{"id":231750,"date":"2021-06-11T17:00:27","date_gmt":"2021-06-12T00:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=231750"},"modified":"2022-09-09T18:13:26","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T01:13:26","slug":"in-tibet-party-cracks-down-on-religion-and-demands-gratitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2021\/06\/in-tibet-party-cracks-down-on-religion-and-demands-gratitude\/","title":{"rendered":"In Tibet, Party Cracks Down On Religion And Demands Gratitude"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Tibet, the Party is pushing a political education campaign to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the region\u2019s annexation. This latest campaign comes amid a widespread \u201cSinicization\u201d effort<\/a> that critics claim has severely eroded Tibetan-language education<\/a> and religious freedom. At Reuters, Martin Quin Pollard reported on life in Tibet amidst an effort to spur gratitude to the Party<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Asked who his spiritual leader was, a monk at Lhasa\u2019s historic Jokhang temple named Xi.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not drunk … I speak freely to you,\u201d said the monk named Lhakpa, speaking from a courtyard overlooked by security cameras and government observers.<\/p>\n

The portraits of Xi were visible at almost all sites visited by Reuters during the trip to Tibet, where journalists are banned from entering outside of such tours. It was not clear when the posters and flags were put up.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] Reuters did not see any images of the Dalai Lama, previously common in homes throughout Tibet, on the trip from May 31 to June 5. [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To mark the anniversary, China\u2019s State Council Information Office published a white paper, \u201cTibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity<\/a>,\u201d that offered a revisionist history of the region\u2019s relation to modern China: \u201cTibet has been an integral part of Chinese territory since ancient times.\u201d At The South China Morning Post, Catherine Wong reported on the Party\u2019s full-throated embrace of the \u201cSinicization\u201d of Tibetan history<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Tibet party secretary Wu Yingjie said on Saturday that the country must pursue further \u201cSinicisation of religion\u201d and a stronger role for the party\u2019s leadership in Tibet, a move analysts said was meant to reframe the region\u2019s history and tighten Beijing\u2019s grip on the area.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] The comments came a day after the party issued a report defining its official position on Tibet, claiming the area \u201chas been an inseparable part of China since ancient times\u201d, dating back to the seventh century.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] \u201cTo strengthen governance in Tibet in the new era, we need to strengthen efforts to Sinicise religion and reshape the historical narrative of Tibet. These are the changes made in the last few years. We did not stress these enough in the past,\u201d Xie said.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] \u201cThis is hard to take seriously, since until 2015 the [party] and the Chinese government had insisted that Tibet only became part of China in the 13th century, and before that they had said it happened in the 17th or 18th centuries. China has yet to explain why it keeps changing its claims as to when it thinks Tibet became part of China,\u201d [Robert Barnett said.] [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Questions over the Dalai Lama\u2019s succession loom in the background of the campaign. The Dalai Lama turns 86 in July and\u2014in the event of his death\u2014choosing his successor will be a contentious process. China claims the power to approve any future Lama reincarnations. In 1995, the Chinese government installed its own choice for the 11th Panchen Lama<\/a> after seizing and disappearing the Dalai Lama-sanctioned reincarnation<\/a>, a then six-year-old child. In 2020, the United States passed the Tibetan Policy and Support Act<\/a>, which mandates that the reincarnation process be decided solely by the Dalai Lama and Tibetan religious authorities and threatens any Chinese officials who interfere with sanctions. Security officials in India have reportedly discussed how to influence the selection themselves. The Dalai Lama himself has repeatedly questioned<\/a> whether the institution should continue after his death and has warned that any successors appointed by the Chinese government would be illegitimate<\/a>. The Economist published an explainer that laid out the process of reincarnation\u2014and the temporal actors who seek to influence it<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

In Tibetan Buddhism, each Dalai Lama is a tulku, a reincarnated custodian of the teachings of Avalokite\u015bvara, the bodhisattva (enlightened being) of compassion. When a Dalai Lama dies, it normally takes years to identify his reincarnated form. Tenzin Gyatso was identified in 1937, four years after the 13th Dalai Lama died. Senior monks interpreted signs from the 13th\u2019s death, such as an unusual star-shaped fungus that grew on his shrine apparently pointing to the north-east, to direct their search. Various clues and spiritual masters led them to two-year-old Tenzin Gyatso, then known as Lhamo Dhondup, who was the right age to be the reincarnated tulku. Young Tenzin correctly identified items belonging to the deceased Dalai Lama and on February 22nd 1940 was enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] According to Chinese law the central government must approve the next Dalai Lama, or indeed of any other senior living Buddha. The atheist regime has long weighed in on matters of spiritual succession. On May 14th 1995, a six-year-old called Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was declared by the Dalai Lama to be the 11th Panchen Lama, the second-most senior monk in Tibetan Buddhism. Three days later he disappeared; he has not been seen in public since. The Chinese government named its own Panchen Lama, who is rejected by most Tibetans. The Dalai Lama has condemned Chinese efforts to appoint his successor as \u201cbrazen meddling\u201d. He has even raised the possibility that he may be the last Dalai Lama.<\/p>\n

