Chinese President Xi Jinping made a visit Thursday to Tibet’s regional capital Lhasa, strolling in the city’s Barkor area and greeting passersby in an unannounced trip not covered by Chinese state-controlled media, RFA’s Tibetan Service reported today in an exclusive story.
Residents’ movements in the city were restricted and factories closed, with construction work halted and Lhasa’s iconic Potala Palace—winter residence of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama—also closed for the day, sources in the city said.
The flying of kites and drones in Lhasa was already barred by order of the city government with the ban running from July 21 to August 27, sources said.
Xi Jinping’s visit to Lhasa, capital of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), was his first since becoming China’s president in 2013. He had visited Tibet previously as vice president in 2011 when Chen Quanguo, now Communist Party chief in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), was party chief in Tibet.
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