Tag: Tibet

‘At the Breaking Point’: Tibetans, Under Lockdown, Make Rare Cries for Help

Chin@Strategy

BEIJING — Infected patients quarantined alongside those who tested negative. No food for hours, despite repeated requests. Lines of buses, loaded with people, waiting late into the night to drop them off at makeshift isolation centers. These are the scenes described by residents of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, who have been locked down for one month as officials try to contain a coronavirus outbreak. Lockdowns, including of entire cities, have become almost commonplace in China, which remains bent on eliminating the coronavirus even as the rest of the world…

China’s Covid Lockdowns Strand Tourists

Chin@Strategy

A few days into a two-week tour through the island province of Hainan — known as the Hawaii of China — Nicole Chan received a message from local authorities that no traveler in the country wants to see in the pandemic. On Aug. 3, a day after officials reported 11 cases of Covid-19 in Sanya, a city of more than one million in Hainan, Ms. Chan was identified by the authorities as at risk because she had been in the area that day. She was told to quarantine right away…

Tibet builds makeshift Covid hospitals amid China’s latest outbreak

Chin@Strategy

Authorities in Tibet are building massive Covid isolation and care facilities in anticipation of further outbreaks in China even though the remote territory has reported only one case during the pandemic. Temporary hospitals – a key feature of China’s Covid response – with at least 1,000 beds each are being built in Lhasa and Shigatse by the Chinese firm Jiangsu Qi’an Construction Group. The firm said it had been tasked with building the hospitals in late March and given “less than half a month” to complete them. More than 400…

China pushes adoption of language, cultural symbols in Tibet

Chin@Strategy

BEIJING (AP) — A top Chinese official said Thursday that “all-round efforts” are needed to ensure Tibetans speak standard spoken and written Chinese and share the “cultural symbols and images of the Chinese nation.” Wang Yang made the remarks before a handpicked audience in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, the home of Tibet’s traditional Buddhist leaders, at a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Chinese invasion of the vast Himalayan region. China’s ruling Communist Party says it “peacefully liberated” Tibetan peasants from an oppressive theocracy and restored…