But the dispute is not just between China and the Tibetans. Another option floated by the Dalai Lama is that his reincarnation may be identified outside Tibet, perhaps in India, where he fled to in 1959 after a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the chief aims of Penpa Tsering, the newly elected head of Tibet\u2019s government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration, is to restart talks with Beijing\u2014stalled since 2010\u2014to negotiate the Dalai Lama\u2019s return to Tibet<\/a>. Prospects for success seem dim. A leading Chinese scholar of Tibet told Global Times<\/a>, \u201cthe Chinese government currently will in no way build any connection with the \u2018Tibetan government-in-exile.\u2019\u201d Penpa has been highly critical of what he terms China\u2019s policy of \u201ccultural genocide\u201d in Tibet. At Reuters, Cate Cadell and Sanjeev Miglani reported on Penpa\u2019s comments and the conflict over the Dalai Lama\u2019s succession<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cTime is running out,\u201d said Tsering, speaking from Dharamshala in India. \u201cOnce [Tibetan culture] is eliminated, it doesn\u2019t make sense to fight for anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] Tsering reiterated that when the 14th Dalai Lama passes he will only be reincarnated in a \u201cfree country\u201d, according to his wishes. China says it has a right to select the Dalai Lama\u2019s successor according to Chinese law.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are they so concerned with the 15th Dalai Lama?\u201d said Tsering. \u201cThe 14th Dalai Lama is still living and he wishes to go to China … the Chinese government leaders need to learn about Buddhism first.\u201d [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not all agree with the \u201ccultural genocide\u201d framing. In an essay<\/a> for The Council on Foreign Relations, prominent Tibet expert Robert Barnett detailed abuses in the region\u2014including the detention, humiliation, and torture of nuns\u2014but argued that those abuses \u201care not similar in scale or duration to the systematic, mass practices of detention and cultural eradication in Xinjiang.\u201d Barnett took particular issue with a Reuters report from September 2020 on coerced labor<\/a> and a 2021 episode of The Little Red Podcast<\/a> that used a since-replaced \u201cclick-bait\u201d title comparing Tibet to Nazi Germany. In a response essay also published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Tenzin Dorjee argued that Barnett\u2019s framing was flawed, pointing out that Tibet was ranked less free than North Korea by Freedom House\u2019s annual freedom rankings<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

[Barnett] insists Xi Jinping\u2019s China is merely trying to \u201cadapt popular understandings of Tibetan Buddhism,\u201d not seeking to destroy it. He points out that \u201cpublications of traditional religious texts run into the thousands.\u201d The quantity of scriptural publications, however, is a misleading metric of religious life, which is more meaningfully measured by variables such as monastic enrollment and graduation rates, the breadth and depth of the curriculum, and the doctrinal and liturgical knowledge of the Sangha, etc.<\/p>\n

In reality, Chinese authorities strictly control and suppress monastic enrollment in Tibet, forbidding anyone below eighteen to join the cloister. Tibetan children in Lhasa, for instance, are banned from visiting the Jhokhang temple or the Potala Palace \u2013\u2013 such bans on religious activity often do not exist on paper and are easily missed by scholars relying purely on documentary evidence. Photos of the Dalai Lama have long been banned in monasteries and homes, but now Chinese authorities are seeking to expunge him altogether from Tibetan Buddhism, which goes far beyond merely \u201cinsulting the Dalai Lama.\u201d (To understand what Tibetan Buddhism without the Dalai Lama might actually mean, imagine the Catholic Church without the Pope.) Whereas once the monastery used to be a liminal space relatively impervious to the state, now it is a panopticon filled with surveillance cameras watching the monastics at all times. Instead of spending their day studying the scriptures, monks and nuns are forced to attend political indoctrination programs and immerse themselves in Xi Jinping thought, which can hardly be called a \u201cpopular adaptation\u201d of what the Buddha taught.<\/p>\n

Even more pernicious than Beijing\u2019s attack on Buddhism is its assault on the Tibetan language, a campaign that bears all the hallmarks of a multigenerational project to render a language dead and thus eliminate a people\u2019s identity. In a report published by Human Rights Watch, Tibetan sources on the ground describe how China\u2019s new education policy, deceptively labeled \u201cbilingual education,\u201d has been replacing Tibetan with Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction not only in primary schools but in kindergartens across the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). What Beijing calls \u201cbilingual education\u201d is more accurately described by the International Tibet Network as a \u201ccradle to grave\u201d education system, where \u201cnew methods of ‘controlling minds’ have been imposed from an early age, with Tibetan toddlers increasingly being subjected to ideological education in hundreds of new and expanded kindergartens across Tibet.\u201d [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Robbie also notes the change of the original title of the Little Red Podcast from \u201cTibet: The Final Solution\u201d to something that does not evoke the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews. Which serves to make his point about false equivalency. pic.twitter.com\/AJvbGqcJxi<\/a><\/p>\n

— Todd Stein (@ToddStein_28) June 6, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n