Why China takes young Tibetans from their families

An air of quiet piety hangs over Rongwo Monastery in the western province of Qinghai. The streets near this ancient complex draw pilgrims and Tibetan Buddhist monks in dark red robes. Local believers make circuits around the monastery’s yellow walls, turning a line of wooden prayer-wheels as they walk.

On a recent Monday afternoon, though, chattering schoolchildren thronged this sacred neighbourhood in the heart of Tongren, a small mountain city known to Tibetans as Rebkong. Youngsters in red scarves and uniform tracksuits bought fruit and snacks from market stalls, most without a parent in sight. Teenage high-schoolers and pupils half their age hauled small suitcases or sat in weary groups beside piles of schoolbags, bringing the bustle of a railway station to streets around the monastery.

Government policy explains the hundreds of unaccompanied minors filling Tongren’s historic centre. This particular Monday was a public holiday for pupils across China, as the country marked the Dragon Boat Festival with a long weekend. But these youngsters were overwhelmingly ethnic Tibetans. As a result, on an overcast holiday afternoon they had already bid their families goodbye and were now heading back to one of Tongren’s dozen or so boarding schools, in time for classes the next morning.

An ever-larger majority of Tibetan youths attend state-run boarding schools at the primary and secondary level, and in extreme cases pre-schools. That is true whether they live in the harshly policed Tibet Autonomous Region, or in the parts of historical Tibet that the Communist Party carved off and handed to the neighbouring provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan (these are run as “Tibetan autonomous prefectures”). At least 78% of Tibetan pupils board, according to official data collected by the Tibet Action Institute, an overseas campaign group.

Lessons in these schools marginalise Tibetan culture. Over the past few years Mandarin Chinese has replaced Tibetan as the medium of instruction, with Tibetan taught only as a language, alongside English. All pre-schools, including in ethnic areas, have used Mandarin since 2021, to “seize the key period of language learning in early childhood”, as the education ministry puts it.

Authorities call boarding schools “very convenient” for Tibetan farmers’ and herders’ children who would otherwise face “long and arduous journeys to school”. Officials insist that parents freely choose whether children board. In Qinghai, a rugged place with Han Chinese, Tibetan, Hui Muslim and Mongolian populations, the provincial government declared in 2018 that “in principle” children should board only when necessary, that they should not board until the fourth grade (ie, age 11), and that in remote pastoral areas school policies should follow “the wishes of the masses”.

Tibetan exiles and activists challenge this narrative. They cite state-media reports boasting of motherly care given to four- and five-year-olds in Tibetan boarding schools. They describe parents being threatened with fines or with a denial of schooling later on if they do not send children to board. Many Tibetan families see Mandarin as a path to employment. But as recently as the early 2000s Qinghai officials pursued that goal in more humane ways. To reduce drop-out rates and raise exam scores they expanded bilingual education, hired Tibetan teachers and accredited schools run by monks. Not now. Private Tibetan schools have been closed and teachers sacked for teaching Tibetan beyond the curriculum. This has sparked parent protests, including near Tongren in 2020.

Chaguan travelled to Tongren to weigh claims that coercive assimilation is now the norm. While in Qinghai he was followed by up to five unmarked cars. Tibetan-speaking officers (one of whom flashed a police badge) filmed and eavesdropped on conversations. In Huangnaihai, a hilltop village near Tongren, an officer’s curt intervention silenced a school headmaster who had been asked how Tibetan parents view Chinese-language schooling.

Despite the officers’ efforts, holes appeared in the official narrative. Start with those pupils in Tongren. Though some stepped off long-distance buses, others turned out to be locals, undermining claims that Tibetan boarding-school construction is solely explained by the need to spare herders’ children from long journeys. Then consider two boarding schools in a river valley below Rongwo Monastery that serve Hui Muslim and Tibetan pupils, respectively. Hui pupils who live in Tongren do not have to board, but rules are different for Tibetan pupils, your columnist was told.

Building schools to forge souls

In a Tongren suburb stands the Nianduhu Township Boarding Primary School. Its gates are flanked by murals showing pupils saluting the national flag, the Great Wall of China and the slogans: “I will become a great Chinese person” and “The motherland in my heart”. The Tibetan-majority school is building dormitories. From the autumn 400 students will live in them, a local education official said. Asked about first- and second-graders, aged eight and nine, he replied that county authorities still need to decide whether those youngest pupils will board, but “the other students will all be boarding.” That includes children with families nearby.

Such policies reflect an assimilationist logic. In 2015 the State Council (China’s cabinet) called for faster boarding-school construction to fulfil “the goal that students of all ethnic minorities will study in a school, live in a school and grow up in a school”. That serves a larger ambition: to “forge a strong sense of the community of the Chinese nation”. That is party-speak for promoting a single national identity to defend social stability and national security. Though clunky, the phrase is enshrined in the party constitution as a guide to ethnic work in the Xi Jinping era. If Tongren residents forget the slogan they need only look up. It is spelled out in big red characters on the hill opposite Rongwo Monastery.

© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com