September 15, 2025
China has launched a new pilot programme deploying Chinese military veterans in state-run boarding schools to indoctrinate Tibetan children as young as four with military training and political education.
The pilot programme, which began with 13 veterans stationed at seven schools in Nagchu, represents Beijing’s most direct militarization yet of Tibetan education, targeting children at their most impressionable age in a region already subjected to intense surveillance, language restrictions and forced cultural transformation.
State-run TV depicted Tibetan children marching in fatigues, raising the red flag on a parade ground, and practising diving for cover under their desks with notebooks on their heads in a ‘civil defence’ drill. Kindergarten children are shown listening to ‘red stories’ that glorify the achievements of the People’s Liberation Army and emphasise loyalty to Xi Jinping and the Communist Party.
The new programme features school-based military instructors (སློབ་གྲྭར་བཅའ་སྡོད་སློབ་ཁྲིད་དམག་དཔོན།,驻校教官) teaching in primary and secondary schools, as well as kindergartens in Sernye District (གསེར་རྙེད་ས་ཁུལ།) in Nagchu (Chinese: Naqu) in the Tibet Autonomous Region, an area that has been subjected to a deepening crackdowns particularly since periods of courageous Tibetan resistance in 2013 and earlier. The programme is an outcome of the recently amended National Defense Education Law, which was passed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, China’s top legislature, and came into effect in September 2024.
In December, temperatures fall to minus 20 in Nagchu before dawn, when soldiers are depicted in state media coverage waking up children to raise the Party flag at Sernye District No 2 (Hangjia) Middle School – a ceremony described as “the most solemn” in the school. A young boy who is part of the newly formed National Flag Guard is cited as saying that the military instructors “are very strict with us”.
A Tibetan mother, noticeably nervous, appears in the official documentary about the pilot programme praising the military teachers and saying that her children have shown improvement in their discipline and motivation. Pema Tashi, a Tibetan military instructor stationed at Kindergarten No. 5, said that the soldiers’ emphasis on ‘red’ education was “taking root in young minds…like seeds sown quietly.”
The aim of the military veterans in schools programme is not only to intensify Sinicisation and indoctrinate a new generation, but also to prepare Tibetan youth for military service. Tibetans are increasingly regarded as an asset to the People’s Liberation Army for mountain warfare close to the border with India given their adaptation to the high altitude of the plateau. Beijing has stepped up its efforts to recruit Tibetans in the PLA, offering incentives to those willing to join. Eighteen to 21-year-old Tibetan students are offered reimbursement of their school fees in exchange for enrolling in a two-year course of military training. Students already receiving state aid for their schooling were required to enroll, according to a Chinese government notice.
This objective was underlined in a series of military camps for children this year, including a training session for 100 Tibetan teenagers from Lhasa middle and senior schools described in official media as “Building Dreams on the Snowy Frontier, Setting Sail for Young Military Spirits”. The teenagers were depicted in combat fatigues studying how to load guns and march with the red flag. Slogans adorned the walls of the camp, including “Love the Army and Master the Martial Arts” and “Tibetan compatriots welcome the 18th Army to Tibet”. The 18th Army of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was ordered to enter Tibet in 1950 as part of a larger military campaign, including the battle of Chamdo (Qamdo/Changdu), of particular strategic importance to Beijing. The Communist authorities gained control of central Tibet when Chamdo, eastern Tibet’s provincial capital, fell to the People’s Liberation Army on October 7, 1950.
The new pilot programme underscores the Chinese government’s drive to integrate national defense education and patriotic education into the daily curriculum of state-run boarding schools in Tibet amid growing concerns over the erosion of Tibetan-medium education under China’s bilingual education, and a heightened emphasis on China’s control over its borders with neighbouring countries including India, Nepal, and Bhutan.
According to a Tibetan and Chinese language official news from March 2025, the pilot program follows a 2022 directive jointly issued by China’s Ministry of Veterans Affairs, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.
The joint directive states that the program aims to “thoroughly implement Xi Jinping’s important expositions on education and veterans’ work, further broaden employment channels for veterans, and strengthen the construction of teacher’s teams of primary and secondary schools.”
Tibet Watch has reported before on military camps for teenagers in Nyingtri (Linzhi, Nyingchi) close to the heavily militarized border with India’s Arunachal Pradesh, and in Nagchu, where students received lectures on “national defence education knowledge and military doctrine, as well as school rules and regulations”.
