Tibet rights organisation condemns launch of Chinese propaganda centre in Lhasa

China’s attempt to boost its efforts at controlling the world narrative on Tibet was witnessed yet again when the Chinese government recently inaugurated the “Tibet International Communication Center” in Lhasa.

Such a step by the Chinese administration is another way to promote the country’s ongoing campaign to reshape global public opinion on Tibet, a report by the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) stated.

The ICT claimed that the establishment of such institutions in Tibet is a boost to China’s propaganda on Tibet, which it had previously pointed out. And it expects further escalation by China in the future in an attempt to dominate the global conversation with China’s propagandistic narrative and storytelling.

In an earlier report released in January this year titled ‘China’s External Propaganda on Tibet: Erasing Tibet to tell a good Chinese story’, ICT claimed that “China’s Tibet policy has been a subject of international scrutiny ever since its invasion and subsequent occupation of Tibet in 1959. The Chinese government knows that there is a political problem in Tibet. But rather than resolve it, one of its approaches is to falsify the situation and employ various methods to control the narrative around Tibet, aiming to reshape its portrayal in global discourse. This report examines China’s recent external propaganda efforts concerning Tibet, highlighting the objectives and the tactics”.

According to the ICT report, the latest propaganda centre by China was established after a “Roundtable Meeting on Building an Effective International Communication System for Tibet” which was jointly organised by the Propaganda Department of the Tibet Autonomous Region Party Committee and the China Foreign Language Bureau. This centre is an outcome of the group study session of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee in May 2021.

The ICT claimed that the immediate outcome of the Politburo CCP Central Committee appears to be the CCP’s push to replace the internationally recognised country name “Tibet” with the sinicised term “Xizang” on the global conversation.

Furthermore, the same report claimed, that such a renaming policy, discreetly initiated in late 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, aligns with the CCP’s General Secretary Xi Jinping’s decade-old vision to “tell a good Chinese story” on the global stage.

The report also claimed that soon, China is likely to intensify its use of state-controlled media platforms to spread its narrative on Tibet.

The ICT also raised concerns that such an institution will be used to marginalize Tibetan voices and obscure the ongoing oppression in Tibet.

The report claimed that “This concern is well-founded, given China’s extensive use of modern technology and media platforms to control information and shape narratives about Tibet”.