As Nepal prepares to host one of the world's most important gatherings of Tibetan scholars, Beijing has once again demonstrated that, for the Chinese Communist Party, even the academic study of Tibet has become a political battlefield.

The children attending the Nyingtri Summer Youth Military Camp are too young to understand the larger political forces surrounding them. Yet the lessons they receive today through drills, patriotic ceremonies, revolutionary narratives and military symbolism may shape how they view themselves and their homeland for decades to come.

For years, the Chinese Communist Party has portrayed China as an unstoppable economic engine capable of weathering every global crisis. Yet the latest figures reveal a more fragile reality.

Chinese authorities have reportedly begun another major demolition campaign at Larung Gar, one of the most influential Tibetan Buddhist educational communities in the world, amid a wider pattern of closures, expulsions, monument destruction and infrastructure projects affecting religious and cultural sites across Tibetan regions.

On 17 June 2026, more than 300 media professionals, government officials and academics gathered in Lhasa for the Second Xizang International Communication Conference, a high-level forum dedicated to "improving" China's international messaging on Tibet