Reported By Kelsang Jinpa
Edited By Pema Tso
Translated By TenGyal
In 2025, the Chinese government enrolled more than 10,000 students from the Tibetan regions in so-called Tibet Classes in major Chinese cities. The authorities claimed that this is the highest number of Tibetan students enrolled in history.
According to a recent report published by the Education Bureau of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), five new schools were established specifically for the Tibet Classes program in major Chinese cities in 2025. The same data showed that 150 new junior middle classes were established with 2,000 students enrolled; 205 new higher middle classes were established with 4,500 students enrolled; and 223 new middle vocational education classes were established with 4,000 students enrolled. Among those enrolled in the vocational classes, 3,215 students are reported to be from the Tibetan Autonomous Region and the remaining 785 from the Tibetan region of Tsongon (Qinghai) Province.
Tibet Times was able to reach out to Mr Dawa Tsering, the former director of the Dharamshala-based CTA Tibet Policy Institute, about the report. In a telephone interview, he stated, “ Saying that the Tibetan people will continue to be backward if they keep being engrossed in religion, the Chinese government has been taking Tibetan students between the ages of 10 and 20 to China. Once in China, even though these Tibetan students do not lose pride in and allegiance to their Tibetan identity, they face immense systemic challenges. In the Chinese educational environment, the pedagogical method is based on distinctly Chinese culture and ideology. Furthermore, these students are prohibited from returning to their Tibetan homelands for extended periods. Maintaining the narrative that stresses the need for development, specifically scientific and material development, by pushing towards modernity, the Chinese government, in effect, holds the goal of providing a Chinese education to these Tibetan students.” He continued, “ Secondly, after these Tibetan students who study in China complete their education, the Chinese government specifically provides them with official positions and jobs in Tibetan communities. The Chinese government intends for them to serve as model and exemplary figures that the rest of the Tibetan community can trust, because on top of being educated and Tibetan, they have pride in their ethnicity. On the other hand, the way these returnee students conduct themselves and go about their work is mixed with Chinese culture; as such, they aim to sinicise Tibetans.”
Moreover, according to information gathered by Tibet Times, the Chinese government takes the best Tibetan students to China and offers them education that is aimed towards sincizing them free of cost. Furthermore, these top Tibetan students are provided with good food and accommodation facilities. They are even taken on excursion trips to major Chinese cities during school holidays. These measures create a distance between the students and their Tibetan language and culture.
According to the official Chinese government report, the expansion of the “Tibet Class” or “Tibet Middle School” projects has accelerated since 2023. The report specifies that student enrollment saw a consistent annual increase of 9.9 percent over the three years leading up to 2025. Notably, approximately 70 percent of these enrollees are children from farming, nomadic, and border communities in remote, high-altitude regions. Central to this expansion is a policy framework emphasised as the “three increments(三增长), three coverages(三覆盖), and one standardization(一贯通).” The “three increments” denote a rise in boarding school enrollment, annual student intake, and the total number of established schools. The “three coverages” signify that these policies fully cover all ethnic groups within the Tibetan region, every remote county, and school establishments in distant border towns. Finally, the “one standardisation” refers to the integration of vocational and employment support within middle-level vocational schools. The government maintains that these strategic pillars are being successfully implemented on an annual basis.
Claiming that the educational programs were backward and there was an acute shortage of educated personnel in Tibet, the Chinese government specifically began to set up the so-called Tibet Classes under the pretext of educational development in 1984. As of today, there are 129 schools set up and 25,000 students in 23 provinces and 60 provincial-level cities and towns. The report claims that so far 180,000 students have completed their studies from these schools and that they are working in different professions, contributing to the economic development in the Tibetan region.
In 1996, the State Council of China issued a document titled “ Regarding the Expansion of the Scale of Inland Tibet Classes,” (关于内地西藏班（校）扩大规模有关问题的请示), related to the establishment of the Tibet Class or Schools across 16 provinces and major municipalities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hubei, Luolin, Jiangsu, Zheijiang, Fujian, Shandong, Hainan, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Shanxi and Chongqing among others. Notably, the document’s preface framed the expansion not merely as an educational goal, but as a “political responsibility.” It called for “concerted effort, strict supervision, and strong support” from local authorities to ensure the program’s success.
