Greetings and Happy New Year. We write to bring to your attention a recent article on Tibetan children and “racial empathy bias” that was published in the US psychology journal, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology (the journal of the American Psychological Association’s Society for the study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race), by a pair of Han Chinese psychology scholars (Jing Sheng and Li Wang) and their graduate students at South China Normal University. In their article, they claimed that their research in the TAR among Tibetan “primary school” students received the approval of their university’s “human ethics” board, but we and others think the scholarship is deeply suspect both ethically and theoretically, in that they make racist claims about Tibetan children’s alleged “racial empathy bias” toward Han Chinese.
The scholars’ claims were so explicitly racist that the journal received complaints after it was published. To their credit, the editors published an apology, and required the authors to strike the most egregious statements (see below). However, the article was NOT retracted, and remains published in the journal. Given recent Chinese state efforts to shape scholarly discourse on Tibet abroad, we feel strongly that this article needs to be completely retracted and that the continued presence of this article and others like it in US academic journals threatens the credibility of these journals and the well-known scholars on their editorial boards (this journal seems to have a huge editorial board, as well as a large list of “editorial consultants,” scholars from major colleges and universities across the U.S.).
Please support our call to the journal editors to retract this article by signing the open letter (see below) to the editors through the Google Form link at the top of the letter. Your name and affiliation will be automatically added to the letter.
Thank you so much for your support!!
Charlene Makley
Elizabeth C. Ducey Professor of Anthropology
Reed College
==================
Open Letter to the Editors of Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology
January 10, 2025
Dear Editors and Members of the Editorial Board,
We, the undersigned scholars, express our grave concern about the article by Sheng et al published April 2024 in your journal, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, titled “The Development of Tibetan Children’s Racial Bias in Empathy: The Mediating Role of Ethnic Identity and Wrongfulness of Ethnic Intergroup Bias”. This paper, which purports to examine ethnic identity and “racial bias in empathy” among Tibetan children, contains fundamentally flawed and ethically dubious research that advances explicitly racist conclusions and ultimately legitimizes the Chinese government’s aggressively assimilationist policies in Tibet.[1]
The article’s central claim — that stronger ethnic identity among Tibetan children correlates with a lack of “racial empathy” toward Han Chinese — is deeply problematic, both theoretically and methodologically. Even though the authors mention the “unique” nature of Tibet’s social, cultural and political “environment,” the authors conflate notions of “race” and “ethnicity”, taking both as natural, universal processes of group identity development in children. Their approach thus not only misrepresents and erases the complex dynamics of ethnic identity in oppressed and racialized minority groups, but it also echoes recent Chinese state narratives designed to criminalize native Tibetan culture and justify the erasure of Tibetan identity. Furthermore, the ethical framework of this research is highly suspect. The authors claim to have received “human ethics” approval from their home institution, yet they fail to disclose critical information about the consent of the children and parents involved in the study. We question whether a genuine kind of prior and informed consent can even be obtained from subjects living in a highly repressive environment like Tibet, which has consistently been ranked by Freedom House as one of the “most oppressed” places on earth.[2]
In particular, the participation of the children and their parents in the study could not have been truly voluntary if the students were enrolled in mandatory state-run boarding schools for Tibetans, where in recent years young students’ Tibetan linguistic and cultural identity is being methodically replaced by a highly nationalistic Chinese indoctrination program.[3] As the Chinese government seeks to consolidate its colonial control over Tibet, it has pivoted to using education as the ultimate instrument of control through indoctrination. Harkening back to similar policies for indigenous peoples in the U.S., Canada and Australia, beginning around 2010, the government rolled out its new policy of residential, Chinese language schooling for Tibetans, simultaneously shutting down local village and monastic schools where Tibetan language was taught. Today these boarding schools house roughly 800,000 Tibetan students between ages 6 and 18, approximately 80 percent of that population.[4] By separating children from their families and coercing them into residential schools where they can become assimilated into Chinese-speaking subjects, the state is betting on a future where younger generations of Tibetans will become groomed Chinese Communist Party loyalists, utterly cut off from their own language, heritage, and cultural identity.
Regardless of the authors’ intentions, in such an egregiously unequal context, this study can not claim to be scientifically neutral. This is true especially because it would seem the authors conducted the study in Chinese language only, and the data, as they say, is based entirely on elicited statements about issues that are politically sensitive for Tibetan children (given current policies since the military crackdowns on Tibetan protests from 2008 on, it is dangerous for Tibetans to even publicly express “pride” in their identities as Tibetans). The paper by Jing Sheng and Li Wang thus embodies the troubling use of academic platforms abroad to legitimize Chinese colonial state narratives while perpetuating the systemic marginalization of oppressed minorities and criminalization of their identities. By allowing this racist article to remain in the public domain — even with revisions — your journal risks becoming complicit in normalizing colonial racism. We believe this not only undermines the integrity of your publication but also damages the credibility of the esteemed scholars who serve on your editorial board and those who have published their work in this journal in the past.
We acknowledge your prior apology and requirements for corrections to the article, yet we think these actions are insufficient. The revisions address only the most egregious language without correcting the flawed premises and unethical research practices underpinning the study. Retraction is the only appropriate course of action for the following reasons:
(1) EthicalViolations:Theauthors’failuretodemonstrategenuineinformedconsentfrom participants, especially children who may be in coercive institutional settings, raises serious questions about the integrity of their research.
(2) Racist Premises andConclusions: The article’s claims perpetuate harmful stereotypes and contribute to systemic discrimination against Tibetans. The conclusions align disturbingly with the Chinese government’s colonial agenda of cultural assimilation, making the research a tool of propaganda rather than objective inquiry.
(3) Damage to Scholarly Standards: Allowing this article to remain published risks setting a precedent for the acceptance of ethically suspect and theoretically flawed research. Journals like yours have a responsibility to uphold the highest standards of academic integrity and to reject research that weaponizes social science to marginalize and oppress vulnerable communities.
We urge you to retract this article in full, accompanied by a public statement acknowledging the harm caused by its publication. This action is necessary to restore faith in your journal’s commitment to rigorous, ethical, and unbiased scholarship. As academics and practitioners who stand for equity, justice, and epistemic integrity, we stand ready to engage in dialogue with you about this matter and to support steps toward improving editorial oversight.
Sincerely,
Dr. Gyal Lo
Educational Sociologist and Former Professor at Yunnan Normal University
Charlene Makley
Elizabeth C. Ducey Professor of Anthropology, Reed College
Announcement of the controversy over the article in Retraction Watch, October 2024
The journal editors’ apology, 2025
The article (which was not retracted) “corrections”
New York Times: Boarding Schools in Tibet Reshape the ‘Souls of Children’
Notes:
1 Campbell, Charlie. “China’s Residential Schools Separate a Million Tibetan Children From Their Families, U.N. Says” Time Online, February 7, 2023. URL: https://time.com/6253481/china-tibet-million-children-separated-residential-schools/
2 Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2024. URL: https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2024-02/FIW_2024_DigitalBooklet.pdf
3 Tibet Action Institute, Separated from Their Families, Hidden from the World: China’s Vast System of Colonial Boarding Schools in Tibet (2021). URL: https://s7712.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/2021_TAI_ColonialBoardingSchoolReport_Digital.pdf
4 Buckley, Chris, “Boarding Schools in Tibet Reshape the ‘Souls of Children,’” The New York Times, January 10, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/09/world/asia/tibet-china-boarding-schools.html