Chinese authorities have recently dealt a blow to the major hub of Tibetan Buddhist learning by expelling more than 1,000 Tibetan monks and nuns from the Larung Gar Buddhist Academy, according to individuals within Tibet.

According to the sources cited by Radio Free Asia (RFA), administrators stated that they must reduce the number of Buddhist clergy living at the academy from 6,000 to 5,000 due to a lack of appropriate residency papers. This action is the most recent in a long line of actions by China to dismantle and reduce the size of the academy, which housed roughly 40,000 Buddhist monastics by the early 2000s.