Tibetans left out of boom 40 years on

Tibetans left out of boom 40 years on

Lindsay Beck, Reuters/Lhasa, China

Tibet's capital is booming, but for Gucang Dunzhu, it doesn't
much matter.

The Lhasa local government boasts 12 percent growth rates for
the past four years, driven by massive investment from Beijing
aimed at jumpstarting the largely agrarian economy.

But when he left his village in Tibet's mountainous hinterland
and came to the city 11 years ago, Gucang Dunzhu spoke only
Tibetan and knew no life beyond that of a herdsman, leaving him
few skills to capitalize on the boom.

"It's not easy to find work," said the 29-year-old, who
eventually found a job in a cement factory.

As China celebrated the anniversary on Sept. 1, of Tibet's
becoming an "autonomous region" of the People's Republic in 1965,
it aimed to showcase its national integration.

But analysts say that, 40 years on, society is more fractured
than ever, with Tibetans becoming an underclass lacking the
skills to participate in Beijing-driven industrialization.

Tibet has been ruled by China since the People's Liberation
Army invaded the Himalayan territory in 1950. Nine years later,
Tibet's god-king, the Dalai Lama, fled on horseback after a
failed uprising against Chinese rule.

The vast, sparsely populated region known as "the roof of the
world" was designated the Tibetan Autonomous Region in 1965, a
gesture Beijing made to other areas with large ethnic minority
populations too to give them more say over their own affairs.

At the same time, Beijing encouraged Han Chinese migration,
both to underscore its claim to Tibet and in hopes that wealth
generated by entrepreneurial migrants would trickle down.

Instead of wealth building harmony, though, analysts say it is
contributing to a rich-poor gap that falls along ethnic lines.

"The government expansion is being driven by Beijing; it's not
being driven locally. And that's creating a very polarized
economy," said Andrew Fischer, a development economist at the
London School of Economics and Political Science.

Golden yaks

In the center of Lhasa, two giant golden yaks grace a
roundabout, a gift from Beijing to celebrate the 40th anniversary
of Tibet's "peaceful liberation" and a reminder that for
centuries herding yaks and farming have been central to Tibetans'
way of life.

But for this anniversary, analysts say, it's not yaks or
monuments that Tibet needs, but schools.

Only about 13 percent of Tibetans have secondary school
education or above, Fischer said, compared with 50 percent of Han
Chinese. Forty percent of Tibetans are illiterate.

That translates into a yawning income gap exacerbating the
ethnic divide.

"The difference in income is there, but that's because they
(Chinese and Tibetans) are engaged in different industries," said
Xu Jianchang, of Tibet's Development and Reform Commission.

He acknowledged that education programs that might allow
Tibetans to move off the farm and into industries were in their
infancy.

"Right now the scale is very small," Xu said, adding that
about 15 million yuan (US$1.85 million) per year was being
allocated for training -- less than $1 for each of Tibet's
roughly 2.7 million people.

Just kilometers away from his office, a gleaming white bridge
spans the Lhasa river, its three arches designed to invoke the
drape of a prayer shawl in a nod to deeply Buddhist Tibetans.

The bridge will carry trains from China's northwestern
province of Qinghai over 1,100 kilometers into Lhasa in a massive
infrastructure project that railway engineer Wang Weigao says
will cost more than $4 billion. The government says it will bring
prosperity to the remote region when it opens in 2007.

Railroad to wealth

"If we finish the construction of the railway, we can realize
large-scale development by groups and enterprises," Xu said.
"We can bring them to other parts of China and the farmers can
get incomes from that."

But with Xu listing yaks and pigs as among products waiting
for access to an export market, Tibetans are understandably wary
about whether the railway will mean greater prosperity or simply
a greater divide.

"Of course it will bring changes. But even we don't know what
kind," said Gucang Dunzhu's 19-year-old relative, who lives with
him and his wife in their two-room house looking after their
schoolboy son.

Near their house, construction workers are tarring a brand new
highway from the airport into Lhasa, set to open in time to whisk
dignitaries into the city for the anniversary celebrations.

"They make a great symbolic show of these dates," said Tsering
Shakya, a Tibet scholar at Oxford University.

"What they're trying to show is the great accomplishments and
national goals of integrating Tibet with the rest of China but at
another level it shows Tibet was different and still continues to
be different from the rest of China," he said.

With 70 percent of Tibet's labor force working in agriculture
and rural wages stagnant, that difference is only likely to grow.
"It's all farming and herding," Gucang Dunzhu said of village
life.

He looks blank when asked about salaries there compared with
the city.

"There is no real income," he said. "We eat what we grow."

REUTERS

GetRTR 3.00 -- AUG 30, 2005 08:26:39