Despite the authorities' claim to have "taken on an important task over the past few decades to develop popular education in Tibet", education - the foundation for the development of human resources - has always been put on the back burner of priority programmes.

It was only in the early 1980s that the authorities decided to look favourably at the idea of promoting a pan-Tibet mass education system. Until then "democratic reforms" - and particularly the chaos and madness of the Cultural Revolution - threw mass education into a shambles.

Right policy, no funding

In 1980 China adopted an ethnic-sensitive social and economic policy for Tibet as part of an internal strategy to encourage the "return of the Dalai Lama to China". The government then sincerely desired to improve educational facilities on the plateau.

Unfortunately, there was no funding to implement this reform. Whatever funding was available was largely invested in developing the market economy - the pet project of China's supreme leader, Deng Xiaoping. Consequently, between 1980 and 1989 more than 62 per cent of primary schools in the "TAR" was closed down and the number of students fell by 43 per cent. (1)

Again, in 1994 Beijing adopted a compulsory education policy for its colonial outpost. But this initiative did not benefit Tibetans since the government failed to change the post-1984 economic policies requiring rural dwellers to fund their own primary education; only minimal assistance from county-level administrations was allotted for capital construction and teachers' salaries. Since the majority of the Tibetans lives in rural areas, these economic policies disadvantaged Tibetans from reaping the benefits of the compulsory education policy.

This resulted in extreme rural-urban disparity in education, as most state-run schools - which receive substantially greater government funding - are located in urban areas where the Chinese population predominates.

Most Tibetans in rural areas could not afford the expense of sending their children to school. On June 4, 1994, the Chairman of the "TAR" Government, Gyaltsen Norbu, acknowledged that "...one third of children in the TAR cannot afford to go to school".

These are the fundamental reasons why many Tibetans feel compelled to send their children all the way to India to enroll in educational facilities run by the exile Tibetan community. According to a report by the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, between 6,000 to 9,000 Tibetan children and young adults have fled Tibet since 1984 to seek educational opportunities in India and Nepal.

The authorities claim that the government of the PRC invested a total of 1.03 billion yuan to promote mass education in Tibet from 1990 to 1995. But the reality is that a large portion of this budget went into educating Tibetan students in China in order to groom a new generation of ideologically brainwashed Tibetan cadres.

Dubious statistics

Tibet's education status is clearly reflected from the situation of mass education in Kham's Chamdo prefecture - one of the most affluent regions of the "Tibet Autonomous Region". An article by Shang Xioling, a reporter of "TAR" Radio, and Tang Ching, a special reporter for "TAR" education gives an alarming insight into education conditions in Chamdo. Their article, headlined Notes on the Sad Story of Education in Chamdo, was published in the July 15, 1993 edition of one of Chamdo's Chinese language newspapers.

The authors reveal that of the 110,000 school-age children in Chamdo, more than 70,000 (63.64 per cent) had no educational opportunity. The illiteracy and semi-literacy rate of Chamdo prefecture, they said, was 78.8 per cent. Shang and Tang wrote that although the claimed average school enrolment rate of the "TAR" was 60.4 per cent, the enrolment rate in Chamdo prefecture was only 34 per cent.

This finding of Shang and Tang reveals the dubious nature of Chinese Government statistics. If Chamdo, as one of the most highly-developed areas in the "TAR", has an enrollment rate of only 34 percent, the "TAR" average cannot be as high as 60.4 percent. Furthermore, what the authorities fail to admit is that the "TAR" and other Tibetan areas of Qinghai (Amdo) and Sichuan (Kham) are still lowest on the education index of China-lower even than China's most backward province, Guizhou. (2)

In short, no matter how many institutions the Chinese Government has in reality developed across Tibet since 1959, Beijing's overriding goal in educating Tibetans has always been to groom political allegiance to China.

