For the past two years, reports have laid bare the systematic erasure of Tibetan identity, and Tibetans across the world have been staging protests, demanding accountability from China. Most recently, on February 18, Tibetan activist Namkyi shared her testimony at the Geneva Summit. At the age of 15, she staged a peaceful protest alongside her sister – an act that led to years of relentless surveillance, intimidation, and repression. She told the summit that Chinese authorities followed her every move until she escaped Tibet for good in 2023.
The weight of China’s rule has been growing for decades in Tibet, but incidents over the past few years have revealed an intensifying effort to wipe out Tibetan culture through a strategy of forced assimilation, particularly targeting children. Under the guise of promoting “national unity” and “economic progress,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has embarked on a systematic campaign to integrate Tibetans into the dominant Han Chinese culture, diminishing their language, religion, and traditions. What Beijing calls “unity” is a methodical erasure of Tibetan identity – a slow-motion cultural genocide taking place in one of the world’s most isolated regions.
Xi Jinping’s government in 2021 announced an ambitious national goal to have 85 percent of China’s population speaking Mandarin by 2025. The official narrative behind this policy claims language conformity and economic cohesion as justifications. But in Tibet, this push for Mandarin fluency is yet another tool for dissolving cultural ties. Central to this policy is the forced assimilation of young Tibetan children through residential schools, where children are systematically separated from their families and immersed in a curriculum designed to extinguish Tibetan identity and replace it with allegiance to the Chinese state.
A 2021 report from the Tibet Action Institute detailed the scope of these assimilation efforts. The institute counted 423,801 Tibetan students in boarding schools in the Tibetan Autonomous Region alone, with another 166,935 in Qinghai, 36,730 in Gansu, 170,565 in Sichuan, and 8,187 in Yunnan – all regions that include ethnic Tibetan populations. Together, it’s estimated that there are more than 1 million children attending these schools. That means at least 78 percent of Tibetan schoolchildren in grade one and above (age 6-18) are being taken from their homes and forced into what activists describe as an effort to suppress Tibetan culture and identity.
“Classes are taught primarily in Chinese with state-approved textbooks,” said Dr. Gyal Lo, an activist and leading expert on China’s assimilation and education policies in Tibet. “Most teachers are Chinese undergraduate students who have little to no teaching experience.” Gyal Lo fled Tibet in 2020 and now resides in Canada.
Generations of Tibetans have been raised in village schools and monasteries that preserved Tibetan language and customs, but under recent new CCP policies, these schools are rapidly being shut down and replaced with state-run boarding facilities. Tibetan children are now forced into an exclusive Mandarin curriculum, deprived of Tibetan textbooks and language class, cut off from their families and way of life.
“When I was in school, I used to feel most of my classmates were Chinese when everyone indeed was Tibetan. My school was 3,000 kilometers away from my home and the only time I could go home was during my one-month summer and two-month winter vacation,” said a source who now resides in exile in Dharamsala, India and went to a school in Shanghai. “Missing my parents was the biggest problem.”
In July 2024, an internationally acclaimed vocational high school for Tibetans – Gangjong Sherig Norling school in Golog county of Qinghai province – which had been operating for 30 years, was abruptly shut down. A video shared by Radio Free Asia showed the 110 students visibly tearful during the school’s final graduation ceremony.
China has also shuttered thousands of monasteries that preserved Tibetan language and customs across Tibet and replaced them with centralized boarding schools over the last dozen years. Tibet is home to a rich Buddhist tradition, and its monasteries have long been the guardians of Tibetan culture and knowledge. The few monasteries that remain face strict surveillance, with monks required to display loyalty to the state above all else.
China’s Education Modernization 2035 Plan, a blueprint for the country’s future schooling system highlights the promotion of Xi Jinping’s ideology of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and the pursuit of so-called high-quality education with “Chinese characteristics” and cultivating patriotism. The repercussions of this education policy are profound. Language is more than a means of communication; it is the backbone of culture, memory, and identity. Stripping Tibetan children of their native language erases not just their ability to speak Tibetan but also their connection to the stories, values, and philosophies of their ancestors.
The Chinese government’s calculated approach to language suppression ensures that each generation of Tibetans becomes less connected to their roots, less able to resist assimilation, and less visible as an independent cultural entity.
