Tibet

A significant proportion of China’s population claims to follow a religion. However, the government continues to toughen oversight, increase persecution of some religions, and attempt to co-opt state-sanctioned religious organizations.

Tenzin Dorjee is a Senior Researcher and Strategist at the Tibet Action Institute and a PhD candidate at Columbia University. In a post published on the Council on Foreign Relations’ Asia Unbound blog on March 29, Tibetologist Robert Barnett admonishes what he sees as the blurring of lines between advocacy and scholarship in the discourse on Tibet. The article, whose stated goal is to dispel the notion of a “Xinjiang-Tibet equivalence,” begins with legitimate arguments for distinguishing knowledge from speculation, urging the media and the academic community to refrain from overstating China’s repression in Tibet.  However, in cautioning against overstatement, Dr. Barnett goes much too far in the opposite direction, downplaying the severity of China’s repression and painting a picture of Tibet that deviates sharply from the lived reality of Tibetans. The version of Tibet that he depicts has little in common with the experience of ordinary Tibetans, who are routinely deprived of their freedom of expression, movement, religion and assembly. His description also sits uneasily with the fact that Freedom House has ranked Tibet as one of the least free places in its 2021 “Freedom in the World” report, assigning it a combined score of 1 out of a possible 100 for civil liberties and human rights –– by comparison, Syria scored 1/100 and North Korea scored 3/100.  The titular argument of Dr. Barnett’s article is that the level of repression in Tibet cannot be equated with that in Xinjiang. There is nothing novel or controversial about his thesis that the internment camps of Xinjiang do not exist in Tibet. So why bother to state the obvious? Because, according to Dr. Barnett, “a number of commentators, journalists, and politicians” have equated Tibet with Xinjiang “in terms of mass abuses.”  Among those guilty of this transgression, he first names Dr. Lobsang Sangay, the outgoing head of the Tibetan government in exile. To be sure, Dr. Sangay drew comparisons between Xinjiang and Tibet. But he was quick to point out where the comparison ended. In a BBC interview in July 2019, Dr. Sangay said there were “detention camps” in Tibet but “not as large” as in Xinjiang. If analyzed in its proper context, it is clear he was referring not to Nazi-style death camps but to the garden-variety re-education centers that have been a feature of China’s indoctrination programs in Tibet.  Dr. Sangay’s main message was that Chen Quanguo, the architect of the Uyghur internment camps, was deploying against the Uyghurs the tools of tyranny he had sharpened in Tibet. This was hardly an overstatement: before Chen took the reins in Xinjiang, he had indeed been the Party Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region from 2011 to 2016. Xinjiang specialists like James Leibold as well as rights monitoring groups like Human Rights Watch have also made the observation that Tibet served as a laboratory of repression for Chen’s dystopian vision. Dr. Sangay was simply trying to connect the dots between Tibet and Xinjiang, which is not the same as equating them. In accusing him of equating the two regions, Dr. Barnett basically erects a straw man that he then proceeds to demolish.  Another individual who comes under censure is Adrian Zenz, the author of a report that points to the existence of a mass program of labor training in Tibet. Dr. Zenz, it is worth noting, is the German scholar whose research on Xinjiang was pivotal in alerting the world to the Uyghur genocide. In critiquing Dr. Zenz’s report on Tibet, Dr. Barnett contributes some interesting details that enrich and complicate our understanding of the labor training program. Yet the essence of his critique suffers from several flaws, two of which merit special attention. Dr. Barnett’s first error is a conceptual one. Dr. Zenz, in discussing the nature of China’s labor training programs in Tibet, has highlighted the “systemic presence of numerous coercive elements.” While noting that there were “clear elements of coercion during recruitment, training and job matching,” he explicitly acknowledges in the report that there was “so far no evidence” of force being used. However, Dr. Barnett misses that conceptual distinction between force and coercion, using the terms interchangeably and thus misinterpreting one of Dr. Zenz’s key arguments.  In the voluminous literature on the strategy of conflict, coercion is said to operate when the threat of retaliation plays a role in getting someone to do something against their will. The direct use of brute force is not necessary for coercion to obtain; the threat of punishment often lurks in the shadows without ever appearing onstage. Dr. Barnett contends that there is no evidence of force having been used to recruit people into the labor training program and rushes to argue that coercion is therefore absent, basically conflating the two terms. This is akin to saying, “Since there is no evidence for the presence of A, we can conclude B is absent.” Besides, in the highly repressive climate of Tibet, the line between choice and coercion is extremely blurry, and yet Dr. Barnett fails to consider the range of direct or indirect negative repercussions Tibetans may face if they do not participate.  Second, one of the reasons he cites for questioning the validity of Dr. Zenz’s report is that its release was “coordinated with a prominent media campaign,” which included the publication of op-ed pieces in leading newspapers and a report by a political advocacy group. In Dr. Barnett’s view, Dr. Zenz’s report is tarnished by his ties to the media and the advocacy community. But this notion that engagement with the non-academic community disqualifies a research enterprise belongs to an elitist, and highly exclusivist, model of scholarship. True, in a bygone era, academics were expected to keep the subjects of their research at a distance –– though such an approach usually led to less knowledge, not more. In today’s more inclusive and decolonized models of scholarship, which put a premium on real-world impact, dialogue between academia and advocacy is considered not only ethically desirable but also epistemically beneficial. Finally, Dr. Barnett rebukes the Australia-based hosts of the Little Red Podcast for equating Tibet with Xinjiang in a recent episode on which I was one of the guests. “Tibet is not Xinjiang,” he repeats. I find it strange that he ignores the entire first segment of the show where we discuss the historical and political reasons why Beijing’s repression in Tibet is different from that in Xinjiang. Starting at 11:45 minutes, I go to great lengths to suggest that the current repression gap between the two regions may be largely attributed to two factors: (1) the Dalai Lama effect, which includes a highly dedicated and fairly influential global network of advocacy groups using political leverage to constrain Beijing’s behavior in Tibet, and (2) the United States’ global “war on terror” that put the Uyghurs, who are Muslims, in an exceptionally vulnerable position vis a vis China. While noting that the tactics of repression are more sophisticated and therefore less brutal in Tibet –– largely out of necessity because of the transnational network of activists monitoring China’s behavior –– none of the guests on the show equate the two regions in terms of mass abuses. Even so, the biggest problem with Dr. Barnett’s article is not how it misrepresents the Little Red Podcast, or Dr. Sangay or Dr. Zenz, but how it normalizes repression by minimizing the scope and scale of China’s totalitarian rule in Tibet. In his rosy view, Tibetan language, culture, and religion are neither under threat nor being targeted for eradication. He insists Xi Jinping’s China is merely trying to “adapt popular understandings of Tibetan Buddhism,” not seeking to destroy it. He points out that “publications of traditional religious texts run into the thousands.” The quantity of scriptural publications, however, is a misleading metric of religious life, which is more meaningfully measured by variables such as monastic enrollment and graduation rates, the breadth and depth of the curriculum, and the doctrinal and liturgical knowledge of the Sangha, etc.  