Tim Cheung (@TimCheung)

"Authorities frustrated by continued resistance to #Beijing are now prying children as young as four years old from their homes — before they have a chance to fully absorb the #Tibetan #language and way of life. Across #Tibet, a mountainous region rich in natural resources where many people harbor dreams of #independence, #China is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build schools, recognizing how social identity forms early in life. The education project includes a network of daylong #preschools, where children are taught in #Mandarin, and lessons emphasize #Chinese #culture. The preschool classes offer a familiar menu of #games, #crafts, #songs and #stories. Yet beyond teaching basic skills, the lessons glorify the #Communist Party and Chinese #identity. #Campus signs read, 'I am a Chinese child, I love speaking #Mandarin'. #Teachers stage skits telling #children their #clothes, #shoes and well-being are# #gifts from the party. From there, most Tibetan students graduate into an expanded system of primary boarding schools, spanning grades one through six, which keep them away from home for weeks or months at a time. They study almost entirely in Mandarin and live under the supervision of teachers and #wardens, including Han Chinese who don’t speak Tibetan. Chinese officials in some Tibetan areas are experimenting with funneling children into boarding schools at the start of preschool, according to government documents, social#media posts and independent researchers. The campaign reflects the convictions of Chinese leader #XiJinping, who said the country needs to reach children as babies 'so that the red gene seeps into their blood and permeates their hearts'...Several Tibetans in their 20s lamented in interviews that China’s ongoing indoctrination of young children seems to be working. One 21-year-old woman, who attended a Tibetan-language elementary school and went to #boardingschool in seventh grade, said her younger relatives entered Chinese boarding school as early as age 6. At the school, they learn entirely in Mandarin, she said, straining communication with their parents and grandparents, who understand very little of the language. The woman, who left China last fall, said she has scolded younger children for speaking to one another in Mandarin. 'Even if they speak Tibetan', she said, 'the first language that comes to their mind is Mandarin'. Such experiences point to a remarkable change, said Tenzin Dorjee, a political scientist at Columbia #University who studies Chinese ethnic policy. 'This has never happened in Tibetan history', he said. 'Tibetans have never spoken to each other in Chinese'. The Tibet Action Institute, a human-rights group, estimates there are more than 800,000 students in boarding schools across Tibetan areas of China, which includes the Tibet Autonomous Region and portions of four nearby provinces. That represents three-quarters of all school-age Tibetans, said the institute, which extrapolated its estimate based on boarding rates in Tibetan areas reported by local governments and researchers...'They are not trying to eradicate these cultures', said Robert Barnett, a Tibet expert at #SOAS University of London. 'They are surgically removing and they’re surgically grafting'...After Xi came to power in 2012, the party turned sharply against expressions of separate ethnic identity among minorities. Officials cracked down on Tibetan alternatives to public schools and expanded the boarding school system. In 2021, #Beijing deleted references to #bilingual education from China’s childhood development plan. #Xi that year was the first Communist Party chief to visit Tibet in three decades. In the capital Lhasa, he urged officials to cultivate 'a stronger sense of identifying with the great motherland, Chinese people, Chinese culture, the Chinese #Communist Party and #socialism with Chinese characteristics'...A Journal review of education data found primary school dorm space in the Tibet Autonomous Region grew almost 120% between 2012 and 2022 to a total of more than 13 million square feet. The Journal found that all or nearly all primary schools are boarding institutions in a half dozen Tibetan counties, a small sample of the total...Over the past decade, county plans and spending data reviewed by the Journal also show sharp increases in preschool construction — far outpacing every other region of China. The number of preschools in the Tibet Autonomous Region reached nearly 2,500 in 2022 from around 500 in 2012. Enrollment among the region’s preschool-age children now tops 90% compared with 52% a decade ago. Yet the new, more aggressive schooling of the youngest students 'is creating a generation of Tibetans that is very different', he said. When his younger cousins and relatives come home from school, there is a language barrier, he said, and a different way of thinking. 'They are brainwashed by Chinese thoughts and propaganda', he said." https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1192464022923582&set=ecnf.100064799856517