Boarding Preschools: A Hidden Agenda
State-run boarding schools in the Tibet Autonomous Region have been operating since the early 1980s, but their expansion has escalated significantly under Xi’s leadership, particularly during his second term. Since 2016, a new wave of boarding preschools for children aged 4-6 have been established, a completely hidden policy of the Chinese government.
Preschools are a mandatory part of China’s education policy, with all children required to attend. In urban areas, where day schools exist, children can return home after classes. However, in rural areas – where the majority of Tibetans live – children must stay in boarding schools. Children are only allowed to return home during weekly breaks or for the summer and winter vacations. The vacation period varies across different provinces.
Dr. Gyal Lo recounted witnessing his two grandnieces, then 4 and 5 years old, completely transformed by their experiences in these preschools: “When they returned home, they only spoke in Chinese and didn’t like the Tibetan food at home. And this was just after three months of enrollment.” After that, he embarked on a journey and visited over 50 such schools in the Tibetan plateau and the other five provinces to dig deeper into this new hidden policy.
While there is no official data on the exact number of these schools, experts roughly estimate around 100,000 to 150,000 Tibetan preschoolers are currently enrolled in them.
“Children as young as 4 years old are sent away to these schools, often as far as 1,000 miles from their homes,” said Lhadon Tethong, director of Tibet Action Institute. “At a critical stage of their development, they are forcibly placed into environments designed to turn them into Chinese and ensure their obedience to CCP.”
By offering free food and accommodations, the boarding schools coax children into accepting their new reality, said Gyal Lo. But these children don’t realize what is being quietly taken from them: the right to speak to their parents in their mother tongue, to whisper their wishes in Tibetan, to argue with their siblings in the language of their ancestors, to pray in the words that generations before them have used. Piece by piece, their heritage is stripped away – not through force, but through a system designed to make them forget who they are.
Educational Advancement or Systematic Trauma?
CCP propaganda portrays these assimilation policies as benevolent efforts to modernize Tibet, with the boarding schools branded as an educational advancement, Chinese media have made constant efforts to debunk the narrative of forced assimilation while painting a rosy, state-approved picture. But those who managed to escape Tibet and videos obtained through a clandestine network of sources describe a vastly different reality – one of isolation and indoctrination.
Kunzang Longyang, 17, took his own life after being separated from his monastery and sent to a state-run boarding school in April 2024 in Qinghai province’s Drakkar County, as reported by Radio Free Asia. A monk at Yulung Monastery, Kunzang Longyang was forced to attend a state-run boarding school because, under China’s law, children should be in state-run schools until the age of 18.
Last September, a harrowing video surfaced showing five young monks attempting to take their own lives by jumping into a river. In the video shared by a local, one monk can be heard saying, “It’s unbearable to stay in the local school. It’s like a prison. They don’t give us food, and they beat us.”
In another video shared by the Tibet Action Institute on Instagram, a young boy is seen being forcibly pushed into a car by two unidentified men. The boy was one of 140 children from Muge Monastery in Muge town, Ngaba, Sichuan, being taken to a government-run boarding school.
The latest video depicting child abuse at one of these schools went viral on Chinese social media. The silent video shows a man identified as Dang Qingfu, the school principal of Tsokhyil Township Ethnic Boarding Primary School in Tsolho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in China’s Qinghai province, throwing a young student to the ground before slapping and pinching him in front of numerous other students. The children in the background appear terrified, while other teachers stand by. The video was allegedly filmed in November 2024.
While China’s laws explicitly prohibit corporal punishment in schools, reports have highlighted practices that go far beyond physical violence. An anonymous source, now residing in India, who attended school in Kardze, Kham (now Ganzi, Sichuan) shared in a report: “Physical torture such as sexual molestation and beatings by teachers and school managers have been ongoing silent practices and have caused many children to experience enduring mental traumas.”
A research by Tibetan Researcher Gazang Cao revealed more than one in three children were experiencing “alienation” in rural colonial boarding schools in Qinghai. Another study found that boarding on campus negatively impacts the socio-emotional competence (SEC) of children living away from their parents.
Forced Choices: Sacrificing Identity for a Hopeful Future
Parents in Tibet once had the option to send their children to monastic day schools, privately-run institutions, or even to schools in exile in India. However, these choices have been systematically eliminated, leaving families with no alternatives but to send their children to state-run residential schools with limited visits from parents.
