Who perpetuates Xizang as 'Shangri-La'?

For far too long, a deeply misleading narrative has shaped international perceptions of Xizang. The Western portrayal of Xizang as a mystical "Shangri-La" bears little resemblance to the region's history and ground reality. It is a romanticized fantasy constructed through orientalist imagination, colonial legacies and political agendas.

Interestingly, many prominent Western Tibetologists themselves have dismantled this myth through research, providing some of the strongest evidence against the longstanding illusion. The idea of "Shangri-La" was never rooted in the real Xizang. The concept was conjured by British writer James Hilton in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, which depicted Xizang as an isolated utopia untouched by the troubles of the modern world.

Hilton himself had never visited Xizang, and his novel relied on selective accounts by Western missionaries and explorers, as well as a creative reinterpretation of "Shambhala", an ideal realm in Tibetan Buddhism. The 1937 Hollywood adaptation of the novel popularized the story worldwide, cementing a highly distorted Western image of the region.

This imaginary vision of Xizang did not emerge by accident. Western missionaries and explorers had long been more interested in projecting their spiritual longings, colonial ambitions and sense of cultural superiority onto Xizang than in understanding the region's history, society and people.

They deliberately ignored both China's historical sovereignty over Xizang and the harsh reality of its system of feudal serfdom. Instead, Xizang was transformed into an imaginary land designed to satisfy the Western fascination with the exotic and to serve broader colonial and political purposes.

In fact, extensive research by Western scholars who are free from traditional orientalist assumptions has exposed the gap between Western imagination and historical reality. In The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing and the Western Creation of Sacred Landscape (1989), Peter Bishop argues that Western travel writing on Xizang is more psychological than factual. Rather than documenting its society, these accounts projected Western fantasies and subconscious desires onto an unfamiliar landscape.

Bishop's subsequent work Dreams of Power: Tibetan Buddhism and the Western Imagination (1993) critiques Western engagement with Tibetan Buddhism as lacking critical reflection on the complexities of cross-cultural understanding.

Whether expressed through idealized admiration or selective appropriation, both approaches reflect forms of cultural imperialism. In his view, the Tibetan Buddhism embraced by many in the West is a constructed "other" designed to fulfill Western spiritual aspirations and fantasies of power.

Dreams of Power is a landmark work in the Western academic reassessment of the "Xizang myth". Through chapters such as An Imaginative Analysis, Tibet Discovered, Eastern Religion: Western Imagination, Spiritual Science, Sacred Technology, The New Monasticism, Images of Spiritual Transmission and Tibetan Buddhism: An Archetypal Appraisal, the book shatters the false illusions constructed by the West and strips away the deceptive veneer of "Shangri-La".

Similarly, US scholar Donald S. Lopez Jr argues in his book Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (1998) that both Xizang and Tibetan Buddhism have long functioned as objects of Western fantasy. Rather than engaging with Xizang as it truly exists, the West has imprisoned it within the utopian image of "Shangri-La", severing it from its real history, society and culture.

These conclusions are not products of Chinese official discourse, but the result of independent scholarship by Western academics. They challenge the entrenched anti-China narratives about Xizang. The "Shangri-La" myth persists not only because of its appeal to Western romanticism, but also its political utility. The reality of old Xizang's feudal serfdom is conveniently omitted from these narratives.

In old Xizang, more than 95 percent of the population lived as serfs without personal freedom, illiteracy exceeded 95 percent and average life expectancy was under 36 years. Such conditions bore little resemblance to the idyllic paradise portrayed in popular imagination.

As China continues to develop, this false narrative is being repurposed as a political instrument. Modernization efforts in Xizang are portrayed as "assimilation", the lawful protection of religious freedom is misrepresented as "religious persecution" and improvements in people's livelihoods are reframed as evidence of "oppression". These so-called issues are not about facts, they are narratives fabricated by the West.

Western media, films and academic works have reinforced the misconceptions, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of falsehoods. But an increasing body of Western scholarship reveals that what the West often sees is not the real Xizang, but its imagined projection.

The real Xizang is neither a mythical paradise nor a perpetual tragedy. It is a modern homeland developing as part of China. China's sovereignty over Xizang has firm historical and legal foundations. The feudal serfdom system has been abolished and people are now masters of their own affairs.

Today, 15 years of publicly funded education are universally available in the Xizang autonomous region. Healthcare and elderly care systems cover the entire population, and extreme poverty has been eliminated. Religious freedom is protected by law and cultural treasures receive unprecedented conservation efforts. Traditional Tibetan medicine, opera, thangka painting and other elements of cultural heritage continue to flourish.

High-speed trains now traverse the plateau, while ecological conservation ranks among the world's most ambitious. The everyday lives of the people of Xizang provide far more convincing testimony than any fictional tale ever could.

The most effective way to dispel falsehoods is to confront them with facts and academic consensus. The myth of "Shangri-La" is, at its core, a product of Western cognitive dominance and political manipulation.

The world should recognize that the real Xizang is found not in romantic fantasies but in historical reality, the lives of its people and China's sovereignty and governance. Narratives built on misunderstanding, prejudice and political agendas cannot withstand facts, nor can they halt Xizang's continued progress toward prosperity and development.

The author is an associate researcher at the China Tibetology Research Center.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.