In reality, Chinese authorities strictly control and suppress monastic enrollment in Tibet, forbidding anyone below eighteen to join the cloister. Tibetan children in Lhasa, for instance, are banned from visiting the Jhokhang temple or the Potala Palace –– such bans on religious activity often do not exist on paper and are easily missed by scholars relying purely on documentary evidence. Photos of the Dalai Lama have long been banned in monasteries and homes, but now Chinese authorities are seeking to expunge him altogether from Tibetan Buddhism, which goes far beyond merely “insulting the Dalai Lama.” (To understand what Tibetan Buddhism without the Dalai Lama might actually mean, imagine the Catholic Church without the Pope.) Whereas once the monastery used to be a liminal space relatively impervious to the state, now it is a panopticon filled with surveillance cameras watching the monastics at all times. Instead of spending their day studying the scriptures, monks and nuns are forced to attend political indoctrination programs and immerse themselves in Xi Jinping thought, which can hardly be called a “popular adaptation” of what the Buddha taught. Even more pernicious than Beijing’s attack on Buddhism is its assault on the Tibetan language, a campaign that bears all the hallmarks of a multigenerational project to render a language dead and thus eliminate a people’s identity. In a report published by Human Rights Watch, Tibetan sources on the ground describe how China’s new education policy, deceptively labeled “bilingual education,” has been replacing Tibetan with Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction not only in primary schools but in kindergartens across the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). What Beijing calls “bilingual education” is more accurately described by the International Tibet Network as a “cradle to grave” education system, where “new methods of 'controlling minds' have been imposed from an early age, with Tibetan toddlers increasingly being subjected to ideological education in hundreds of new and expanded kindergartens across Tibet.”  In Lhasa, for instance, parents are required to place children as young as three in these kindergartens, where the children’s mother tongue is first downgraded, then marginalized, and finally banished into irrelevance. By some estimates, around 81,000 Tibetan children above the age of 3 were “in pre-schools and kindergartens” in the TAR by 2017. According to Xinhua, this number has now grown to 150,000, and the number of kindergartens in the region has increased tenfold over the last decade to roughly 2,200. Even the pro-Beijing Global Times has reported that recent policies have “left the Tibetan language in a precarious situation,” as parents complain that “there is nowhere to study Tibetan language.”   One story that was relayed to me by a Lhasa native illuminates the micro-level mechanism by which a language, and the culture it carries, can undergo annihilation. A Tibetan toddler, after attending the “bilingual kindergarten” for a couple of months, came home one day speaking only in Chinese. Her parents were horrified when they realized that their daughter could no longer communicate with her grandparents, who spoke only Tibetan. In Tibet, as in many traditional societies, grandparents play a foundational role in shaping children’s cultural development and orienting their worldview — if children inherit genes from their parents, they inherit culture from their grandparents. Seen in this light, the vast and growing network of state-led “bilingual kindergartens,” which permanently damage the children’s relationship with their grandparents, are clearly designed to stem the intergenerational transmission of culture and fundamentally reconfigure Tibetan identity.  Much of this is underreported in the media, for the simple reason that Tibet remains an information black hole. Even North Korea, the hermetically sealed nation, has allowed the Associated Press and the Agence France-Press to establish bureaus on the ground, but there is not a single foreign reporter in Tibet. Beijing uses big-data technology of surveillance and state-of-the-art infrastructure of repression –– including the “convenience police stations” and the “double-linked households system,” innovated by Chen Quanguo during his tenure in Tibet –– to keep Tibetans, much like Uyghurs, in a general state of fear. But China’s ambition goes beyond mere physical control of its restless peripheries. Calling its ethnic unity education “an engineering project of the soul,” Xi Jinping’s China aims for nothing less than to “transform ethnic cultures and identities” as a permanent solution to what it views as the two biggest challenges to its cultural unity and political stability: Tibet and Xinjiang.  To conclude, imagine a detective who, after failing to find a gun or a knife in the house of an abusive husband, decides that his battered wife calling for help has no reason to fear for her life. When, in fact, any number of items in the house can be retooled into a deadly weapon. Dr. Barnett looks for a single fatal wound on Tibetan culture, and failing to find it, is quick to exonerate the Chinese government. Meanwhile, as China wages its multifaceted campaign to displace Tibetan language, erase Tibetan Buddhism, and relocate the nomads from the grasslands into the ghettos, Tibetans get the unmistakable feeling that their culture is undergoing death by a thousand cuts. There is no single policy that destroys a people, no single bullet that kills a culture. It is the totality of state policies and strategies whose interaction creates a complex process that ultimately chokes a culture and lowers it into its coffin, not overnight but over time.  Reference 1. Human Rights Watch, China’s “Bilingual Education” Policy in Tibet: Tibetan-Medium Schooling Under Threat (2020) 2. International Tibet Network, Shaping the Soul: China’s New Coercive Strategies in Tibet (2021) 3. Schelling, Thomas, The Strategy of Conflict (1960) 4. Zenz, Adrian and James Leibold, “Chen Quanguo: The Strongman Behind Beijing’s Securitization Strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang,” China Brief, Volume 17, Issue 12 (September 2017). 5. Human Rights Watch, “China: Tibetan Children Banned from Classes,” January 30, 2019. 6. Human Rights Watch, “China: Ban on Tibet Religious Activity Toughened,” September 11, 2019. 7. Leibold, James, “Planting the Seed: Ethnic Policy in Xi Jinping’s New Era of Cultural Nationalism,” China Brief, Volume: 19 Issue: 22 (December 31, 2019).    

