Tibet: Development for Whom? by Barry Sautman and Irene Eng

[AGATHA]

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DOI: 10.1177/0920203X0101500202
China Information 2001; 15; 20
Barry Sautman and Irene Eng
Tibet: Development for Whom?
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20
TIBET:
DEVELOPMENT FOR WHOM?
BARRY SAUTMAN AND IRENE ENG*
Barry Sautman is a political scientist and lawyer in the Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China. Irene Eng, formerly associated with the Division, is an economic geographer and writer.The Tibetan 6migr6 administration headquartered in Dharamsala (India) and Chinese leaders have fiercely debated the question of who benefits from development in Tibet. While some officials on both sides may have more nuanced views, the &dquo;govemment-in-exile&dquo; represents Tibetans as exploited colonial subjects,’ while the PRC portrays them as content recipients of modernization.’ The 6migr6 administration and most of its Western supporters find no strengths to offset the weaknesses of the development process in Tibet. They appraise its benefits in terms of a binary of &dquo;the Tibetans&dquo; and &dquo;the Chinese&dquo; and contend that Tibetans are mired in poverty that would not exist in a free Tibet, because development solely serves state interests: roads are built only to facilitate military deployment and extract Tibet’s resources; schools exist only to inculcate loyalty to China. The Tibetan Youth Congress, the main pro-independence emigre organization, has written that &dquo;the main beneficiaries of Tibet’s invigorated economy are Chinese settlers and China’s central government exchequer.&dquo;3 Some 6migr6s also argue, however, that lack of development, such as the scarcity of schools, is a PRC policy to eradicate Tibetan identity.4 Development allegedly
includes population transfer that is causing Tibetans to disappear in a sea of Han Chinese and is displacing them from traditional occupations and &dquo;cultural genocide&dquo; that forces Tibetans to eschew their customs and spirituality for materialistic Chinese lifestyles and mindsets.6 A former US Special Coordinator

1 Tibet Government in Exile (hereafter TGIE), China’s Tibet: The World’s Largest Remaining Colony, http://www.tibet.com/humanrights/Unpo/index. 1998
2Tibet Information Network (hereafter TIN), A Turning Point in Tibet’s History: The 17-Point Agreement (London: TIN Special Report 313, 2001).
3 Tibetan Youth Congress (hereafter TYC), Development for Whom? A Report on the Chinese Development Strategies in Tibet and Their Impacts (Dharamsala: TYC, 1995), 9.
4 "Culture Clash over Teaching Tibet," Christian Science Monitor, 24 September 1999, 8.
5 Tibet Support Group UK (hereafter TSG), New Majority: Chinese Population Transfer
into Tibet (London: Tibet Support Group UK, 1995).
6 Lodi Gyari, "Statement of Lodi Gyari, Special Envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Washington, D.C.," in U.S. and Chinese Policies toward Occupied Tibet, ed. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (hereafter SFRC) (1992), 102-969, 24-25; Yeshi Choedon, "China’s National Minorities Policy with Special Reference to Tibet," in Ethnicity and Politics in Central Asia, ed. K. Warikoo and Dawa Norbu (New Delhi: South Asian Downloaded from http://cin.sagepub.com at HKUST Library on November 10, 2008

21
for Tibet and the current US Secretary of State have charged that migration and
development threaten traditional Tibetan culture and that only the Han in Tibet
are allowed to participate in development.’ 7
PRC officials concede that in Tibet &dquo;the economy is backward, the
starting point is low, the foundation is weak, and the task of modernization is
extremely heavy,&dquo; but argue that &dquo;historical and geographic reasons&dquo;-a remote
location, difficult terrain and climate, and cultural &dquo;backwardness&dquo; explain most
of Tibet’s problems. They hold that Tibetans in general benefit from state-led
development and attribute Tibet GDP growth rates that now exceed PRC averages
to state subsidization of Tibet’s budget and aid from other localities. Officials
are adamant that most Han are in Tibet temporarily and provide services
that would otherwise not be avallable.8
While there is no consensus on what constitutes development, it is
conventionally defined for developing countries as a process of economic and
social betterment.9 Alternative conceptions do exist, especially for Tibetan
societies,’° but both 6migr6 and PRC leaders understand development conventionally,
as industrialization, increased purchasing power, etc. We argue that
development in Tibet accords with neither the dystopian emigre vision nor the
PRC’s undifferentiating claims of progress. The notion that development in
Tibet overwhelmingly benefits the state or the Han is challenged, but not to
advance the non-testable proposition that Chinese rule has been good for
Tibetans, compared to how well-off Tibetans might be were they not within
China. We instead contend that an extreme form of &dquo;urban bias&dquo; skews development
in Tibet, stratifying society across the ethnic divide and disparately benefiting
the Han population mainly because it is urban. There are no available
Publishers, 1992), 187-203; Dalai Lama, "I Am Optimistic, the Dalai Lama Speaks
(sic)," Tibetan Bulletin 2, No. 1 (January-February 1998): 30-32.
SFRC, Hearing on "Recent Developments in Tibet," 13 June 2000, Federal News
Service; "Senate Foreign Relations Committee Questions Secretary of State Designee
Colin Powell," Cable News Network, 17 January 2001.
8 "Chance of Western Development Not to Be Missed," Renmin ribao (hereafter RMRB),
27 March 2000, British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts (hereafter
BBC/SWB) 17 April 2000; "Tibet Officials Assess Regional Three Stresses
Programme," Xizang ribao (hereafter XZRB), 27 July 1999, in BBC/SWB, 3 September
1999; Yang Chuantang, "Tibet’s Today and Tomorrow: Interview with Tibet Autonomous
Region Vice-Chairman Yang Chuantang," Beijing Review (hereafter BR), 27 July
1998, 11-14; Zhong Xuan, "Survey Reveals Better Life in Tibet," BR, 2 September 1996,
12-15.
9 Kofi Hadjor, Dictionary of Third World Terms (London: I. B. Tauris, 1992), 100; Brian
Welsh and Pavel Butorin, Dictionary of Development: Third World Economy, Environment,
Society, Vol. A-1 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990), 310.
’° Ted Trainer, "What Does Development Mean? A Rejection of the Unidimensional
Conception," International Journal of Sociology & Social Policy 20, nos. 5-6 (2000):
95-113.
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22
statistics on ethnic income disparities in Tibet; indeed, no income questions were
asked for the 2000 census anywhere in China. Based on our own observations in
Tibet and on the pattern of relative degrees of inter-urban and urban-rural disparities
found throughout China, we deem it likely that the differences between
urban Han and urban Tibetans are substantially less than the difference between
urban and rural Tibetans, let alone the difference between the whole urban population
and the whole rural population.
