OPINION
Ashu Maan* analyses China’s 2021 “Children’s Speech Harmonization Plan” and its wider push toward Mandarin-only preschool education, reshaping Tibetan cultural transmission, family structures, and religious identity; he places these developments within the broader debate on minority rights, assimilation policies and China’s persistent attack on Tibetan identity.
Something is quietly happening inside the kindergarten classrooms of Tibet, and the world is starting to pay attention. A recent report has sparked international debate over China’s education policies in the region, specifically around preschools, which critics say are being used to phase out the Tibetan language in favour of Mandarin Chinese. The Chinese government calls it progress. Many others call it erasure, and the fact that it is happening to children as young as three makes it all the more urgent.
A Big Shift in the Classroom
In July 2021, China rolled out what it called the “Children’s Speech Harmonization Plan.” The policy is straightforward in its requirement: all preschools across the country, including those in ethnic minority regions like Tibet, must use Mandarin as the sole language of instruction. Not just for lessons, but for play, conversation, and everyday communication.
This matters enormously because the early years of childhood are when language takes root most deeply. For generations, Tibetan kindergartens were places where young children could strengthen their native tongue before entering a school system already dominated by Mandarin. That space no longer exists. Experts warn that when children only hear and speak Mandarin at school, they begin, consciously or not, to associate it with authority and opportunity, while Tibetan starts to feel like something old, something lesser, something left behind.
A Gradual Change, Not a Sudden One
To understand why this policy feels so significant, you have to look at how things got here. This didn’t happen overnight. For decades, China officially guaranteed minority groups the right to be educated in their own languages. Those protections, however, slowly gave way to practical pressures. Mandarin became the language of university entrance exams, textbooks, professional life, and economic mobility. Tibetan language classes were kept on the timetable, but only as a minor subject, a token gesture rather than a foundation.
The 2021 preschool policy feels, to many, like the final step. If Tibetan was already being pushed to the margins in primary and secondary schools, removing it from preschool cuts the thread entirely. Children now enter formal education without ever having had the chance to learn in their mother tongue.
How It Affects Families
The effects of these changes are already visible inside Tibetan homes, and they are deeply personal. Reports describe children as young as three or four losing their Tibetan within months of starting kindergarten. It happens quickly, and the consequences ripple outward through the whole family.
In Tibetan culture, grandparents are the keepers of tradition. They pass down oral histories, Buddhist teachings, local songs, and the rhythms of everyday life, all in Tibetan. When a grandchild can no longer hold a conversation in that language, that thread of transmission breaks. Grandparents and grandchildren find themselves unable to truly communicate, and with that gap, an entire world of inherited knowledge quietly slips away.
Perhaps most troubling is what some schools are reportedly asking of parents. There are accounts of schools pressuring families to speak Mandarin at home, and demanding video evidence that they are doing so. The government’s reach, in these cases, extends beyond the classroom and into the family living room.
Identity and Religion
In Tibet, language is not simply a communication tool. It is the vessel that carries an entire spiritual and cultural world. Tibetan Buddhism, its prayers, its texts, and its rituals, is expressed through the Tibetan language. The two are inseparable in a way that is difficult to fully convey from the outside.
The report notes that kindergartens are now directed to avoid religious topics altogether. In their place, children receive what is called “patriotic education”, lessons focused on loyalty to the state and the Communist Party.
Celebrations of “Chinese culture” are encouraged, while the specific history, traditions, and religious life of Tibet are absent from the curriculum. Critics argue this does not simply add something new to children’s sense of identity, it actively replaces what was there before, leaving children with a fractured or one-sided sense of who they are.
The Bigger Picture
The Chinese government’s position is that national unity depends on a shared language. If everyone across this vast country speaks Mandarin, the reasoning goes, it becomes easier for people to work, study, and move freely. There is a logic to that argument, even if many find it deeply insufficient.
What education experts point out, and what examples from around the world demonstrate, is that national unity and linguistic diversity are not opposites. Children in many countries grow up bilingual, learning both a national language and their mother tongue. They do not have to choose between belonging to their country and belonging to their culture. It is entirely possible to teach Mandarin without dismantling Tibetan. The question is whether there is a will to do so.
The new policy has left its mark across several areas of Tibetan life. In terms of language, Mandarin is now the sole medium of instruction for children between the ages of three and six, leaving no room for Tibetan in the classroom. Culturally, the rich traditions that once shaped a child’s early education have been replaced by state-approved content that reflects Beijing’s priorities rather than Tibet’s heritage.
Within families, a growing communication gap is forming between young children and their grandparents, who often speak little or no Mandarin. And legally, the shift represents a quiet but significant departure from the protections that were once guaranteed under the 1984 Regional Autonomy laws.
A Question of Rights
International human rights organisations are watching these developments with alarm. Under international law, children have the right to learn in their own language and to practise their own culture. These rights are not optional extras, they are foundational protections. Groups are now calling on Beijing to restore bilingual education in Tibet, one that allows children to grow up fluent in Mandarin without being cut off from their heritage.
What Happens Next
The debate over Tibet’s preschools is really a debate about something much larger: whether a country can pursue national unity while still allowing its minority communities to remain fully themselves. The policies being put in place today are not targeting teenagers who already have a strong cultural foundation; they are targeting toddlers, at the very moment when identity, language, and belonging first begin to form.
If children grow up without a living connection to Tibetan, unable to pray in it, sing in it, or simply talk to their grandparents in it, the culture does not disappear all at once.
It fades, gradually and quietly, one generation at a time. The classroom, it turns out, can be one of the most powerful forces in the world. The question is what it chooses to build, and what it allows to vanish.
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* Ashu Mann is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. He was awarded the Vice Chief of the Army Staff Commendation card on Army Day 2025. His research focuses include the India-China territorial dispute, great power rivalry, and Chinese foreign policy.