Robert Barnett is a Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; an Affiliate Researcher at King’s College, London; and former Director of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University. Recent edited volumes include Conflicting Memories with Benno Weiner and Françoise Robin, and Forbidden Memory by Tsering Woeser. This piece was produced in collaboration with an ongoing group research project into policy developments on Tibet. Since the wave of mass detentions in Xinjiang became known internationally, a secondary proposition has begun to circulate in the media and among a number of politicians: the claim that Tibetans are experiencing similar abuses to those faced by Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, the other vast, colonized area in what China sees as its far western territory. That claim is incorrect. Although Chinese policies in Tibet are exceptionally restrictive and repressive, as far as is known they do not include the extreme abuses found in Xinjiang. Of course, we should encourage such questions to be raised and assessed, but scholars, the media, and opinion leaders need to discriminate more carefully between speculation and knowledge, and between advocacy and scholarly findings. The lines between these categories have been blurred increasingly, perhaps deliberately, and can damage everyone if not restored. Policy Variations: A Bit of History The central premise of the Tibet-Xinjiang equivalence claim is that China’s Tibet and Xinjiang programs are similar in terms of mass abuses. Proponents note correctly that mechanisms, terminology, aims, and underlying theories used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Tibet and Xinjiang are similar, and that the current Party Secretary of Xinjiang formerly served in Tibet. These continuities reflect the shared repertoire of Communist jargon and history from which all CCP officials draw, as well as their adherence to the CCP’s overall policy regarding nationalities, which has shown an increasingly assimilationist approach since 2014. However, despite their constant declarations of unity with the Party Center, regional officials are not expected to implement the Center’s policies in identical ways in each region. In fact, Chinese policies in Tibet and Xinjiang have often differed widely in implementation. This divergence reflects topography, history, and logistics, but also continues the deep-seated debates among revolutionaries since at least the time of the Jacobins and Girondins about how rapid or gradual revolutionary reforms should be. Much the same debate took place within the CCP from even before the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It focused particularly on areas inhabited by peoples such as the Tibetans, Mongolians, or Uyghurs. In such areas, radicals in the CCP—notably leaders of the Northwest Military Region—insisted on rapid, often violent social transformation. Gradualists, such as those in the Southwest Military Region in the first half of the 1950s, argued that Tibetans, being more backward in their view, should be won over by allowing feudal practices to continue while slowly building initial alliances with local elites. The details of this debate have been carefully documented by Benno Weiner in his recent book on the factions that respectively opposed or promoted the gradualist strategy known as the United Front in Tibetan areas of Qinghai in the 1950s. Weiner shows that the gradualist approach lasted in those areas until 1958, when policy switched to immediate reforms of society, land ownership, and religious practice, which usually meant the use of force and culminated with the Cultural Revolution. The gradualist approach was reintroduced throughout China in 1979, when Deng Xiaoping came to power. Not coincidentally, Deng had been the Political Commissar of the Southwest Military Region in 1950; arguing that China was still in the “primary stage of socialism” and thus not yet ready for full communism was a return to the praxis advocated by his faction forty years before. There was nothing new or specifically communist about this debate over how to manage minorities. In the late Qing empire, Chinese reformers had argued over the same question: whether to incorporate non-Han Chinese peoples within the empire rapidly by force or gradually through education, industrialization, acculturation, or some longer process. In Xinjiang, the Qing had resorted to direct control by invading the region in 1877 and turning it into a Chinese province; Tibet had negligible Han Chinese or Manchu presence at that time. By 1910, the proponents of rapid, forced reform had persuaded the Qing court to allow a policy of direct rule and rapid assimilation of Tibetans, which the Qing representative in Sichuan, Zhao Erfeng, carried out until the fall of the dynasty a year later. Some scholars trace the differential ways of managing minorities in China to much earlier perceptions in Chinese political thought as to which minorities were more “raw” or “untamed” relative to those considered somewhat “civilized” and thus amenable to softer tactics. Today, arguments of this kind are diplomatically concealed behind milder-sounding arguments, such as the current view among CCP policymakers that there are two kinds of religion in China—so-called “non-indigenous religions,” which include Islam, and “indigenous religions” such as Buddhism (notwithstanding that in fact it originated in India, not China). We can easily imagine Chinese policymakers arguing that followers of an “indigenous” Chinese religion are more easily managed and so can be won over with less brutal policies than those who follow a monotheistic, “non-Chinese”—read, less civilized—religion. Since 9/11, this diffracted version of global Islamophobia has been commonly expressed in China in terms of terrorism, which the current Xinjiang policies are supposed to forestall. By contrast, the spectre of terrorism is rarely invoked in Tibet. There, the threat consists primarily of an idea that Beijing seeks to eradicate: the insistence by “the Dalai” that Tibet was independent in the past. This effort by Beijing has led to extraordinarily extensive forms of repression, control, and social engineering in Tibet, which are increasing almost by the day. But in terms of violence, China has been cautious in Tibet, as demonstrated by the fact that there have been only two or three known judicial executions of Tibetans in politically related cases over the last 35 years, as opposed to scores of executions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Whatever the rationale, the Chinese state has often enacted policies in different ways in different areas, even if the policy names and objectives are similar. This is what was so significant about China’s decision to scale back Mongolian language instruction in Inner Mongolia last year: until then, China’s policy of assimilation and bilingual education in Inner Mongolia had followed a wholly different and more accommodating model of policy implementation from those in Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai, or any other area. The change announced for classroom teaching in Inner Mongolia’s primary schools was significant because it meant that, after several years of giving primacy to local culture, the region was switching from a gradual to a rapid, forced approach to implementing policy on a non-Han Chinese population. Mass Detention in Tibet The contention that Tibet and Xinjiang are coterminous in terms of mass abuses has been made by a number of commentators, journalists, and politicians, including Lobsang Sangay, the current head of the exile Tibetan administration. Sangay has said, among