Last week, Chinese state media reported that Wu Yingjie, the former Party chief of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), pleaded guilty to bribery charges during a trial in Beijing. Wu joins a long and growing list of officials swept up in Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign. While Wu played a key role in carrying out the government’s hardline policies in Tibet, analysts doubt that his conviction will improve the human rights situation in the region. Tibetan Review provided more details about Wu’s prosecution and role in Tibetan affairs:

The [China Daily] report cited prosecutors as saying Wu had accepted bribes worth more than 343 million yuan ($47.37 million) between Jun 2006 and Feb 2021 during his years of working in senior positions in TAR, including as the regional party secretary, vice-chairman of the regional government and head of the regional publicity department.

Prosecutors have told the court that Wu had used his positions to secure benefits for others in project contracting and business operations.

[…] China’s party and government anti-corruption watchdogs have said Wu had violated Party disciplines and national laws, harming the region’s development. They have also accused him of failing to implement the Party’s strategy for governing Xizang and interfering with engineering projects for personal gain, the report said, using China’s Sinicized name for Tibet (or TAR).

Wu, who worked as the Party Secretary of TAR from 2016 to 2021, maintained a hardline approach toward Tibetan affairs, aligning closely with Beijing’s policies. His tenure was marked by a strong emphasis on Sinicization, ideological control, and stringent security measures. He prioritized political stability and Sinicization over Tibetan autonomy and cultural preservation. While occasionally speaking of respecting Tibetan customs, his actions were directed at the erosion of Tibetan identity under the guise of integration. [Source]

The U.S. government had imposed sanctions on Wu in 2022 for his policies that “involved serious human rights abuse, including extrajudicial killings, physical abuse, arbitrary arrests, and mass detentions in the TAR. Additional abuses … include forced sterilization, coerced abortion, restrictions on religious and political freedoms, and the torture of prisoners.” Pelbar from RFA Tibetan described how Tibetans reacted to the news of the investigation against Wu when it was announced last June:

The move was praised by Tibetans on Chinese social media in a rare display of public opinion about such measures in China.

“It is very good that this man has been arrested,” said one person. “This is good news for Tibetans,” said another.

“This enemy of the Tibetans has been captured and it will eliminate harm from the Tibetan people,” said a third.

[…] More than 760 comments appeared on a WeChat channel in response to a story about Wu’s investigation, all expressing support for the probe.

But at least one activist predicted the investigation would do nothing to change the plight of Tibetans.

“Despite Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s investigation of Wu Yingjie and other officials as part of the nation’s anti-corruption campaign, there will be no positive impact on Tibet and its related issues,” said Sangay Kyap, a Tibetan rights analyst. [Source]

Other Tibetan officials have also been targeted by anti-corruption probes. In January, the South China Morning Post reported that the the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) placed former Tibet chairman Che Dalha (Qizhala) under investigation for “severe violations of law and Communist Party discipline.” In February, the CCDI announced that it had expelled two Tibetan officials—Qi Jianxin, a former governor, and Jangchup (Jiang Chu), former vice governor, of Dechen (Diqing) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan—for having “seriously violated the Party’s political discipline,” being “disloyal and dishonest to the Party,” and making “illegal gains.”

Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign has extended to a wide swath of government and society. In November, Admiral Miao Hua was suspended and placed under investigation, and recently General He Weidong of the Central Military Commission was reportedly detained for unspecified crimes. In February, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong was removed from office in what many believe was a graft-related probe. On Tuesday, the Chinese government announced the launch of “Sky Net 2025,” an operation to “hunt down fugitives, recover illegal proceeds and combat cross-border corruption.” Beyond high-level officials and overseas criminals, petty corruption is another massive target of Xi’s campaign, as Chun Han Wong reported last week for The Wall Street Journal:

Communist Party enforcers are targeting grassroots graft from kickbacks for public contracts to bribes for medical treatment in a renewal of Xi’s popular assault on corrupt “flies” and “ants”—low-level bureaucrats and state workers—whose misconduct affects ordinary citizens.

[…] Party inspectors proceeded to root out what they call “unhealthy tendencies and corruption issues that occur close to the masses.” Authorities punished 530,000 people and sent 16,000 of them to prosecutors for criminal proceedings in 2024. These probes drove up overall disciplinary cases to record levels last year, when the party penalized 889,000 people.

The offenses have included bribery, abuse of power and the misuse of public funds meant for school meals, pensions, medical insurance and rural development. The party also ramped up pressure on bribe-givers, opening investigations against 26,000 people last year for offering payoffs and inducing graft, a 53% increase from the year before. [Source]

Last week at the U.N. Human Rights Council, 28 European states expressed concern about the “dire” human rights situation in Tibet and Xinjiang. Regarding Tibet, this includes “obligatory boarding schooling and the suppression of protests against hydropower projects. We are deeply concerned over reports that Tibetan schools teaching Tibetan language and culture have been shut down and that Chinese authorities have insisted that all students attend state schools where Tibetan is only taught as a stand-alone subject.” The research network Turquoise Roof recently published a report outlining the Chinese government’s strategic plans for Tibet from 2025 to 2049, which reveals a switch in approach from a framework of nominal autonomy to complete assimilation. The following is an excerpt from the report’s executive summary:

• Dismantling cultural transmission to the next generation through boarding schools that split families, centralised to require family separation.
• Economic integration into China’s national infrastructure networks, as [an] essential supplier of industrial raw materials from lithium to water.
• Policies grounded in the Party state narrative that traditional Tibetan lifestyles are ‘backward’ and ‘unproductive’.
• Systematic disempowerment, surveillance, relocation, and control. [Source]