New Delhi: China’s education policies in Tibet are increasingly becoming a battleground over identity, history and cultural preservation, according to a report.
The Eurasia review, said in a report that educational reforms implemented under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are reshaping how Tibetan children understand their own heritage.
In its report titled “Tibet Is Not Han China: Reject The Rewriting Of A Living Civilisation”, it contends that the struggle for Tibet extends beyond politics and territory and has become “a battle over memory, identity, and the right of a people to tell their own story”.
According to the report, Tibetan students are increasingly being taught narratives that portray Tibet as an inseparable part of China while minimising or omitting Tibet’s distinct political, religious and cultural history.
It said that school curricula often emphasise the role of successive Chinese dynasties in Tibet while downplaying periods of Tibetan self-rule and the wider historical influence of Tibetan civilisation across Central Asia and the Himalayan region.
The report also added that educational content increasingly presents the Chinese Communist Party as the primary force behind Tibet’s development, reducing Tibetan history to a prelude to what Beijing describes as the region’s “liberation” in the 1950s.
It also expresses concern over the declining presence of Tibetan Buddhism, literature, folklore, oral traditions and indigenous knowledge systems in educational materials.
Particular attention is drawn to language policies. Citing research by human rights organisations, the report claims that nearly one million Tibetan children have been placed in state-run boarding schools that primarily operate in Mandarin. It also notes that revisions to China’s National Common Language Law in December 2025 made Mandarin the principal language of instruction across schools, replacing earlier provisions that allowed minority languages to serve as teaching mediums.
The report said that these developments risk producing generations of Tibetans increasingly disconnected from their linguistic and cultural heritage.
It compares the policies to historical assimilation programmes once implemented in countries such as Canada, Australia and the United States, where indigenous children were placed in residential schools designed to suppress native languages and traditions.
“Protecting Tibetan heritage requires more than preserving monuments or religious sites. A civilisation survives when its history, values, and language are passed from one generation to the next. Schools play a decisive role in that process. When educational materials fail to reflect Tibetan perspectives, students lose access to the intellectual and cultural foundations of their own society,” the report said.
Beijing maintains that Tibet has been an inseparable part of China since ancient times. However, it cites scholars and Tibetan leaders who dispute that position, pointing to historical research and primary-source documents that describe Tibet as having functioned as an independent political entity.
“Rejecting the rewriting of Tibetan history is therefore not only a defence of the past. It is an investment in the future of one of humanity’s most distinctive cultural legacies,” the report concluded.
Calling Tibet “a living civilisation with its own language, history, religious traditions, and cultural memory”, the report urges greater international attention to the preservation of Tibetan educational and cultural heritage.
(IANS)
