Published byTibet News Digest - November 1995

UPI reports China has blamed the Tibetan birth rate for poverty and illiteracy rampant among Tibetans. Beijing usually blames Tibetan "splittists". Now, officials contend uncontrolled population growth has constrained Tibet's economic growth, saying improvements depend on better services to facilitate birth control, while insisting "forced abortion and sterilization are absolutely nonexistent." In a turnabout from previous insistence that Tibetans were free to have as many offspring as they want, family planning officials in Lhasa have issued new regulations recommending three children per couple in agricultural and pastoral areas and for Tibetans on the state payroll. Chinese are limited to single child families. Official figures put the region's birthrate at 2.56% in 1994, and the nation's at 1.77%. Some 44% of Tibetans, 79% of women of childbearing age, are illiterate.