Signaling Potential Crackdown, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping Conducts Rare Visit to Tibet

China is signaling that it is prepared to increase its repression of Tibet. On August 20, Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Tibet to mark the anniversary of China’s effective annexation of the region and reaffirm Beijing’s control over Tibet’s Buddhist majority — an effort that has largely accelerated under his leadership. 

The visit, which comes as the region braces for potential turmoil in advance of the Dalai Lama naming a successor, signals China’s continued efforts to repress the country’s ethnic minorities while maintaining centralized power within Beijing.

Xi Visits Lhasa Amid Concerns Over Regional Political Turmoil

Xi’s visit, his second as China’s paramount leader, coincided with the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Tibet Autonomous Region, one of five such regions that allow ethnic minorities to practice highly limited self-governance. During his trip, Xi extolled the local government’s efforts to curb local “separatism” while calling for additional measures to regulate “religious affairs” and “guide Tibetan Buddhism to adapt to socialist society.”

These efforts have become increasingly central to Beijing’s management of Tibet, whose Buddhist population largely remains loyal to the aging Dalai Lama, whom China has labeled as an agitator for separatism. China has previously claimed that only its authorities would be capable of verifying the Dalai Lama’s successor, a direct threat to the region’s religious traditions and a potential flashpoint for future protests. China has also announced plans to construct a new hydroelectric project, the world’s largest, along the Yarlung Zangbo River, which runs directly along the Tibetan plateau before entering southeast Asia.

China Continues to Suppress Tibet

China has increasingly repressed Tibetan culture and society both to maintain its hold over a key border region with India and to cement Xi’s preferred domestic narrative of Han supremacy within Chinese society. Since Xi’s rise to power in 2012, Beijing has increased efforts to send Tibetan children to Chinese language boarding schools, aiming to produce a generation incapable of remembering their cultural heritage. China has paired this initiative with expanded restrictions on the movement and teachings of Tibetan monks and nuns, which parallel Beijing’s efforts to exert control over the country’s other recognized faiths.

China has also expanded its surveillance and monitoring of the region, including increasing its police presence, strictly monitoring social media, and collecting Tibetans’ DNA for gene-banking projects. Beijing has also banned Tibetans from using their native language on Chinese social media sites, compelled them to consent to invasive home searches for virtual private networks, and forced them to show a “national security” application on their phones at local checkpoints. While primarily intended to prevent Tibetans from asserting sovereignty, these measures also aim to block any potential access to the broader diaspora led by the Dalai Lama.

Washington Should Prepare to Punish Beijing

In response, the United States should prepare a range of legal and diplomatic measures to counter Beijing’s likely efforts to tighten its control over Tibet in the aftermath of the Dalai Lama’s passing. Expanding on the U.S. Treasury Department’s 2022 sanctions on Chinese authorities engaged in forcefully assimilating Tibetan children, Congress should consider preparing a package of conditions-based sanctions that target both regional and Chinese Communist Party officials who engage in retribution against Tibetan protestors or civil society leaders.

Despite worsening trade ties, the Trump administration should also prepare to extend diplomatic support to India in anticipation of Chinese retaliation against New Delhi for its efforts both to protect the Tibetan government-in-exile and to secure the future of an independent Dalai Lama.

Jack Burnham is a research analyst in the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from Jack and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Jack on X @JackBurnham802. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.