other things, that forced detention camps exist currently in Tibet. There have been some occasions in the last decade when camps were created to hold Tibetans detained without being accused of any crime. Two of those occasions involved serious abuses. These occurred in camps created in 2017 to house monks and nuns expelled from a number of monasteries in eastern Tibetan areas, notably Larung Gar, and then returned forcibly to their home areas within the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), where they were detained for “legal education.” One of these camps was created in the eastern Tibetan area of Nyingtri to reeducate a number of nuns, while the second was in Sog, Nagchu, in northern Tibet, where the detainees seem mainly to have been monks. The detained nuns, comprising at least 30 women, were forced to sing or dance in front of officials to the tune of patriotic Chinese songs, in at least one case while wearing military-type outfits. In the case of the center at Sog, there is one account by a monk who was held for four months in 2017, and it describes incidents of forced reeducation, humiliation, torture, and sexual harassment. These are instances of grave abuse, but they are not similar in scale or duration to the systematic, mass practices of detention and cultural eradication in Xinjiang, where detainees are held and abused for years, forced repeatedly to abjure religious belief entirely, and made to use a language not their own. There have been at least three other recent occasions in Tibet—in March 2008, January 2012, and May 2012—when camps were created temporarily in hotels, schools, or converted army bases to hold Tibetans for purposes such as “legal education.” The 2008 camp held several hundred monks from monasteries in Lhasa whose place of registration was outside the TAR, and the 2012 detentions were of an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 lay Tibetans held for two months after attending religious teachings by the Dalai Lama in India. In addition, a Tibetan reported being held for two months in a detention center in Driru, Nagchu, in 2016, and I know of two individuals held for about two weeks each in 2019 in some office buildings in a Tibetan area of Sichuan for failing to implement supposedly voluntary “poverty alleviation” measures. Further details of these cases have not yet emerged, and others may well come to light. However, these cases again differ markedly from the Xinjiang camps in terms of scale or degree, involving an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people over a decade or more—around 1.4% of the lowest estimate for detainees in Xinjiang during the last four years. In addition, as far as one can tell from interviews with former inmates or those close to them, the Tibetan camps appear to have lasted for at most six months, but usually much less; included limited amounts of re-education, if any; and, apart from the two camps in 2017, are not reported to have involved cultural denigration, physical abuse, or cruelty. Labor Programs and the Coercion Claim In September 2020, a report appeared by a scholar that appeared to show evidence of forced labor camps in Tibet and other Xinjiang-style policies in the TAR. That scholar, Adrian Zenz, has done well-regarded work on Tibet and Xinjiang in the past. His more recent work has been attacked and abused by Chinese state media and others, including smears about his religious beliefs by a pro-Chinese denialist called Max Blumenthal, demonstrating a particularly ugly form of hypocrisy. He is also being sued by Chinese companies in Xinjiang and has been sanctioned by the PRC government. Nevertheless, there are some technical problems with Dr. Zenz’s article on Tibet. Although scholarly in nature, the article was not peer-reviewed, involved no field verification, and did not refer to work by other researchers with expertise on labor, employment, and statistics in Tibet. In addition, the article was coordinated with a prominent media campaign, including simultaneous release of an op-ed in the New York Times, a lengthy article by Reuters, an editorial by the Wall Street Journal, and a report by a political lobby group, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). Dr. Zenz and like-minded writers described a mass program initiated by Chinese authorities to provide labor training for Tibetans, and in some cases to arrange for them to be transferred to other locations for work. These writers are entirely correct that training programs claiming to involve huge numbers of people have been set up in Tibet, alongside a program arranging for people to move to different areas for work. They are also correct that in Xinjiang a program with a similar name appears to have involved abuses on a vast scale. But details of the Tibet scheme are unclear and—so far—do not yet indicate Xinjiang-style implementation: so far at least, around 94 percent of what are described in these reports as labor transfers in Tibet are apparently local, at least some of the small number of intra-provincial ones claim to be short-term, and there is no evidence yet that either of these programs in Tibet has involved force or abuse. As for actual cases of coercion, there are none in the reports by Dr. Zenz, Reuters, or any other outlets. When I asked a Tibetan colleague about his own research, he described a Tibetan family of seven, all of whom had registered for labor training programs. Only one, however, had in fact attended a course, and the family had not reported any threat of force or pressure to comply. This seemed to suggest that, at least in that case, local officials were aiming primarily to put names on registration forms in order to inflate the number of apparent participants in the program. This case does not prove anything, but it does raise doubts. If we go back to the article by Dr. Zenz, we will see that it consists of two entirely different statements: one that correctly summarizes Chinese official documents giving numbers for registration or inclusion in labor training schemes and work placements, and one that is purely inference about a possibility of labor camps (as opposed to voluntary training camps) and of the use of force. Those inferences are based on references in official documents to such things as “military-style” training and to photographs of trainees in military clothes. Such an inference is possible. It is not, however, reliable: every school and university student in China has military-style training for a week or so each year and many department stores have military-style training every morning. These trainings involve drills, but not necessarily the use of force, and many people in Tibet and China wear military garb because it is tough and cheap. Dr. Zenz himself noted in his original report that he had found no evidence for any Xinjiang-style labor camps in Tibet: "There is so far no evidence of accompanying cadres or security personnel, of cadres stationed in factories, or of workers being kept in closed, securitized environments at their final work destination.” He added that “there is also currently no evidence of TAR labor training and transfer schemes being linked to extrajudicial internment." He later stated categorically that he had never mentioned labor camps. The Reuters report also had two types of findings: one confirmed the existence of the labor programs, citing two or three official documents not used by Dr. Zenz, while the other repeated the evidence about coercion offered by Dr. Zenz without new evidence. Therefore, the question of force was not part of its “investigation.” The article even said that “Reuters was unable to ascertain the conditions of the transferred Tibetan workers”and