Young Chinese and Tibetans are compelled to learn a simplified caricature of China’s history that portrays Tibet as part of China since ‘ancient times’. As part of a long-term strategy to urbanise most Tibetans, reducing them to merely one of many ethnic groups mingling in municipalities where no nationality retains special rights, Tibetans face displacement and resettlement into frontier villages and concrete apartment blocks. The Tibetan landscape, now a premier destination for high-end tourism and an escape from urban pressures for young Chinese, presents a jarring juxtaposition of designer shopping malls alongside the omnipresent apparatus of total surveillance and securitisation.
This policy brief analyses China’s policies in Tibet, which involve as aspects of a coherent plan the ruthless suppression of even moderate criticism of Party policy; the imposition of a ‘Sinicisation’ campaign in education and mainstreaming of Chinese language.
