China's Money and Migrants Pour Into Tibet

By Edward Wong | The New York Times
24 July 2010

They come by new high-altitude trains, four a day, cruising 1,200 miles past snow-capped mountains. And they come by military truck convoy, lumbering across the roof of the world.

Han Chinese workers, investors, merchants, teachers and soldiers are pouring into remote Tibet. After the violence that ravaged this region in 2008, China's aim is to make Tibet wealthier -- and more Chinese.

Chinese leaders see development, along with an enhanced security presence, as the key to pacifying the Buddhist region. The central government invested $3 billion in the Tibet Autonomous Region last year, a 31 percent increase over 2008. Tibet's gross domestic product is growing at a 12 percent annual rate, faster than the robust Chinese national average.

Simple restaurants located in white prefabricated houses and run by ethnic Han businesspeople who take the train have sprung up even at a remote lake north of Lhasa. About 1.2 million rural Tibetans, nearly 40 percent of the region's population, have been moved into new residences under a "comfortable housing" program. And officials promise to increase tourism fourfold by 2020, to 20 million visitors a year.

But if the influx of money and people has brought new prosperity, it has also deepened the resentment among many Tibetans. Migrant Han entrepreneurs elbow out Tibetan rivals, then return home for the winter after reaping profits. Large Han-owned companies dominate the main industries, from mining to construction to tourism.

"Why did I come here? To make money, of course!" said Xiong Zhahua, a migrant from Sichuan Province who spends five months a year running a restaurant on the shores of chilly Nam Tso, the lake north of Lhasa.

A rare five-day official tour of Tibet, though carefully managed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, provided a glimpse of life in the region during a period of tight political and military control.

Tibet is more stable after security forces quelled the worst uprising against Chinese rule in five decades. But the increased ethnic Han presence -- and the uneven benefits of Han-led investment -- have kept the region on edge.

Some Chinese officials acknowledge the disenfranchisement of Tibetans, though they defend the right of Han to migrate here.

"The flow of human resources follows the rule of market economics and is also indispensable for the development of Tibet," Hao Peng, vice chairman and deputy party secretary of the region, said at a news conference with a small group of foreign journalists. But the current system "may have caused an imbalanced distribution," he said. "We are taking measures to solve this problem."

The government bars foreign reporters from traveling independently in Tibet. Journalists on the tour were brought to several development projects by ministry officials, but were occasionally able to interview locals on their own. Tibetans interviewed independently expressed fear of the security forces and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

One high school student complained that Tibetans could not compete for jobs with Han migrants who arrived with high school diplomas. "Tibetans just get low-end jobs," he said.

Chinese officials say Tibetans make up more than 95 percent of the region's 2.9 million people, but refuse to give estimates on Han migrants, who are not registered residents. In the cities of Lhasa and Shigatse, it is clear that Han neighborhoods are dwarfing Tibetan areas.

Resentment of the Han exploded during the March 2008 rioting -- Tibetans in Lhasa burned and looted hundreds of Han and ethnic Hui shops; at least 19 people died, most of them Han civilians, the Chinese government said. Han security forces then cracked down on Tibetans across the plateau.

Robert Barnett, a scholar of Tibet at Columbia University, said the goal of maintaining double-digit growth in the region had worsened ethnic tensions.

"Of course, they achieved that, but it was disastrous," he said. "They had no priority on local human resources, so of course they relied on outside labor, and sucked in large migration into the towns."

Now, a heavy security presence is needed to keep control of Lhasa. Around the Barkhor, the city's central market, paramilitary officers in riot gear, all ethnic Han, march counterclockwise around the sacred Jokhang Temple, against the flow of Tibetan pilgrims. Armed men stand on rooftops near the temple.

Limits on religious freedom have been a major cause of discontent. In the Jokhang itself, and in the Potala Palace, the imposing white-walled winter fortress of the Dalai Lamas, images of the exiled 14th Dalai Lama have been banned. Pilgrims carry the Dalai Lama's photograph in hidden lockets or amulets. As the pilgrims circle the Potala, a loudspeaker in a small park blares Communist Party propaganda: "We are part of a Chinese nation contributing to a great future -- we are Chinese people."

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