(TibetanReview.net, Aug02’26) – The top Tibetan leader of a county in Tsolho (Chinese: Hainan) Prefecture of Qinghai province, formerly part of Tibet’s Amdo (or Domey) Province, has been removed from his post after he dithered on carrying out at once further religious restrictions and demolitions ordered by the prefecture’s new Chinese party chief, reported the Tibetan-language tibettimes.net Aug 2, citing a local source.
The report said that following his appointment as the Tsolho prefecture’s Party Secretary in Apr 2026, Xiong Yuan Lai ordered new, more rigorous religious restrictions and demolitions apparently ahead of the coming into force of China’s new Ethic Unity and Progress Promotion Law in all the five counties of the prefecture.
Xiong was stated to have announced a new policy under which local Tibetans were banned from practising religious fasts, along with the imposition of new restrictions on a range of religious practices.
In particular, his order was stated to require all the county and township-level administrations in the prefecture to demolish all the mani stone piles, burn all the religious prayer flags and banners flying at residents’ homes, and for every home to put up the Red Flag of the Communist Party of China-state in their place.
He was also stated to have complained that there were too many ethnic Tibetan government officials across the prefecture and thereby removed many of them. Numerous new, severe restrictions were also stated to have been imposed, causing great hardship to the local Tibetan people.
While the counties of Serchen (Gonghe), Trika (Guide), Mangra (Guinan), and Ba (Tongde) apparently complied with Xiong’s order, Drugbum Gyal, serving concurrently as the party secretary and governor of Dragkar (Xinghai) county, was stated to have dithered, saying an immediate implementation of the new policy order could lead to unpredictable reaction from the masses. He proposed to implement the order gradually.
But Xiong would not have it and ordered his immediate removal from his post, and reportedly had him assigned to a minor post in the prefecture’s people’s congress.
Drugbum Gyal was born in Tharshul Village in Mangra County in 1973. He graduated from Qinghai University in 1993 and joined government service. He rose through the ranks to become the deputy governor of Ba county in 2009, and thereafter the deputy Party Secretary and vice-governor of Dragkar (also known as Tsigorthang) County, before becoming its Party Secretary and governor, the report said.