Nomads, schools and the struggle for language
Large state programmes resettle Tibetan nomads and farmers into new villages and towns and move most children into boarding schools taught mainly in Chinese, bringing roads and services but deep fears for Tibetan culture.
- Exile from the Grasslands: Tibetan Herders and Chinese Development Projects — Jarmila Ptáčková, University of Washington Press (2020)
- Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development — Emily T. Yeh, Cornell University Press (2013)
- "They Say We Should Be Grateful": Mass Rehousing and Relocation Programs in Tibetan Areas of China — Human Rights Watch (2013)
- China: UN experts alarmed by separation of 1 million Tibetan children from families and forced assimilation at residential schools — UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2023)
From the early 2000s, Chinese development programmes transformed the Tibetan plateau. The Qinghai–Tibet railway reached Lhasa in 2006. Under “ecological migration” schemes from 2003, herders in the headwaters region of Qinghai were moved off grasslands to protect them, and from 2006 the “Comfortable Housing” campaign rebuilt or relocated rural homes across the TAR; Human Rights Watch reported in 2013 that some two million Tibetans had been rehoused since 2006.
- Exile from the Grasslands: Tibetan Herders and Chinese Development Projects — Jarmila Ptáčková, University of Washington Press (2020)
- Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development — Emily T. Yeh, Cornell University Press (2013)
- "They Say We Should Be Grateful": Mass Rehousing and Relocation Programs in Tibetan Areas of China — Human Rights Watch (2013)
At the same time, village schools were consolidated into larger boarding schools where teaching is mainly in Mandarin. In 2010, students in Rebkong and other towns protested against plans to reduce Tibetan-medium teaching. Language activists have been jailed, including Tashi Wangchuk, sentenced in 2018 to five years after speaking to The New York Times. In 2023 UN human rights experts raised alarm at the scale of the boarding system.
- China: UN experts alarmed by separation of 1 million Tibetan children from families and forced assimilation at residential schools — UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2023)
- Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations Against Chinese Rule — Tsering Woeser, Verso (2016)
- The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 — Tsering Shakya, Columbia University Press (1999)
Resettlement lifts herders out of poverty, protects fragile grasslands at the sources of the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong rivers, and brings schools, clinics and electricity. Boarding schools give rural children a modern education, and national-language skills open opportunities across China.
- Tibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity — State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China (2021)
Herders have often been moved without real consent and left without livelihoods, and the schools separate children from their families, language and religion. UN experts warned in 2023 that about a million Tibetan children were in a residential system that appeared designed to assimilate them.
- "They Say We Should Be Grateful": Mass Rehousing and Relocation Programs in Tibetan Areas of China — Human Rights Watch (2013)
- China: UN experts alarmed by separation of 1 million Tibetan children from families and forced assimilation at residential schools — UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2023)
Studies of the grasslands show mixed results: some families welcome housing, roads and schooling, while the ecological case for removing herders is disputed and outcomes vary greatly by place.
- Exile from the Grasslands: Tibetan Herders and Chinese Development Projects — Jarmila Ptáčková, University of Washington Press (2020)
- Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development — Emily T. Yeh, Cornell University Press (2013)
Why it matters today
For many Tibetans, the survival of the language and of nomadic life is now the front line of identity. Parents worry that children in boarding schools are losing Tibetan, and campaigns to defend the language have led to protests and prison sentences.