We assess development in Tibet’s agriculture, industry, infrastructure
and services and find that Tibet has moved from quasi-stagnation before 1959 to
a plateau of rapid dependent growth today, while great obstacles to development
remain. State statistics, as well as observations from five research trips to Tibet
from 1995-2000, are used because they are perforce the only statistics available
for Tibet as a region, the unit of analysis of the discourse of Tibet. China’s state
statistical system is problematic, but we note with Rawski the international acceptance
of official Chinese data and that China at the outset of the reform
period had a system of &dquo;reasonably accurate quantitative information.&dquo; &dquo; Tibet’s
economy still resembles that of the China at the outset of the reform: in 1999,
91.1 % of staff and workers in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) were employed
by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) (93.7% in 1978) and 6.2% worked in
urban collective-owned units (6.3% in 1978).’2
We have seen no evidence that official data is more inaccurate with
regard to Tibet than other parts of China or the country as a whole. TAR statistics
can mislead in ways that statistics do elsewhere: for example the claim that
there were 480,000 TAR poor in 1994 and 70,000 in 2001 is otiose because the
standard for poverty-a per capita income of less than Y600 per year among
peasants or Y700 among herders-has been employed since 1990 without adjustment
for inflation.&dquo; A comparable sleight of hand takes place, incidentally,
with the US &dquo;poverty line,&dquo; which is based on a multiplier of a family’s food
budget of less than $4 a person per day and does not take into account the costs
of housing, child care or transportation.’4
The argument that PRC statistics on Tibet are fabrications is however
another matter. It is usually based on the incredibility of a supposed PRC claim
that only 100,000 non-Tibetans live in the TAR. The PRC has in fact stated that
at the 2000 census, non-Tibetans were 7.8% of a TAR population of 2.61
million; of the 205,200 TAR non-Tibetans, 155,300 were Han. Only non-
11 Thomas Rawski, "China by the Numbers: How Reform Has Affected China’s Economic
Statistics," China Perspectives, no. 33 (2001): 25-34.
1 2 Xizang tongji nianjian 2000 (Tibet statistical yearbook 2000; hereafter XZTJNJ) (Beijing
: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2000), 46.
1 3 "Despite Progress, Illiteracy Not Written off," South China Morning Post (hereafter
SCMP), 16 August 2001, 8.
1 4 Laura Russell and Jean Bacon, The Self-Sufficiency Standard: Where Massachusetts
Families Stand (Boston: Women’s Educational & Industrial Union, 2000).
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23
Tibetans who had resided in the TAR for six months or more were counted in
this number. 15 This practice accords with the international de jure approach to
censuses, which requires that people must have a residential minimum in a given
area to be counted as &dquo;belonging&dquo; to it.’6In the Hong Kong 2001 census, for
example, residents were those who had already lived there for the last three
months or more and intended to live there for the next six months or more.
Soldiers in Tibet, as elsewhere in China, were also excluded from provincial
counts, not illogically given the US experience of serious overcounts of military
personnel included in state-level statistics.&dquo;
Many Tibet-related official statistics do not in fact flatter the Chinese
state; e.g. the acknowledgement that rural Tibetans’ income is only half that of
PRC peasants as a whole. The statistics most subject to the &dquo;wind of falsification
and embellishment&dquo; (jiabao fukuafeng) in China proper-industrial output of
township and village enterprises (TVEs) and tax collection-are less relevant to
Tibet than to other areas. Tibet has proportionately fewer such enterprises than
other parts of China&dquo; and, in contrast to China proper, virtually no direct taxes
are collected in rural Tibet.’9 According to Tibetan cadres we have interviewed,
officials in Tibet, as in the rest of China, often report higher production achievements
in order to show their own merit, but an over-reporting of as much as ten
percent would be considered unusual enough to be noted, an inflation of reality
not at all out of the ordinary in China as a whole. 20
We examine the differential impact of growth on ethnic groups and the
urban/rural gap, with a focus on the new urban Tibetan middle class, whose
prosperity journalists have colorfully described2’ and whom one of us has
studied through interviews, surveys and other methods in a related research project.
We find that development has not been as encompassing as the PRC claims.
A rising tide of development has lifted most boats, but unevenly: urban people
benefit much more than the rural majority and peasant opportunities are circumscribed
not only by geography, but also by competition from non-Tibetans for
1 5 Xinhua, 30 March 2001; "Chinese Officials Prepare 2000 Census of World’s Most
Populous Nation," Agence France Presse, 13 October 2000.
1 6 John Week, Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, 6th ed. (Belmont:
Wadsworth Publishing, 1996), 18.
1 7 Mary Kent, "First Glimpses from the 2000 Census," Population Bulletin 56, no. 2
(2001): 3-39.
1 8 "New Party Secretary Orders Cadres to Fight Separatism," XZRB, 18 October 2000, 1,
in BBC/SWB, 27 October 2000; Xinhua, 23 July 2001.
1 9 "Officials Prey on China’s Peasants," Baltimore Sun, 12 February 2001, 1; Xinhua, 5
March 1999; "Tibetan Official on Tax Reform," XZRB, 7 February 1994, 3, in
BBC/SWB, 7 March 1994.
2 0 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
2 1 Elisabeth Grinspoon, "Chinese Are Reweaving the Region’s Social Fabric," Los
Angeles Times, 14 June 1994, 6; "High Stakes," Far Eastern Economic Review, 22 June
1995, 76-78; "In Tibet a Struggle for the Soul," Washington Post, 16 July 1999, 1.
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24
urban employment. Development is not however the ethnically exclusive extirpator
of all things Tibetan that elegiac 6migr6 polemics claim. Tibetans have
benefited from industrialization, a steady rise in education levels, and improvements
in health, communications and transportation. We concur with Erickson, a
Tibet independence advocate who nevertheless acknowledges that Tibet’s main
social divide is urban/rural and that its society
is not an apartheid of wealthy Chinese set above the masses of Tibetans.
Nor is it as stratified as the old system. Today it has a large
middle class, and the material lives of most have improved since [the]
market reforms. 22
Development has recast stratification in Tibet and benefits most those who,
regardless of their ethnicity, access state resources transferred to the region,
mainly urban cadres, better-off businesspeople and the intelligentsia. Such
people, directly or indirectly, chi huang liang (eat the Emperor’s grain). In
Tibet’s cities, for example, some three-fourths of the &dquo;permanent&dquo; population,
whether Tibetan or non-Tibetan, are on the state payroll . 21 Other inhabitants of
Tibet, including urban plebeians of all ethnic groups, but especially peasants and
nomads, benefit much less. That development is neither for &dquo;the Chinese&dquo; nor
for &dquo;the Tibetans&dquo; confounds confident predictions that it will ameliorate conflict
in Tibet, as the PRC maintains, or aggravate it, as the emigres expect.
