29 September 2026
New Tibet Watch report ‘Eyes Above the Plateau: Drones, DJI, and the Aerial Architecture of Control in Tibet’
EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01 BST, WEDNESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2026
Policing the skies on the roof of the world: how China took control of the air over Tibet
Tibet Watch is publishing the first detailed report on China’s use of drones in Tibet. Using the Chinese state’s own documents, it shows police buying drones for the places where Tibetans have protested, gathered to pray and tried to escape persecution, while the state closes the sky to almost everyone else. Much of the equipment is made by DJI, which made most of the drones UK police forces disclosed in 2023.
In Eyes Above the Plateau: Drones, DJI, and the Aerial Architecture of Control in Tibet, published on 30 September with research support from US non-profit C4ADS, Tibet Watch traces China’s build-out of aerial surveillance in Tibet through the Chinese state’s own paperwork published since 2017 including tenders, contract awards, police bulletins, flight bans and training reports.
The documents reveal two significant parallel developments. Security agencies at every level, from the regional anti-terror unit to county police stations, have bought drones, automated docking stations and systems to detect and jam other people’s drones. At the same time, the state has closed the sky to everyone else. Tibet’s police define the mission of the drone training as ‘stability maintenance’, the Communist Party’s term for crushing any dissent, however mild, and enforcing compliance with Party policy above religious and cultural life as Xi Jinping pursues forcible assimilation.
Key findings
- Drones are bought for the places where Tibetans resisted China’s anti -Dalai Lama and land use policies. Driru in the Tibet Autonomous Region, where Tibetans have been shot dead, tortured and imprisoned in a violent crackdown following peaceful protests in 2013, has the largest county police fleet on record: 18 aircraft flying daily patrols. Fifteen months after peaceful protests in Derge in the Tibetan area of Kham against a dam that will submerge villages and ancient monasteries, county police bought a network of four automated DJI drone docks for a checkpoint on the Sichuan–Tibet road.
- The state is closing the sky to everyone else. One of the largest single purchases is not for drones but against them – detection and jamming equipment for Lhasa police in 2021. In August 2025, during Xi Jinping’s visit to the plateau a month after the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday and announcement of succession plans, the airspace over Lhasa and four other prefecture-level areas was closed to all but approved flights. Chamdo warned that unauthorised drones would be shot down. Since May 2026, a new drone in China will not take off until registered to its owner’s identity.
- British police fly the same brand. DJI equipment appears in 12 confirmed contract awards to security and government buyers in Tibetan areas, in packages worth a combined ¥24.8 million (about £2.8 million), which include 15 aircraft for the police covering central Lhasa and the Jokhang temple. All went through resellers; the record does not show DJI contracted directly. In 2023, at least 230 of 337 drones disclosed by 37 UK police forces were DJI. Britain removed Chinese-made surveillance cameras from sensitive government sites on national security grounds in 2022, but left drones untouched.
- One playbook for Tibet and Xinjiang. Tibet’s police drone course trains pilots for “stability maintenance”, the same mission DJI trained police for in Xinjiang in 2017. The US sanctioned DJI in 2020 and 2021 over the surveillance of Uyghurs.
- Routine and large-scale. In one Shigatse district alone, police report more than 5,700 drone duty activities and over 22,700 km flown since May 2024, including crowd flow monitoring at large events in the district that is home to Tashilhunpo monastery, official seat of the Panchen Lamas, where China’s installed Panchen has presided over religious ceremonies recently.
- The military is in the air on the Indian border. In Nyingtri, next to Arunachal Pradesh, the Indian state that China claims as PRC territory, a military-linked “low-altitude defence network” runs from radar detection through to prosecution, the only city-level drone control body in the record with military participation.
Shede Dawa of Tibet Watch said: “China has published the evidence itself. Tender by tender, it has put police drones over the places where Tibetans protest, pray and try to leave, and taken the sky away from everyone else. The state can watch Tibetans from above, and they cannot look back without its permission. DJI’s aircraft are part of that system, and they are the same aircraft British police fly. The UK removed Chinese surveillance cameras from sensitive sites in 2022. There is no good reason to treat drones differently.”
The report calls on the UK Government to extend its 2022 restrictions on Chinese-made surveillance cameras to drones, to issue guidance to police forces, and to use new powers in the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill to reach equipment already in service. It also asks the US, the EU and retailers to act on the Tibet record.
Notes to editors
- Eyes Above the Plateau is published on 30 September 2026 at 00.01 BST. Advance copies are available under embargo on request.
- The report draws on Chinese tenders, contract awards, police bulletins, flight bans and training reports; it is fully footnoted.
- This report was produced with research support from C4ADS, a Washington-based nonprofit that investigates the networks behind conflict and repression. Through a mentored consultancy, C4ADS worked alongside Tibet Watch researchers to build their capacity in open-source and publicly available information (OSINT/PAI) investigation. The work covered systematic searching of Chinese government procurement portals and official media, structuring findings as a verifiable dataset, corporate records research, and digital security. C4ADS also provided access to its investigative data platform, and held regular mentoring sessions while the research was under way. The partnership is part of a wider programme to equip exile Tibetan researchers to document the Chinese state’s surveillance of Tibetans from the state’s own public record, and to continue doing so independently.
- Tibet Watch is a UK-registered charity (No. 1114404) that documents conditions in Tibet, working in partnership with Free Tibet.
Media contact: Kate Saunders · [email protected] · +44 (0) 7947 138612
