July 2025

How might the battle over succession play out over the coming months? If the Dalai Lama announces a successor, how will Beijing respond? How robust is the institutional framework for maintaining legitimacy without the Chinese government’s recognition, and what are its potential vulnerabilities? What are the ramifications for China’s relationship with India, which hosts the Tibetan government-in-exile? How might other countries respond to Beijing?

The young Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet is now in a Chinese prison for “actively participating in terrorist activities.” He was likely targeted because he had studied in Turkey between 2010 and 2016. It is always difficult for what China calls “ethnic minority” (i.e. non-Han Chinese) filmmakers to make the films they want to make inside China, where review by the state Film Administration is mandatory for all. What may be surprising is that filmmakers from Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang have succeeded in making important and eloquent works of cinema that grapple, at least indirectly, with the particular situations of their communities in China, despite the constraints under which they work.