BBC Report: Is development killing Tibet's way of life?

Tibetans have struggled to safeguard their way of life, but can they continue? High in Tibet's mountains there are fears that an ancient way of life is slowly dying. China is bringing development to Tibet, changing it, trying to make it modern, but some Tibetans are worried that their region's unique identity is being eroded.

Ours was a rare, Chinese government-controlled trip to Tibet. Our schedule and our movements were almost entirely controlled by official minders who rarely let us out of their sight. Almost all the people we spoke to were hand-picked to show us China's view of Tibet.

Handsome wages

One way things are changing in Tibet is evident at the 5,100 Mineral water factory four hours drive outside Lhasa. Bottles of mineral water fly along production lines imported from Germany. The name comes from the altitude of the glacier that feeds water to the factory, 5,100 m (16,700ft) above sea level. The water is sold in China's far-off cities. The factory brings jobs and money to a poor region.

Around 150 Tibetans work here, among them Pubu Zhaxi. He says the work is not hard and he earns 5,000 renminbi ($735, £491) a month, a handsome wage in Tibet. But it is not all quite so simple. The factory, it turns out, is owned by a company registered in Hong Kong, so the profits, and the water, really flow outside Tibet. And although the factory's boss says collecting the run-off from the glacier has no environmental impact, the water would have flowed into a wetland in the valley where yak herds graze the mountain grasses.

Ancient structure

In Lhasa too there are signs of change all around. The Potala Palace, rising high above the city, was once home to the Dalai Lama before he fled into exile. It is a symbol of the way, for centuries, Tibet resisted outside influence. But now the palace courtyard is full of Chinese visitors. They pose in Tibetan cowboy hats. Tourism is another plank in China's plan for development.

Qiangba Gesang, the director of the Potala Palace says that four years ago 370,000 tourists were allowed to visit the palace each year. Now the number has gone up to 600,000. It is a sign of the way China's economy is developing and of the way Tibetans are becoming richer too, he says. But he is not so clear when asked if the surge in numbers is having any impact on the ancient structure.

Comfort?

The influx of Han Chinese as tourists and migrants is altering Tibet. So too is China's policy of moving every Tibetan herder and farmer into a new home. We are taken to see one model project just outside Lhasa. Neat rows of grey stone houses stand in lines with Tibetan prayer flags fluttering from them.

China says it has constructed 230,000 of what it calls these "comfort houses" for 1.3 million Tibetans in the past four years. It gives grants to help pay the cost. But the Tibetans have to use their own savings too and take out loans, so they end up with debt. And, we are told, many of the Tibetans in this village have leased their farmland to Chinese migrants to raise money. The Chinese grow vegetables while the Tibetans now work on construction sites in Lhasa. So Tibet's demographics are shifting.

Backwardness

Inside one house we find Do Bu Jie. In his seventies, he wears a brown Fedora hat at a jaunty angle. On his wall, as in every house we see here, there is a poster of China's Communist leaders, from Mao Zedong to Hu Jintao. Below it is a huge television set.

Do Bu Jie is a Communist Party member and supporter of the housing project. "Our old house was made out of mud, it wasn't this good," he said. "I was just a farmer. But the Communist Party looks after us." China's government genuinely believes its policies are helping transform Tibet from what officials say was a state of "backwardness".

But while some Tibetans are benefiting, many are not convinced. They believe the economic gains are largely flowing to Chinese immigrants. And they say their way of life and their cultural identity are all under threat.

Railway boom

The number of Chinese moving to Tibet is a sensitive topic. When I asked for figures from officials in Beijing before our trip I was given a stern lecture about the bias foreign journalists have in reporting on Tibet. Then I was told the statistics are not kept.

But in Lhasa we were taken to the new railway station, a giant, modern building, echoing and empty. Its style vaguely echoes the Potala Palace. The railway is Beijing's biggest investment in Tibet, costing billions of dollars, and is designed to connect the region with the rest of China. A train pulls in and passengers fill the platform.

There are Chinese migrant workers, dragging sacks of possessions, Tibetans with bundles of goods, Chinese tour groups all wearing red caps, the tour-leader waving her flag, and a few foreign tourists too. We are told 3,000 passengers come here everyday, so roughly one million a year, a third of them visitors.

In snatched conversations we managed with Tibetans during our five-day tour it was clear the sheer number of Han Chinese flowing in to Tibet was a cause of resentment.

Chinese vs Tibetan

Another sensitive topic is the survival of Tibetan as a language. At the Tibet Shanghai Experimental School, so-called because it is built with funds from the Shanghai government, a class full of Tibetan children in red and white track-suits are all having a Chinese lesson.

Nine hundred of the students here come from the families of farmers and herdsman, we are told. Many get help from the central government with funding to enjoy this education. It is another showcase project.

