The labour transfer programme or scheme in the
Tibet Autonomous Region
The Tibet Autonomous Region or Xizang Autonomous Region, often shortened to Tibet or Xizang, is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China in Southwest China. It was overlayed on the traditional Tibetan regions of ...
of the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, is part of the vocational training programmes run by the
Chinese government
The Government of the People's Republic of China () is an authoritarian political system in the People's Republic of China under the exclusive political leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It consists of legislative, executive, m ...
under the
Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...
(CCP) aimed at teaching skills, providing jobs, improving standards of living and lifting Tibetans out of poverty.
''
'' The Tibetan regional government came out with a policy paper in March 2019 called the "2019–2020 Farmer and Pastoralist Training and Labor Transfer Action Plan" which mandates the "military-style…
ocationaltraining".''
''
Many aspects of the scheme have been called coercive, with religious re-education and correction of "backward thinking" including "thought education" also being planned for Tibetans excessively influenced by religion.
The training includes learning the Chinese language and developing "gratitude" for the CCP.
Plans for "poverty alleviation" say that the state must "stop raising up lazy people".
Background
According to a September 2020 report by German anthropologist
Adrian Zenz
Adrian Nikolaus Zenz (born 1974) is a German anthropologist known for his studies of the Xinjiang internment camps (also known as "re-education" camps) and Uyghur genocide. He is a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Mem ...
sponsored by the
Jamestown Foundation
The Jamestown Foundation is a Washington, D.C.-based conservative defense policy think tank. Founded in 1984 as a platform to support Soviet defectors, its stated mission today is to inform and educate policy makers about events and trends, which ...
, over 500,000 Tibetans, mostly subsistence farmers and herders, were trained in the first seven months of 2020 in military-style training centres experts say are akin to
labour camps
A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (espec ...
. The study adds the training programs lead to most workers ending up in low-paid jobs like textile manufacturing, construction, and agriculture.
However, the Jamestown Foundation study stresses that in Tibet, the labour scheme is "potentially less coercive" than what is alleged in
Xinjiang internment camps
The Xinjiang internment camps, officially called vocational education and training centers ( zh, 职业技能教育培训中心, Zhíyè jìnéng jiàoyù péixùn zhōngxīn) by the government of China, are internment camps operated b ...
.
The study concluded:
Chinese government reactions
Officials in Chinese administered Tibet have defended the "vocational training program", saying that it allows the locals to acquire new work skills and improve living standards. Tibetans are not forced to take part in the program, and if they do, they have the choice of taking up the training they want, such as driving or welding.
See also
*
List of re-education through labor camps in China
*
Re-education through labor
Re-education through labor (RTL; ), abbreviated ''laojiao'' () was a system of administrative detention on Mainland China. Active from 1957 to 2013, the system was used to detain persons who were accused of committing minor crimes such as pet ...
Further reading
* Adrian Zenz (24 September 2020)
China Has a New Plan to Tame Tibet The New York Times.
The 2019-2020 Farmer and Pastoralist Training and Labor Transfer Action Plan(in Chinese). Via — archive.org.
References
{{Reflist
Human rights of ethnic minorities in China
Political repression in China
Human rights abuses in China
Tibet Autonomous Region