The Urban Bias Thesis in PRC Perspective
Urban bias concepts date back to the classical political economists, Adam Smith,
David Ricardo, and Karl Marx.24 The latter stated in 1867:
The foundation of every division of labor that is well developed and
brought about by the exchange of commodities is the separation
between town and country. It may be said that the whole economic
history of society is summed up in the movement of this antithesis.
The concept enjoyed a recrudescence from the 1960s until structural adjustment
began in developing countries in the mid-1980s. Lipton, theorizing urban bias
from an interest group perspective, described it as unbalanced or distorted development
that creates an opposition of interests between &dquo;urban classes&dquo; and &dquo;rural
2 2 Barbara Erickson, Tibet: Abode of the Gods, Pearl of the Motherland (Berkeley:
Pacific View Press, 1997), 52.
2 3 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
2 4 Mick Moore, "Political Economy and the Rural-Urban Divide: 1767-1981," Journal
of Development Studies 20, No. 3 (1984): 5-27.
2 5 Karl Marx, Capital. Vol. 1 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1965 (1867)), 352.
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25
classes.&dquo;26 Viewing it as &dquo;defined upon outcomes, not causes or processes&dquo; and
only as to some outcomes and circumstances,27 he nevertheless described a
process and implied causes of urban bias. An urban coalition of employers,
bureaucrats and other elites, as well as formal sector labor, influences policy
against agriculture through protectionism and import substitution that raise the
cost of inputs into rural production above what would prevail at international
prices. Rural elites secure their aims by joining with urban power-groups. Urbanrural
price distortions produce greater increases in the prices of manufactured
goods than of agricultural goods. The coalition also pressures the state to underallocate
infrastructure and social welfare to rural areas in order to invest resources
in urban areas without recovering costs from the beneficiaries. The state
compounds bias by &dquo;augmenting public employment and public directly productive
investment in cities to a degree not justified by any conceivable efficiency
criteria.’,28 This draws migrants to the possibility of stable urban employment.
Rural-to-urban migration produces an urban informal sector whose
members are shut out of most benefits of urban bias garnered by the formal
sector, a dichotomy more rigid in China than elsewhere. 21 In some countries,
including China, the state has used direct price controls to hold down agricultural
prices in order to promote industry and reduce urban costs of living. In China,
the rapid development and maintenance of capital-intensive, loss-making heavy
industry, controlled rural-to-urban migration, coerced grain production, unequal
exchange of agricultural and industrial products at state-imposed prices, excessive
rural taxes and a privileging of urban residents in pensions, food subsidies,
housing, educational and health benefits have all been present. 30 There
was however a period of &dquo;rural bias&dquo; in the Cultural Revolution decade (1966--
2 6 Michael Lipton, Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias in World Development
(London: Temple Smith, 1977), 13; Michael Lipton, "Urban Bias Revisited," Journal of
Development Studies 20 (1984): 139-66. See also Robert Bates, "Governments and
Agricultural Markets in Africa," in Toward a Political Economy of Development, ed.
Robert Bates (Berkeley: University of California, 1988), 331-58. 2 7 Michael Lipton, "Urban Bias: Of Consequences, Classes and Causality," in Beyond
Urban Bias, ed. Ashutosh Varshney (London: Frank Cass, 1993), 229-57.
2 8 Charles Becker, Beyond Urban Bias in Africa: Urbanization in an Era of Structural
Adjustment (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1994), 94.
2 9 Dorothy Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State,
and the Logic of the Market (Berkeley: University of California, 1999). 3 0 Peter Nolan and Gordon White, "Urban Bias, Rural Bias, or State Bias?: Urban-Rural
Relations in Post-Revolutionary China," Journal of Development Studies 20, no. 3
(1984): 52-81; Chang, Kyung-Sup, "The Confucian Family instead of the Welfare State?:
Reform and Peasant Welfare in Post-Mao China," Asian Perspective 17, no. 1 (1993):
169-200; Chang Kyung-Sup, "Chinese Urbanization and Development Before and After
Economic Reform: A Comparative Reappraisal," World Development 22, no. 4 (1994):
601-13.
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26
1976), in the form of a diversion of health and educational resources from town
to countryside.31 The contribution of agriculture to accumulation in non-farm
sectors in the Mao era also ended up being negative because of eventual state
subsidization of agricultural inputs and declining labor productivity.32 Controls
over migration and grain production have eased in the post-Mao era, but excessive
taxation now fuels widespread peasant protest.33
Economists have calculated that urban bias in the whole developing
world has resulted in an implicit tax of 22% on agriculture, a price suppression
effect of 8% and a transfer of resources of 46% from agriculture to other
sectors.34 There has also been a decline since the 1970s in agriculture’s share of
developing country (including PRC) central government expenditures. Lipton
argues that urban bias is inefficient because the investment-to-output ratio is
greater in non-agriculture than in agriculture. He also contends that it is not a requisite
of development, as developing states of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries in Europe, North America and Japan showed little of it. Other scholars
aver that urban bias is generic to most industrial revolutions.35 The persistence of
sharp urban bias to the very end of the Soviet Union36 lends weight to the contention
that it is mainly a matter of political choice by state elites, 37 a choice that
reflects the process that determines the distribution of political influence. Policy
decisions reflect the differential power or influence of social groups. The mainly
urban groups that benefit from the development strategy chosen thus must be
strong enough to dominate the mainly rural groups who lose out. 3S
3 1 Nolan and White, "Urban-Rural Relations," 76; Han Dongping, The Unknown Cultural
Revolution: Educational Reforms and Their Impact on China’s Rural Development
(New York: Garland Press, 2000).
3 2 Massoud Karshenas, "Dynamic Economies and the Critique of Urban Bias," Journal
of Peasant Studies 24, no. 4 (1997): 60-102.
3 3 Thomas Bernstein and Lu Xiaobo, "Taxation without Representation: Peasants, the
Central and the Local States in Reform China," China Quarterly, no. 163 (2000): 742-63.
3 4 Maurice Schiff and Alberto Valdes, The Political Economy of Agicultural Pricing
Policy, Vol. 4 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press/World Bank, 1992); Cedric
Pugh, "’Urban Bias,’ the Political Economy of Development and Urban Policies for
Developing Countries," Urban Studies 33, no. 7 (1996): 1045-60.
3 5 Development Planning Unit, The World Bank, Urban Bias and Structural Adjustment,
Working Paper No. 67, University College, London, 1994, 17.
3 6 Stephen Wegren, "The Social Contract Reconsidered: Peasant-State Relations in the
USSR," Soviet Geography 32, no. 10 (1991): 653-82.
3 7 Michael Lipton, "Urban Bias", 229-57; Anne Krueger, The Political Economy of Agricultural
Pricing Policies. Vol. 5 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
3 8 Karl Pedersen, On the Political Economy and Urban Bias in Third World Development,
Discussion Paper 9/93, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration,
Bergen, 1993.
