China’s Censorship Of Tibet Flooding Proves Again The CCP Can’t Be Trusted

More than one week ago, a flash flood of ice, rock, and mud swept through a Himalayan valley on the Tibet-Nepal border. Large sections of riverbank disappeared. The number of deaths continues to grow. Pilgrims, foreign tourists, hydropower workers, and villagers are among the thousands still missing.

After an initial hesitation about foreign teams, Nepal opened the disaster area. Foreign journalists were allowed in. Officials, the army, and villagers shared updates on destroyed bridges and rising rivers. The disaster authority gives daily updates on the dead and missing. As of Sept. 3, 2026, 1,259 people were reported dead and more than 5,000 missing, including 583 foreigners, about 85 of whom are Americans. More than 12,000 people have been rescued.

In contrast, China responded with secrecy, censorship, and punishment. Tibet was already difficult to access before the flood. Foreign reporters can only visit on government-guided tours. Tibetans risk detention for talking to journalists or posting anything that goes against the official story. A BBC correspondent said it is often easier to reach sources in North Korea than in Tibet. UN experts and rights groups accuse Beijing of forced assimilation and serious abuses in the region.

Since 2009, more than 150 Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest Beijing’s rule. On July 2, 2026, Tibetan activist Lobga Rangzen, who lived in exile, died after self-immolating outside the UN headquarters in New York.

After last week’s flood, Beijing increased its censorship in Tibet. Censors removed videos and eyewitness posts from Chinese platforms, even from private chats. Most people in China have not seen the footage that others have: a crowd running as the gate at Gyirong Port closed.

Beijing does not release daily numbers for the dead, missing, or rescued. Its last official update, on Aug. 29, reported 16 dead and about 546 missing. Tibetan exile groups say these numbers are far too low compared to Nepal’s rising count. Foreign journalists cannot verify China’s figures because the government does not allow them into the Tibetan disaster area.

Inside China, the official story is even more limited. State media focuses on Communist Party leaders and PLA rescue efforts. Reports rarely show victims, survivors, their families, or images of the destruction, which differs sharply from Nepal’s coverage.

State media and online figures were told to repeat only the government’s official casualty numbers. Anyone who questions these numbers can face up to 10 days in detention and a 1,000-yuan fine (about $150). By Aug. 31, at least 10 people had already been punished for “spreading rumors” and making up “false disaster information.”

During a disaster, timely information helps families find missing relatives, lets governments organize rescues, and allows other countries to send aid quickly. When time matters, censorship can cost lives. Yet, time and again, the CCP always relies on censorship, especially in time of crisis.

The party’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic followed a similar playbook. In early 2020, officials in Wuhan and Beijing hid the truth about person-to-person spread for weeks. They detained people for “spreading rumors,” harassed citizen journalists, removed images of crowded hospitals, and likely underreported deaths and infections.

Beijing also influenced the World Health Organization (WHO) to do its bidding internationally. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus publicly praised Beijing’s response even as human-to-human transmission was downplayed, and the organization helped fight coronavirus “rumors” on social media platforms inside and outside China. The WHO did not declare a public-health emergency until Jan. 30. Taiwan, which is close to the mainland and was tracking cases, was excluded from emergency meetings.

An epidemic model later estimated that if China had acted just one week sooner, cases could have dropped by about 66 percent. Taking action three weeks earlier might have reduced cases by about 95 percent. In other words, had China and the WHO acted sooner with transparency, the rest of the world might have been spared months or even years of disruptions.

Not surprisingly, a Pew survey found Xi Jinping’s reputation abroad at a historic low. Many people said they did not trust him to “do the right thing” in world affairs.

The same trust issue has come up in the Himalayas, as some people in Nepal and India now wonder if China gave Nepal enough advance warning. China is more advanced in technology like artificial intelligence and weather satellites than Nepal. Also, “China operates hydrological monitoring stations across the Tibetan headwaters, collecting real-time data on river levels and upstream conditions,” according to Indian scholar Brahma Chellaney.

Nepal’s science minister, Mahabir Pun, said Kathmandu received no warning from China and now wants a formal early-warning link. Former planning official Govind Raj Pokharel asked why a country with advanced satellites did not spot the collapse and call downstream. Chinese officials responded by insisting they made “every effort to monitor Himalayan terrain for risks and share the information with its neighbor.” Still, China’s censorship means that Nepal cannot independently verify what China knew and when it knew.

Another Covid-19 similarity is that people are already debating what triggered the deadly flood last week. China said it was entirely a natural disaster. Chellaney, however, points out that China has built highways, border infrastructure, and hydropower stations, including the world’s largest dam, in one of the most earthquake-prone regions. Even Chinese geologists have warned that the ground near the Yarlung Tsangpo dam project has a “loose structure and weak cohesion.” They also said that “after long-term immersion and under the influence of fault activity and earthquakes, instability of the slopes on both sides of the reservoir area can be extremely easily triggered.”

Even though the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) ruled out that any dam failure as the cause for last week’s flash flood, there are increasing concerns that the next flash flood may not be so easy to separate from what China is building, because “the boundary between natural disaster and human-made catastrophe is blurring in the Himalayas,” says Chellaney.

The CCP’s continued censorship about the flood in Tibet reminds us of something we’ve learned from the pandemic. The CCP cannot be trusted, especially in a crisis, because it always prioritizes power and control over the well-being of its citizens or the global community.