Contact is taking a holiday!

Contact is taking a break after 25 years of bringing you news of Tibet and Tibetan issues. We are celebrating our 25 years by bringing you the story of Contact and the people who have made it happen, and our archive is still there for you to access at any time, and below you can read the story of Contact, how it came into being and the wonderful reflections of the people who have made it happen over the years.

When and how Contact will re-emerge and evolve will be determined by those who become involved.

News From Other Sites

Doklam Is PM Modi’s Biggest Geo-Strategic Win To Date

NDTV, 30 August 2017 Read original story here After a brief diplomatic tango necessitated to settle the question of who withdrew its ground troops first – India or China – it is now public knowledge that both sides agreed to simultaneously withdraw from the Doklam region. India withdrew first, but read more →

Mutual understanding on Doklam issue is ‘India’s victory’: Prakash Javadekar

ANI, The Business Standard, 29 August 2017 Read original story here Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday welcomed the Indian and Chinese troops’ decision to withdraw from Doklam, and said that the mutual understanding has proved to be a ‘victory for India.‘ “The mutual understanding between both read more →

Learning Mandarin and Tibetan Made Compulsory for ITBP Recruits

The Wire, read original story here, The new rule has been put in place to make communication with Chinese Liberation Army soldiers at the India-China border smoother. Only around 150 personnel in 90,000-member force speak the language at the moment. Credit: PTI New Delhi: The Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) has read more →

China orders internet comments linked to real identities

Engadget, 28 August 2017 Read original story here China isn’t slowing down in its bid to silence online political opposition. As of October 1st, the country will require that tech firms hold on to records of the real identities of everyone posting comments on internet message boards. This is to discourage “false rumors, read more →

At Beijing book fair, publishers admit to self-censorship

South China Morning Post (AFP) Just days after the world’s oldest publisher briefly caved in to Chinese censorship demands, international publishing houses are courting importers at a Beijing book fair, with some admitting they keep sensitive topics off their pages. The censorship controversy that hit Cambridge University Press (CUP) sent read more →

Chinese Communist officials to run Tibetan Buddhism center

The Washington Post, Read original story here. BEIJING — China has appointed Communist Party and government officials to manage one of the world’s largest centers of Tibetan Buddhist learning, raising concerns over strengthened ideological control over religion that critics say is draining such institutions of their vitality. The appointments at read more →

There is no place in academia for craven submission to Chinese censorship demands

Paul Mason, The Guardian, Read original story here Imagine if the British government could eradicate the miners’ strike from history. Not just by deleting all news coverage but by preventing the academic study of it. Imagine if, at university courses on the history of modern conservatism, all mention of it was banned. read more →

Nothing Rong in Tibet

Sophie Richardson, Human Rights Watch, 24 August 2017 Read original story here Addressing its abusive past has never been a strength for the Chinese Communist Party, particularly in hotspots like Tibet. If anything, the party has become increasingly strident in defending its record in that region. In 2009, for instance, authorities read more →

Is China using water as a potent weapon against India?

Rajesh Singh, 23 August 2017, Wion News Read the original story here A few days ago, the Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson informed that China had not shared hydrological data with India on the Himalayan rivers this year. He sought to downplay the development by explaining that “sometimes, due to read more →

View: China is all set to pay a heavy price for its Doklam blunder

By Kanwal Sibal, The Economic Times, 23 August 2017 Read the original story here. China has begun to believe that like America, it too has become an “indispensable nation,” at least for the global economy, and that its position as virtually the biggest trade partner of most major economies limits read more →

China’s desperate desire to keep its people in the dark

The Editorial Board, The Washington Post, 21 August 2017 Read original story here THE CAMBRIDGE University Press has rightly abandoned its plan to censor the prestigious China Quarterly journal at the behest of the Chinese authorities. It was indefensible for the journal to remove some 300 sensitive articles and book reviews from its website for a read more →

Doklam foretold

By D.S. Hooda, Indian Express, Read original story here, The Doklam stand-off was inevitable. It may be resolved peacefully but it is a manifestation of the larger geopolitical contest that is playing out in Asia between India and China. How do we respond? Economically, it is a no-contest because it read more →

China’s global ambitions: are there lessons to be learnt from Tibet?

The man who replaced the Dalai Lama as the head of Tibet’s government-in-exile has brought a troubling message to Australia. The Chinese military forcibly annexed Tibet in the 1950s, sending the Dalai Lama into hasty exile in India. The Dalai Lama retains his role as spiritual leader. But the Tibetan read more →

Cambridge University Press accused of ‘selling its soul’ over Chinese censorship

Tom Phillips, The Guardian, Read original story here The world’s oldest publishing house, Cambridge University Press, has been accused of being an accomplice to the Communist party’s bid to whitewash Chinese history after it agreed to purge hundreds of politically-sensitive articles from its Chinese website at the behest of Beijing’s read more →

China’s dystopian push to revolutionize surveillance

Maya Wang, The Washington Post, Read the original story here As part of a new multimillion-dollar project in Xinjiang, the Chinese government is attempting to “build a fortress city with technologies.” If this sounds Orwellian, that’s because it is. According to the Sina online news portal, the project is supposed read more →