Battle for Tibet

Feb. 18, 2025
7/6c: pbs.org/frontline, PBS App
10/9c: PBS stations (check local listings), YouTube
& the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel
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It’s been 75 years since China invaded Tibet, the mountain territory it has long claimed as its own.

With the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama approaching his 90th birthday, the long-running fight over the control and future of this contested land is reaching a critical juncture.

China heavily restricts the international media’s access to the region. But a new FRONTLINE documentary goes inside the Battle for Tibet at this pivotal moment, drawing on undercover footage, expert interviews and firsthand accounts to investigate the struggle over the survival of Tibetan language, culture and religion, and the Chinese Communist Party’s rule over the tightly controlled territory.

“China only shows the beautiful and good parts,” Namkyi, who fled Tibet after protesting China’s rule, says in the documentary. “The true situation in Tibet isn’t allowed to be seen.”

From award-winning producer and director Gesbeen Mohammad (China Undercover, Putin’s War at Home), Battle for Tibet premieres Tues., Feb. 18, on PBS stations and online.

China insists that human rights are at their “historical best,” and that Tibetans’ religious freedoms are being protected. But the footage and first-person accounts from exiled Tibetan interviewees paint a different picture. They describe China’s efforts to control their religion and culture — including placing Tibetan children in Chinese Communist Party-run boarding schools where they are taught in Mandarin.

“These boarding pre-schools erase the fundamental mindset of Tibetan children from the age of 4 and replace it with a new Chinese mindset,” Gyal Lo, a sociologist and advocate who was born in Tibet, tells FRONTLINE in Battle for Tibet. “If these schools continue for another 15 or 20 years, Tibetan national culture and identity will be completely destroyed.”

Undercover footage in the documentary shows digital surveillance of Tibet’s monasteries, the historical heart of resistance to communist party rule.

“Surveillance is at the heart of this process of subjugating the Tibetan people,” says Greg Walton, a surveillance expert who has studied the systems China is using. He adds that there is “a desire to to control, a desire to then instill a sense of fear, to encourage self-censorship, to very deliberately create a chilling effect society-wide.”

Battle for Tibet also examines China’s branding of the Dalai Lama as an anti-China separatist, despite his repeated statements that he is no longer seeking Tibetan independence and would accept self-rule within China — and explores China’s pursuit of a campaign to choose his successor.

“If they mishandle the death of the Dalai Lama, the critical juncture which they’ve been planning for for years, they could face a calamitous pushback from the Tibetan population,” says Professor Robert Barnett, a renowned academic and expert on Tibet who has worked and lived there.

In the meantime, China insists that life in Tibet is “significantly better” for the people there because of its rule, which it says must continue.

“For the Chinese government, for the Chinese nation, the thing is very simple,” says Victor Gao, a well-known defender of China and advocate of its rule in Tibet who runs a think tank in Beijing. “There is only one China, and Tibet is part of China. We need to defend China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity very fiercely.”

For the full story, watch Battle for Tibet. The documentary will be available to watch at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App starting Feb. 18, 2025, at 7/6c. It will premiere on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel that night at 10/9c and will also be available on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. Subscribe to FRONTLINE’s newsletter to get updates on events, podcast episodes and more related to Battle for Tibet.

Credits
Battle for Tibet is a Hardcash production with GBH/FRONTLINE and ITV. The director and producer is Gesbeen Mohammad. The senior producers are Dan Edge and Eamonn Matthews. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.

About FRONTLINE
FRONTLINE, U.S. television’s longest running investigative documentary series, explores the issues of our times through powerful storytelling. FRONTLINE has won an Academy Award® as well as every major journalism and broadcasting award, including 108 Emmy Awards and 34 Peabody Awards. Visit pbs.org/frontline and follow us on X, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to learn more. FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional support for FRONTLINE is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund, with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen.

Press Contact: Anne Husted, Associate Director of Publicity, Communications and Awards | frontlinemedia@wgbh.org | 617.300.5312