Published by: World Tibet Network News, Thursday, October 10, 1996
By Jane Macartney
LHASA, China, Oct 10 (Reuter) - Time in Tibet is a moveable feast.
In this far-flung outpost of Chinese rule, the clocks are synchronised with Beijing more than 2,560 km (1,590 miles) to the northeast, but dawn is two hours behind and everyone goes to work about two hours later than in Beijing.
It is not only Tibetan time that lags the rest of China. The economy in this Himalayan region, still based largely on yaks, goats and Buddhism, also trails.
Beijing says it is doing its utmost to narrow the gap and to make up for destruction wrought on Tibet's monasteries and temples in China's ultra-leftist 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
It has pumped more than 35 billion yuan (US$4.2 billion) into the inaccessible, remote and backward region long peopled by nomadic herders and barter traders, officials say.
The funds are also useful to buttress control of the restive and strategically important region that borders India.
The investment is slowly paying off.
Economic growth in 1995 reached 10.6 percent, up from 8.6 percent the year before. Rural per capita incomes were about 600 yuan ($72) a year while urban incomes neared 2,000 yuan ($240) -- both still about half the national average but increasing rapidly.
In the capital Lhasa, the swift growth of commerce has taken even local leaders by surprise.
"I thought it would take several years before we could attract any real interest," said Chen Ciduan, president of the Tibet Investment and Trust Corporation that in 1994 set up a stocks trading centre in Lhasa.
"But we had to double our space last year and we are already overcrowded and making plans for another expansion," he said.
That's the high flying end of economic development in Tibet.
For those at the other end of the scale, Beijing is trying to make things easier with preferential policies to help a people struggling into the late 20th century from a lifestyle that more closely resembles the middle ages.
Income tax holidays, tax breaks and easy loans are just some of the incentives available to businessman in Tibet. The concessions are also attracting numerous entrepreneurs from elsewhere in China where such favourable policies are not available.
In Lhasa, one street specialises in selling the highly-decorated, colourfully-painted furniture favoured by Tibetans. Another sells fake leather sofas that appeal to Han Chinese residents.
Chinese restaurants abound, cheek by jowl with Tibetan-managed shops selling yak butter, computer parts and bolts of brocade and wool.
Tibet offers some of China's oddest employment opportunities.
In a tiny one-room workshop leased from a struggling state-owned factory processing yak horns, seven artisans from neighbouring Yunnan province hammer traditional silver bowls embossed with Buddhist symbols.
"We were already making these Buddhist artifacts in Yunnan anyway," said workshop owner Li Wenhan, 26. "It's only because there is so much demand here that we came. We could easily sell these in Yunnan, but here they need them."
Li said 40 percent of the goods they make are for export, 20-30 percent are sold to Tibetans and the rest distributed elsewhere in China.
The success of Li's business underscores a problem in Tibet that must be as frustrating for its Chinese masters seeking to lead the region into prosperity as for many educated Tibetans.
"The Tibetans lack education and a mentality of work," said one Tibetan-Nepali businessman who was born in Lhasa.
"They don't appreciate the need to work, they just want to make a profit straight away," he said. "It's very sad. They are too impatient to understand that you have to earn a living through steady work."
While some might dispute that view, no one questions that Tibet is among China's poorest and most inaccessible regions. Out of Tibet's 2.3 million people, about 400,000 live below the official poverty line.
Officials oversee one of China's most innovative anti-poverty policies in the deeply devout Buddhist area where many still donate much of what they earn to monasteries and temples and where education is costly.
"We are determined to bring all Tibetans out of poverty by the end of the century," said an official who declined to be identified.
Almost all Tibetan government officials are involved in anti-poverty programmes. Each government department in the Tibet Autonomous Region sends officials into rural areas each year -- both to see where government money and aid are most needed and to teach poverty-stricken nomads how to boost their incomes.
Many of Tibet's worst off are nomads living in remote mountain areas, many with large flocks of yaks, goats and sheep, but with little idea of how to exploit their resources.
The nomads either use their animals to feed themselves or, when their numbers climb, set them free as an offering to Buddha to try to win merit for their next reincarnation, believing that their station in each life is dependent on their behaviour in the previous one.
"Many of these people have assets but they are still poor because they don't know how to use them," the official said.
Tibet does not rely on handouts alone. Since last year it has worked at setting up sister relationships with 14 of China's booming eastern cities and provinces.
These wealthy cousins each send between 10 to 20 officials to work for three years in the region over a 10-year period and also provide financial resources.
The provinces are helping Tibet with 43 projects, mostly in infrastructure. Initial investment was 2.3 billion yuan ($277.1 million) but now totals more than 3.0 billion yuan ($361 million).
"Tibet's capacity to develop itself is very low," the official said. "It's hampered by its geological conditions such as lack of infrastructure and its remoteness. And it takes a long time to move away from the previous feudal serf system.
"This is a very beautiful place but we have a very arduous task ahead."
($1.0-8.3 yuan)
