China has launched a program placing military veterans as 'on-campus instructors' in schools throughout Tibet, seeking to impart children as young as six with military and political training. The effort aims to instill loyalty to the Chinese state from a very young age, a sign of Beijing's strengthened drive to assimilate Tibetan youth and reduce traditional Tibetan cultural identities.
State-controlled media show Tibetan students engaging in army training, marching and waving the Chinese flag, and obeying commands from their instructors in ranks. Other videos display children doing air raid practice by crouching under desks and filing out with notebooks over their heads to serve as cover for falling objects. Soldiers have been deployed in schools in many areas, such as Lhasa, Chamdo, and Nagchu in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), and in Ngaba and Kyungchu counties in Sichuan province, Sangchu County in Gansu province, and other regions in Qinghai province.
The new system, established to provide that 'national defense education takes root from early childhood' and prepare Tibetan youth for possible military service, is stated by authorities to create a 'new win-win situation for veterans' services and the ideological and political education of youth'.
This initiative is all part of a larger effort to promote "ethnic unity" and integrate Tibetan and other ethnic populations into Han Chinese culture. It involves screening propaganda films about Chinese soldiers as heroes and hosting story-telling contests praising the Communist Party as great. Students and teachers are also being encouraged to shed 'superstitious' thinking in order to do away with Tibetan Buddhism.
These steps have been criticized by Tibetans and foreign observers as eroding Tibetan cultural and religious identity. Critics contend that such efforts violate the region's distinctive heritage and constitute a systematic effort to assimilate Tibetans into the Han Chinese majority, undermining Tibetan cultural and religious autonomy.
In short, the assignment of military veterans as teachers in Tibetan schools is a calculated strategy by the Chinese regime to inculcate loyalty and integrate Tibetan youth into mainstream Chinese society. This strategy, however, has raised serious issues on the preservation of Tibetan cultural and religious identities.
