By Wangden Kyab
On 13 August, China Daily published an attack on Tibetan self-immolation protest. Five days later, on 18 August, another Chinese state media outlet, People’s Daily, published a tribute to a living Tibetan portrayed as loyally guarding China’s border in occupied Tibet.
Read separately, the two articles may appear to be routine pieces of state propaganda. Read together—both centred on Tibetan loyalty—they reveal a single strategy executed in two acts: discredit the Tibetan who sacrificed his life in exile for Tibet, and manufacture the image of the Tibetan loyalist who serves the Chinese state.
Act One: Discredit the Martyr
On 2 July 2026, a Tibetan refugee named Lobga Rangzen left a video statement on his Facebook account calling for victory for Tibet’s independence and set himself on fire in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York. As his body burned, he scattered pamphlets into the air. Two phrases were legible: “Free Tibet” and “China out of Tibet.”
In his final message, Rangzen urged fellow Tibetans to intensify the struggle to restore the independence of Tibet, a nation invaded by Chinese military forces in the 1950s. China Daily’s response, six weeks later, was to call his self-immolation protest a “stunt.” The state media outlet labelled him a separatist, described his act as anti-Buddhist, and alleged that it had been instigated by a separatist group associated with the 91-year-old exiled Tibetan leader, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. It ultimately sought to connect his protest to a U.S. conspiracy against China’s new ethnic law that took into effect one day before Rangzen’s death following the self-immolation protest.
The anti-Buddhist charge against Rangzen is deeply ironic. It comes from the propaganda apparatus of an officially atheist one-party state that has repeatedly branded the 14th Dalai Lama a separatist and vilified him despite his international recognition as a symbol of peace, compassion, and humanitarianism. Such portrayals are part of a familiar political manoeuvre. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) routinely employs political narratives and defamatory characterizations against individuals and institutions whose positions contradict Beijing’s political stance, particularly on Tibet.
The attack on Rangzen went further by attempting to transform his self-immolation into evidence of a foreign conspiracy. China Daily alleged that his protest was connected to the U.S. government’s campaign against China’s so-called Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law. In doing so, it sought to replace Rangzen’s own stated political motivation with an external one. That serves an important propaganda purpose. If Tibetan dissent can be framed not as an expression of Tibetan political conviction but as the product of foreign manipulation, the Tibetan dissenter is denied political agency. Rangzen’s final testimony stated what he believed and why he acted. Recasting his protest as part of a foreign intelligence operation allows the state to divert attention from that message and from the political cause he sacrificed his life to highlight.
Act Two: Manufacture the Loyalist
Five days after the attack, as Tibetans around the world were mobilising against the Chinese Communist Party’s portrayal of Rangzen, another branch of the same state media outlet, People’s Daily, told a very different Tibetan story.
On 18 August 2026, People’s Daily published a report titled “Three Generations Have Continuously Guarded the Borderlands of the ‘Snow Land’ for Fifty Years,” profiling Dargye, a 73-year-old Tibetan Communist Party member and former soldier from Puktsang Village in Zayu County, Nyingchi City, Tibet Autonomous Region. The area borders the north Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, where recent local reports have described increasing intrusions by Chinese soldiers.
The report presents Dargye and his family as a model of multi-generational service to the Chinese state in a strategically sensitive border region. Their participation in border defence is held up as evidence of patriotism and loyalty, reinforcing Beijing’s broader propaganda narrative of Tibetan happiness, development, and support for state security objectives.
According to the report, Dargye joined the People’s Liberation Army at the age of 21 and received four years of border-defence training under the Chamdo Military Sub-command. It states that he later returned to his hometown and became a local platoon commander responsible for border patrols, defence activities, and the transportation of military supplies across difficult mountainous terrain.
The article traces three generations of his family serving in border defence—Dargye, his eldest son, and his grandson—with a great-grandson described as aspiring to join the military and “repay the motherland.”
The significance of the story lies not only in Dargye’s biography but also in the strategic value of recruiting Tibetans from border communities into China’s border-security network.
Local Tibetans possess intimate knowledge of the terrain, mountain routes, settlements, and surrounding communities. In difficult, high-altitude, and geographically isolated border environments, such knowledge can provide significant operational advantages to China’s border-security forces.
The incorporation of Tibetans into the local security forces and other auxiliary roles therefore strengthens the state’s capacity to monitor and control sensitive border regions. It also draws local communities directly into the security apparatus, creating financial dependence on state subsidies, placing Tibetans themselves on the front line of implementing Beijing’s border-security policies.
A Tibetan living in a border area, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confided to the author that all men in his village are required to join local civil-military groups and participate in border-guarding activities on a rotating basis, assisting regular border forces. He further stated that the local government had installed a fingerprint-scanning machine at the village entrance, requiring villagers to scan their fingerprints daily. According to him, the system enables officials to monitor villagers’ movements and identify absences. Those who have been away may subsequently be questioned about where they went and what they did.
Another Tibetan from the same region of Dargye said, “My mother and my family were asked to patrol the border. China is spending a huge amount of money on people living in the border areas. They are spending money to buy people’s loyalty. My home village is at the border, so everyone is being paid to live there. People cannot refuse the payment either.”
These testimonies, absent from state media, reveal the coercive reality behind China’s supposedly “voluntary” border patrols. Through payments, compulsory participation, and high-tech surveillance, Tibetans are drawn into the state’s security system, where coercion is repackaged as patriotism and an image of Tibetan loyalty is constructed to advance Beijing’s broader colonial strategy in Tibet.
Two Tibetans, One Strategy
Neither China Daily’s attack on Lobga Rangzen nor People’s Daily’s tribute to Dargye is primarily about the individual Tibetan at the centre of the story.
Rangzen represents the Tibetan whom the state cannot accommodate. His explicitly stated political conviction must therefore be discredited, attributed to separatism, foreign manipulation, or conspiracy, and stripped of legitimacy.
Dargye represents the Tibetan whom the state can celebrate. His purported life and family history are presented as evidence that Tibetans willingly identify with the Chinese state, defend its borders, and regard service to China as an expression of patriotism.
Taken together, the two stories expose the dual logic of Beijing’s Tibet propaganda: delegitimize the Tibetan who dissents, glorify the Tibetan who purportedly serves, and present the manufactured contrast as proof that Tibetans freely accept China’s authority.
(Views expressed are his own)
The author is a Senior Researcher and Research Manager at Tibet Watch, where he leads research on human rights and contemporary developments in Tibet. His work focuses on analysing Chinese policies, governance, and their impact on Tibetan communities.
http://tibet.people.com.cn/n4/2026/0818/c309795-20034349.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202608/13/WS6a7ddfbfa31073853ec53329.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com