Xi turned up in Lhasa on August 20, 2025, timed to the 60th anniversary of the Tibet Autonomous Region. The next day, Beijing staged a tightly choreographed ceremony before the Potala Palace (floats, formations, slogans) designed to project order and ideological obedience. The message was unsubtle: Tibet is a solved problem and an internal matter, period.
The Core Message: “Unity,” Control, and the Ideology Line
On stage, senior leaders hammered the themes of “ethnic unity,” “stability,” and the “anti-secession struggle.” This is regime code: unify language, narrow religious space, harden borders, and shut down dissent. That’s why the parade placed security services front and center and why the speeches leaned on discipline over diversity.
Succession Politics: Setting the Board for the Next Dalai Lama
Beijing has spent months re-asserting that the Chinese state will control the Dalai Lama’s succession. Xi’s presence in Lhasa is part show of force, part pre-emptive framing: Tibet’s top spiritual transition will be decided under Party supervision, not by the Dalai Lama or the global sangha. That line was re-stated again on Aug. 5 by a senior Tibet official “the central government has the indisputable final say.”
Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama and his institution have publicly spelled out a process that keeps Beijing out – setting up a direct collision. Xi’s visit underscores who Beijing expects the world to accept as referee.
Cultural Policy in Motion: Language and Assimilation
This isn’t just pageantry. Policy moves are already in train: Tibetan is set to be removed as a core gaokao subject from 2026 for most students in the region, a shift critics see as engineered assimilation by credential design. Xi’s Lhasa optics sit on top of that pipeline – ceremony at the center, bureaucracy in the trenches.
The India Angle: Border Signaling While Talking “Stability”
The timing also tracks with China’s outreach to New Delhi: Wang Yi was in India (Aug. 18 – 19) for the 24th round of LAC talks and economic normalization chatter. Beijing’s twin signals (diplomacy in Delhi, dominance in Lhasa) aim to box the narrative: China seeks “stability,” but on its terms, with the Himalayan frontier framed as secure and unquestioned.
Domestic Theater Before a Bigger Stage
There’s another calendar item: the Sept. 3 “Victory Day” parade in Beijing, a showcase of new hardware and choreographed might. Locking the frontier storyline in Tibet a fortnight earlier sets the mood music – unity at the periphery, power at the center. It’s the same production, different acts.
What It Really Signifies
Consolidation, not consultation. The visit was a status update to cadres and the world: Tibet is governed through ideological conformity, security presence, and administrative levers (schools, language, monasteries). The Potala backdrop wasn’t reverence; it was appropriation.
Pre-setting legitimacy claims. By reinforcing the state’s role in succession and “ethnic unity,” Beijing is building paperwork and optics for the day after the 14th Dalai Lama so it can argue its pick is the only “legal” one.
Border messaging to India. Tibet is the high ground of the China–India relationship; staging power there during LAC diplomacy is textbook coercive signaling wrapped in ceremony.
Policy follow-through. Language policy changes, tighter religious management, and “anti-secession” rhetoric point to a long game of cultural standardization – Sinicization with legal-bureaucratic teeth.
Xi didn’t go to listen. He went to imprint: on the skyline, on the bureaucracy, on the future of Tibetan Buddhism. The parade was the costume; the program is assimilation, succession control, and border leverage. If you’re looking for “why,” it’s simple to lock Tibet into Beijing’s political architecture before anyone else can write the next chapter.
