Tibet has seen sweeping ‘reforms’ in education since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in China. Besides fostering a general sense of legitimacy for the Communist Party among young Tibetans, Beijing is now looking to assimilate them into Chinese society. This goal of achieving ‘ethnic unity’ has resulted in the closure of many Tibetan schools, in favour of Tibetans being inducted into militarised boarding schools. The recent closure of a popular Tibetan school in Qinghai drew widespread criticism from Tibetan exiles, and according to the Human Rights Watch, at least five schools in eastern Tibet have been shut down since 2021. Parents in these regions must now compulsorily turn to China’s state-run boarding schools for Tibetan children. The curriculum in these schools, which largely excludes the teaching and learning of the Tibetan language, religion, and culture is intended to lead these children into becoming more Chinese and less Tibetan in terms of their identity and cultural orientation.

While the PRC’s repressive policies in Xinjiang have rightfully drawn attention and concern from the international community, their attempts to weaponise education by using it as a tool of identity erasure in Tibet must be viewed with equal consternation.

Cultivating Tibetan Loyalty for the ‘Motherland’

Nearly a million Tibetan children are currently placed in China’s state boarding schools, with an estimated 100,000 Tibetan children in pre-schools. In terms of official numbers, there are approximately 895 boarding schools in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). The number, however, is likely to be much higher since the regions of eastern Tibet (Kham and Amdo) have been subsumed into Chinese provinces. Patriotic education, loyalty towards the party-state, and a resurgence of Han nationalism drive Xi’s minority assimilation policy.

The policy, known otherwise as ‘nationalities work’, dictates how each one of the five major ethnic groups must function in relation to the Han majority and to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In the case of Tibet, this is most evident in the re-ordering of Tibetan society and culture through education. Boarding schools in Tibet must use Mandarin Chinese in place of Tibetan as the primary language of instruction. Chinese culture, or the dominant Han Chinese identity, is given primacy. As a result of this young children are often unable to communicate with families in their mother tongue.

Attendance at these schools is compulsory for Tibetans, and first-hand accounts from recent Tibetan exiles into India, whose testimonies I have had the opportunity to listen to, describe the coercive nature of attendance and curriculum structuring, and the extensive militarisation, surveillance, and ideological indoctrination within these schools. Meanwhile, independent Tibetan schools, including vocational schools teaching the Tibetan language, have been forced to shut down under false legal pretexts. Parents have no options outside of state-run schools located far away from their homes.

The recently proposed draft law on ‘ethnic unity’ aims to further strengthen this process of indoctrination. Besides clearly misrepresenting Tibet’s history through the false narrative of 2,000 years of civilisational continuity, the law envisages a ‘common consciousness’ in all public undertakings. This includes, among other things, education and compulsory references to Tibet as ‘Xizang’, a name many Tibetans consider to be highly offensive because it translates to ‘western treasure house.’

Tibet’s ‘Stolen Generation’

Recent studies by Tibetan scholars have compared the structure of China’s boarding schools to indigenous schools in settler colonies such as Australia, New Zealand, the US, and Canada. Just like the China of today, governments in these states set about the task of assimilating indigenous communities by proscribing Christian education for native children, to be administered without access to, or the involvement of, their parents. In fact, some Chinese scholars view the historical Anglo-Saxon dominance of the American system quite favourably.

In these schools, children would be subject to routine physical abuse and starvation, especially if they did not speak English. Their cultural and social impact was profound as generations of First Nations people were forcibly removed from their families and societies and placed into the dominant culture of the ‘white majority’. Far from assimilation, indigenous people continued to be racially profiled and faced systematic barriers to their upward social and economic mobility. In Tibet, Chinese scholars themselves have pointed to the detrimental socio-emotional impact on children studying in these residential schools without the guardianship of their parents.

A Need for Timely Intervention

While some countries and human rights organisations have condemned China’s policy, meaningful diplomatic and other intervention remains a challenge. In 2023, the US government decided to sanction Chinese officials who were associated with the CCP’s ‘forced assimilation’ policy. However, as is evident by now, sanctions rarely work with major powers and regional hegemons.

The extensive surveillance inside Tibet also makes it difficult to access information, resulting in significant gaps in knowledge. Moreover, India, which hosts the largest number of Tibetan refugees in the world, has chosen not to take up the matter bilaterally with China. Without assistance from the international community, Tibetan language, religion, and culture face definite possibilities of erasure. With fewer Tibetans being able to escape via Himalayan routes in recent years, the possibility of identity preservation in exile also remains difficult.

With Tibet being cut off from the Himalayan states almost completely, and China looking to exert control over Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetans are in dire need of support from the international community, and especially their host countries. Ultimately, only a multilateral consensus that keeps Tibetan identity and, more importantly, the political status of Tibet at its front and centre, is likely to be met with some form of success and a tempering of China’s draconian Tibet policy.

Janhavi Pande is a PhD student in the Department of Politics and International Relations at University of Adelaide, Australia.