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27
The urban bias thesis is not without its critics.39 Byres has skewered it
for ignoring rural social differentiation in non-Communist developing countries 40
and, while urban bias is politically negotiable, it has economic as well as political
determinants. 41 Contrary to Lipton’s assertion moreover, international factors
do impact urban bias, with strong relationships among urban bias, dependence,
and economic stagnation in non-core countries.42
The urban bias theory applies, mutatis mutandis, to China. Researchers
have shown the ubiquity of urban bias in China, through price differentiation of
rural produce and agricultural production inputs, taxes on peasants that far
exceed state investment in agriculture, and, most importantly, state financial
transfer programs in favor of the urban sector.
43 In 1986-1992, the share of state
budgets devoted to investments in urban SOEs ranged from 52-62% and in 1998
it was 54%; the share of investments in rural areas during the same period was
less than 10% of the budgets, despite rural people accounting for 73-76% of the
population. In 1998, agriculture’s share of capital construction expenditures was
3 9 Dudley Seer, Urban Bias: Seer versus Lipton, Discussion Paper 116, Institute of
Development Studies, University of Sussex, 1977; Ronald Herring and Rex Edwards,
"Guaranteeing Employment of the Rural Poor: Social Functions and Class Interests in
the Employment Guarantee Scheme in Western India," World Development 11 (1983):
575-92.
4 0 T. J. Byres, "Agrarian Transition and the Agrarian Question," Journal of Peasant
Studies 4, no. 3 (1977); T. J. Byres, "Of Neo-Populist Pipe-Dreams: Daedalus in the
Third World and the Myth of Urban Bias," Journal of Peasant Studies 6, no. 2 (1979):
210-44.
4 1 Ana-Maria Wahl, "Positional Power, Party Politics and Social Security in Mexico: Is
Urban Bias Politically Negotiable?" International Journal of Sociology and Social
Policy 18, nos. 2-4 (1998): 103-56; Gene Gruver and Lester Zeager, "Economic
Incentives for an Urban Bias in Development Policies," Bulletin of Economic Research
42, no. 1 (1990): 55-62.
4 2 Bruce London and David Smith, "Urban Bias, Dependence, and Economic Stagnation
in Non-Core Nations," American Sociological Review 53 (1998): 454-63.
4 3 Tian Qunjian, "China’s New Urban-Rural Divide and Pitfalls for the Chinese Economy,"
Canadian Journal of Development 22, no. 1 (2001): 165-190; Li Zuojun, Zhongguo
de genben wenti: jiu yi nongmin he chu qu (China’s basic problem: where can 900
million peasants go) (Beijing: Zhongguo fazhan chubanshe, 2000), 34-36; Dennis Tao
Yang, "Urban-Biased Policies and Rising Income Inequality in China," American Economic
Review 89, no. 2 (2000): 306-10; Dennis Tao Yang, and Zhou Hao, "Rural-Urban
Disparity and Sectoral Labor Allocations in China," Journal of Development Studies 35,
no. 3 (1999): 105-33; Cheng Xiaonong, "Dangdai Zhongguo jingji zhuangkuang, wenti
yu qushi," in Zhongguo qiantu yu liang’an guanxi (China’s future and cross-Straits
relations), ed. Chen Yizi (Taipei: Fengyun luntan chubanshe, 1997), 65; Yang Yiyong,
Gongping yu xiaolü: dangdai Zhongguo de shouru fenpai shouru (Equity and efficiency:
contemporary China’s income and distribution) (Beijing: Jinri Zhongguo chubanshe,
1997), 99.
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28
only 1.9%. State loans favor urban enterprises; short-term loans to agriculture
and rural TVEs were only 16% of the total. 44
Even without considering non-income benefits that accrue to urban, but
not rural people, urban bias in China is severe and growing. Rural net income
(chun shouru) was 31% of urban subsistence income (shenghuofei shouru) in
1957, 42% in 1978 and 58% in 1985, but 49% in 1990, 39% in 1993 and some
35% in 2000.45 Put another way, the ratio of urban-to-rural net income, which
was 3.13:1 in 1980, dropped to 2.34:1 in 1985, but rose to 3.34:1 by 1995.46 In
1979, urban residents had 74% of individual savings in China, while rural
residents had 26% in 1985; the figures were 79.1 % and 20.9% in 1995.47
Even if the claim made by PRC sociologist He Qinglian that &dquo;1% of the
working population owns 60% of the country’s social wealth&dquo;4’ is exaggerated,
the distribution of wealth is quite skewed. In 2000, 3% of the PRC population
had 47% of all savings, which in total amounted to over Y6 trillion (20% of
Chinese had 80% of all savings in the mid-1990s). Upper-level wealth holders
are reckoned to be overwhelmingly urban residents, who in 1997 received
almost one-third of their total income from savings interest, securities investments
and inheritance.49 These trends render inapposite claims of the early 1980s
that the PRC state retains powerful ruralist elements. 50 They also disconfirm
early 1990s predictions that the growth of rural industry had obviated urban bias
in China. 51
Inequality within both PRC rural and urban societies is far less than
overall regional inequality. The latter is less than urban/rural income differences
within provinces.52 Urban/rural disparities are much higher in inland provinces
44 Yang, "Urban-Biased Policies", 309; D. Gale Johnson, Reducing the Urban-Rural
Income Disparity in China, Working Paper, Office of Agricultural Economics Research,
University of Chicago, 2000, 13-14.
4 5 Li Zuojun Zhongguo de genben wenti, 21; "Chinese Living Standards Rise in 1996-
2000 Period," Asia Pulse, 30 March 2001.
4 6 Cheng Xiaonong, "Dangdai Zhongguo jingji zhuangkuang", 90.
4 7 Yang Yiyong, Gongping yu xiaolü, 126.
4 8 "Chinese Author Warns of Unrest if Economic Inequalities Persist," International
Herald Tribune, 21 July 2000, 20.
4 9 "Inherit the Wind—It’s Cheaper," China Online, 7 July 2000; Xinhua, 12 October
1999; "Chinese Authorities Reportedly Concerned about Growing Income Gap," Zhongguo
tongxunshe, 28 June 2000; "Chinese Income Gap Widens," China Daily, 25 May
1998, 3.
5 0 Nolan and White, "Urban-Rural Relations," 75.
5 1 Jean Oi, "Reform and Urban Bias in China," in Beyond Urban Bias, ed. Ashutosh
Varshney, 129-48.
5 2 Zhan Shiqiang, "Trends in Regional Disparities and Economic Growth in China,"
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2000, 70.
