China hosts academic symposium to defend colonial boarding schools in Tibet

Tenzin Nyidon 

DHARAMSHALA, Oct. 30: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on Monday organized a so-called “International Academic Symposium on Boarding Education and Plateau Development” at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. The event gathered experts and scholars from countries including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, in an apparent attempt to legitimize and defend Beijing’s colonial-style boarding school system in Tibet.

The symposium, heavily covered by Chinese state media, portrayed the boarding schools as a model of “equity and high-quality education” suited to the unique geographical and cultural conditions of the plateau regions. State reports claimed that the schools “respect ethnic culture” and have become “a vital method of enhancing educational quality and equity” through strong state support.

Zhalo, a researcher at the China Tibetology Research Center, argued that the schools contribute to educational development, while Mario Cavolo, a senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, dismissed international criticism as “nonsense,” asserting that “Tibetan culture is everywhere, and it has been passed on in the schools, including boarding schools.”

Similarly, Michael Alan Crook, president of the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, claimed that students in Tibet’s boarding schools enjoy good living conditions and that the mixed enrollment of different ethnic groups fosters “mutual understanding.”

However, rights organizations and experts have strongly refuted these claims, describing the symposium as part of Beijing’s broader propaganda campaign to whitewash its assimilationist education policies in Tibet.

In its July 2025 report, When They Came to Take Our Children: China’s Colonial Boarding Schools and the Future of Tibet, the Tibet Action Institute (TAI) exposed the devastating impact of these institutions, drawing on rare firsthand accounts from within Tibet and among recent exiles. The report documented how children as young as four are forcibly separated from their families, subjected to political indoctrination, and stripped of their Tibetan language and cultural identity.

TAI’s earlier 2021 report, Separated from Their Families, Hidden from the World, revealed that nearly one million Tibetan children have been compelled to attend such schools under the guise of education reform. The findings described how mandatory enrollment, suppression of Tibetan identity, and coercion of parents constitute a system of forced assimilation designed to weaken Tibetan culture and loyalty to their heritage.

While Beijing promotes these new facilities as symbols of progress and modernization, human rights groups stress that the real issue lies in the curriculum and the underlying state policy of reshaping Tibetan children’s identity to align with Chinese nationalism.

International concern over China’s colonial education system continues to grow. On February 6, 2023, UN human rights experts warned that approximately one million Tibetan children are being subjected to policies aimed at cultural, religious, and linguistic assimilation through residential schools. Special Rapporteurs Fernand de Varennes (minority issues), Farida Shaheed (right to education), and Alexandra Xanthaki (cultural rights) reported that the education provided in these schools is dominated by the Han Chinese language and culture.