Published by: World Tibet Network News Monday - July 14, 1997

Dow Jones

Date: 14 Jul 1997

By Marcus W. Brauchli

Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

LHASA, China -- On summer evenings, Chinese traders still gather as they have for generations in the teahouse courtyards of this remote Tibetan capital.

Their pastimes are traditional -- playing mahjong, fishing in carp-stocked ponds or simply sipping green tea. But their numbers these days are hardly traditional: By the thousands, Chinese now crowd teahouses or, more often, the profusion of neon-lit karaoke bars and smoky nightclubs that accommodate newcomers.

The influx is overwhelming Tibet, melding its serene Buddhist culture into China's pell-mell present. A decade ago, yak-pulled carts trundled down cobblestone alleyways; today, honking taxis and diesel trucks clog Beijing Road. Brown blossoms of dust in the sapphire sky mark the building sites noisily under construction by hard-hatted Chinese. Hopeful investors loiter outside a securities firm satellite-linked to Shanghai's stock exchange, 1,800 miles to the east.

With speed and resolve, China is exporting its economic boom to its most distant outpost. But channeling cash and commerce into this South Africa-size region isn't an act of Chinese charity. Rather, Beijing is attempting to accomplish with wealth what force failed to do: undermine the independence movement and integrate long-rebellious Tibet and its 2.3 million people.

How well the new strategy works is important because Tibet has become one of China's great vulnerabilities. When the U.S. Congress weighs whether to support China's continued access to the American market, Beijing's handling of Tibet invariably attracts attention. European Union countries regularly invite the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, to make a case for pressure on China. Even Hollywood's image-making machine is on board: Not only are actors such as Richard Gere and Harrison Ford big backers of the Dalai Lama, but two mainstream movies about Tibet are in production.

The early verdict on China's new strategy is mixed. The fast economic integration into China is cultural genocide and has "de-Shangrilized" Tibet, contends the Dalai Lama's information and foreign secretary, Tempa Tsering. And that can seem true: Handbills for sexually-transmitted-disease clinics plaster lampposts under the cliff-like walls of the Potala, the soaring Buddhist bulwark that dominates Lhasa.

Yet here -- where ethnic Han Chinese generally mix peacefully with ethnic Tibetans -- views are often less harsh.

"Of course, there is a cost to rapid economic development and a threat of uprooting Tibetan culture," says Tashi Tsering, an exuberant, 67-year-old academic who once lived in the U.S. and has returned to set up primary schools in rural Tibet. "But we must be pragmatic and take advantage of the opportunities."

Once heretical, such pragmatism is increasingly common among educated Tibetans, including former exiles returning to run businesses or charities. A "Free Tibet" campaign thrives abroad, but for many people here it has been replaced by a "Preserve Tibet" movement that accepts Chinese sovereignty and seeks to ensure that Tibetan language, culture and the fragile environment aren't destroyed. Already, many old monasteries have been wrecked, vast forests have been logged, and mining has polluted lakes. Yet in China's neighboring provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan, where as many as four million ethnic Tibetans live in areas once part of Tibet, ethnic Tibetans clamor for development, too; some move to booming Lhasa.

Beijing May Have Bought Itself Some

So, Beijing may have bought itself at least some relief from its Tibet headaches. Long after the People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet in 1950 and incorporated it into Communist-run China, relations between Beijing and its new Tibetan citizens were unhappy at best, bloody at worst. Since the Dalai Lama fled in 1959, Tibetans have waged sporadic armed insurrection, staged riots and protests or refused to cooperate with the Chinese administration. Stiffened by a belief in reincarnation, thousands of Tibetans -- many of them monks and nuns -- died, and thousands more were jailed. For Beijing, Tibet provided festering evidence that coercion doesn't always work.

Economic incentives, by contrast, produced striking results elsewhere in China, with entrepreneurship eclipsing dissent. The upshot: At a July 1994 conference on Tibet, the third since 1950, China's leaders quietly launched the new approach. They didn't abandon the stick -- human-rights groups report a subsequent surge in arrests and brutality -- but Beijing now dangles a fat carrot, too.

In both 1995 and 1996, Tibet's economy grew more than 10%, faster last year than China's did. Yet without $460 million of grants from Beijing last year -- equivalent to more than two-thirds of Tibet's economic output -- the region would sink into dire poverty. The money goes mainly to infrastructure projects, and isn't unwelcome. Even a Tiananmen Square replica built across from the Potala draws little criticism; it is used as a marketplace.

"Tibet has embarked on the market economy that China has embraced, and it will not turn back," says Mao Xiaomao, a Han responsible for Tibet's economic planning. Although worried that government subsidies could become addictive, he predicts that Tibet will be weaned off them within 20 years. Without them, "the economy would be faced with a terrible challenge," Mr. Mao says.

The government's new strategy calls for creation of "pillar industries" --

mining, forestry, light industry, construction materials and tourism. The

economic logic: Tibet is rich in chromium, lithium, borax and gold, as well as in forests. "Our aim is to optimize China's resources," Mr. Mao says. But a political logic is at work, too: Tibet is to be forced into China's mainstream.