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29
and the poorer the province, the higher the ratio.53 As noted below, urban inequality
is lower than rural inequality. Gustaffsson and Shi have shown that PRC
urban inequality is lowest in the west, due to its less reformed economy. 54 Tibet
has the least reformed economy in China. The urban/rural disparity in Tibet is
thus likely to be among the highest, if not the highest, in China, while interurban
income disparities in the TAR should be among the lowest in the country.
We shall discuss in the conclusion how a distinctive form of urban bias applies
to Tibet’s peculiar &dquo;dependent development.&dquo;
Tibet as a Developing Region
Tibet as the TAR
Any analysis of Tibet must first define its territory. The 6migr6s term all
Tibetan-inhabited areas &dquo;Tibet.&dquo; Many scholars distinguish &dquo;political Tibet,&dquo; the
central-western Tibetan areas now denominated the TAR, with half the PRC’s
5.3 million Tibetans, from &dquo;ethnographic Tibet,&dquo; which is on the Tibet plateau,
but was outside the control of Dalai Lamas for 100-200 years before 1951.ss
Ethnographic Tibet is within the PRC provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and
Yunnan. Other scholars speak of a Tibetan &dquo;culture region&dquo; encompassing areas
where inhabitants use the Tibetan language and practice Tibetan Buddhism.s6 In
this essay, we equate Tibet with the TAR.
Old and Pre-Reform Tibet
Old Tibet was more complex than the opposition of &dquo;two antagonistic classes:
serf-owners and serfs&dquo; claimed by PRC scholars,57 but did have a pre-modem
social structure. 51 Whether Tibet before Chinese authority returned in 1951 was
5 3 S. Guillaumont Jeannenney and Hua, "How Does Real Exchange Rate Influence Income
Inequality between Urban and Rural Areas in China?," Journal of Development
Economics 64 (2001): 529-45.
5 4 Björn Gustafsson and Shi Li, "The Anatomy of Rising Earnings Inequality in Urban
China," Journal of Comparative Economics 29, no. 1 (2001): 118-35.
5 5 Melvyn Goldstein, "The Dalai Lama’s Dilemma," Foreign Affairs 77, no. 1 (1998):
83-90; Yu Zhen and Guo Zhenlin, Zhongguo Zangqu xiandaihua: lilun, shijian, zhengce
(Modernization of China’s Tibetan areas: theory, practice, policy) (Beijing: Zhongyang
minzu daxue chubanshe, 1999), 37-38.
5 6 Wim Van Spengen, Tibetan Border Worlds: A GeohistoricalAanalysis of Trade and
Traders (London: Kegan Paul International, 2000), 61.
5 7 Liao Zugui and Zhang Shuhua, "Is Old Tibet a ’Shangi-La’?: A Summary of the 1991
China Tibetology Seminar," in Theses on Tibetology in China, ed. Liao Zugui and Zhang
Zuji (Beijing: China Tibetology Publishing House, 1996), 499-546.
5 8 Melvyn Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet: Decline of the Lamaist State (Berkeley:
University of California, 1989); Dawa Norbu, Tibet: The Road Ahead (London: Rider,
1998).
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30
feudal is disputed.s9 Van Spengen terms it ’&dquo;feudal’ in one way or another&dquo;
because of the &dquo;contract between lord and vassal, in the form of legitimate and
accepted surplus appropriation.&dquo;6° The Dalai Lama has affirmed this characterization
by stating that if he returns to Tibet, &dquo;there will be no going back to the
old feudal system ,61 and even pro-independence monks in Tibet have emphasized
&dquo;the undesirability of the ’old society’.&dquo;62 All land was owned by the old
order’s three pillars: the regime (30.9%), the aristocracy (29.6%) and the
monasteries (39.5%).63 Only 6% engaged in non-farm activities.64 There was
scant social change during a &dquo;united front&dquo; period from 1951 to the Lhasa anti-
PRC uprising and emigration of 195 9.65 .
Some scholars portray the two post-1959 decades of socialist transformation
as an unmixed calamity,66 but Tibet’s fate was no worse than that of
the rest of China. Tibet was sheltered from the disasters of the Great Leap Forward
(1958-1961) and, except during the three most disruptive years of the
Cultural Revolution (1967-1969), experienced modest growth in infrastructure,
industry and agriculture, although no appreciable increase in living standards . 61
Concern about living standards came only with the onset of the reform era in
China.
Reform-era Development Initiatives
Central Tibet Works Forums in 1980, 1984, 1994 and 2001 have marked major
TAR development initiatives. Visiting Tibet in 1980, Chinese Communist Party
5 9 William Coleman IV, "Writing Tibetan History: The Discourses of Feudalism and
Serfdom in Chinese and Western Historiography," Unpublished M.A. thesis, University
of Hawaii, 1998; Song Lin, "Jiu Xizang duijian nongnu zhidu de fandong benzhi" (The
reactionary essence of Old Tibet’s feudal serf system), Xizang yanjiu, no. 3 (1999): 27-
32.
6 0 Van Spengen, Tibetan Border Worlds, 71.
6 "Ama1rtya Sen, Dalai Lama Call for Unbiased Reportage," Hindu, 31 January 2001;
"Nobel Laureates Urge Press to Fight Narrow Thinking," Independent, 5 February 2001,
4.
6 2 Ronald Schwartz, "Renewal and Resistance: Tibetan Buddhism in the Modem Era," in
Buddhism and Politics in Twentieth Century Asia, ed. Ian Harris (London: Pinter, 1999),
229-52.
6 3 Dangdai Zhongguo de Xizang (Contemporary China’s Tibet), 2 vols. (Beijing: Dangdai
Zhongguo chubanshe, 1991).
6 M4a Rong, "Economic Patterns of the Tibet Autonomous Region," in Development,
Society and Environoment in Tibet, ed. Graham Clarke (Wien: Verlag der
Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1998), 167-86.
6 5 Tsering Shakya, Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet since 1947
(London: Pimlico, 1999), Chs. 4-5.
66 Warren Smith, Tibetan Nation (Boulder: Westview Publishers, 1996), Chs. 12-13.
6 7 Dawa Norbu, "Changes in Tibetan Economy, 1959-1976," China Report 24, no. 3
(1988): 221-36.
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31
(CCP) General Secretary Hu Yaobang stated that the lives of Tibetans had not
been much improved over three decades .6’ A First Tibet Work Forum of top
PRC leaders that year exempted peasants and herders from taxes and grain
quotas and increased subsidies to rural areas. Family farming and herding replaced
communes in the early 1980s, a crucial change because 65% of Tibetans
were peasants and 25% were herders.69 The share of farmers and herders in the
TAR workforce and their share of GDP have shrunk over the years. In the late
1990s, however, almost 80% of Tibetans still worked in primary production,
with most of the 360,000 ha. of arable land in the south and most of the 65
million ha. of pastureland in the north. 70
Table 1. Share of TAR GDP by sector, 1985-1999
Sources: Wang Lixiong, Tian Zang: Xizang de mingyun (Sky burial: the fate of Tibet)
(Brampton: Mirror Books, 1998), 423; Xinhua, 23/1/99, 28/6/99; Guo Jinlong, &dquo;Speech
at All-Tibet Conference on Ideological and Political Work,&dquo; Xizang ribao (hereafter
XZRB), 18/10/00; BBC/SWB, 27/10/00.