This is clearly reflected in the speech of Chen Kuiyuan to the 1994 "TAR" Conference on Education:

"The success of our education does not lie in the number of diplomas issued to graduates from universities, colleges...and secondary schools. It lies, in the final analysis, in whether our graduating students are opposed to or turn their hearts to the Dalai Clique and in whether they are loyal to or do not care about our great Motherland and the great socialist cause."

Tibetan language in the law

In 1987 the "TAR" People's Congress passed a legislation calling for Tibetan to be used as the sole language of instruction at primary level and stipulating that Chinese should only be introduced from age nine. The legislation promised to set up Tibetan-medium junior secondary schools in the "TAR" by 1993 and to make most university courses available in Tibetan shortly after 2000.

A special committee, known as "The TAR Guiding Committee for Written and Spoken Tibetan", was set up in 1993 to implement this legislation. At the inaugural ceremony of "The TAR Guiding Committee", "TAR" Deputy Party Secretary Tenzin commented, "There is conclusive evidence that nothing can substitute the effect of using Tibetan language to raise educational quality and to improve the nationality's cultural level."(3)

Although this legislation did not satisfy the populace, it was at least seen as a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, there was no political will to implement this legislation.

The anguish of Tibetan scholars

The diminishing relevance of the Tibetan language on its home soil became a source of grave concern for many Tibetan scholars, some of whom openly raised their voices in protest. In 1992 Professor Dungkar Lobsang Trinley, one of the leading cultural and intellectual figures of modern Tibet and recognized by the Chinese authorities as a "national treasure", said: "In spite of Tibetan being declared the first language to be used in all government offices and meetings, and in official correspondence, Chinese has been used everywhere as the working language".

This state of affairs, he further argued, resulted in Tibetans losing control over their own destiny. Professor Dungkar went on to say, "All hope in our future, all other developments, cultural identity, and protection of our heritage depends on this (Tibetan language). Without educated people in all fields, able to express themselves in their own language, Tibetans are in danger of being assimilated. We have reached this point."

Dherong Tsering Thondup raised a similar concern after conducting a detailed survey of the status of Tibetan language in many parts of eastern Tibet, now part of China's Sichuan Province.

In his report, published in the early 1990s, Dherong wrote that out of the 6,044 Tibetan party members and officials in the nine districts forming "Kanze Tibet Autonomous Prefecture", only 991 were literate in Tibetan. Similarly, the majority of the 25 Tibetan students in one class in Dhartsedo (Ch: Tachienlu, now renamed Kangting), could not speak Tibetan at all. Dherong cited three principal reasons for this: The first, he said, is the Chinese government's chauvinistic policy, which accelerates the process of Sinicization; the second is the notion of Tibetan being a worthless language in today's society; and the third, the inferiority complex suffered by Tibetans, which hampers their initiatives to protect their own language.

Elaborating on China's chauvinistic policy, Dherong said that the socialist era calls for joint efforts to promote all nationalities, and not wipe out any particular nationality. The Chinese constitution guarantees each nationality freedom to manage its own education, science, culture, health and hygiene, and the right to protect the nationality's cultural heritage. However, these enshrined rights, he argued, had never been fully implemented for Tibetans.

"The failure to promote the significance and use of the nationality language, in effect, represents a slight on the nationality. If Chinese is used as the lingua franca to the neglect of the nationality language, if all are Sinicized through the policy of nationality chauvinism, and if the nationalities are pushed to ... assimilate into one another for the purpose of helping to bridge economic and cultural disparities, this is totally against the provisions of the constitution regarding the freedom to use and promote one's language."