that “Researchers and rights groups say…without access they can’t assess whether the practice [of labor transfer] constitutes forced labor.” Nevertheless, it still repeated the same allegations of abuse and force, attributing them to “rights groups.” It added a fact that appeared to be corroborative, stating that “small-scale versions of similar military-style training initiatives have existed in the region for over a decade,” but gave no details of such cases, apart from that of the 30 nuns in 2017, noted above. The qualifications that the authors of these reports provided were correct and appropriate, but they were too little and too late. The reports included multiple references to coercion, albeit speculative, and more categorical assertions were made in accompanying op-eds and oral presentations. Such speculation is often justifiable and necessary, not least because evidence of major abuses might yet come to light. Tibetan exiles and others are not wrong to be concerned. But the initial reports by Dr. Zenz and Reuters led to a wave of secondary reporting that, regardless of intention, blurred the solid data about the existence of labor training and work placement schemes with speculation about coercion. Those secondary reports acknowledged Dr. Zenz’s article as the source of their information, but claimed incorrectly that he had reported the existence of labor camps and alleged use of force, about which he had only speculated. The Times of London said China was “accused of imprisoning 500k Tibetans in labor camps” and “as many as half a million Tibetans have been forcibly moved into labor camps this year,” making it a single-source report, with no corroboration, claiming incorrectly that Zenz had alleged imprisonment and labor camps. The BBC declared that the Zenz report had found China to be “‘coercing’ thousands of Tibetans into mass labor camps” and said this had been corroborated by Reuters, although Zenz had not said this, while Reuters had confirmed only the existence of labor programs, not the existence of labor camps or coercion. The BBC added that “the scale of the programme as detailed in this study indicates it is much larger than previously thought,” although in fact this was the first mention of the program outside China. The Guardian was more cautious and only referred to coercion in quoted remarks from Zenz, but, like the BBC, said the Zenz report had been corroborated by Reuters, implying this applied to camps and coercion as well as labor programs. The New York Times did not report the news, but carried an op-ed by Zenz which made stronger assertions about the use of compulsion than his original article had, this time without any caveat. Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald reported without qualification and without any second source that “China is pushing hundreds of thousands of Tibetans into forced labor camps,” none of which is known to be true. Not surprisingly, this apparent unanimity in the mainstream media implying an equation between the labour training scheme and coercive detention was quickly taken up in the political arena. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China referred to “an apparent widespread system of forced labor” and “a large-scale mandatory ‘vocational training’ program” in Tibet, again relying on one source, and again fusing the substantive issue of labor programs with speculation about it being “forced” and “mandatory.” The Congressional-Executive Commission on China, based in Washington, D.C., held a hearing partly based on reports of what one speaker, Matteo Mecacci, called “forced labor” in Tibet; the British House of Commons organized a debate on the issue at which a senior British politician, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, asserted categorically that the Tibet labor programs were “mandatory,” “forcible,” and involved “people … being taken from one place and put into camps;” and the Democracy Forum in the UK held a discussion in part about the fact that, according to its chair, China “has sent over half a million Tibetans to labor transfer camps under strict military supervision.” I have found just one media report that correctly reported on the Zenz report: a tiny media outfit called TLDR. TLDR published a video summary of the Zenz report which is accurate as well as succinct, yet manages to detail the factual claims about the labor training schemes separately from Zenz’s speculation about the possible use of force, which it bracketed as an as yet unverified but potentially important addendum. Since then, the rhetoric has escalated. The most striking case is that of a scholar and a former journalist affiliated to universities in Australia who hosted a podcast originally called “Tibet-The Final Solution?” The title was taken from a statement by a Tibetan activist that China plans the total annihilation of Tibet or its culture, which was used as the trailer for the program. The actual podcast, the title of which was later changed amid complaints, did not discuss or debate this claim—it was added after the discussion had been recorded and was designed, apparently, only as click-bait to attract an audience. What is going on when a serious journalist, let alone an academic, proposes that China is a Nazi state trying to annihilate Tibetan people or Tibetan culture? China is indeed minimizing the role of the Tibetan language in schools, insulting the Dalai Lama, denying Tibetan history, persecuting dissidents, relocating nomads, and trying to adapt popular understandings of Tibetan Buddhism so that the religion emphasizes or mimics (“Sinicizes,” as the state puts it) neo-Confucian values, amid numerous other repressive policies. But to equate this with the Wannsee Conference is deeply offensive and unethical. Apart from insulting the memory of those who died, for one thing, there is no evidence of any attempt, at least in the post-Mao era, to annihilate the Tibetan people. As for culture since the death of Mao, as Dr. Zenz himself documented in his earlier work on Tibet, certain aspects of Tibetan modern culture have thrived, particularly prose fiction, poetry, film, fine art, popular music, and to some extent the Gesar epic, horse racing, and certain local festivals. Publications of traditional religious texts run into the thousands. Lay religious events still involve thousands of people. There is an enormous amount of repression, which should be widely studied and publicized, and there are understandable reasons why many Tibetans fear for their culture, alarmed as many are by, for example, the prioritization of Chinese as the language of instruction in many or most schools. But this is not the same as genocide or annihilation: Tibet is not Xinjiang. Activists and others should of course be encouraged to argue their perspectives and present whatever evidence they have. But for a mainstream media outfit, let alone a university, to use such a proposition as click-bait is disturbing. In the long run, this kind of ideologically-inflamed, anti-Chinese rhetoric will damage Tibetan people and their situation in Tibet, since they and others will have to waste time on debates about what is exaggerated and what is fact. The underlying issue here is not that scholars should not speculate, nor that activists and community members should not raise deeply held concerns: they should do both. But serious writers, publications, and media need to maintain sharp distinctions between what is speculation and what is reliable, confirmed information. The quality of discourse, and even the possibility of developing effective responses to mass abuse, suffers on all sides if exacting standards of evidence and discussion are discarded.  