Rural people retain some advantages created by the First Tibet Work
Forum that are not accorded to urbanites, including very low-cost health care and
education and, in theory, freedom from taxes and compulsory sales of grain, although
peasants who want subsidized fertilizer, water and credit must contract
6 8 Wang Yao, "Hu Yaobang’s Visit to Tibet, May 22-31, 1980," in Resistance and
Reform in Tibet, ed. Robert Barnett and Shirin Akiner (London: Hurst & Co., 1994),
285-89.
6 9 Tsetsen Wangchuk Sharlho, "China’s Reforms in Tibet: Issues and Dilemmas,"
Journal of Contemporary China 1, no. 1 (1992,): 34-60; Charles Allen, The Search for
Shangri-La: A Journey into Tibetan History (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1999). 7 0 Xizang Zizhiqu jingji dili (Economic geography of the Tibetan Autonomous Region)
(Beijing Xinhua chubanshe, 1994), 1-5; XZTJNJ 1999, 45, 146.
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32
with the state for typically 6-12% of the harvest.&dquo; Low taxes and subsidized
social welfare measures no longer available in China proper give the TAR population
income levels disproportionate to their productivity: Tibet’s 1994 per
capita GDP was only 14% that of Shanghai, but rural and urban incomes were
41 % and 84% those of Shanghai. 72
The center concluded in 1984 that TAR living standards had not improved
enough; indeed, rural production declined after collective irrigation and
fertilization ended and modem methods of farming introduced during the 1960s
and 1970s were abandoned, returning rural areas to subsistence farming. Incomes
edged up only due to the elimination of taxes.&dquo; A Second Tibet Work
Forum announced that the state would loosen cultural controls, bring many
Tibetans to neidi (China proper) for schooling and have nine provinces finance
43 Tibet infrastructure projects, including stadiums, hotels, and schools, costing
RMB 470 million .74 Center subsidies to Tibet grew, yet average GDP growth in
China was 8.5% per year in 1986-1992, but only 2.7% in Tibet. China’s 1992
GDP per capita was RMB 2648; Tibet’s was RMB 1642. A Third Tibet Work
Forum launched 62 projects in 1994, in farming, animal husbandry, transport,
communications and energy, to cost RMB 4 billion over five years. The center
again increased TAR subsidies, which in four decades have exceeded RMB 40
billion. In 1996, TAR tax revenues were RMB 244 million; expenditures were
RMB 3.7 billion. The center’s subsidies surpassed RMB 3 billion per year in
1994. Aid from provinces, cities and foreign sources, bank loans, and enterprise
share sales provide additional revenue.’5 The center undertook 30 of the 62
projects and the provinces the remainder. There were also 668 smaller &dquo;aid
7’ Erickson, Tibet , 55; Peter Hessler, "Tibet through Chinese eyes," Atlantic Monthly,
February 1999, http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99feb/tibet3.htm; Ronald Schwartz, "The
Reforms Revisited: Grain Procurement in Tibet," in Development, Society and Environment
in Tibet, ed. Clarke, 153-65; XZTJNJ 1997, 19, 35; Ma Rong, Xizang de renkou yu
shehui (Tibet’s population and society) (Beijing: Tongxin chubanshe, 1996), 105.
7 2 Tian Xiaowen, "Market Orientation and Regional Economic Disparities in China,"
Post-Communist Economies 11, no. 2 (1999): 161-72.
7 3 Sharlho, "China’s Reforms in Tibet," 44; Patrick Peatfeld, "Save Our Tsampa! Modernization,
International Aid and the Future of Tibetan Agriculture," Tibetan Review 30,
no. 5 (1995): 13-19.
7 4 Yin Fatang, "Speech by Yin Fatang at Tibet Party Plenum," Lhasa Regional Service,
16 May 1984, BBC/SWB, 22 May 1984; "Tibet Carries out New Policies," BR, 21 May
1984, 6.
7 5 "Regional Party Committee Transmits Third Tibet Work Forum Guidelines," XZRB, 2
August 1994, 1-2, in BBC/SWB, 22 August 1994; "On Acting Fully and over the Longterm
in the Spirit of the Third Central Forum on Tibet Work," XZRB, 29 July 1998, 1-2,
in BBC/SWB, 26 October 1998; Yu and Guo Zhongguo Zangqu xiandaihua, 323;
Xinhua, 28 April 1995, 23 January 1999, 28 June 1999, 13 April 2000; "Sixty-two
projects benefit Tibetan people," BR, 27 July1998; XZTJNJ 1997, 11-13.
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33
Tibet&dquo; (yuan Zang) initiatives by 15 provinces, some of dubious utility. 76 The
Third Forum called for increasing Tibet’s growth rate to 10%.77 In 1994-1997,
projects involving RMB 12.3 billion in investment in fixed assets were completed
and GDP annual growth averaged 14.5%. 78 New investment accounted for
three-fourths of growth. GDP was RMB 9.12 billion in 1998 (1.28 billion from
Lhasa) and RMB 11.7 billion in 2000.’9
Because most aid projects have focused on the primary sector and infrastructure,
the secondary sector has not grown rapidly. Old Tibet had no modem
industry and indeed half the population living in urban settings, where industry is
usually found, were monks or nuns. By 1985, the TAR had 34,000 industrial
workers; there were still only some 50,000 workers in 300 industrial enterprises
in 1999, out of 1.2 million employed. They work mainly in electric power,
mining, leather, building materials, pharmaceuticals, food, wool spinning,
printing, and mechanical repair.so &dquo;Over 60%&dquo; of TAR secondary sector workers
in 1990 were Tibetans.&dquo; Of 58,899 permanent workers in TAR state-owned
secondary and tertiary sector economic units (jingji danwei) in 1999, 41,454 or
70.4% were Tibetans; of 23,361 contract workers in such enterprises, 16,674 or
71.3% were Tibetans. 82
Most industry is state-owned; almost three-quarters of the 214,000 TAR
urban employed in 1999 were public employees. 81 Some 4,300 workers were on
lay-off status, each receiving an RMB 250 monthly stipend, and there have been
rumors that some of the older enterprises in transportation, industry and trade
may be allowed to go bankrupt. TAR SOEs generated RMB 17 million in profits
in 1998, with only 10% in the red and six listed Tibet firms providing RMB 30
million in TAR taxes. SOE profits depend however on state subsidies: scarce
7 6 "In Tibet a Struggle for the Soul," Washington Post, 16 July 1999, 1.