But although the school says teaching Tibetan is a priority, on closer scrutiny, that does not seem to be the case. Half the teachers are Chinese, and only Tibetan language is taught in Tibetan. No other subject is. All the exams, except for Tibetan language, have to be written in Chinese. Even the signs around the school and the names of the classrooms are all in Chinese. And the curriculum is all Chinese too. So the children, we are told, are taught that the Dalai Lama is a threat to China.

It is clear China's drive for development is transforming Tibet, improving incomes and changing lives. But it seems that is not always being welcomed. For all the benefits China says it is bringing them, the impression left by our visit was that Beijing is struggling to win the consent of ordinary Tibetans. And in a generation's time their homeland may have changed irrevocably.

15 July 2010 Last updated at 19:54 ET

By Damian Grammaticas, BBC News, Lhasa

Dalai Lama to tweet with Chinese web

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, will hold his first online chat with Chinese web users via Twitter on Friday, despite efforts by Beijing to silence him on the mainland.

The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner will hold an hour-long chat session to be broadcast on the Twitter account of Chinese writer Wang Lixiong, who has long been a critic of Beijing's policies in Tibet.

Wang said in a blog entry that the Dalai Lama -- reviled by Beijing as a separatist -- will respond to about 250 questions submitted by more than 1,100 web users on the mainland, where information about the monk is restricted.

Nearly 12,000 people selected the 250 questions by online voting done on a Google Moderator site, which was blocked in China on Thursday, according to Xiao Qiang, who heads the US-based China Digital Times.

The Dalai Lama joined Twitter, the popular micro-blogging site, earlier this year.

Although Twitter is blocked in China, Chinese users will be able to access the chat with the Dalai Lama, from 1200 GMT, as Twitter allows third-party applications and servers to freely use its data both inside and outside China.

This has made Twitter largely available in China, eliminating the need for the virtual proxy networks often used to circumvent the vast web of government Internet censorship sometimes dubbed the "Great Firewall of China", Xiao said.

"The Great Firewall has actually helped the Twitter community to grow in China in a way not seen around the world," he told AFP by telephone.

"This community has a particular political bond, which is anti-censorship. Many Twitter discussions are about Internet freedom and how to circumvent the so called Great Firewall in more sophisticated ways."

An estimated up to 150,000 Chinese have Twitter accounts, with as many as 100,000 of them physically living in the mainland, Xiao said.

China has called the Dalai Lama a "wolf in monk's clothing" and accused him of seeking to split the country, although he has repeatedly said he accepts Beijing's rule and is only seeking "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet.

A decade of dialogue between representatives of the Tibetan leader and China's communist government has failed to reach any substantive progress.

AFP, Beijing, 21 May 2010
Copyright © 2010 AFP

ICT reports China targeting Tibet artists, intellectuals

China is cracking down on Tibetan intellectuals and artists who have sought to open up discussion of the future of their region after unrest that spread across the area in Spring 2008, an overseas activist group said on Tuesday.

More than 30 men and women, including writers, bloggers, singers and environmentalists, have been detained or are imprisoned, mostly after sharing views or information about conditions in ethnic Tibetan areas, the International Campaign for Tibet said in a new report.

"Raging Storm: The crackdown on Tibetan writers and artists after Tibet's Spring 2008 protests" details scores of arrests and long jail sentences for many intellectuals.

Protests led by Buddhist monks against Chinese rule in March 2008 gave way to deadly violence, with rioters torching shops and turning on residents, especially Han Chinese.

At least 19 people died in the 2008 unrest, which sparked waves of protests across Tibetan areas. Pro-Tibet groups overseas say more than 200 people were killed in a subsequent crackdown.

China's Communist Party-run government says that Tibet has historically belonged to China, and it is spending generously there to develop a poor remote area. Officials accuse the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled leader, of fanning separatism.

A new generation of young, often bilingual and tech-savvy, ethnic Tibetans have been exploring their ethnic identity in the wake of the 2008 protests, the report says.

"These (writings) have been published in blogs, articles in one-off or unauthorized literary magazines, in books published and distributed privately, and also in the lyrics of songs sung in public places, uploaded onto Youtube or as cellphone ringtones," the report said.

Their efforts, which challenge the official account of the events of 2008 as a conspiracy mounted by outside forces, have prompted the most wide-ranging suppression of Tibetan artists and intellectuals since the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, it said.

"For the first time since the Cultural Revolution, singers, artists and writers have been the target of a drive against Tibetan culture in which almost any expression of Tibetan identity not validated by the state can be branded 'splittist'."
Lhasa, the regional capital of Tibet, is introducing rules to restrict access to printing and photocopying services, state media reported, in what officials said was an effort to stop "illegal activities."