The Indian government announced today that Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit India later this week for an “informal summit” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi beginning October 11. The leader-level meeting occurs against a backdrop of geopolitical tensions between the two countries, although ties have improved since their tense military standoff at Doklam during the summer of 2017. This week’s Modi-Xi summit will take place in a location renowned for its cultural heritage: Mamallapuram (or Mahabalipuram), located on the southeast coast of India in the state of Tamil Nadu. The monuments at Mamallapuram date back to the seventh and eighth centuries, and have been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site [UNESCO video]. The southeast coast of India faces the Bay of Bengal, Southeast Asia, and the larger Indian Ocean region—given the history of trade between south India and Southeast Asia, perhaps Modi intends to signal India’s long seafaring history and outward links to underscore his “Act East” ambition. Writing for The Hindu, Suhasini Haidar reported that Indian officials planning the summit sought to emphasize Tamil Nadu’s historic connections to China, including earlier links of Buddhism and maritime trade.    The formal visit announcement provided general guidelines for their meeting agenda: “discussions on overarching issues of bilateral, regional and global importance and to exchange views on deepening India-China Closer Development Partnership.” While this allows for virtually any topic under the sun, we can expect attention to the following issues of concern: Regional security and terrorism:  India has long-standing concerns about terrorism emanating from Pakistan. China has not been particularly supportive of India on this issue, and in light of the decades-long China-Pakistan friendship, is not likely to change. India’s August revocation of the traditional autonomy afforded to Jammu and Kashmir has prompted Pakistani outrage. China, too, called the conversion of Ladakh, until now a part of the erstwhile state, into a separate territory under Delhi’s direct oversight “unacceptable.” (China claims parts of Ladakh.) While Modi will not likely seek to open up the question of Kashmir’s autonomy, or its bifurcation into two federally administered territories, he very well could express concerns about Pakistan-based terrorism and its deleterious effects on regional security. Modi and Xi could also discuss stability in Afghanistan, given shared concerns about the fragile state. (India and China more recently began joint training programs in Afghanistan.) Bilateral concerns:  India and China fought a border war in 1962, and have yet to resolve their continued border issues. More than twenty rounds of negotiations have not resulted in clarity about the actual delimitation. Moreover, in the summer of 2017, Indian troops defended Bhutan’s border against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s expansion of a road in what grew into a three-month standoff between India and China. While the “informal summit” will not resolve these concerns, the leaders could discuss the issue. Trade ties will almost certainly figure into the conversation; China is India’s largest trade partner in goods alone, and India has consistently—for years now—been displeased with the trade deficit (now reportedly around $57 billion) and the composition of trade. Over the past few years, India has continued to raise tariffs on electronic goods in part due to its trade deficit. Global and multilateral cooperation:  Despite the known border and trade tensions, the China-Pakistan relationship, and the growing geopolitical competition for influence in the Indian Ocean region, India and China do have a cooperation sweet spot: multilateral organizations and global issues. India’s objections to China’s Belt and Road Initiative notwithstanding, New Delhi supported Beijing on the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (India is the number two capital contributor, holds a vice presidency, and is the largest borrower at this point), and they worked together to develop the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) forum and its related New Development Bank. India and China have had similar complaints about representation in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). China and India have also expressed similar concerns about climate change and historical responsibility for carbon emissions. This is not to say that China and India are in lockstep on all multilateral concerns; China remains a holdout, for example, on India’s quest for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and in August, China helped elevate the matter of Kashmir’s autonomy for a private UN Security Council discussion. But the existence of closer cooperation on matters like infrastructure development, regional connectivity, and global governance complicates a narrative of geopolitical competition. The “India-China Closer Development Partnership” specifically listed in the formal announcement of the informal summit falls squarely in this category. Not likely to feature on the agenda: Tibet. India hosts the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile, and of course has been home to the Dalai Lama for decades. Indian papers reported that eight Tibetan community activists had been detained in Tamil Nadu ahead of the “informal summit” in order to prevent protests during Xi’s visit. It’s a pity, because a peaceful expression of political views would have reinforced India’s strength as a democracy—a strength China lacks.

Lincoln Davidson, Bochen Han, Theresa Lou, Gabriella Meltzer, Ayumi Teraoka, and James West look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Prominent Chinese lawyer facing possibility of lifetime imprisonment. The Chinese police have recommended prosecution on a charge of “subverting state power” for Zhou Shifeng, director of the Beijing Fengrui Law Firm whose arrest last summer invigorated a campaign to discredit and dismantle networks of rights-focused defense lawyers who have attempted to challenge the government. Zhou’s law firm took on many contentious cases about legal rights, representing the likes of dissident artist Ai Weiwei and Uighur academic Ilham Tohti. The charge of “subverting state power” can carry a sentence of up to life in prison. In comparison, Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years for “inciting subversion of state power”, which is generally regarded as a lesser offense. Prosecutors now have up to a month and a half to decide whether or not take Zhou to court on the subversion charge. While it’s possible that the charge will be lightened, Zhou’s legal peers say that prosecutors are more inclined to stick with the more serious charge so as to set an example for other lawyers under investigation. China’s crackdown on lawyers is part of a comprehensive tightening of civil society under President Xi Jinping, in line with recent moves to restrict activity of foreign NGOs in China and reform the legal profession qualification system. 