7 7 "A new milestone," XZRB, 6 August 1994, in BBC/SWB, 11 August 1994.
7 8 "Tibet’s All-Around Economic Strength Has Markedly Increased," RMRB, 28 July
1998, 4, in BBC/SWB, 1 August 1998.
7 9 Xinhua, 28 June 1999, 25 August 1999, 22 May 2000; "Gyamco on Tibet’s Gold
Mining Potential," Tibet People’s Broadcasting Station (hereafter TPBS), 18 January
1995, in BBC/SWB, 28 January 1995; China Society for Human Rights Studies
(hereafter CSHRS), Forty Years of Progress in Tibet, reprinted in China Daily, 17 July
1999, 4; Guo Jinlong, "Speech at All-Tibet Conference on Ideological and Political
Work," XZRB, 18 October 2000, in BBC/SWB, 27 October 2000.
8 0 Xinhua, 8 August 1995; CSHRS, 1999, 4; Robyn Iredale et al., Contemporary
Minority Migration, Education and Ethnicity in China (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
2001), 141; XZTJNJ 1999, 23, 45; Yu and Guo, Zhongguo Zangqu xiandaihua, 342.
8 Xin1hua, 6 March 1991
8 2 XZTJNJ 2000, 47.
8 3 Zhongguo laodong tongji nianjian (China labor statistical yearbook; hereafter abbreviated
as ZGLDTJNJ) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2000), 11.
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34
materials and skilled labor and irregular lending practices make industrial costs
high and profitability low.s4
Foreign sources of growth remain scarce. Tibet had $85 million of
contracted foreign investment by 1998, with $25 million negotiated that year,
including in such non-traditional industries as electronics, mining and pharmaceuticals.
How much committed investment exists is unclear. By 1998 Tibet had
received $67 million in international aid and $66 million in foreign government
loans for education and agriculture projects. Foreign trade volume (including
tourism) was $400 million in 1995-1998. S5
Effects of Development on Incomes
Tibet’s GDP in 1998 was 30 times the low 1959 baseline. Even after the
completing of the 62 projects, growth in 1998 was still 10% (16% for Lhasa) and
GDP per capita reached RMB 3626. Provincially-funded projects, the migrant
influx and commodity price rises have allowed nominal per capita income to
climb year-by-year and GDP grew by 9.3% in 2000. The center’s 1994 target for
TAR end-of-the-century rural income was surpassed and its goal for TAR GDP
greatly exceeded. The Fourth Tibet Work Forum confirmed the Tenth 5-Year
Plan (2001-2005) goal of upping GDP by 12% per year, compared to 7% for the
whole PRC and having Tibet reach the PRC &dquo;middle level&dquo; by 20 10.86 The
Forum, under the slogans of &dquo;leaps and bounds development&dquo; and &dquo;constant improvements
in the standard of living for the people of every nationality in Tibet,&dquo;
announced that the center will invest RMB 31.2 billion during the Tenth Plan
period in 117 projects in Tibet. The provinces are to provide RMB 1.06 billion
for 70 projects. The total RMB 32.8 billion is twice the amount the center and
8 4 Xinhua, 25 May 1999, 17 June 1999, 18 June 1999; Guo, "Speech at All-Tibet
Conference"; "Economic Restructuring Sees Good Results," Zhongguo xinwenshe
(hereafter ZGXWS), 10 February 1999, in Foreign Broadcast Information Systems-China,
FBIS-CHI-1999-0211; "Tibet’s All-Around Economic Strength Has Markedly Increased,"
RMRB, 28 July 1998, 4, in BBC/SWB, 1 August 1998; "A Race That’s Already
Lost," SCMP, 20 December 1999, 1; Ma Rong, "Economic Patterns".
8 5 Asia Pulse, 18 December 1998; Xinhua, 2 May 1999, 28 June 1999.
8 6 "Tibet Sets out Development Targets for Next Few Years," RMRB, 6 October 1994, in
BBC/SWB, 29 October 1994; "Tibet’s All-Around Economic Strength Has Markedly
Increased," RMRB, 28 July 1998, 4, in BBC/SWB, 1 August 1998; "Speech by Raidi at
Fourth Plenary Session," XZRB, 24 November 1998, 1-2, in FBIS-CHI-99-006, 6
January 1999; "Regional Economic Conference Opened in Lhasa," XZRB, 20 January
1999, 1, in FBIS-CHI-1999-0217; "Leader Luo Gan on Tibet Development, Stability,"
XZRB, 8 March 2001, in BBC/SWB, 14 March 2001; "China Uses Carrot, Stick in
Ruling Tibetans," Kyodo, 12 October 1998; "Tibetans Turn to Net in Search of Profit,"
SCMP, 5 July 1999, 8; Legqog, "A New Era in the History of Tibet," XZRB, 6 April
1999, 1, in FBIS-CHI-1999-0512; XZTJNJ 1997, 21; Xinhua, 7 March 1999, 10 March
1999, 9 July 1999; 30 May 2000, 3 January 2001, 14 March 2001, 5 March 2001, 15
March 2001.
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35

[AGATHA]

provinces gave the TAR during the Ninth Five-Year Plan. S7 The amount of
central government investment in the TAR moreover has been described as
&dquo;open-ended&dquo; (shang bu fending). As long as the TAR Government proposes
feasible projects, the center will invest in them no matter how much money these
projects require. After the Forum moreover the Tibet Communist Party Committee
resolved that it would concentrate on improving living standards in the
countryside.
Table 2. TAR nominal per capita income by year (in yuan)
Sources: Xinhua, 10/7/82, 17/8/87, 21/4/89, 3/4/90, 14/11/90, 24/2/91, 14/3/91, 29/12/91,
22/3/93, 30/12/94, 1/9/95, 25/12/95, 8/3/96, 16/1/97, 2/2/98, 28/5/98, 18/6/99, 9/3/00,
13/3/00, 24/5/00, 16/3/01; &dquo;Tibet Vice-Chairman Gives Key Economic Statistics for
1993,&dquo; Tibet People’s Broadcasting Station, 1/2/94; BBC/SWB, 18/2/94; &dquo;Living
Standards and Incomes,&dquo; Tibet Regional Service, 15/10/81; BBC/SWB, 18/11/81.
TAR nominal rural incomes increased 8.7 times in 1978-1997, but
inflation was high. In rural China as a whole, nominal rural per capita income
grew 15.2 times, with inflation averaging 8.1%; thus, rural income grew 3.4
8 7 Xinhua, 29 June 2001, 3 July 2001; "Tibet Leader Legqog on Assistance from Chinese
Regions," Ta kung pao (Hong Kong), 10 August 2001, in BBC/SWB, 13 August 2001.
