Sinicization of Tibet

[4][5][6] The government in exile says that the policies intend to make Tibet an integral part of China and control desire for Tibetan self-determination.

[13] On 16 October 1950, news that the People's Liberation Army was advancing towards Chamdo and had taken the town of Riwoche (which could block the route to Lhasa) arrived.

"[17] Ngabo accepted Mao's Seventeen-Point Agreement, which stipulated that in return for Tibet becoming part of the People's Republic of China, it would be granted autonomy.

[21] Before the signing of the Seventeen Point Agreement on 23 May 1951, Tibet's economy was dominated by subsistence agriculture, but the stationing of 35,000 Chinese troops during the 1950s strained the region's food supplies.

[23][24][25] As a part of the Great Leap Forward in the 1960s, Chinese authorities coerced Tibetan farmers to cultivate maize instead of barley (the region's traditional crop).

[26][27] The Cultural Revolution, which was implemented by students and laborers who were members of the Chinese Communist Party, was initiated by Mao and carried out by the Gang of Four from 1966 to 1976 in order to preserve Maoism as China's leading ideology.

[31] Citing an unqualified labor force and less-developed infrastructure, the Chinese government has encouraged migrants to stimulate competition and change Tibet from a traditional to a market economy with economic reforms set forth by Deng Xiaoping.

Tibetans complain of being robbed of their dignity in their homeland by having their genuinely loved leader incessantly denounced, and of being swamped by Chinese immigration to the point of becoming a minority in their own country.

"[44] In August 2021, the Associated Press reported that Wang Yang stated in front of the Potala Palace that efforts are needed to ensure that Tibetans share the "cultural symbols and images of the Chinese nation.

[47] In 2020 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that "Tibetan Buddhists, like members of all faith communities, must be able to select, educate and venerate their religious leaders according to their traditions and without government interference [...] We call on the PRC government to immediately make public the Panchen Lama's whereabouts and to uphold its own constitution and international commitments to promote religious freedom for all persons.

"[48] The head of the Kagyu sect, the Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje, was also groomed by Chinese leaders, but at age 14 he fled to India in 1999.

[49] Within Tibet, schools issue warnings to parents that students should not be attending classes at monasteries, a long-standing tradition, or engage in any religious activity.

[50] The practice of removing prayer flags, symbols of Tibetan culture and religious belief, has increased since 2010 as the persecution of religion escalates.

[51] The 2019 Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy annual report found that Chinese police forces and surveillance teams moved into monasteries and villages to monitor Tibetan residents for signs of opposition to China's rule, "facial-recognition software and careful monitoring of digital spaces [were] deployed to suppress political protests against the increased clampdowns on civil and political rights.

"[52][53] According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, during the summer of 2019, the Chinese authorities demolished thousands of residences at the Yachen Gar Tibetan Buddhist center in Sichuan Province, displacing as many as 6,000 monks and nuns.

[56][better source needed] In 1987, the Tibet Autonomous Region published more explicit regulations calling for Tibetan to be the main language in schools, government offices and shops.

[61] Chinese government policy requires only Tibetan government job candidates to disavow any allegiance to the Dalai Lama and support government ethnic policies, as announced in October 2019 on the TAR government's online education platform, "Support the (Communist) Party's leadership, resolutely implement the [Chinese Communist] Party's line, line of approach, policies, and the guiding ideology of Tibet work in the new era; align ideologically, politically, and in action with the Party Central Committee; oppose any splittist (division of Tibet from PRC) tendencies; expose and criticize the Dalai Lama; safeguard the unity of the motherland and ethnic unity and take a firm stand on political issues, taking a clear and distinct stand.

[69] At the end of 2015, in "what amounts to one of the most ambitious attempts made at social engineering, the Chinese government is in the final stages of a 15-year-old campaign to settle the millions of pastoralists who once roamed China's vast borderlands," the Chinese government claimed it will have moved the remaining 1.2 million nomad herders into towns that provide access to schools, electricity and modern health care.

[70][71][72] In a 2011 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, criticized China's nomad resettlement policies as overly coercive and said they led to "increased poverty, environmental degradation and social breakdown".

[73] In 2017 Tibetan nomads previously forced from traditional grazing lands in a state-directed resettlement scheme in Qinghai were told to go back due to a new policy announced in 2016, so authorities could use their current homes for development as tourist centers and government employees housing.

"After two years of living in the new towns, residents are now being forced to move back to their original grasslands without their animals, which are the main source of livelihood in Tibetan nomadic communities".

[83] In 2008, Robert Barnett, director of the Program for Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, stated that it was time for accusations of cultural genocide to be dropped: "I think we have to get over any suggestion that the Chinese are ill-intentioned or are trying to wipe out Tibet.