Chinese authorities are removing thousands of Tibetan farmers and herders from their traditional livelihoods and subjecting them to forced military-style “vocational” training before sending them in groups to faraway places to work at new jobs, according to a new report released by the Jamestown Foundation. Described as a drive to reduce rural poverty in Tibet, the campaign has already trained over half a million so-called rural surplus laborers during the first seven months of 2020, and mirrors similar programs already under way in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), said researcher Adrian Zenz, an expert on Xinjiang and Tibet.
“This scheme encompasses Tibetans of all ages [and] covers the entire region,” said Zenz, a Senior Fellow in China Studies at the Washington D.C.-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and contributor to the report.
The training is supervised by People’s Armed Police drill sergeants, includes instruction in Chinese law and the Chinese language, and is aimed at reforming “backward thinking” and “diluting the negative influence of religion”—factors believed by China to have hindered economic development in Tibet’s countryside, he said.
