For decades, the steady flow of Tibetans escaping across the Himalayas into India and Nepal served as a barometer of conditions inside Tibet.
From the late 1990s through the mid‑2000s, several thousand Tibetans sought exile every year, bringing firsthand accounts of political restrictions, cultural pressures and daily life under Chinese rule.
But data from the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, the de facto capital of Tibetans in exile where the 14th Dalai Lama also resides, has revealed a collapse in the number of newly arrived Tibetans
Between 1995 and 1999, more than 12,000 Tibetans successfully sought exile. In the past five years, that number has plummeted to just 81.
With fewer Tibetans able to leave, independent information is becoming scarcer. That has made Beijing's policies, like religious regulation, language reforms, or rural relocation, more opaque to the outside world.
