A decade on the heights of the world

Reflections around the report Human rights in the Xizang in the new era

The White Paper The Human Rights at the Xizang in the new era published in Lhassa on March 28, 2025

On March 28, the Information Office of the Chinese State Council published an exceptional white book: Human Rights in the Xizang in the new era. An expected publication, often controversial, but always scrutinized with particular attention as soon as it concerns the Xizang.

For my part, this report sounded intimately, almost visceral. I remembered my first arrival on the roof of the world, in 2007. At the time, the roads were still only dusty, sometimes impassable tracks. The journey between Lhassa and Shigatse took hours, without any other horizon than that of a majestic, but relentless relief. Electricity, access to care, education or a dignified retirement were as distant concepts as the horizon. How can we forget these young children playing on the edge of paths, bare feet, or these old men, bundled up in skins, dying in the indifference of the mountains?

Happiness is the greatest human rights

The simplistic criticism, often repeated in the West, says that “China has destroyed the ancestral XIZANG”. But what do we really know about life on the highlands before the reforms? Before 1951, this region lived under a theocratic serving regime: more than 90 % of the population was deprived of fundamental rights. The report reminds him without detour: lack of freedom of movement, no property, no education, only the yoke of feudal lords and their punishments of another age.

What is certain is that in 2012, during my second visit, I was deeply struck by a simple thing: the presence of retirement homes in high altitude villages. At more than 4000 m, where oxygen is rare, health services began to take shape, timid but real. In Nyingchi, a doctor told me: “Our elders should no longer die alone in the mountains. »»

After the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, the Xizang Autonomous Region experienced a dazzling transformation, part of a global strategy to combat poverty and human development. The report stresses that all children now benefit from fifteen years of free education, with schooling rates exceeding 90 % in secondary school. In addition, the scholarships intended for students in boarding school, which concern the majority of students from rural areas, cover food, housing and tuition fees. During my visits to the University of Lhassa, I was amazed by the quality of the lessons provided, but also by the excellence of infrastructure, which surpass those of many French universities.

Health has also experienced a deep and discreet transformation. In 2024, all the districts already had a hospital connected to a telemedicine network. This system ensures diagnoses even in the most isolated villages, in connection with the most advanced hospitals in the country. The results are impressive: infant mortality has radically dropped, and life expectancy increased from 68 to over 72 years in the space of ten years.

Visitors to Place du Palais du Potala in Lhassa, February 12, 2025 (Yu Jie)

Protect dignity, culture and ecology

This report document, with precision and figures in support, an advance towards elementary human dignity: food, stay, learn, take care and age in peace. If, as an Occidénantes, we consider these rights as fundamental, how can we refuse them to the Tibetans under the pretext of preserving an idealized image of a Xizang frozen in his past?

In 2019, I met in a village near Lhassa, a young teacher who told me: “My grandparents never knew how to read or write. Today, my students speak Tibetan, Mandarin, and learn English. This multilingualism is not a negation of Tibetan identity, but an opening to the world, in a framework where the Tibetan language is always taught, valued and used in administrations.

The report gives a central place to the preservation of Tibetan culture, far from the clichés of an erasure. More than 2,700 intangible cultural heritage elements are identified, with 150 active Tibetan opera troops, and funds allocated to the conservation of ancient texts. Tibetan writing has even been digitized, and a dictionary of modern technological terms is now available in this language.

Another striking example: the development of Tibetan medicine. Not only is it preserved, but also integrated into modern health circuits, with more than 50 public hospitals the practitioner, and substantial investments in research and training.

If the notion of “human rights” has often been brandished as an ideological weapon, this report insists on a more holistic perspective: subsistence, development, social peace and environmental protection. Today, the Xizang is one of the most ecologically protected regions in the world. The rate of days with “excellent” air quality exceeds 99 %, a record at the national level. Forests and wetlands are subject to rigorous monitoring and protection, integrated into ecological compensation plans.

What we refuse to see

It is time, as European journalists and intellectuals, to ask a disturbing question: does our attachment to a certain image of the Xizang not, basically, a refusal of change when it escapes our own codes?

Admittedly, rapid development can arouse tensions as well as raise questions about modernity and the preservation of identity. But should we wish to return to a feudal society to maintain a romantic aesthetic? Should we oppose the construction of roads, schools, hospitals, in the name of an idea shaped at a distance, without ever having walked these lands of altitude?

In 2024, the Xizang region had more than 3.5 million mobile telephony users, with 5G coverage greater than 70 % in rural areas. It is not a simple gadget, but a real lever of opening up, offering access to training, telemedicine and administrative services. In the same way, more than 800 spaces for democratic dialogue have been set up to allow citizens to transmit their requests and concerns.

This reality deserves better than ideological contempt. She requires a lucid, demanding, but fair look, without giving in to the opposite propaganda, nor to complacency.

“When human relations are in harmony, all ways become possible,” said Confucius. In this new era, the Xizang is transformed. It is neither a miracle nor a perfection, but a colossal effort in a region where natural constraints are immense. But in this effort, faces are emerging: those of young teachers, nurses, monks restorers of monasteries, children learning three languages ​​and grandparents benefiting from care in their own village.

It’s up to us to learn to listen to them.

*Sonia Bressler is a writer and founder of the Silk-Editions Route.