The new industries could require relocating and retraining large numbers of

Tibetans now living solitary lives in mountain valleys and on high, grassy plateaus; many are shepherds or sustenance farmers. The government says nobody will be forced to move. However, many of the best jobs -- offering, thanks to subsidies, double or more the pay available elsewhere in China -- are open only to people literate in Chinese. To older Tibetans' alarm, many young Tibetans are relinquishing their language in favor of Chinese.

"To be a government worker or a factory worker, anything connected to government funding, [the] Tibetan language isn't outlawed but becomes ostracized," a concerned Tibetan official says. "China becomes so important to careers, to incomes. This tendency exists at every level and threatens our culture."

Tashi Tsering, the academic, is one of the Tibetans finding ways to preserve the culture. He has written a trilingual Tibetan-Chinese-English dictionary and has just finished a book documenting his lifelong efforts to guard Tibet's heritage.

Ambitious Ones Find They Must Learn Chinese

From a cozy apartment beside the Johkang, a 1,200-year-old Buddhist temple, Mr. Tsering sells handmade carpets to supplement what he spends building primary schools. His project, which has brought 30 new schools to his native county, ensures the education of rural children among the county's 70,000 people. So far, 2,600 children have been enrolled.

"I'm telling young Tibetans: `First you must learn Tibetan because you are Tibetan and it is your mother language,'" Mr. Tsering says. "Even if Tibetan is not feeding you, you have to learn it. It is your culture."

But the ambitious ones find they must learn Chinese; right now, only 62% of the students in Tibet's four universities are Tibetan. Professing concern, the government requires Tibetan children to learn Chinese in primary school, puts students in specialized professional schools and educates about 4,000 Tibetans a year elsewhere in China.

Tibetan students, though, say more than Chinese language holds them back. Some complain Han Chinese are favored and say Tibetans, with their traditional garb, taste for salted yak-butter tea and rugged background, are shunned by Han teachers. Han Chinese "can use the back door to get in," says a Tibetan university student, using slang for bribery and connections. "Then they get the best jobs."

The government admits that disproportionate numbers of civil servants, including Tibet's powerful Communist Party secretary, are Han Chinese. At companies, too, the numbers are skewed: Jinzhu Group, a private trading and natural-resources spinoff of the government's export-import agency, says only 60% of its 400 employees are Tibetan.

Tibetans worry that unless they compete for such jobs, they will lose control over their society. Already, the number of mainland Chinese who have moved to Tibet's two biggest cities nearly equals the native Tibetans there; by the cities' own estimates, 100,000 ethnic Han are in Lhasa, compared with a Tibetan population of about 140,000, and 30,000 or so are in Shigatse, equal to the native Tibetans. The number outside the cities is smaller but is growing in places where new industries are springing up. In addition, 50,000 Chinese military people are here, by Western estimates. Such numbers belie Beijing's frequent claims that only a tiny fraction of Tibet's population is Han.

Officials call the surging Chinese presence a natural part of integration with China. "Places like Sichuan province have much larger populations, and relatively speaking it's harder for people to find opportunities there," says Wang Yingcai, a 42-year-old Han in the Tibet Autonomous Region's government. "Of course, they will find more opportunities here."

For many Chinese, Tibet is a frontier of opportunity and freedom. They aren't required to register with the authorities, and the flood of government money helps them prosper. Many soldiers, after leaving the People's Liberation Army, return to Tibet to set up businesses.

Commerce in Tibet's towns centers in Chinese neighborhoods. Zhao Shuyun, a

31-year-old woman from Shanxi in central China, was the last of her five brothers and sisters to come to Tibet and open a sundries store here. The family now controls almost an entire city block with side-by-side stores selling everything from dried oysters to Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, Ms. Zhao says. Just down the street, under a Chinese sign that says "Night in Shanghai," three slender, heavily made-up women from Sichuan province run a hostess bar. "I think I can make more money here," says one of them, Jing Rong, a 28-year-old former hairdresser who came to Tibet a year ago. "Besides, there's no work in Sichuan."

Government Doesn't Trust Monks

Even Tibet's venerated monasteries are feeling commercial pressures. On one hand, they are encouraged to solicit tourists and to charge them for tours. On the other hand, the number of monks is still regulated, "to promote the development of the economy," says Tibet's religious-affairs director, Tu Deng.

The gulf between Tibetan culture and the market's demanding ways is wide and dangerous. Before China invaded in 1950, the area now known as Tibet had at least 2,000 major monasteries with at least 110,000 monks, by Beijing's own estimate. Today, it has only 1,700 monasteries with about 64,000 monks. Mr. Tu says the government has spent $36 million on monastery construction since 1980, only a fraction of its spending on infrastructure.

The problem is that the government doesn't trust monks, who dominated pre-Chinese Tibet. Mr. Tu angrily blames monks and nuns, who revere the Dalai Lama, for much of the past unrest. In the Potala, rooms open to tourists are monitored by sophisticated eavesdropping and surveillance equipment. Last year, Mr. Tu and his colleagues banned Dalai Lama pictures in monasteries, a move that led to violence in some places. "They can remove the pictures from our monasteries," one monk says, "but not from our heart."

Chinese officials all but admit hoping that by smothering Tibet with money, they can smother such emotions. Says Mr. Wang, the economic planner: "Only growth brings stability."