Slogans have echoed loudly across Tibet in recent days. “Long live Tibet’s peaceful liberation!” has crackled from loudspeakers and megaphones. “Let us build the Chinese national community!” and “Long live the great, glorious, and correct Chinese Communist Party!”
Seventy-five years have passed since Chinese and Tibetan representatives signed an agreement that paved the way for the People’s Republic of China’s takeover of Tibet. The event took place in Beijing, where the Tibetan delegation was isolated and placed under intense pressure by the hosts. The outcome was inevitable.
In Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, the Chinese authorities have marked the anniversary with singing, dancing, and lengthy speeches. A local leader, Sun Xianzhong, said in his speech that the people of “Xizang” had created a “human miracle” by leaping over several thousand years in just a few decades. In recent years, the Chinese authorities have been eager to replace Tibetan place names with Chinese ones. Xizang is therefore Beijing’s preferred name.
The stubborn mountain kingdom was officially incorporated into the People’s Republic of China in 1951. But the “liberation” was far from peaceful, as Tibetans took up arms and did not surrender without a fight. Discontent in the following years culminated in the 1959 uprising, which ended with the Dalai Lama and tens of thousands of others fleeing to India, Nepal, and Bhutan. A few years later, during the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s Red Guards arrived — and once again the Tibetans suffered greatly.
Only in the 1980s were they able to breathe more freely. From his exile in India, the Dalai Lama attempted to engage China’s leaders in dialogue, without success. Instead, he was branded a “jackal” and a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” In the new millennium, there has in practice been no dialogue between Beijing and the Tibetan government-in-exile, and the Dalai Lama — who will soon turn 91 — appears powerless.
Under Xi Jinping, the government has invested heavily in Tibet, in infrastructure, tourism, mining, and much else — and the growth figures are impressive. But much of what is happening is causing fear and anxiety among Tibetans. For years they have felt like second-class citizens, and with Xi at the helm, the government has intensified its Sinicization of the country’s 55 ethnic minorities. The goal is to force local languages, religions, and cultures into a Chinese national framework.
In what is officially called the Tibet Autonomous Region, there are just over 3.1 million Tibetans. In addition, another 3.9 million are believed to live in neighboring provinces. In recent years, the authorities have conducted a targeted campaign to shape — or brainwash — Tibetan children by forcing them to attend state-run boarding schools.
The Tibet Action Institute, based in the United States with branches in several other countries, estimates that at least 800,000 children between the ages of six and eighteen live in boarding schools. Preschool children, too, are increasingly being removed from their home environments to live in these new collective communities. Last year, TAI estimated their number at 100,000, bringing the total close to one million. The authorities say they consider boarding schools important, but dispute that the student numbers are that high.
In 2021, China’s Ministry of Education began requiring Mandarin to be used as the language of instruction and care in all kindergartens and preschools, thereby giving it priority over minority languages. Videos from Tibet have shown small children unable even to say their names in Tibetan, pronouncing them instead as if they were Chinese.
“China has built a machine that reaches into the mouths of toddlers and tears out their mother tongue,” says Rabga Tashi of the London-based organization Free Tibet. “As a Tibetan, I know what language loss means for a people. It is not just about words, but about everything. China is now inflicting this loss on children before they are old enough to understand what is being taken from them.”
The alarming development is confirmed by Human Rights Watch. The organization points out that Tibetan children are not only subjected to Chinese language and culture. They are also exposed to massive political propaganda. They are taught to love the Communist Party and “Uncle Xi Jinping” more than even their own parents. When the children occasionally return home for visits, they begin to stutter, stumble, and cry — because the language they learned from their mother and father is gone.
Language loss at such an early age is serious, experts say, because language is not merely a means of communication. In Tibet, as everywhere else, it conveys memories, songs, stories, prayers, and family history. When a child can no longer hold a natural conversation with parents and grandparents, it is not only words that are lost, but an entire cultural transmission. The loss is especially severe because it happens so early. A teenager learning Mandarin has already had time to build a linguistic and cultural foundation. A preschool child has not.
In March this year, China passed a new law intended to promote the “unity” of all the country’s ethnic groups. The law gives the state a stronger legal basis for forcing Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols, and other minorities into the same Chinese straitjacket. Once again, it establishes Mandarin as the primary language, while minority languages are assigned a subordinate role.
The Muslim Uyghurs in the western Xinjiang region are suffering in much the same way. Large numbers of Uyghur children have been separated from their families and placed in orphanages and state-run boarding schools, with Mandarin as the primary language and heavy political indoctrination. There are also reports that children have been placed with Han Chinese families through state assimilation programs.
In addition, the authorities have demolished or closed a significant number of mosques. China rejects the accusations, but independent investigations show an extensive dismantling of Islamic cultural heritage in the region. Xinjiang has a population of around 26 million. After many years of massive state-directed migration, Han Chinese now make up more than 42 percent of the permanent population.
In Inner Mongolia, the authorities’ heavy-handed assimilation policies triggered strong protests in 2020. The census that same year showed that Han Chinese accounted for nearly 80 percent of the region’s 24 million inhabitants. Since then, the large and visible protests have subsided in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia alike. The imbalance of power has become overwhelming. With advanced surveillance technology, the authorities are able to “shadow” anyone perceived as threatening the political order. It has rarely been more difficult to form an opposition movement in China than it is today.
“I cannot understand it,” a Chinese student said to me last year. “In 1989, up to one million Chinese people demonstrated in Beijing, and they kept it going for almost seven weeks. How could that happen? Today, no one can raise a protest sign without being arrested immediately.”
