[Op-ed by Brahma Chellaney, professor emeritus of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, Germany, and the author of, 'Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.']
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In recent decades, China has invested heavily in the Plateau — building extensive military infrastructure, constructing mega-dams on Asia’s great rivers, and expanding extraction of strategic minerals — while relying on surveillance, coercion, and security forces to suppress resistance. However, physical control of Tibet is not enough for Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). He wants complete and lasting control over the entire Tibetan Plateau.
The best way to achieve that, Xi has concluded, is by erasing the identity of the people who inhabit it. The Tibetan people are a distinct ethnicity, with their own language, traditions, cuisine, and dress. Stripping Tibetans of their identity — ensuring that they no longer think of themselves as Tibetan — has one goal: to extinguish resistance to permanent Chinese rule over the “Roof of the World.”
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Some 96% of Tibetans speak their native language.