In May 1994, members of the "TAR" Political Consultative Committee complained against the drastic cut in the budget for Tibet University, Lhasa, and the mass transfer of staff members from educational institutions to other departments.(4)

In 1996 Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, wrote:

"Actually, the Tibetan language has no value in present-day Tibet. For instance, if a letter was mailed with an address written in Tibetan, it wouldn't reach its destination even within Tibet, let alone outside. In the case of travels, no matter how literate a person is in Tibetan, he would not be able to know the bus timing or read the seat number on his ticket. Even if one has to look for a hospital or a shop in the county headquarters or a city, the knowledge of Tibetan is useless. A person who knows only Tibetan will find it difficult even to buy daily necessities. "If our language is useless in our own country, where else will it have any use? If the situation remains like this for long, the Tibetan language will become extinct one day... Rare in Tibet are schools where one can study Tibetan language and culture. "... Moreover, parents have developed the habit of not sending their children to school. This is because the primary school teaches Chinese rather than Tibetan. Even if the students learn Chinese and graduate from the middle school, there is no employment scope in Tibet. They end up herding cattle and working in fields. There is, of course, a slight opportunity for learning Tibetan. But the parents know that Tibetan language is useless in day-to-day life. Therefore, they have no motivation to send children to school.

"...In the cities and county headquarters there are serious cases of people being unable to speak Tibetan, although both their parents are Tibetans. Many of them have lost their Tibetan characteristics. Moreover, the Tibetan officials cannot speak pure Tibetan. One-fifth or two-thirds of the words they use are Chinese. That's why common Tibetans can't understand their speech."(5)

The situation deteriorated further in 1997 when the "TAR" Deputy Party Secretary Tenzin disclosed a decision to make Chinese mandatory for Tibetan students right from primary school.

In his meeting with James Sasser, US Ambassador to China, Tenzin said that the 1987 policy was "impracticable" and "not in conformity with the reality of Tibet" and that "the decision to allow grade one to three boys and girls to be taught only in the Tibetan language will do no good to the children's growth. "TAR" Deputy Party Secretary Raidi stated that an ethnic nationalitywhich studies and uses only its own spoken and written language definitely is an insular ethnic nationality which will have no future or hope.(6) Within a decade, the 1987 legislation had been revoked.

The Chinese policy to undermine Tibetan language and culture is imple-mented in all regions of Tibet - not only in the "TAR". This is clearly reflected in a recent statement by Zhou Yong-kang, the Communist Party Secretary for Sichuan province (which incorporates large parts of Eastern Tibet). At a meeting of China's National People's Congress in March 2000, Zhou announced that the teaching of Tibetan in schools was "a drain on government resources".(7)

Suppressing incorrect culture

In late 1996 a historical play and a guide book were banned in Tibet. The play, Secrets of the Potala Palace, and its film version featured the Fifth Dalai Lama meeting the Chinese Emperor Shunzi without performing kow-tow. Similarly, a pictorial guide to the treasures and history of the Potala Place, edited by scholar Thubten Gyaltsen, was banned because it contained a portrait of Sangye Gyatso, regent to the Fifth Dalai Lama and a great political strategist of the era.

Alluding to the banned works, Chen Kuiyuan said that there were "a small number of literary and artistic works which, by turning things upside down, extol what should not be extolled, and even go all out to sing the praises of the separatist chieftain Di-ba Sang-jie Jia-cuo (Desi Sangye Gyatso in Tibetan)".

In July 1997 Chen attacked Professor Dungkar Lobsang Trinley for demanding the inclusion of Buddhism in Tibetan studies. In a thinly-veiled criticism against Professor Dungkar, Chen said, "Some people, claiming to be authorities, have made such shameless statements confusing truth and falsehood." This, Chen said, "is similar to separatists' attempts to use the spoken language and culture to cause disputes and antagonism between nationalities"(8).

NOTES:

1. 1995 TAR Statistical Yearbook, PRC
2. UNDP's China Human Development Report 1997
3. TIN Review No. 26, 1997
4. Proceedings of the Sixth TAR Political Consultative Members' second meeting, 15th issue, March 18, 1994
5. Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, Thunderous Secrets to the People of the Snowland in the 21st Century, Serthang Thekchen Choeling, Golok, northeastern Tibet, 1996
6. Xinhua, March 9, 1999; SWB March 10, 1999
7. TIME, July 17, 2000, Quoted by Tsering Shakya
8. Xizang Ribao (Tibet Daily), November 7, 1997

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Last updated: 29-September-2000