Is the Dalai Lama set to become a relic of Tibet’s past?
- According to Beijing’s propaganda banners, the spiritual leader is ‘the head of a political clique that seeks independence for Tibet’
- China’s Communist Party is ‘continually refining its techniques for aggressive secularisation’, academic says
“The older folks might know, but we don’t ask and they don’t tell,” she said, near her village in Shigatse in central Tibet.
“The 14th Dalai Lama is the head of a political clique that seeks independence for Tibet,” one says beside a road in Shigatse. The sign has been erected in front of a sea of prayer flags.
“He is the loyal tool of the international anti-China forces, and ultimate root of Tibet’s social unrest.”
Speaking to the South China Morning Post during a reporting trip to Tibet organised by the Chinese government, Lamu, who finished college 2018 in Shandong, the coastal province designated to provide point-to-point aides to her city, said she now worked in a food factory set up as a part of the country’s poverty alleviation programme.