Under the rules, operators of printing and copying businesses in Lhasa must be cleared by the police, and must collect the names, addresses and identity card numbers of anyone using their services, said a report in the Lhasa Evening News last week.

"TORTURE WITHOUT TRACE"

Among the Tibetans under pressure is civil servant, essayist and editor Shogdung, who before 2008 had been considered a radical critic of Tibetan traditions and close to the Chinese state after he authored an article denouncing Buddhism.

However his latest book, "The line between Sky and Earth," is an exploration of the 2008 protests and their impact on Tibetan identity, and argues for the right to civil disobedience. It includes a section apologizing for earlier views and a discussion of the pressures and discriminations Tibetans face. "They have made everyone, be they close or distant, powerless, helpless and desperate," the report quotes it saying. He was detained on April 23 this year, and his whereabouts and welfare have been unknown since.

Two Tibetans who worked for Western NGOs received sentences of 14 years and life, apparently for attempting to pass on information about the situation in Tibet, the report said.

Singer Tashi Dhondup, who performed songs with lyrics mourning the dead and ongoing repression, including one with the title 'Torture Without Trace' was also detained in December and sentenced to 15 months of "re-education through labor."

The Qinghai provincial government's media department declined comment on Shogdung, Tashi Dhondup and other Tibetans detained there. The Tibetan government could not be reached for comment.

Reuters, Emma Graham-Harrison, BEIJING
Tue May 18, 2010 12:57am EDT
(Editing by Alex Richardson)

US, China resume human rights talks

The United States and China resumed a formal dialogue on human rights on Thursday after a two-year hiatus in which the countries have worked to keep ties stable amid disputes over Tibet, Taiwan, Internet freedom and the value of the yuan currency.

Although the first such talks under the Obama administration follow ethnic unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet and an overall deterioration in conditions in China, the Asian nation's growing economic power and international clout make it easier for it to shrug off critics, human rights experts said.

The U.S. State Department said the two-day, closed-door meeting in Washington would address areas including religious rights, rule of law and Internet freedom, an issue that put Google Inc on a collision course with Beijing last year and led the Web search giant to quit the Chinese market.

The dialogue, which was frozen between 2002 and 2008, is expected to include cases of numerous Chinese lawyers and human rights activists who have been detained or harassed by their government, the State Department said.

"Rule of law, religious freedom, freedom of expression, labor rights and other human rights issues of concern will be raised over a two-day period," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.

"Internet freedom is a dimension of our pursuit of freedom of expression," he said, adding that he was unsure whether the Google issue would be raised but wouldn't be surprised if it did come up.

Google, the world's top Internet search engine, said in January that it was no longer willing to censor Internet search results in China and might pull out of the country partly because of cyber attacks on its corporate infrastructure.

Two months later, Google shut its mainland Chinese-language portal.

A senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Chinese authorities took the issue "very seriously," but had yet to respond specifically to U.S. calls for an open and thorough investigation into the cyber attacks on Google.

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. group Human Rights Watch urged the United States to raise specific cases of detained lawyers and activists, as well as to prevent the talks from being "largely a rhetorical shell" as they are seen by much of the rights community.

"Over the past year, the Chinese government has tightened controls on Uighurs and Tibetans, launched attacks on lawyers and human rights defenders, maintained a chokehold on media freedom, and bolstered government surveillance and censoring of Internet communications," the letter to Clinton said.

The Buddhist region of Tibet was roiled by ethnic unrest ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, while Muslim Uighurs rioted last year in violence that left nearly 200 people dead.

China "has even obstructed civil society organizations, including groups working with victims of the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake and child victims of the 2008 toxic melamine milk scandal," Human Rights Watch said in the letter.

The plight of activists was underscored anew this week when China's top AIDS activist, former health ministry official Wan Yanhai, fled to the United States with his family, citing pressure from authorities, said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

China's delegation, led by Chen Xu, the director-general of the Foreign Ministry's Department of International Organizations and Conferences, is being hosted by Mike Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in talks that also involve outside experts.

Complaints about China's rights practices increasingly fall on deaf ears as a booming economy amid a recession in the West has given Beijing confidence and diplomatic muscle at a time of rising nationalism among Chinese, analysts say.

After decades of double digit economic growth, showcased by the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo, "the average Chinese citizen today is more well-disposed toward the Chinese government than the average American citizen is toward the American government," said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy.

Richardson of Human Rights Watch acknowledges the unfavorable winds for meaningful rights talks.

"It's absolutely true that they have become even more intransigent on human rights issues over the last couple of years as they are feeling very confident, and there are a lot of debates about whether these dialogues are really a useful exercise," Richardson said.

"But the only people who really win if they don't take place at all are people in the Chinese government."

By Paul Eckert
Reuters, Washington
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed)