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Chinese President Xi Jinping is greeted on his visit to the Tibet autonomous region. Photo: Xinhua

Xi Jinping tells Tibetans they’re at ‘a new historical starting point’

  • Chinese president is leading a senior delegation in Lhasa to mark 70 years since the ‘peaceful liberation’ of Tibet
  • He calls the Communist Party’s policies there ‘completely correct’ and urges Tibetans to follow its socialist path
Xi Jinping
After more than a decade, President Xi Jinping returned to Lhasa on Thursday, leading a delegation to mark the 70th anniversary of what Beijing calls the peaceful liberation of Tibet.

State news agency Xinhua on Friday said Xi had arrived in the city – one of the highest in the world at an altitude of 3,656 metres (12,000 feet) above sea level – after visiting Nyingchi in the south of the region a day earlier.

Speaking in Lhasa, Xi called the ruling Communist Party’s policies in the Himalayan region “completely correct” and urged Tibetans to follow its socialist path to “write a new chapter of lasting stability and high-quality development”.

“Now, China has embarked on a new journey of comprehensively building a modern socialist country, the development of Tibet also stands at a new historical starting point,” Xi said, according to Xinhua. He said that through socialism with Chinese characteristics and national unity the “dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” could be realised.

Xi also stressed on the need for Tibetan Buddhism to “adapt to the socialist society” during a visit to the Drepung Monastery in the west of Lhasa on Thursday.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping makes first trip to Tibet in a decade

Chinese President Xi Jinping makes first trip to Tibet in a decade

The president also met local officials, telling them to strengthen national unity and patriotic education to counter separatism.

He also told them to do more to protect Tibet’s environment as “[mountains covered by] ice and snow are as good as mountains of gold and silver” – a line he frequently uses on environmental protection.

During a visit to People’s Liberation Army troops stationed in the region, Xi offered praise for their defence of China’s territory but also urged them to “strengthen comprehensive military training and preparations”.

Xi last visited Tibet as vice-president in 2011, when he vowed to fight against “separatist activities” linked to the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader whose influence China has spent years trying to remove.

Xi’s latest tour began in Nyingchi in the southeast on Wednesday, when he inspected conservation work at the Yarlung Zangbo River and the Niyang River basin. A video clip circulating on social media shows the president greeting residents with the Tibetan expression for good fortune, “tashi delek”. “[As for] the future, the people of all ethnic groups in Tibet will march towards a happy life – I am as confident as you are,” Xi says in the clip.

Xi Jinping is making his first visit to Tibet as president. Photo: Xinhua
Xi also visited the new railway station in Nyingchi, from where passengers can now take a high-speed train to the regional capital Lhasa. It is part of a larger development linking Tibet in the west with Sichuan province, and Xi received a progress report on the next section to Yaan.

Observers expected Xi’s tour to focus on key policy priorities, particularly stability and development of the region.

Junfei Wu, deputy director of Hong Kong think tank the Tianda Institute, said key themes were likely to include Tibetan Buddhism’s “adaptation to socialism and Chinese conditions” and the strengthening of ethnic unity by stepping up political and ideological education.

“Sinicisation of religions has already been set as a cornerstone of China’s ethnic and religious policy, aimed at forging a common Chinese identity. It has been carried out in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and certainly Tibet, which is regarded as now under better control,” he said.

On the development front, Wu said Xi would promise major infrastructure projects to boost economic growth and jobs in the region, as well as for Tibetans living in the neighbouring provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai.

He said there would also be a focus on climate change and conserving the Qinghai-Tibet plateau.

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Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said Beijing may need to rethink its development model to allow companies, especially the private sector, to play a bigger role in Tibet, where the civil service remained the top employer.

“Chinese government statistics show the public administration sector employs more than 40 per cent of Tibet’s labour force,” he said. “Tibet has been relying heavily on Beijing’s investments and transfer payments for development. It has to find ways to be more self-sustaining, as the sustainability of the current model may face challenges in the longer term.”

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In Nyingchi on Wednesday, Xi also visited the Urban Planning Museum to “inspect urban development planning, rural revitalisation, and urban park construction” before heading to Lhasa.

Online video footage circulating on Friday morning showed Xi walking out of a traditional Tibetan clothing shop in Lhasa’s Barkhor district, near the Jokhang Temple. He was accompanied by Tibet party chief Wu Yingjie as he waved to the cheering crowd amid a heavy security presence.

A Sichuan government source said that, before he arrived in Nyingchi, Xi had also stopped in the neighbouring province, including a visit to Bronze Age archaeological sites at Sanxingdui in Guanghan and Chengdu. He is also said to have met key officials from Chengdu and Chongqing.

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Earlier this month, Gyaincain Norbu, the Panchen Lama chosen by Beijing, also toured Tibetan areas of the neighbouring provinces, according to local media reports.

Within the Tibetan refugee community, photos and footage of Xi’s visit were shared widely, especially images of the president outside the Potala Palace.

Tenzin Lekshay, spokesman for the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile headquartered in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala, said Xi’s emphasis on stability meant tighter controls. “The Chinese government emphasised stability in every other decade marking Tibet’s liberation. In 2001, 2011, and now 2021. But whose stability are we talking about here?” Lekshay said. “It’s not Tibetan people’s stability for sure. So far, we believe the Tibetan people are still very unhappy with the hardline approach imposed by the Chinese government,” he said.

“The true aspirations of the Tibetan people in preserving their culture and identity have not been respected. Lhasa has been converted into a living museum and tourist attraction,” he added.

Robert Barnett, former director of Columbia University’s modern Tibetan studies programme, said Xi’s visit was “ostensibly about the opposite of security” and focused on demonstrating economic progress and cultural protection in Tibet.

“When Xi visited Tibet as vice-president in 2011, it was only three years after a wave of major protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule, and at that time there were paramilitary units posted on every street corner of Lhasa plus snipers on rooftops 24 hours a day – and they remained in position until 2014,” he said. “Three months after his visit, for the first known time in People’s Republic’s history, China sent cadre teams to live in and run every village and every monastery at township level or above in Tibet – and those teams are still in place today.

“[This visit, there is] no visible security at all, with almost no sign of uniformed police, let alone troops. Instead, there are cheering crowds welcoming him.”

Additional reporting by Kunal Purohit

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Xi tells Tibetans to ‘write a new chapter of stability and development’
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