2. Obama meets the Dalai Lama. U.S. President Barack Obama met privately with the fourteenth Dalai Lama on Wednesday despite China’s firm opposition. The meeting—the fourth between the president and the spiritual leader—took place in the residence instead of in the Oval Office, which is traditionally reserved for heads of state. The White House reiterated that the personal meeting does not symbolize a shift in U.S. policy toward Tibet, which Washington considers part of China. However, President Obama encourages the Dalai Lama and his representatives to work directly with the Chinese government to resolve their differences. Beijing considers the Dalai Lama an anti-China separatist and has urged foreign governments not to host him. The Chinese Foreign Ministry emphasized that Tibet is part of China’s internal affairs, and that Washington risks jeopardizing relations with Beijing with the meeting. The meeting comes amidst increasing tensions between the two countries in the East and South China Seas. Just last week, the U.S. military accused a Chinese fighter jet for conducting an “unsafe” intercept of a U.S. reconnaissance plane that was operating in international airspace over the East China Sea. 3. Hyderabad on “high alert” for potential polio outbreak. Officials announced on Wednesday that a strain of active, vaccine-derived type 2 polio virus had been found in the water at a sewage treatment plant in Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana state in southern India that is home to over seven million people. Twenty-four sections of the city have been declared “most-sensitive areas” for a future outbreak. This discovery has prompted a precautionary vaccination drive that will begin Monday and reach 300,000 children, according to a statement from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Thanks to collaboration between federal and state governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and non-profit organizations, India detected its last case of polio in West Bengal in 2011 and was declared polio-free in 2012. Despite this success story, experts such as regional health officer Rajesh Singh have expressed mounting concern: “When the vaccine is given through the mouth, the liquid that gets dissolved and passed on in the form of stool accumulates in the sewage system. The virus in that vaccine becomes a stronger and more resistant strain.” 4. Tokyo governor finally resigns. Tokyo Metropolitan Governor Yoichi Masuzoe resigned on Wednesday after admitting to an inappropriate use of political funds to pay for personal travel and entertainment, including manga comic books and a Chinese-made silk calligrapher’s robe. The election for a new governor will occur on July 31, only three weeks after the House of Councillors election. Masuzoe had long refused to resign, even warning that he might dissolve the assembly if his non-confidence vote passed. He finally agreed to resign when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Komeito, which backed him in the February 2014 election, started urging him to step down, cautioning against the damage he might cause to the upcoming Upper House election. Political parties are now quickly searching for candidates to back, and so far two women have been mentioned: Yuriko Koike, former defense minister for the LDP, and Renho, acting president of the main opposition Democratic Party. While Masuzoe set off the public’s furor over his expenses, the resulting Tokyo gubernatorial election is expected to cost about 5 billion yen ($50 million). It is critical that the Tokyo residents vote based on candidates’ ability to successfully run the metropolitan city without undermining public confidence. Only voting for famous names will only lead to another gubernatorial election. 5. Afghanistan and Pakistan exchange heavy fire along border. Last Sunday, Afghan and Pakistani forces exchanged heavy gunfire at the Torkham border crossing—the busiest official border crossing between the two countries—resulting in five dead and dozens injured. The fighting forced the closing of the border crossing for the second time in the past month, and tensions continued to escalate as a Pakistani Army officer was killed in the fighting on Tuesday. Each side has accused the other of unprovoked firing. In a dispute over the construction of a border gate by Pakistani forces, Pakistan claims the gate is on their side of the border and is designed to curtail the movement of militants, while Afghan officials say the construction violates an agreement on building new installations along the shared border that requires mutual discussion and agreement. Various ceasefires have been violated throughout the week with both sides reportedly deploying additional troops and weaponry to the border and summoning respective ambassadors to lodge formal complaints. As of Friday, construction had resumed on the Pakistani side despite a ceasefire requiring work to be halted, and the crossing remained closed, stranding thousands. The dispute comes after months of increasing tensions between the two countries over the ongoing war against that Afghan Taliban. Bonus: Jack Ma says fakes better than original products. Ma, the founder and chairman of Alibaba, the largest e-commerce company in the world, said this week that “fake products today, they make better quality, better prices than the real products, the real names,” adding fuel to perceptions that the company profits from counterfeiting. Fake products, often produced by the same factories that make brand-name items, have long been widespread on Alibaba’s platforms, and critics have accused the company of not doing enough to combat counterfeiting. Earlier this year an anti-counterfeiting industry group suspended Alibaba’s membership. Ma may be on to something: there will always be consumers who are unwilling or unable to pay the premium charged by brand name products. But growing Chinese demand for foreign-produced goods suggests that many consumers are hoping to avoid knock-offs.

Ashlyn Anderson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, Charles McClean, Will Piekos, and Sharone Tobias look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. Thai prime minister removed from office, faces impeachment. Thailand’s constitutional court voted to remove Yingluck Shinawatra from office for abuse of power for illegally transferring a civil servant to another post. The court also removed the nine ministers that were in her cabinet at the time. Yingluck now faces impeachment by the Thai senate, in conjunction with alleged connection to a farm subsidy program. Deputy Prime Minister Niwattumrong Boonsongpaisan was named interim prime minister of the caretaker government, a choice that satisfied neither supporters nor the opponents of Yingluck and the ruling Puea Thai Party. Protestors, both anti-government and pro-government, continue to be active following Yingluck’s removal, and there appears to be no clear way forward. Thailand’s democracy has faced a rocky path the past few months, and some fear that elections planned for late July will be postponed. 2. Vietnam, Philippines confront China in South China Sea. State-owned oil giant China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) set up an oil rig 120 nautical miles off the coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea. In response, Vietnam has reportedly deployed thirty-five ships to the surrounding seas, while China now has as many as eighty. The vessels’ close proximity has resulted in a number of incidents, including the use of water cannons and ship-to-ship collisions. Both Beijing and Hanoi declared their sovereignty of the contested area, and neither side has shown any sign of backing down. Meanwhile, the Philippines seized a Chinese boat laden with hundreds of endangered turtles and detained its crew in contested waters. A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman urged the Philippine government to “stop taking further provocative actions.” 3. Communal violence breaks out amid India’s national election. In the western area of the state of Assam, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, an ethnic Bodo militant group, opened fire on Muslim residents of two remote villages in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District, killing around forty people and burning hundreds of homes. Though India’s national elections have fanned the flames, tension between Bodos (who comprise 30 percent of the region’s population) and non-Bodos (including other tribes, Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims, and other ethnic groups) is not a new phenomenon. Many observers have pointed to the polarization of voters along ethnic and religious lines as the trigger for the violence. 