Tibet: China's little
treasure By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - China has intensified its
long-term quest to integrate the remote land and
people of Tibet by building new infrastructure and
drawing up plans to tap the Himalayan region's
virgin water sources and its rich reserves of
copper, gold and hydrocarbons.
Chinese
communist leaders insist their intentions are to
make Tibet part of the country's economic miracle
by expanding trade and tourism, and creating
wealth in the backward region that many Westerners
see as the last refuge of spiritualism.
But detractors say Beijing sees Tibet as
the new "El Dorado" for
energy-starved and
resources-limited China. Some 40% of China's
natural resources are located in Tibet, whose
Chinese name, Xizang translates as "Western
Depository".
International activists and
Tibetans-in-exile have warned that the new wave of
Chinese investment in the region would be
detrimental to Tibetan culture and autonomy. They
say the new infrastructure would lead to further
militarization of the Tibetan plateau as China,
which occupied the region in 1951, would be able
to move troops and supplies more rapidly and
maintain a more effective garrison there.
While they welcome the breaking of the
physical isolation that has surrounded the region
for centuries, many worry that non-Tibetans will
be the biggest benefactors of China's latest
assertion of control over this disputed land.
"It is wrong to say that Tibetans are
opposed to development - the question that needs
to be asked is development for whom?" Yudon
Aukatsang, an elected deputy in the Tibetan
government-in-exile located in India told Inter
Press Service (IPS)correspondent Ranjit Devraj
during an interview on Friday. "We also need to
define development better," she added.
Economic migration of China's Han
majority, which now controls most of the tourist
industry as well as trade between Tibet and the
rest of China, markedly intensified after Beijing
built the first highway linking the province of
Qinghai with Tibet in the 1950s.
"The
exploitation of natural resources and the influx
of Han population into Tibet through the highway
were bad enough, but these are certain to multiply
with the new railway," Aukatsang said. This
summer, China opened the world's highest railway
linking the garrison town of Golmud in Qinghai and
Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.
Built at a
cost of about US$4.2 billion, the railway is 1,140
kilometers long and runs over severe terrain with
unstable permafrost at extreme altitude, which
makes it one of the most difficult railways ever
built in the world.
At the opening
ceremony, Chinese President Hu Jintao hailed the
project as a "miracle" that proved the Chinese
were "among the advanced peoples of the world".
Apart from the symbolic importance of the
new railway as a projection of national prestige,
the line provides faster, cheaper and more
comfortable access to landlocked Tibet. The train
ride from Beijing to Lhasa (via Golmud) now takes
only 48 hours and is less expensive than a flight.
''Strategically important to Tibet's
development, this railway is an infrastructure
project for public welfare rather than for
commercial purposes," Sun Yongfu, vice minister of
railways, said before the inauguration of the line
on July 1.
Although the Chinese government
touts the railway as a successful development
project, it has clear economic goals - to
stimulate trade between Tibet and the rest of the
country and allow for more tourists to visit this
remote mountain-bound region.
The
government expects Tibet's tourism revenue to
exceed 5 billion yuan ($700 million) per year by
2010, with the number of annual visitors rising
sharply from 1.8 million in 2005 to some 10
million by 2020.
Already, in anticipation
of rising tourist numbers, the daily entry quota
into the Potala, the winter palace of the Dalai
Lama in Lhasa, has been raised from 1,500 to
2,300.
"Our guidebook to Tibet is a
best-seller," Yi Xiaoqiang, an official with the
China Youth Press, says of the stylishly presented
Zangdi Niupishu, or Ox-hide book of
Tibetan lands. "It has sold more than 100,000
copies since its release - a real record for a
guide book."
Just a month after launching
the new line this summer, the Chinese government
announced it would extend its run from Lhasa, to
Xigaze, the region's second-largest city and the
traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, one of
Tibetan Buddhism's venerated spiritual leaders.
Work on the Xigaze line in southern Tibet would
begin next year and take three years to complete,
the official Xinhua news agency reported.
This year, Chinese leaders are also
planning to start building 21 highway projects and
nine other major roads in Tibet, while upgrading
the highway to Nepal.
In July, an ancient
trade route across the 14,200-foot high Nathu La
Pass leading into the Indian state of Sikkim, that
had been closed since the 1962 Sino-Indian border
war, was dramatically reopened for commercial
activity.
The infrastructure building
forms the centerpiece of China's "western
development plan", which Communist Party leaders
say is designed to usher Tibet into an era of
modernity and prosperity, now enjoyed in the
booming Chinese provinces in the east.
"In
reality, it is a political project and the railway
marks the culmination of Mao Zedong's dream to
irreversibly absorb Tibet into China," says Matt
Whitticase, spokesman for the Free Tibet Campaign
in London. "It will facilitate the migration of
Han Chinese colonists into Tibet, ensuring the
further diminution of Tibetan culture and identity
within Tibet."
Most of the construction
companies benefiting from the railway are from
eastern China, and the same is true for mining
companies now hoping to use the railway to
facilitate their operations in the region.
Once in place, the infrastructure network
will speed up the exploitation of the Tibetan
plateau's rich deposits of gold, copper, zinc,
coal and other resources. Copper is regarded as
particularly valuable as it is an essential
component in the generation and transmission of
electricity.
China has also invited
transnational oil giants such as BP and Shell to
explore for oil and gas equivalents after
realizing that its own companies lacked the
expertise to drill in a region known for its
complex geology.
The Free Tibet Campaign,
which fights for China's complete withdrawal from
Tibet, has mounted a vigorous opposition to
Western oil and mining companies helping China to
extract local resources because it says Tibetans
are routinely denied participation in the key
decision-making surrounding such projects.
"Tibetans are unable to exercise their
economic rights to determine how their resources
are utilized," Whitticase said. "They live in an
atmosphere of fear and intimidation where
opposition to an unsuitable project such as
hydrocarbon extraction would have dire
consequences."
Perhaps one of the most
controversial Chinese plans to tap Tibetan
resources to date is Beijing's new water scheme,
called the "the big Western Line".
Encouraged by the success of its civil
engineering triumph with the Golmud-Lhasa railway,
Chinese planners have come up with an even more
audacious scheme to build a series of aqueducts,
tunnels and reservoirs that would carry water from
Tibet to the parched plains of northern China.
The partly underground 300 kilometer
western line could eventually supply up to eight
billion cubic meters of water a year from the
Jinsha and other rivers in the Tibetan region,
according to Li Guoying, head of the Yellow River
Conservancy Commission. The water would also be
used to feed the Yellow River's upper reaches to
accommodate rising industrial demand, Li told the
media recently.
Still, the project remains
so controversial that no starting date has been
announced.
