Criticism over Xizang schools countered

Foreign experts rejected comparisons between boarding schools in the Xizang autonomous region and colonial-era residential schools in Western countries, stressing that the schools in Xizang ensure children in remote areas gain access to education.

In recent years, some Western media outlets have raised concerns about the use of boarding schools in Xizang, often comparing them to residential schools in countries such as Canada and the United States, where historical tragedies involving Indigenous children occurred.

Michael Crook, chairman of the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, argued that the purposes of the two systems are fundamentally different. He stated that the colonial-era residential schools aimed to “abduct the local children… and separate them from their own culture and language”.

“That’s not the case of boarding schools in Xizang,” Crook said, adding that the criticism often reflects the accusers’ own history. He denounced the attacks using an old Chinese saying: “judge a noble person by the standards of a petty person.”

“Some of these countries have looked back on their shameful history of cultural genocide of the native peoples and so on,” Crook said.

Kwok Siu Ming, associate director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, Canada, echoed this view, emphasizing that the goal of the colonial system was the “elimination of the culture”. In contrast, he said, China’s boarding schools are there to “enhance the living standard of the children in Xizang and keep their culture alive at the same time”.

He noted that boarding schools are a way of optimizing resources and enhancing education levels in China, promoting respect for local culture.

Mario Cavolo, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, dismissed accusations that the schools are used to destroy Tibetan culture as “nonsense”.

According to Crook, for students in Xizang, attending boarding school is a personal choice. He recounted personally visiting a boarding school in the region where he observed students making notes in Tibetan on Tibetan textbooks. MDT/China Daily