4. Alibaba files IPO in the United States. Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company similar to eBay, filed what could become the biggest-ever initial public offering (IPO) in the United States. Experts say that the valuation of the firm could exceed $150 billion. The company, founded by Hangzhou native Jack Ma, began as a website that connected small manufacturers with commercial buyers overseas, but quickly expanded to include options to allow consumers to sell to one another and a business-to-consumer website. Last year, the company’s sales exceeded $5.7 billion; measured by the value of goods sold, Alibaba is bigger than eBay and Amazon combined. Some China watchers warn that investing in Alibaba means taking on political risks: strict Chinese controls limit foreign investment, require online censorship, and also make it difficult for both foreign and domestic companies to gain too much power. 5. Norway turns away Dalai Lama after pressure from China. Tibet’s spiritual leader in exile, the Dalai Lama, was in Norway this week to commemorate the Nobel peace prize he received twenty-five years ago. Amidst warnings from Beijing, the Norwegian government decided against meetings between the Dalai Lama and top politicians, a decision aimed at appeasing Beijing after trade and political links were suspended in 2010 when Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel prize. The Chinese Foreign Ministry approved of the decision, and the Dalai Lama was not disappointed and was content to meet with the Norwegian public instead. A trend of avoiding the Tibetan spiritual leader may continue in countries with deep trade ties to Beijing, as studies suggest meeting with the Dalai Lama can carry heavy economic costs. Bonus: Japanese fans think American Godzilla is “too fat.” As American audiences look forward to the May 16 premiere of the new Godzilla reboot, which stars Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad fame, fans in Japan have expressed annoyance at how “massive” the monster appears in trailers. Japanese fans criticized the new Godzilla as much heftier than his 1954 onscreen debut, joking online that Americans had “super-sized” Godzilla and calling it names such as “calorie monster,” “marshmallow Godzilla,” and “Godzilla deluxe.” Not all responses were negative, however. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Kouhei Nomura, author of an encyclopedia on the Godzilla films, said the size gave Godzilla “a more dignified presence.” As Nomura eloquently summed up, “being bigger is a non-issue when it comes to Godzilla.”

Beginning in February 2009, a number of self-immolation incidents have occurred in the greater Tibetan region in China. Since then, at least 116 Tibetan monks and farmers have chosen to set themselves on fire. These acts are reminiscent of similar incidents that happened in South Vietnam 50 years ago. On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk burned himself to death in Saigon in protest of the government led by Ngo Dinh Diem.  Photos of this dramatic event were circulated across the world, becoming one of the most powerful images of the twentieth century that quickly undermined Diem’s legitimacy and eventually led to his assassination in November. However, the ongoing self-immolations in Tibet are quite different from those that occurred in Vietnam. In Tibet, most of the self-immolation cases appeared to be spontaneous and each act seemed to be separate from the others.  Perhaps as a result, these ultimate sacrifices have failed to convey any consistent or clear message to the outside world. Based on the data compiled by a well-known Tibetan writer and dissident, a Chinese dissident writer and scholar Wang Lixiong identified seven motives from the wills of 26 self-immolators; and the three top motives are “to serve as an act,” to offer their bodies to Dalai Lama, and to express courage and defend dignity.  These motives are themselves abstract and ambiguous, but they clearly suggest that self-immolation in Tibet was not always out of desperation or driven by the need to seek political independence or international attention.  Sun Yan, a professor at City University of New York, recently quoted two Tibetan scholars and argued that self-immolation was a local phenomenon subject to special regional and religious influences.  It was observed by one Tibetan scholar that those who burned themselves were only from four of the 3,600 temples in the greater Tibet region.  The other Tibetan scholar noted that most of the self-immolation acts and protests in recent years were associated with the Gulden Temple in Ngawa Autonomous Prefecture of western Sichuan Province. Unlike what had transpired in South Vietnam, the growing number of self-immolations in Tibet has, thus far, failed to generate significant international attention or cause a major shift in China’s Tibet policy.  The United States, while calling on China to permit Tibetans to “express grievances freely, publicly, peacefully and without fear of attribution,” urged Tibetans to “end the(ir) voluntary sacrifice.”  At the same time, the Chinese government has accused Dalai Lama of orchestrating the self-immolations, a charge he strongly rejects.  Instead of leading to China’s reexamination of its policy toward Tibetans, the protests might have given the hard-liners within the Party full ammunition to resist the reopening of the dialogue with Dalai Lama, and, in context of the rising nationalism, also silenced the domestic intellectuals and the general public for any rational and constructive discussion of the problem. If the self-immolations have failed to galvanize international support, why hasn’t Dalai Lama used his moral authority to issue a public statement asking for Tibetans to stop the practice? It is widely believed that self-immolation cases would drop significantly if he makes such a move.  But Dalai Lama is facing a major dilemma over this issue. As a voice of peace and reason, he privately does not support self-immolation. Indeed, from the outset, he was said to be skeptical of how effective this approach would be.  But he has refrained from calling for an end of self-immolation. While he is still the unrivaled spiritual leader among Tibetans, his Middle Way Approach to resolve the Tibetan issue—which does not accept the status quo or political independence—through nonviolent means is increasingly challenged by the young generation, as represented by the Tibetan Youth Congress, the largest NGO in the exile community.  They are increasingly frustrated and many have been radicalized by the lack of breakthrough in the negotiation between Dalai Lama’s representative and the Chinese central government that began in 2002.  Against this backdrop, self-immolation has been viewed by some as an extreme form of collective frustration and anger among the Tibetans.  Unless Dalai Lama is able to offer a viable alternative, his call for ending the practice would likely alienate his supporters, even draw backlash from the radical wing of his own constituency.  It’s because of this that he has expressed respect for the courage and motives of the self-immolators, despite his general disapproval of their behavior.  But allowing self-immolation to continue is in neither China’s nor Dalai Lama’s interest.  For Dalai Lama, it would undermine his moral authority and become a political liability in pursuing his Middle Way Approach.  For Beijing, failure to take the issue seriously might cultivate a sense of desperation among Tibetans, which in turn could lead to the escalation of violence against the Chinese rule (as has been found in the northwestern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region).  It’s therefore in both sides’ interest to break the impasse by reopening the dialogue that was stalled in 2010.