According to the conquerors, there is much to celebrate (ABC News, August 21, 2025).
With leader Xi Jinping looking on, China marked 60 years of Communist Party rule in Tibet on Thursday with speeches and a parade in front of the 17th-century Potala Palace, the home of the Dalai Lama until he fled to India in 1959.
Speakers hailed economic development in the remote region in the foothills of the Himalayas and stressed the need to fight separatism. Opposition to Chinese rule has been largely quashed by a decades-long campaign of repression that has imprisoned Buddhist monks and demolished some monasteries. [“Some” here means “many.”]
“Tibetan affairs are China’s internal affairs, and no external forces are permitted to interfere. All schemes to split the motherland and undermine stability in Tibet are doomed to fail,” senior Communist Party leader Wang Huning told a crowd of 20,000 flag-waving people in a large public square.
Speeches and parades to 1) hail economic development, 2) stress the “need to fight separatism,” 3) celebrate the “stability” of mass ongoing attacks on a people and culture. Twenty thousand flag wavers bussed in from Beijing agree. (I don’t know that the flag wavers were bussed in from Beijing. I know that the 20,000 flag wavers did not consist of internal repressed Tibetan separatists.)
“Autonomous” region
Why sixty years instead of 74 years? Red Chinese forces occupied Tibet in 1951, “two years after emerging victorious in a civil war and taking control of China.” What the CCP has just been celebrating is the anniversary of its “establishment of the Tibet autonomous region in 1965.”
Why aren’t the repressed Tibetan separatists also celebrating the 60 years of repression? The Free Tibet site discusses “China’s Lies.” Some of the answers to the lies:
Tibet was not ruled by the Chinese government prior to the 1950 invasion….
With 40,000 Chinese troops holding its country hostage, the Tibetan government was forced to sign the Seventeen Point Agreement, which recognised China’s rule in return for promises to protect Tibet’s political system and Tibetan Buddhism.
Tibetans never accepted the occupation of their country and continued to resist China’s armed forces. The Chinese army responded brutally, killing thousands….
The Tibet Autonomous Region is no more autonomous than China is a “people’s republic” under Xi Jinping’s heinous dictatorship. The most senior political position in the region, the Communist Party Secretary, has never been held by a Tibetan and is controlled by the CCP leadership….
Tibetans fight on a daily basis to show that no amount of economic growth would be an adequate trade for control of their country’s destiny and freedom to practice their religion and culture….
Free Tibet supporters have no argument with the Chinese people. They support Free Tibet because they support Tibetans’ bravery in their unwavering struggle for freedom.
Chinese people are also victims of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule and many face severe punishments in resisting its policies. When they learn the truth beyond their government’s propaganda, many Chinese people also support Tibet.
Many, perhaps. Not all, unfortunately. Many who have a fair idea of dictators’ worst crimes support the dictators anyway.