Those who refuse to send their children to these schools are denied the necessary certificate for their kids to enroll in grade one. They are also blacklisted and barred from receiving any government benefits.
“If they live in rural areas where most Tibetans live, then kids are sent to boarding preschools, which are attached to boarding elementary schools,” said Lhadon. “If you don’t want that, then parents need to move to urban centers where there are still day school options, which is not feasible for most people.”
Caught in a difficult situation, many parents reluctantly comply to ensure their children do not fall behind in an era of rapid urban development. When I asked a friend of mine, now living in Paris, about her siblings back in Tibet who attend these boarding schools, she expressed having little to no understanding of what the schools are really aimed at. All she knew was that her parents had no choice but to send the children away even though the school was just an hour away.
“That was the only option,” she said.
Tibetans living through this in Tibet often don’t fully grasp the extent of what they are experiencing because they are simply surviving. Their understanding of their rights is limited and skewed by the systemic oppression they face. In many cases, they want their children to be educated, hoping they can thrive within the Chinese-dominated system, even though it comes at the cost of their identity and autonomy.
Where Does the World Stand?
“Free Tibet” was a global rallying cry in the 1990s. In recent years, global attention on Tibet has faded significantly, with several interlinked factors contributing to its decline. Key among these are shifts in activist networks, diminished public momentum, and the CCP’s aggressive efforts to silence dissent and control the narrative on Tibet.
For years, international action has been sporadic and largely symbolic. It wasn’t until 2022 that the United Nations issued a 17-page communication to the Government of China urging them to address the separation of 1 million Tibetan children from their families – a move that shed light on the grave human rights violations.
In July 2024, former U.S. President Joe Biden signed the “Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act” – also known as the “Resolve Tibet Act” – reaffirming U.S. support for Tibetan human rights and cultural preservation. The same month, the United States took a stronger stance, announcing visa restrictions on Chinese officials implicated in the repression of marginalized religious and ethnic communities, including Tibetans.
“You can wipe out the identity of a group over several generations without killing anybody,” said Stephen Rapp, former ambassador-at-large for global war crimes issues at the U.S. State Department. “And that can be genocide if your intent is to destroy that national group, which can be inferred from the continuous pursuit of such a policy.”
In October 2024, 15 U.N. member states, including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Japan, issued a joint statement at the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee, calling on China to address its human rights violations in Tibet.
While many Western governments have condemned Beijing’s use of education as a weapon of cultural genocide, China continues to deny any wrongdoing. Despite the severity of the issue and tireless efforts by Tibetans to draw attention and appeal for support, substantial progress has yet to be achieved. The road to justice for Tibet remains long, fraught with geopolitical complexities and a global community that often prioritizes economic ties with China over human rights.
John Jones, research manager at Free Tibet U.K., said, “China will be even more assertive in Tibet. So sometimes it’s about winning a campaign and achieving your goal, and sometimes it’s about holding the line and just waking up every day and reminding your government and your supporters that what’s happening in Tibet is not acceptable.”
This “soft” genocide is rarely visible to the global public, partly due to China’s extensive control over information flow from Tibet. Beijing enforces severe restrictions on local media and internet access, keeping reports of repression from reaching the outside world.
The fear of retaliation or harm to loved ones is also a powerful deterrent that keeps many silent about their experiences. Many Tibetans are reluctant to discuss their experiences with the state-run boarding schools. Individuals interviewed for this article expressed hesitation, fearing that speaking out could jeopardize the safety of their families in Tibet.
“It’s a sensitive topic to discuss with my parents and we never bring it to our conversations,” said Tenzin (name changed for safety reasons) who lives in exile in India.
Gyal Lo’s brother in Tibet told him that they continue to face intense pressure from the government due to his activism. They fear he will not be allowed back into Tibet. “I heard it from my neighbor that my father had passed away. My family couldn’t contact me,” he said.
The residential school systems in the United States and Canada, designed to systematically erase Indigenous identities, remain a deeply regrettable chapter in their histories. While North America confronts and reckons with this legacy, China is actively pursuing a similar campaign against Tibetans today – brazenly, under global scrutiny, and without remorse. Despite China’s continued denial and refusal to take accountability, the struggle for Tibetan identity and freedom persists, unwavering and resolute.
This article has been updated to correct the figures in paragraph four, which count Tibetan students not the number of schools.