Chinese authorities. In the name of social management, it is alleged that large scale collection of data of Tibetans through DNA extraction, iris scans and facial recognition are being carried out.

Early this year, the world was in for a deep shock when three UN experts in their report said that roughly one million Tibetan children have been separated from their families and forcibly placed into Chinese state-run boarding schools, as part of efforts to assimilate them “culturally, religiously, and linguistically into the dominant Han Chinese culture,” Time, an American news magazine, said while quoting the UN experts’ report.

Giving chilling details of forced cultural dissociation of Tibetan children from their roots, the UN report quoted by Time said Tibetan children from rural areas are placed in residential schools, where lessons are “conducted solely in Mandarin Chinese with scant reference to Tibetan history, religion, and certainly not exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.”

Sinicization of Tibet and its culture, tradition and way of life has been speeded up since Xi Jinping became CPC General Secretary in 2013. In September 2020, when China and entire parts of the world were grappling with deadly coronavirus, Xi Jinping attended the seventh central symposium on Tibet, considered to be China’s highest-level meeting on Tibet, where he proposed three goals for the complete assimilation of Tibetans into Chinese mainstream life.

First goal included, strengthening of political and ideological education in Tibetan schools by replacing religious texts with the CPC rulebook; second goal emphasized upon by the Chinese President, included strengthening of border defence and frontier security of Tibet by crushing any dissent brewing in Tibet; third goal included replacement of Tibetan scripts with Chinese characters.

The third goal was also emphasized during a three-day seminar on Tibet in Beijing in August this year. The seminar, backed by the United Front Work Department, which oversees ethnic and minority affairs in China, was participated by 320 scholars, including 40 from outside mainland China, Xinhua news said. Their stand was that by replacing Tibet with the word ‘Xizang’ would lead to enhancing China’s international discourse on Tibet.

Across state-backed media, the word ‘Xizang’ has been in use in China since 2019. According to South China Morning Post, the English language editions of People’s Daily, tabloid Global Times, official Xinhua news agency and broadcaster CGTN have been using ‘Xizang’ in their English language reports for the last five years.

But no state-backed news outlet has ever completely replaced Tibet with ‘Xizang.’ Both names often figured in the Foreign Ministry statements also. After the October 5 direction, stress is being laid on calling Tibet as ‘Xizang’. The Chinese government says the move is a part of its effort to mainstream Tibetans’ life in China.

In hindsight, however, the move is a part of forced cultural assimilation of Tibetans, which is being undertaken when the international community, including the US and the European Union have raised concerns over increase in human rights violations of Tibetans in China.