-by International Campaign for Tibet
Analysis of Tibetan representation in PRC leadership in 2024
It is the season of China’s annual meetings in Beijing of its National People’s Congress (parliament) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (political advisory body). Popularly called the “Two Sessions,” China has also been using these sessions to tout how well Tibetans and others who are dubbed “ethnic minorities” are enjoying their rights.
This claim was most recently reiterated in December 2023 by a Chinese diplomat who claimed, “The 56 ethnic groups in China are all equal regardless of their size, and are entitled to participate in the governance of state affairs.”[1] In August 2021, Wang Yang, then-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), during his visit to the Tibetan capital Lhasa to participate in a “Meeting Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet,” claimed that following the “liberation” of Tibet (meaning China’s conquest of the country), “Several million serfs rose and held their future in their own hands.”[2]
It is China’s contention that the Tibetan people have become “masters of their own destiny”[3] since its takeover of Tibet.
This report analyzes the current leadership representation at the national level—and in Tibetan areas at the provincial and sub-provincial levels—and finds that Tibetans have mainly token positions while real power in Tibet continues to be in the hands of non-Tibetans.
The International Campaign for Tibet commented: “The fact that the Communist Party excludes Tibetans from real leadership positions in Tibet gives reason to believe that the party leadership does not trust Tibetans to support CCP rule if they had the choice and, to the contrary, that Tibetans would choose to abolish CCP rule, if they could.”
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the military and the government are considered the three wings of the Chinese governance system, with the government and military being subordinate to the party. Within the party, the three important organs are its Central Committee, the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee, with the standing committee being the most powerful. The level at which Tibetans are represented in all these different organs at the national, provincial and prefectural levels of administration indicates the discriminatory nature of China’s governance when it comes to Tibetans.
In 1978, Tibetan scholar Dawa Norbu, who had experienced life in Tibet under Chinese rule before going into exile, wrote how the Tibetan people perceived the Chinese occupation. He said, “The Chinese mission in Tibet was to usher in a new era of progress, with connotations of new miracles to a preindustrial people. As soon as the people of Tibet were able to rule by themselves, the Chinese comrades would return home—or so was defined for Tibetans the alien concept called autonomy.”[4]
Looking at the situation of Tibetans in Tibet in 2024, rather than having their future in their own hands, they continue to be second-class citizens in their own homeland. In 2020, we analyzed the Tibetan representation then under Chinese rule and concluded that while numerically Tibetans had some level of representation, in practice, power was deeply tilted toward non-Tibetans, predominantly Chinese.[5] This situation remains the same in terms of Tibetan representation at the prefectural and county levels four years later.
Under the People’s Republic of China, Tibet is bifurcated into 17 prefectural- and two county-level (under non-Tibetan prefectures) administrative divisions[6]: the Tibet Autonomous Region (with seven prefectural level areas under it); two prefectural-level and one county area under Sichuan province, six prefectural-level areas under Qinghai province, one prefectural and one county level area under Gansu province, and one prefectural-level area in Yunnan Province. Click here to read more.