Traditional Tibet resists impatient China

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Traditional Tibet resists impatient China

RURAL PEOPLE ARE RELUCTANT TO MODERNIZE

By Alexa Olesen

Associated Press

Nov. 12, 2006

 

NAQU, Tibet - In Tibet's sprawling heartland, where yaks and sheep far outnumber

people, Chinese bureaucrat Duan Xiangzheng pictures the region's organic meat

speeding 1,800 miles to Shanghai dinner tables and doubling herders' incomes.

 

" This is not a dream or an illusion, " said the sturdy 50-year-old communist

chief of Naqu prefecture. He points to a new high-speed railway that cuts right

through Naqu, connecting the California-sized swath of high-altitude grasslands

and its 355,000 nomads and 7.5 million livestock to the rest of China.

 

" Before, to send one head of yak by these high mountain roads to the inland

market meant a financial loss, " he said. " Now, we have the railway and we want

money and we want our Tibetan families and ordinary people to be busy and

bustling. "

 

China's leaders are investing billions in government money to improve

livelihoods and win popular support in Tibet, which is chronically impoverished

and stubbornly resistant to Chinese rule. If only they could get the Tibetans to

go along.

 

Lawang, the 23-year-old son of nomadic herders from Naqu, said his family

doesn't want to slaughter animals en masse, even for more money. Lawang said

sheep and yaks are like family members, grazing close by the family's tents and

providing milk, wool and meat.

 

" Once a year we slaughter some of our animals, but just as many as we need to, "

said Lawang, who, like many Tibetans, goes by one name. " And when we kill them,

we cry and the animals cry too. "

 

A clash of expectations is intensifying between Tibetans and their Chinese

rulers. In recent years, Beijing has given Tibet everything from cell phone

networks and roads to the $4.2 billion " Sky Rail " between Beijing and the

Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

 

At the same time, it has assaulted the core of Tibetan identity -- their

Buddhist faith -- by demonizing their spiritual leader, the exiled Dalai Lama,

and by limiting how and where they worship.

 

Rather than winning over Tibetans, China's carrot-and-stick approach seems to be

deepening the gulf.

 

In Lhasa, Beijing is spending $22 million restoring the Potala, the hilltop

palace where the Dalai Lama lived until he fled to India in 1959. Dorje, a

33-year-old monk wearing a blue workman's jacket instead of traditional robes,

stands ready to answer questions about the landmark.

 

But when a reporter asked if he wants the Dalai Lama to come home, he muttered

" of course, " then faltered and declined to answer further questions.

 

" Sorry, " he said in the English he learned at night school. " It's because there

are a lot of, how do you say it, detectives, here. "

 

Another monk, in a less-crowded room nearby, was more outspoken, accusing

Chinese-appointed officials of ordering the forced removal of the Dalai Lama's

portraits throughout Tibet. " No one dares to hang them up now, " said the monk,

who refused to give his name. " We are not a free people. "

 

Indeed, there are no pictures of the Dalai Lama on public display, and Tibetans

say simply typing his name into an Internet search engine or having a casual

conversation about the 71-year-old holy man is enough to draw police to a

person's door.

 

Though the region's civil servants insist they respect religious freedom, they

remind critics that before the Dalai Lama left, Tibet was a feudal society, most

of whose people were desperately poor and illiterate.

 

Under Chinese rule and especially in the past decade, much has changed. Apart

from trains, phones and airports, the muddy tracks of central Lhasa have been

widened and paved, and many neighborhoods in the city of 550,000 now resemble

mid-size Chinese cities.

 

Less than 20 years ago, Naqu had a monastery, a restaurant and little else. Now

it has two main streets named Liaoning and Zhejiang, after the Chinese provinces

that funded them, and are lined with Chinese-run hotels, a post office and shops

selling motorbikes, TV sets and cell phones.

 

But its largely nomadic population lives in traditional felt tents, many with no

electricity or running water.

 

Duan, a transplanted Chinese who graduated from Beijing's Agricultural

University and believes in the government's free-market socialism, said Naqu

would thrive if locals would shake off traditional attitudes and embrace his

plan. Mass-marketing meat and dairy products would double the average herder's

annual income to 2,566 yuan ($320) by 2010, he said.

 

" Because of religion and tradition, some herdsmen feel that as long as they can

be fed and sheltered, they are satisfied, " Duan said. " These traditional,

backward concepts will have to be changed. "

 

With government subsidies flowing in, Tibet's economy has grown an average of

12.7 percent a year between 2000 and 2004, outpacing much of the rest of China,

according to the government.

 

Some say, however, that as quickly as Beijing's money pours into Tibet it is

redirected back to Chinese businesses put in charge of the infrastructure

projects.

 

The high-ceilinged and artfully muraled Lhasa station at the end of the new

railroad takes its cues from traditional Tibetan architecture. But its architect

was Chinese, and its marble floor tiles and the pine covering its 69-foot

columns come from distant Chinese provinces.

 

Only 20 percent of the 5,400 laborers who built the station, and 10 percent of

the 100,000 workers who built the railway, were Tibetans, Railway Ministry

officials said. They argue that there aren't enough skilled Tibetan laborers for

such jobs.

 

Andrew Fischer of the London School of Economics agreed, but blames China,

saying it is over-investing in Tibet's infrastructure and skimping on education

for Tibetans, effectively barring them from reaping the benefits of the economic

boom.

 

Vocational spending in Tibet is one-quarter the average elsewhere in China, he

said.

 

Tourism, China insists, will open up new opportunities for unskilled Tibetans.

But savvy Chinese are also pouring in to snap up the service jobs, especially in

the summer peak season.

 

By the shores of the startlingly blue Namtso Lake in Naqu, a small canvas tent

offers spicy dishes from neighboring Sichuan. Xiong Taigui, 34, from Sichuan,

scrubbed laundry while his wife prepared an order of spicy potato shreds and

noodles with chicken and greens.

 

These migrant restaurateurs have been coming to Tibet every summer for 17 years,

leaving their children with their parents back home for five months of the year.

 

Unlike many ethnic Chinese migrants who admit being afraid of Tibetans, Xiong

said he likes and respects them.

 

" When we first came, people were very suspicious of us, but our relations with

the locals are really good now, " he said. " Tibetans aren't bad; they are

actually more good-hearted than us. They are very moral people. "

 

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