70 Years Since CCP Takeover, Regime Calls for Tibet to Accept Communist Rule

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China’s Communist Party marked the 70th anniversary of its taking control of Tibet with a call for the region to embrace the regime’s all-encompassing rule.

At the iconic Potala Palace, a sacred Buddhist site in Tibet’s capital Lhasa, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang on Aug. 19 spoke in front of a tightly-vetted crowd of 20,000, casting the Party as the savior who “peacefully liberated” Tibetan “peasant slaves”.

“Tibet could only develop and prosper by adhering to the Party’s leadership and the socialist path,” said Wang, who also heads the regime’s mostly nominal political advisory body and is a member of the Party’s top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee.

Chinese communist troops marched into the vast Himalayan region in 1951 forcing Tibetan leaders to accept a treaty that promised to uphold Tibet’s existing political system, regional autonomy, and religious freedom.

The 14th Dalai Lama, who turned 86 this year, fled on foot to India in 1959 after the Chinese military crushed a Tibetan uprising. Around 80,000 people soon followed him, according to the Tibetan government in exile.

While the regime claims it had “liberated” Tibetan peasants from an oppressive theocracy, critics and activists say that Beijing had instead embarked on a campaign of “cultural genocide” in the unique Buddhist region, that had been largely independent of central Chinese rule for most of its history.

Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims walk the kora at a shrine on the shore of the high altitude saltwater Namtso lake during a government organized visit for journalists in Namtso, Tibet, China, on June 2, 2021. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Over the years, the regime has forced monks and nuns to return to secular life, and handed harsh sentences, as long as 20 years, to some monks, according to human rights groups.

A 2020 report by think tank Jamestown Foundation also found militarized vocational training camps—similar to those that hold more than a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang—appearing in Tibet.

Wang, in his speech at the ceremony, took a victorious tone, gloating over what he described to be a “harmonious and stable” Tibet where different ethnicities “love each other like tea and salt,” in a reference to the smoky, salty local beverage known as butter tea.

He said that the Party has “defeated the separatist and sabotage activities by the Dalai [Lama] group and overseas hostile forces,” and successfully eliminated extreme poverty in the region.

Wang also signaled plans to intensify cultural assimilation and “patriotic education.” Stressing a need to deepen the public’s acceptance of the Party and “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” he called for “all-rounded efforts” to push Tibetans to write and speak the standardized mandarin language, and develop shared “symbols and image of the Chinese nation.”

Broadcast footage of the event, live-streamed nationwide through Chinese state media, prominently featured a solo portrait of Chinese leader Xi Jinping that towered over the audience, a scene reminiscent of the personality cult built around the Party’s first ruler Mao Zedong.

Later in the day, Wang joined some 600 people to watch a performance with segments touting locals’ purported gratitude toward the Party.

The festive mood was not shared among the Tibetan diaspora.

“Judging by developments in Tibet over the past 70 years, the Tibetan people have no cause for jubilation,” International Campaign for Tibet, a Washington-based advocacy group, said in a statement, adding that “Chinese policies have turned Tibet itself into an open-air prison.”

A Tibetan Buddhist woman hold prayer beads as he spins a prayer wheel at a local shrine in Lhasa, Tibet, China, on June 3, 2021. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

It cited a new internal code of conduct forbidding Tibetan officials to practice religious beliefs. According to the group, the new policy first began circulating in April and bans Party members who hold official positions to wear Buddhist beads and statues, display religious signs on government vehicles, donate money to monasteries, and pay religious pilgrimage. The officials were also told to discourage their family members from religious practices.

“After 70 years of oppression, the only thing the Tibetan people need ‘peaceful liberation’ from today is China’s brutality,” the group said.