(TibetanReview.net, Mar15’24) —After apparently failing to get the event cancelled, China has on Mar 13 expressed deep dissatisfaction and lodged a stern opposition to the US and Canada’s determination to hold an event on the preservation of Tibetans’ unique culture on the sidelines of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
It has accused the two countries of seeking to hype up Xizang-related issues and spread lies by holding a public seminar on assessing “China’s Assimilationist Policies Targeting Tibetan Language, Culture and Religion.”
Xizang is China’s name for Tibet, which the latter stopped using since last year in official discourses to strengthen its narrative on the issue.
“The organizers and participants of these meetings are filled with anti-China organizations and individuals, among whom the Tibetan government-in-exile is a thoroughly separatist political group which no country in the world acknowledges,” China’s official globaltimes.cn Mar 14 quoted a statement from a spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Canada as saying.
The real intention is “to smear China with Xizang-related issues and embolden the ‘Tibetan independence’ forces,” the statement was further quoted as saying.
The statement has sought to justify China’s forced enrolment of, reportedly, around a million Tibetan children in an assimilationist boarding school system for the purpose of Sinicizing them.
It has claimed that the new school system was “entirely based on the students and parents’ wishes and needs.”
It has also said, “As Chinese nationals, it is only natural for the Xizang people to possess skills and knowledge of the national language, culture and history, as it is the right and responsibility of every citizen.”
It has sought to reject the basis of the criticism of the school system by maintaining that “the schools generally offer traditional cultural courses such as Tibetan language,” that “students are allowed to wear Tibetan clothes on campus,” and that “parents can visit the school and pick up their children from school at any time.”
China’s official Xinhua news agency earlier reported Dec 2, 2021, that the People’s Republic of China will be a Putonghua-, or Mandarin Chinese-speaking, unilingual country to the extent of 85% of its population under President Xi Jinping’s Sinicization drive by 2025. The goal is to make it a fully unilingual dominion by 2035, the report said, citing the country’s Ministry of Education.
It was also reported by chinadigitaltimes.net Nov 2, 2021, that after making Mandarin the only medium of instruction for children of all ages across the country, including even for preschoolers, under an Aug 2 directive from the ministry of education, language learning app Talkmate and the online video streaming site Bilibili had removed Tibetan and Uyghur languages from their platforms, citing Chinese government policy.
Also, on Jul 28, 2023, it was reported by laprensalatina.com that the students in schools such as the one Spanish international news agency EFE gained access to in a visit organized by the Chinese government – the only way to enter Tibet as a foreign journalist – learnt both Mandarin and Tibetan, although this minority group seemed completely immersed in Chinese culture. The suggestion that students lean Tibetan also was obviously stage-managed for the visitors, given the propaganda objective of organizing the media tour.
Indeed, the report said that the Communist Party of China’s aim in organizing the visit was to challenge criticism Beijing faced over allegations of forced assimilation policies towards Tibetans.