China Deploys Military Veterans as School Instructors to Indoctrinate Tibetan Children
By Tenzin Chokyi
DHARAMSALA, 17 Sept: Beijing is advancing its settler-colonial agenda in occupied Tibet through militarised education by placing army veterans as “on-campus instructors” in schools, including kindergartens, to instil loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party over Tibetan identity, according to the latest report published by Tibet Watch, the research wing of the London-based advocacy group Free Tibet.
Military personnel are being deployed in schools across occupied Tibet to provide patriotic education and prepare children for future military service in what the Tibet Watch has described as “Beijing’s most direct militarisation yet of Tibetan education, targeting children at their most impressionable age in a region already subjected to intense surveillance, language restrictions, and forced cultural transformation”.
The pilot programme, which began in Nagchu in the traditional Tibetan province of Kham has already expanded to schools in Lhasa and Chamdo as well as to Tibetan areas in Ngaba, Khyungchu and Sangchu in Amdo province among others, according to RFA, citing sources inside Tibet.
Sernye District in Nagchu was chosen as the first pilot area in March 2025, where 13 retired Han Chinese army veterans were installed in seven schools as on-campus instructors. Chinese state media celebrated the programme as a success, claiming that 300 Tibetan students had applied to become “future military service volunteers” after its launch.
Critics say the aim of the veterans-in-schools programme is not only to deepen Sinicisation and indoctrinate a new generation, but also to prepare Tibetan youth for military service, particularly for mountain warfare along the border with India, given their adaptation to the plateau’s high altitude, making Tibetans the first line of defence.
Local state media reported that the “on-campus instructors” serve multiple roles, including as national defence education counselors, behavioural norms instructors, and ideological and political lecturers.
Video footage released by state outlets depicted children drilled in strict discipline and raising the Party flag each morning, described as “the most solemn moment” of the school day, even when temperatures drop to subzero in the winter. Parents appeared in interviews expressing cautious approval of improved discipline, while one veteran instructor was quoted as saying, “The soldiers’ emphasis on red education was taking root in young minds like seeds growing quietly.”
China has long imposed compulsory military drills in schools and universities, but experts say this “on campus instructor” system marks a first.
The development stems from the amended National Defence Education Law, passed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee and effective from September 2024. The amendment mandates the expansion of People’s Liberation Army branches into colleges, universities, and high schools nationwide to boost recruitment through military education and physical training.
According to Frank Lehberger, a Germany-based Sinologist and senior research fellow at the Indian think tank Usanas Foundation, the law “is being exploited in Tibet as an auxiliary tool to achieve the CCP’s still-elusive goal of full Sinicisation, militarising and indoctrinating a new generation of Tibetans already living under surveillance and cultural repression,” RFA reported.
