By Hans Vriens in Lhasa

Far Eastern Economic Review

May 29, 1997

As Han Chinese flock to the Tibetan capital, skyscrapers and traffic jams are redefining the city. Even the Dalai Lama might have a tough time recognizing his former home.

Anywhere else in the world, the crowd packed into the tiny hotel room might be football supporters preparing to cheer their national team There is the same intense focus on the tele-vision the faces shining with expectation and anxiety But this is the Holiday Inn in Lhasa, and a group of Tibetans is gathered to watch veteran interviewer Larry King of CNN. The credits roll and the camera pans in on King's guest for this show, the Dalai Lama. When the face of Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader appears, there is a moment of stunned silence, then a great cheer.

To many of these Tibetans, being able to watch the Dalai Lama on television is an almost unbeliev-able privilege. This, after all, is the country in which attempts last year by Chinese police to confiscate pictures of the Dalai Lama in the Ganden monas-tery led to a riot that left two dead and 100 injured.

It has been almost four decades since the Dalai Lama fled to India on horseback during a Tibetan insurrection against Chinese rule. But there's no question of his being forgotten. Every visitor to the country can tell tales of being asked for photos of the Dalai Lama or watching the joy even a crude sketch of the Dalai Lama in a Lonely Planet Guide Book can elicit.

His memory may live on undiminished, but the Tibet the Dalai Lama himself remembers is disap-pearing at an ever accelerating pace. In fact, if he were to return to his imposing but empty Potala Palace tomorrow, the Dalai Lama wouldn't recog-nize much of the capital he fled in 1959. "Lhasa has changed more in the last few years than in the thou-sand years before," says a Tibetan resident of the city.

The only Tibetan neighbourhood left, with its distinctive low, whitewashed stone buildings decked in brightly coloured banners, surrounds the 1.200-year-old Jokhang temple, Lhasa's most important religious building. This area, too, is rapidly being demolished, however. And when it goes, nothing will distinguish Lhasa from any other Chinese boomtown except the Potala Palace looming formerly over the city it once commanded.

The 1,000-room palace is now surrounded by barber shops, karaoke bars, a disco called J.J.'s, Chi-nese-run restaurants and art galleries selling Tibetan art to tourists. There are also droves of almost exclusively Chinese prostitutes thronging the karaoke bars surrounding the huge parade ground the Chinese authorities constructed two years ago by razing an entire neighbourhood. In the last few months, Lhasa has been invaded by hundreds of small Chinese-built taxis, and or the first time in history there are traffic, jams in the city.

The changes are the result of a sudden acceleration in the Sinification of Tibet in general and Lhasa in particular. "Lhasa is a lost cause," despairs a Tibetan business-man. '"In the last two years the capital has been overwhelmed by Chinese settlers." Other sources in Lhasa and groups such as the London-based Tibet Information Centre confirm that Tibetans are a dwin-dling minority in their own capital city.

To some Tibetans it is a mystery why all these Han Chinese have suddenly decided to come and live in their often inhospitable country. Quite apart from the cold, an altitude of 11,830 feet guaran-tees terrible headaches for any newcomer. But the explanation is really very simple: money. Wages here are very good," beams a Chinese taxi driver. "Very good!"

Chinese immigrants say they can earn up to five times as much in Tibet as they can in China. Tibet also enjoys preferen-tial tax and loan policies that exempt the vast and sparsely populated region from 'he credit squeeze Chinese Vice-Premier Zhu Rongji introduced in 1993 to keep inflation in check.

Drab Chinese office blocks are going up everywhere. One almost-finished 11-storey glass-and-steel tower is locally referred to as the '"skyscraper." In down-town Lhasa, opposite the statues of two enormous golden yaks - put up by the Chinese authorities - sits a modern office building housing the brand new, solar-powered radio and TV station that broad-casts Communist Party propaganda.

Perhaps the oddest of all is the Tibet Stocks Business Centrere. A satellite dish on the roof feeds speculators the latest fluctuations in prices on China's two stock exchanges, in Shenzhen and Shang-hai. The Tibet Investment & Trust Corp. set up the centre. According to president Chen Ciduan, business is booming. The trading centre now has 4,000 registered share buyers - compared with 100 when it opened two years ago. According to Chen the centre has been instrumental in the listing on the stock exchange in Shang-hai of two companies fromTibet, Tibet Shendi Corp. and the travel agent Tibet Pearl Co.

Such developments leave many Tibet-ans bemused. "I don't understand where all these Chinese get their money from. There is no way we can compete with them," says a tour guide'. Many Tibetan inhabitants of Lhasa seem to have resigned themselves to the fact that they are con-demned to permanent unemployment in the Chinese-dominated economy. Groups of listless young Tibetan men playing out-door billiards are a common sight in the streets surrounding the Jokang temple.

Tibetan businessmen concede that the economy has improved . But they say the beneficiaries are largely Chinese migrants. "Very few of the recently opened hotels, restaurants and shops in Lhasa are run by Tibetans." complains a Lhasa trader.

According to the Tibetan government in exile, of the 13,000 shopkeepers in Lhasa only 300 are Tibetans, and business in other cities and towns is similarly domi-nated by ethnic Chinese.

Change is even reaching into the red and white Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama's home and the seat of the Tibetan govern-ment until the Chinese army reached Lhasa in 1951. More rooms in the build-ings painted red (to signify they deal with religious concerns) have been opened to the public and to the approximately 70,000 foreign tourists who visited Tibet last year. The former government offices in the white buildings remain off-limits.

"Recently most of the 62 monks who take care of the religious palace and live in it have been replaced by ordinary cleaners," explains a monk in the palace. "Also 68 Tibetan tourist guides who had been to India just had their licences revoked to work as tour guides." Now, only guides trained in China are allowed to show tour-ists around.

"The authorities don't care if they can properly express themselves in English or if they have any knowl-edge about Tibet, as long as their political views are correct," explains a guide. The dismissal of the 68 tour guides is confirmed by Robbie Barnett of the Ti-bet Information Network.

Some monasteries around Lhasa destroyed in the Cultural Revolution have been partially rebuilt. The Drepung monastery on the outskirts of Lhasa was once the largest in Tibet, housing about 10,000 monks. Now it has only around 700. Most of the town-size monastery built at the foot of a moun-tain still lies in rains.

The Chinese authorities have also stepped up their pressure on the monks.

The latest crackdown started a few months ago, when China signalled a dramatic tightening of its control over Tibet, saying religion would have to bow to communism.

Ominously, the official Tibetan Daily called for 'large-scale" changes to exist-ing policies. "Religion exerts too powerful an influence in the Himalayan region," an article in the newspaper argued. 'Without large-scale reform and readjustment it will he impossible for religion to conform to the new socialist system in China. More money is spent on monasteries than on Communist party buildings."