Systematic Erasure of Identity: How China Is Dismantling Tibetan Education

 

China’s education policy in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is significantly reducing ethnic Tibetans’ access to education in their mother tongue. The government policy, though called “bilingual education”, is in practice leading to the gradual replacement of Tibetan by Chinese as the medium of instruction in primary schools throughout the region, except for classes studying Tibetan as a language. Since the 1960s, Chinese has been the language of instruction in nearly all middle and high schools in the TAR, where just under half of Tibetans in China live, but new educational practices introduced by the government in the TAR are now leading more primary schools and even kindergartens to use Chinese as the teaching language for Tibetan students.

 

Over the past decade, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has pursued a calculated and multi-layered campaign to dismantle Tibetan education, replacing it with a Mandarin-centric, ideologically controlled system aimed at cultural assimilation.

 

 

The detention of eminent Tibetan educationist Chogtrul Dorje Tenzin on December 4, 2025, in Golog Prefecture marks a decisive escalation. With his arrest, Chinese authorities shut down the Minthang Ethnic Vocational School, a respected institution that since 2010 had preserved Tibetan language, arts, and traditional knowledge. Students were forcibly transferred to Mandarin-only state boarding schools, effectively ending Tibetan-medium education at the institution.

 

 

This was not an aberration. In July 2024, authorities liquidated the Jigme Gyaltsen Nationalities Vocational High School in Qinghai after 30 years of operation, despite its strong academic record and official recognition. Earlier, Tibetan language teacher Dhonyoe was expelled from a primary school in Ngaba simply for encouraging students to use their mother tongue, now effectively banned under “uniformity” policies.

 

Such actions send an unambiguous message: independent Tibetan educators and institutions will not be tolerated.

 

 

Monasteries historically the backbone of Tibetan learning have been systematically targeted. In Amdo in March 2025, more than 1,000 young monks were forcibly removed from Kirti monasteries and transferred to government schools for political indoctrination. Surveillance, bans on minors, and dismantling of monastic schools have hollowed out religious education. Reports of abuse and even suicide attempts among displaced monk students underscore the human cost of these policies.

 

 

The closure of the Lhamo Kirti Monastery School and the detention of four Tibetan teenagers in October 2024 for resisting transfer to state-run institutions further illustrate the coercive nature of the campaign. Monastic education, once central to Tibetan society, is being replaced by ideologically sanitised, Mandarin-based curricula.

 

 

Perhaps the most alarming development is the large-scale forced placement of Tibetan children into Chinese-run boarding schools. A July 2025 report indicates that nearly one million Tibetan children, including around 100,000 preschoolers, have been separated from their families and placed in institutions where Tibetan language use is restricted and political indoctrination is routine.

 

 

These schools disrupt intergenerational transmission of language and culture, ensuring that children grow up alienated from their communities and traditions.

 

 

From prefecture-wide orders eliminating Tibetan language classes in Kardze (effective 2024) to plans to remove Tibetan from college entrance examinations, linguistic suppression has become policy. Patriotic education campaigns in 2025 explicitly banned religious symbols, reduced Tibetan-language instruction, and dismissed Tibetan-language teachers across multiple regions, including Lhasa and Ngaba.

 

 

Even during winter breaks, children are barred from private Tibetan-language lessons or religious activities, enforced through door-to-door inspections and surveillance.

 

 

Access to higher education has also been politicised. Since 2022, Tibetan students seeking university admission must meet stringent “ideological and political morality” criteria, effectively screening out those with cultural or religious affiliations deemed undesirable by the CCP. While universities have expanded in Tibet, Tibetan students remain marginalised in key science and technology disciplines, reinforcing structural inequality.

 

 

The cumulative impact is stark. The Tibetan government-in-exile reports that enrolment in Tibetan schools fell from 23,684 in 2012 to 13,035 in 2024, reflecting the combined effects of closures, forced transfers, and demographic pressure.