Xi Jinping has called on China’s border troops to forge a “great wall of steel” along the country’s borders by enhancing their capabilities in frontier defence and control. Underlining the imperative of securitisation which now dominates every CCP policy, Xi says that “We must adhere to our strategic thinking that to govern the nation, we must first govern our borders, to govern our borders, we must first stabilize Tibet.” Reflecting the priorities of the top Party leadership and unlike his predecessors, Xi has made a number of visits to troops in border regions, including an inspection tour to Nyingtri (Chinese: Nyingchi) in the TAR in 2021, located in a strategically important area bordering Arunachal Pradesh in India. The administrative seat of Nyingtri is called Bayi in Chinese, meaning ‘eight one’, a reference to the PLA’s creation on 1 August 1927.
The PLA’s Western Theatre Command (WTC) is the largest of China’s five Theatre Commands and exercises operational jurisdiction over the country’s borders with India and Afghanistan. Since military manoeuvres against India in 2020, China has raised its grading among Theatre Commands and brought the WTC on par with the Eastern Theatre Command, which is ranked first in terms of priority for receiving new aircraft and weaponry.
The military veterans in schools programme is consistent with the emphasis made by Tibet Autonomous Region Party chief Wang Junzheng on shaping young minds to be loyal to the Party, involving the strengthening of ideological education and instilling the ethos of “love the Party, love the country” in children.
Endnotes:
[1] Xinhua News Agency video, 23 January 2025, http://www.xz.xinhua.org/20250123/ea758264067540ad8b4f0aaf0bc843ae/c.html
[2] Driru (Biru) in Nagchu prefecture became one of the focal points of Tibetan resistance to the Chinese occupation in 2013, following attempts by the Chinese authorities to force Tibetans to fly Chinese flags from their homes, and the activities of Chinese mining companies in the region. Tibet Watch report: ‘Driru county: The new hub of Tibetan resistance’, 30 April 2014, https://tibetwatch.org/download/driru-county-the-new-hub-of-tibetan-resistance/
[3] Statement issued by the Publicity Centre of the Ministry of Veterans in China, 20 March 2025, https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_30444705
[4] Ibid, 20 March 2025, https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_30444705
[5] ‘Tibetan Students Offered Military Training for a Break on School Fees’, Radio Free Asia, 11 August 2021, https://www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/training-08112021123320.html
[6] Weixin post by Tibetan Communist Youth League, 17 April 2025, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/b8JF32QuGF30pK5IZGntlA
[7] ‘Three Departments Jointly Issued Opinions to Promote Outstanding Retired Military Personnel to Teach in Primary and Secondary Schools’, Xinhua News Agency (reposted on the official website of the Central Government of the People’s Republic of China), 22 June 2022, https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2022-06/22/content_5697159.htm
[8] Video news published by the Ministry of Veterans Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 23 June 2022, https://www.mva.gov.cn/sy/shipin/202206/t20220623_61975.html
[9] Tibet Watch report, 6 October 2021, https://tibetwatch.org/teenage-tibetans-in-central-tibet-start-school-year-with-military-training/
[10] ‘Xi Focus: Xi Urges Troops to Forge ‘Great Wall of Steel’ in Guarding Chinese Borders’. Xinhua News Agency, 9 June 2023, http://english.news.cn/20230609/3bb4c5a7d3b44352925b9c027064f0bd/c.html
[11] ‘China sets policy directions for building a modern socialist Tibet’, CGTN, 30 August 2020, https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-29/Xi-addresses-seventh-Tibet-work-forum-in-Beijing–TlGiGamKcM/index.html
[12] For further analysis see: ‘Sacred Authority and State Power – Part two’, Turquoise Roof and Sinopsis, 18 June 2025, https://turquoiseroof.org/download/sacred-authority-and-state-power-part-two/
[13] ‘Chinese President Xi Jinping Meets Representatives of Troops Stationed in Tibet’, CCTV Video News Agency (via YouTube), 23 July 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk-cEQmh_aI
[14] Cited in Xinhua News Agency video of the Nagchu school, 23 January 2025, http://www.xz.xinhua.org/20250123/ea758264067540ad8b4f0aaf0bc843ae/c.html
