China’s “stability” norm entrepreneurship: Taking Tibet repression globally

For over seven decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has utilized Tibet as the foundational laboratory for scaling and innovating its internal security apparatus. What initially began as a military occupation has matured into a sophisticated 21st-century system of high-tech repression, characterized by grid-based surveillance, “convenience” police stations, preemptive policing and the creation of massive DNA databases. These mechanisms, refined through the systematic monitoring and surveillance of millions of Tibetans, are no longer confined to the Tibetan plateau.

Findings from multiple think tanks, academics, and the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) demonstrate that China is now actively packaging and exporting its authoritarian and security-based governance model on a global scale by training foreign security forces. This spread is facilitated through China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and the framework of Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative (GSI). Consequently, Beijing plays an unprecedented role in shaping public security practices, internal security organs, and technological norms within nations across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific.

This Tibet-derived model is steadily emerging as a de facto global template for authoritarian security governance. By prioritizing regime protection over human rights, this framework presents a fundamental challenge to democratic international order. As the Tibet model becomes a template for others, it normalizes authoritarian control on an international scale. “Stability maintenance” (weiwen), which has been the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) core objective in Tibet for decades, is being established as a new global norm that seeks to displace existing global norms predicated upon the protection of human rights enshrined in international law.

The proliferation of China’s GSI and the export of the Tibet-refined model represent a paradigm shift in international security governance. When countries adopt Chinese-style preemptive policing and “stability maintenance,” they import the assumption that dissent is a security threat. This false equivalence undermines the international human rights framework and accelerates global democratic backsliding.

Recommendations for the international community

1. Ensure that China’s Tibet-refined “stability maintenance” model does not become a template for the normalization of authoritarian control on a global scale.
2. Shine a light on and promote accountability for the CCP’s repression in Tibet. The Party’s strategy for Tibet has global implications. China’s repressive treatment of Tibetans is being adopted by governments in many other parts of the world.
3. Sanction and expand entity lists to include all Chinese entities exporting “stability maintenance” mechanisms to promote authoritarianism via security trainings and related coordination in other countries.
4. Democracies should actively counter the export of Chinese governance models worldwide. This requires reinforcing security assistance programs in partner countries, offering viable, human security-focused alternatives to Chinese models of authoritarianism and social control.
5. Enforce strict due diligence requirements for local companies supplying components for Chinese surveillance technology, which could be used in human rights violations.
6. Condition engagement with China on human rights audits and push the United Nations to investigate the role of Chinese police training in facilitating authoritarianism abroad.

Click here to read the full report.

Support Tibetans in their struggle for freedom by donating here!