Xi Jinping returned to Lhasa for the first time in 10 years. Leading an official delegation, the Chinese leader has chosen the 70th anniversary of the invasion of the region by communist troops, an event celebrated in Beijing as “peaceful liberation”. This is the first visit as president: the first and last Chinese leader in office to go there was Jiang Zemin, in 1990.
In the video released by the state broadcaster Cctv, he is seen greeting a crowd in ethnic costumes and holding Chinese flags as he gets off the plane, greeted by a red carpet and traditional dancing. “All regions and people of all ethnicities in Tibet will march towards a happy life,” promised the president.
After a “warm welcome from cadres and crowds of all ethnic groups,” says CCTV, Xi went to the bridge over the Nyang River to assess the ecological and environmental situation of this stream and the Yarlung Tsangpo River. He was also at Nyingchi Railway Station to learn about the planning of the Sichuan-Tibet railway before taking a train to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and also the highest city in the world, 3,656 meters above sea level.
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Xi had already twice visited the autonomous region where Beijing is internationally accused of pursuing the strengthening of its military and political presence of ethnic and cultural assimilation: in 1998, as party head of Fujian province and in 2011, as vice president. On this last occasion, he commemorated in Lhasa what he calls “the peaceful liberation of Tibet” and promised to fight the “separatist activities” linked to the Dalai Lama, the Buddhist spiritual leader in exile in India since 1959 and against whose influence on the Tibet, China has been fighting for years, investing heavily in the region after the 2008 protests against the communist regime.
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Unlike previous visits, this time Xi shifted attention from the issue of separatism and internal security to internal dossiers focusing on the issues of stability and development. According to Junfei Wu, deputy director of the Tianda Institute think tank in Hong Kong, “the adaptation of Tibetan Buddhism to socialist society” and the strengthening of ethnic unity, by promoting ideological education, are Xi’s priorities in Tibet. . “The sinization of religions is already a cornerstone of the central government’s religious policy to forge a common Chinese identity”, explained the analyst, quoted by South China Morning Post, “it is carried out not only in Tibet but also in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia”.
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