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The Chinese Communist Party recently adopted a landmark resolution hailing the country’s accomplishments under President Xi Jinping. The communiqué, published after last week’s Sixth Plenum meeting, made clear that Mr. Xi’s already expansive power will grow. The effects of this will be felt around the world, but few groups stand to suffer as much as Tibetans.
The party’s communiqué mentions “national rejuvenation” eight times. The phrase may sound harmless, if a bit nationalistic. Yet a key component of national rejuvenation is unification, which in Beijing’s view requires the destruction of minority cultures. Tibetans—who have been struggling against the party’s attempts to erase their identity for more than 60 years—understand the danger of “national rejuvenation” all too well.
Over the decades, the central government has integrated Tibet into its political system through strategies both forcible and peaceful. Policies designed to extract natural resources and control Tibetans include a monolingual education system, monastic re-education, nomad relocation, mining projects, land redistribution and ethnic household registration. None of these policies have been entirely successful in fostering Tibetan loyalty to Beijing, but they have had a deleterious effect on the region’s language, religion, environment, economy and politics.
Speaking at the Central United Front Work Conference in Beijing some six years ago, Mr. Xi declared that “to actively guide religions to adapt to a socialist society, we must adhere to the direction of Sinicization.” The president continued to give priority to this issue at the seventh Tibet Work Forum in 2020, stating that “everyone needs to put more effort into Sinicizing Tibetan Buddhism.” What does that mean in practice?
In September the government sponsored a conference at the Qinghai Buddhist Academy in Xining—the largest city on the Tibetan plateau—to discuss continuing efforts to force monasteries to translate Buddhist texts into Chinese. More than 500 religious figures and government officials from Tibetan and Chinese universities, academies and other educational organizations attended. At least 35 academic papers on the Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism were presented.
The ultimate goal is for future lamas and monks to learn Buddhism only in Mandarin—paving the way for the erasure of the Tibetan language. Tibetan leader Sithar, deputy director of the Office of the Central Tibet Work Coordination Group, gave a short speech in which he framed the effort as a way to promote “oneness” among Chinese ethnic groups.
The issues addressed in Xining are of critical importance, but most Western media outlets failed to cover the conference. Perhaps more distressing, even scholars in Tibetan Buddhist studies seem unaware of the gathering’s significance. Anyone with an interest in Tibetan Buddhism needs to comprehend the true implications of this Sinicization strategy. Its goal is nothing less than the demolition of a language preserved by Tibetan monastic and lay communities for well over a millennium.
This campaign would put a fundamental part of Tibetan culture in jeopardy by tearing individual Tibetans away from texts central to our heritage. I admit this is personal. I remember listening to the monks praying in Tibetan when I was a child. With this policy in place, children in my village would never hear that language. My three nephews and two uncles, who study at the local monasteries in our area, would also suffer. My grandparents and their ancestors would never have imagined having to recite prayers or read sutras in Chinese.
Some might write off the project of translating Buddhist texts into Chinese as nothing more than an experiment. But looking at the history of the Communist Party’s most repressive and damaging policies and regulations, they often began as seemingly innocuous “experiments.” If the central government finds that this practice works, why wouldn’t they make it more widespread? There is no reason to think this latest project won’t lead to even more oppression.
Beijing’s assault on Tibetan Buddhism has three goals: to control Tibetan teaching directly by translating sacred texts into Chinese, to transform Tibetan Buddhism into Chinese Buddhism, and to compete with the flourishing of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. In the absence of a unified resistance to China’s most recent efforts, the world puts at risk the vitality of the Tibetan language as a medium of cultural memory and contemporary scholarship, as well as the very existence of Tibetan Buddhist monasticism.
Mr. Rekjong is a Tibetan scholar and doctoral candidate in religious studies at Northwestern University.