Published by World Tibet Network News, Saturday - November 25, 1995

BEIJING, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- China claimed Thursday uncontrolled population growth among Tibetans has resulted in dire poverty, massive illiteracy and is crimping the drive to improve living standards.

In a marked turnabout from previous insistence that Tibetans were free to have as many offspring as they want, family planning officials in the capital city of Lhasa have issued new regulations recommending three children per couple in agricultural and pastoral areas and for those Tibetans on the state payroll.

Both "developing and controlling population are based on Tibetan realities and serve the fundamental interests of the Tibetan people," said Tuden, the Beijing-selected director of Tibet's Family Planning Office.

Chinese are limited to single-child families, the cornerstone of the country's population policy.

Publication of the shift in Tibet in the official China Daily coincided with a clash between the Chinese government and the dalai lama over the choice of the reincarnation of the 10th panchen lama, the second most important spiritual leader in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy.

A recent high-level meeting of lamas summoned to Beijing narrowed the search to three boys, without including the choice announced by the dalai lama in May.

Beijing has branded the dalai lama's selection as illegal and void because he failed to seek the government's approval.

Chinese troops invaded Tibet in 1951 and the dalai lama fled into exile in India eight years later following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Exiled Tibetan activists and human rights groups charge China is bent on diluting Tibet's religious and cultural heritage by infusing the Himalayan region with Han Chinese, the country's ethnic majority accounting for 92 percent of the population.

Now the family planning officials contend uncontrolled population growth among the 3 million Tibetans has constrained economic growth and improvements will primarily depend on better services to facilitate birth control.

"Such things as forced abortion and sterilization are absolutely non-existent," said Tuden, contrary to claims of human rights groups and exiled Tibetans who attended the Non-Governmental Organization forum prior to the U.N. Conference on Women held in Beijing in September.

Beijing usually blames Tibet's impoverished and backward state on the ongoing rumblings for Tibetan independence from the dalai lama's supporters.

Dai Xinyan, deputy director of the Family Planning Office, said, "In agricultural and pastoral areas, we advocate every couple have three children, with a certain time interval between births."

"But that is only a suggestion, not an arbitrary order," she said. Official figures show the region's birthrate was 2.56 percent in 1994, far higher than the 1.77 percent national average. Between 1951 and 1994, mortality dropped from 2.8 percent to 0.9 percent, while average life expectancy rose from 36 to 62 years.

The results are thwarting efforts to improve education, health care, employment and upgrade living standards, Tuden said.

Some 480,000 people are living below the poverty line, 44 percent of Tibetans are illiterate and the figure jumps to 79 percent in women of child-bearing age, he added.