Dharamshala — A new report documents the serious impact of Chinese boarding schools on Tibetan children, where they are denied the right to learn the Tibetan language, meet their parents, and where they are beaten and abused both physically and mentally. "The Chinese government uses Tibetan children as a means of forced assimilation of the Tibetan people," the report stated.
On May 28, 2025, the Tibet Action Institute published a report entitled “When They Came to Take Our Children: Chinese Colonial Boarding Schools and the Future of Tibet”. The report details the severe impact of Chinese boarding schools on Tibetan children, the abuse and neglect in boarding schools, the psychological and emotional damage, the alienation of children from Tibetan cultural influences.
The report states, "An existential struggle is underway in Tibet today. Notwithstanding decades of colonial repression, Tibetans have maintained their distinct identity. The Chinese government perceives this as a threat to its control and is now using Tibetan children as a means to forcibly assimilate the Tibetan people."
"This report presents new evidence of its corrosive impact. Not only does the boarding system threaten the wellbeing of individual children, it jeopardizes Tibetan language, culture, and Tibetans’ future as a distinct people," it explained.
The new report states, "the Chinese government has expanded its efforts to limit children’s access to their language and culture. Students are banned from attending Tibetan language classes during school breaks and parents are forbidden from involving their children in religious activities. In many rural areas, children aged four to six live in boarding preschools."
The report also writes, "Today, Tibetan children’s lives are being irrevocably altered to serve the purposes of the Chinese government. The colonial boarding school system is in blatant violation of domestic and international law. It is also contrary to best practices that have been conveyed to the Chinese government for decades by United Nations bodies such as the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, Special Procedures, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights."
The new report reveals that children as young as four are attending Chinese boarding schools in rural areas, and that children are highly vulnerable to neglect and abuse in these schools. Tibetan children grow up largely under the influence of the Chinese government rather than their families, and parents rarely have the choice of sending their children to state boarding schools.
The report states, "even younger children are being compelled to board across Tibet. At present, Tibetan children aged three or four to six must attend Chinese-language preschool. In urban areas, they are currently able to go to day school, but in many rural areas, children leave home at age four to live in Chinese government-run institutions."
"The schools are fragmenting Tibetan families, Tibetan identity, and the very fabric of Tibetan society. The system is part of a colonial strategy by the Chinese government to alter the minds and reorient the loyalties of Tibetans as a people in order to eliminate the basis of Tibetan group identity and potential for collective action; and Tibetans are resisting as they can while living under extreme repression," the report wrote.
"When it gets dark in the evening and I can’t take care of myself, I miss my mom and grandparents," said a child in the Chinese boarding school.
"At home, these children communicate with their family members in Chinese and have adopted Chinese customs and have forgotten about their Tibetan customs," a Tibetan who recently fled Tibet told Tibet Action Institute.
The report also states that the food in Chinese boarding schools is very poor and insufficient in quantity, leading to health problems and risks for Tibetan children. Tibetan students are also not allowed to wear religious items, the sungdue [Buddhist blessing cords] around their necks and wrists and chanting Tibetan prayers. If the students are found chanting prayers and wearing any blessing cords, they are beaten by the teacher. "Beatings are a regular part of boarding school life," former students from Tibet said.
One former colonial boarding school student said, "sometimes, I felt like a prisoner in the school."
"When they came to take our children, it felt as if they were searching for prisoners we were hiding. They tried every method to take our children from us," said parent of student forced to attend Chinese colonial boarding school.
The report also covers the closure of Tibetan schools, in particular the recent closure of the Gangjong Sherig Norbu Lobling school, run by Tibetan monk, and the Chinese government's ban on language courses and religious activities in Tibet. The Chinese authorities have forced young Tibetan monks and nuns to leave their monasteries and have forcibly placed them in Chinese boarding schools.
