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Xinlu Liang

To win the global war of words over Tibet, China’s western autonomous region that repeatedly makes international headlines, Beijing must stop fighting the West’s algorithms and start adapting to them.
That was the blunt assessment of Zachary Lundquist, an American media professional with the state-run China International Communications Group (CICG), speaking in Lhasa, capital of China’s Tibetan autonomous region, on Tuesday.
Lundquist – better known by his Chinese name, Huang Hao – was addressing an audience of more than 300 media professionals, government officials and academics at the Second Xizang International Communication Conference.
He argued that the biggest barrier to projecting an accurate image of modern Tibet was no longer political hostility from Western governments but the invisible, self-reinforcing recommendation engines of Silicon Valley.
Despite Beijing using the region’s official romanised pinyin name “Xizang” since 2023 to assert its sovereign narrative, when Western users search “Tibet” on social media, the algorithm often steers them towards a “pre-existing, highly politicised narrative”.

“It is not always born out of pure malice, but the algorithm ‘learns’ these associations over time,” Lundquist said, adding that this created an unbreakable information cocoon where rational voices were drowned out.
To break the cocoon, Chinese media should leverage big data and audience profiling to identify specific, highly niche interest groups across digital platforms and “design customised content for each category”, he said.
“For those interested in culture, push Thangka art and intangible cultural heritage; for the politically and economically minded, highlight infrastructure improvements and tourism development; and for the sceptics, respond to specific concerns with hard data and facts.”
In what he called a shift from broad “fireworks display” to targeted “searchlight”, Lundquist said that when online analytics showed rising global interest in rural literacy or girls’ education, AI systems should prioritise targeted human-interest features rather than dry policy documents.
Stories detailing the success of Tibet’s education policy should be directed straight to international researchers and NGOs – who have for a long time cared about inequality, rural access and children’s development – instead of to the general public, he said.
On ecology, he suggested, Chinese communication teams could leverage algorithms to reach users already invested in environmental issues, by embedding stories of glacier conservation, such as Tibetan antelope migrations, into hashtags like “climate change” and “biodiversity”.
“It’s not about changing the technology, but changing the core communication philosophy: stop talking about what we want to say and start addressing what the audience actually cares about,” Lundquist said.
Also at the symposium, Yang Dezhi, editor-in-chief of the China Xizang Information Centre under the United Front Work Department, recalled that during the Lhasa unrest of the late 1980s, Beijing was left voiceless on the world stage.
“Back then, even foreign observers who were generally friendly to China viewed Tibet through a lens of deep misunderstanding and prejudice,” Yang said.

That passivity led to the creation of China Tibet magazine in 1989 and China Tibet Online in 2000. Today, those entities had merged into a unified, digital media engine with multiple social media accounts, he said.
“The United States and Western countries are imposing comprehensive containment and suppression on China. The situation of public opinion struggles related to Tibet is becoming more severe and complex.”
To address the new challenges, in recent years China Tibet Online has rolled out a sharp-tongued commentary designed to actively challenge Western narratives.
Dubbed “Yujie Sharp Commentary”, it has featured several commentaries criticising the Dalai Lama, including multiple pieces discussing mentions of him in the files related to Jeffrey Epstein that were disclosed by the US Justice Department.
The Dalai Lama has said he never met Epstein nor authorised anyone to meet or interact with him on his behalf.
One of the most delicate tightropes Beijing is walking involves the international backlash over Tibet’s boarding school system, which Western human rights groups have frequently condemned as a tool of forced cultural assimilation – accusations Beijing denies.
Luo Dan, president of the Xizang Institute of Socialism, drew on findings from an international symposium about boarding schools and highland development held last year by China to offer a counter-narrative.
“When we place [Tibet’s] boarding education within the unique geographical context of ‘high altitude and sparse population’, it becomes a globally shared ‘highland development challenge’,” Luo said.

He noted that international experts, including Canadian researchers such as Guo Xiaoming, a professor from the University of Calgary, had increasingly viewed these schools not as ideological institutions, but as highly practical mechanisms for pooling scarce educational resources in deep mountain ranges to “optimise resource allocation”.
For decades, both Western critics and Beijing authorities have viewed Tibet mostly as a sensitive, fortified border zone – a defensive shield separating China from South Asia. However, today other academics are trying to reshape Tibet’s image in the global arena.
Sun Yong, director of the West China Frontier Research Institute and former Communist Party chief of the Xizang Academy of Social Sciences, argued that the narrative must shift from a “frontier-defence mentality” to an active “bridge-building vision”.
Through academic hubs and digital platforms – like the WeChat account “China-Nepal Railway and South Asia Exchange” – researchers were marketing Tibet to the Global South as China’s main, open gateway to South Asia, Sun said.
At the same time, they are shifting focus towards the concrete economics of the Belt and Road Initiative, such as trans-Himalayan trade routes, joint disaster management and green energy grids.
“Academia acts as the bridge that passes the ball from official diplomacy to the public,” he said, adding that official statements carried political weight, but academic and civil dialogues had the weight of objectivity.
Sun also called for isolated academic exchanges to be transitioned to a permanent, institutionalised framework, and the fostering of the next generation of researchers to deepen mutual understanding.


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Could AI algorithms hold China’s solution for global narrative on Tibet?

This week’s second Xizang International Communication Conference took place in Lhasa, capital of China’s western autonomous region. Photo: Xinhua

Zachary Lundquist, aka Huang Hao, addresses the symposium in Lhasa on Tuesday. Photo: Handout

Attendees at the conference in Lhasa listen to the China Xizang Information Centre’s editor-in-chief Yang Dezhi. Photo: Xinlu Liang

Luo Dan, president of the Xizang Institute of Socialism, offered a counter-narrative about education in the Tibetan region. Photo: Handout

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More than 300 media professionals, government officials and academics attend international communication-focused conference in Lhasa


More than 300 media professionals, government officials and academics attend international communication-focused conference in Lhasa.


Global South

United States

Could AI algorithms hold China’s solution for global narrative on Tibet?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}More than 300 media professionals, government officials and academics attend international communication-focused conference in Lhasa

More than 300 media professionals, government officials and academics attend international communication-focused conference in Lhasa