(TibetanReview.net, Feb14’26) – As China’s Sinicization drive in Tibet intensifies, its propaganda broadcast service network has been expanded, seeing many new broadcast services and reception facilities being introduced there recently even as the crackdown on independent broadcast services continues, including with an unannounced ban on foreign journalists.
Marking the World Radio Day of Feb 13, 2026, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned that China’s state-owned broadcaster China National Radio (CNR) had rapidly expanded its Tibetan-language programming, pushing government propaganda deeper into Tibetan communities.
The watchdog expressed outrage that the regime’s narrative is moving to fill the void left by the suspension of Tibetan-language services at the US-funded international broadcasters Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA). It has called on the international community, including the USA, to support independent Tibetan media outlets.
The group noted that in less than a year, CNR had expanded its Tibetan-language programming from one programme to 17, citing the new winter season broadcast schedule of the Prague-based High Frequency Coordination Conference (HFCC), an international non-governmental organization that coordinates the use of shortwave frequencies among broadcasters worldwide.
Without RFA and VOA, there is currently almost no counter‑voice capable of challenging the Chinese regime’s propaganda in Tibet, which glorifies the Communist Party, promotes “ethnic unity,” and attributes any dissent to “hostile external forces,” the report noted.
Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said Feb 3 that the two Tibetan broadcast services are expected to be back in business, citing the latest government budget negotiated by the two political parties and signed by President Donald Trump that day, which retained a total of $23 million assistance for Tibetan programmes.
But listening to the VOA and RFA services, even if they are resumed, is not a routine matter to the people in Tibet. In the Tibet Autonomous Region, more than in any other part of the PRC, the regime closely monitors and represses anyone attempting to disseminate information from independent sources — especially news on the widespread human rights abuses against the Tibetan minority. Foreign journalists are routinely denied access to the region, said the RSF report.
In Tibet’s Ngari prefecture, for example, private satellite reception equipment has been banned. And in the prefecture’s Coqên (Tibetan: Tsochen) County, more than 3,500 government-installed satellite television sets have been set up in 17 villages, restricting rural and nomadic households’ access to external broadcasts.
The report cited an official statement as saying China planned to install these satellites in all 74 county-level administrative divisions across the Tibet Autonomous Region by the end of 2025.
Regarding the CNR’s increase in Tibetan-language programming, Shen Haixiong, Deputy Head of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party and Head of the China Media Group., has said during the 75th-anniversary celebration of state-run Chinese Tibetan Radio in May 2025, that it is part of Beijing’s plan for “the leader’s [Xi Jinping’s] thoughts to penetrate the hearts of people of different ethnicities like a shower of honey.”