8 8 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
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36
times in real terms .89 Rural TAR nominal per capita income grew 2.4 times in
1990-1997, but inflation averaged 11.2%.9° The 1997 TAR average rural income
of RMB 1040 was only worth RMB 497 in 1990 prices and the average real
annual increase in rural income for 1990-1997 was 2.2%, about the same as the
average increase in rural incomes for China as a whole in 1978-1993 (versus an
average increase for PRC city dwellers of 13%).9’ Rural income per capita is
projected to reach Y2000 in 2005. That will require increases averaging 8% per
year, almost twice what the government optimistically projects for rural income
in China as a whole.92 Inflation in the TAR was still fairly high at 5.6% for 1999,
although that figure was only half the percentage for the whole PRC.93
Growth in rural wealth has also been slow. Rural Tibetans are richer
than neidi peasants in productive fixed assets-not including land, which is
owned by the state. Indeed productive fixed assets have been the one equalizing
force in rural wealth distribution in China as a whole.94 These assets averaged
RMB 11,560 in 1996 in Tibet, but only RMB 3605 in the whole PRC. Animals
account for most of the difference. TAR households on average owned animals
worth 7.3 times those of PRC households and animals are 57% of productive
fixed assets in rural Tibet, but only 25% in the whole PRC.95 The value of
animals is growing faster in neidi than in Tibet, however. In 1985-1995, their
value in PRC households grew 2.67 times, while in Tibet their value grew by
only 0.8% a year in 1985-1993.96
Not surprisingly then, Tibetan rural incomes have declined in relation to
those of rural China. In 1978, TAR per capita rural incomes (although not living
standards) were higher than in the PRC as a whole (RMB 120 vs. RMB 90),
because Tibetans could sell some animals, while neidi peasants were very
restricted in marketing the fruits of their labor. By 1981, PRC peasant income
reached RMB 223, while the TAR figure was RMB 200 . 97 In China as a whole
in 2000, peasant income was RMB 2253; in Tibet it was RMB 1325. Thus, TAR
rural income was 90% of PRC rural income in 1981 and 68% in 1990, but only
59% in 2000. The cost of living is higher in Tibet moreover because goods must
be imported from neidi. At the same time, urban Tibetan income, which was
8 9 Xinhua, 13 April 1999.
9 0 XZTJNJ 11996;, 12 Xinhua, 8 January 1997, 23 February 1998.
9 1 Song Fengxiang and Michael Timberlake, "Chinese Urbanization, State Policy and the
World Economy," Journal of Urban Affairs 18, no. 3 (1996): 285-306.
9 2 Xinhua, 5 March 2001.
9 Z20G0L0D,3T J7N6J.
9 4 Mark Brenner, "Re-examining the Distribution of Wealth in Rural China," Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 2000.
9 5 Zhongguo tongji nianjian (China statistical yearbook; hereafter ZGTJNJ 1998)
(Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1997), 377-78.
9 6 ZGTJNJ 1, 919798; Ma Rong, "Economic Patterns," 174.
9 7 Xinhua, 2 June 1982.
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37
91 % of PRC urban income in 1986 (RMB 752 vs. RMB 828), was 102% of it in
2000.98
While the income gap between rural Tibet and rural China has grown
and the gap between urban Tibet and urban China has shrunk, the urban/rural
income gap within Tibet is now a chasm. This comports with a China-wide
tendency for the greatest urban/rural gaps to appear in poor provinces because
urban incomes are standardized at a high level by institutionalized wage determinations,
while rural incomes reflect regional disparities in resources and opportunities.
99 Compared to the degree of inequality in 1959, Tibet’s urban/rural
income gap was more narrow forty years later because urban incomes had
increased 4.3 times, while rural incomes had increased 6.7 times.’oo As in China
as a whole, however, the greatest rural gains were made in the 1980s. The gap
has widened since then.
The 1995 PRC urban/rural income ratio was 2.4:1 or 3.3:1 if in-kind
income is taken into account (up from 2.26 in 1985);’°’ the ratio in Tibet is 4.8:1,
among the highest in the world, as most developing Asian countries have a ratio
well below 2 and often as low as 1.5.102 TAR rural residents’ 1985 net income
was 54% of TAR urban residents’ income. By 1996 it was only 17%, creeping
up to 21 % by 2000. One reason for the widened gap is that TAR spending for
agriculture fell from 13% in 1978 to 3% in 1996, while administrative
spending-much of it for urban-based personnel-rose from 12% to 22% and
spending for education, culture, and health went from 12% to 23 %.103 More than
80% of subsidies for Tibet support administration and personnel expenses,
centered mainly in urban areas; less than 20% go directly to production
The simple urban/rural income ratio of 4.8:11 moreover may be a
considerable underestimate because it is based on mean incomes in the two areas.
In a study of urban/rural income differences in Kenya, which like China has
greater differentials than are found in most developing countries, Githinji 105
found a mean per capita income ratio of 2.99, but because of much larger in-
9 8 Xinhua, 16 March 2001, 26 March 1991, 26 March 1988.
9 9 John Knight and Lina Song, The Rural-Urban Divide: Economic Disparities and
Interactions in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 324.
1 00 Xinhua, 17 September 1999.
’°’ Azizur Khan and Carl Riskin, "Distribution and Growth of Household Income,"
China Quarterly, no. 154 (1998): 221-53; Li Zuojun, Zhongguo de genben wenti; World
Bank, Sharing Rising Incomes: Disparities China (Washington: World Bank, 1998), 17.
1 02 Azizur Khan and Carl Riskin, Inequality and Poverty in China in the Age of Globalization
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 125.
1 X1ZTJN03J 193,97, 107.
1 04 Xizang shehui fazhan yanjiu (Studies of the development of Tibetan society) (Beijing:
Zhongguo zangxue chubanshe, 1997), 181.
1 05 Mwangi Wa Githinji, Ten Millionaires and Ten Million Beggars: A Study of Income
Distribution and Development in Kenya (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 37-40.
Downloaded from http://cin.sagepub.com at HKUST Library on November 10, 2008
38
equalities in rural areas than in urban areas, the ratio of urban to rural median
incomes was 3.9. Similarly, PRC rural inequality is generally greater than urban
inequality and, since most of the poor are peasants, rural inequality contributes a
sizeable share of overall PRC inequality.’°6 The PRC ratio of urban-rural per
capita consumption moreover is higher than the ratio of urban-rural per capita
income (e.g. 3.26 vs. 2.51 in 1998).’°’ The difference in living standards between
urban and rural Tibet is thus likely to be higher than the 4.8:1 figure conveys.
Some cadres in Tibet believe that 6:1 is a more accurate ratio. Peasant income,
moreover, is only about 40% in cash and the rest in kind.10s
Obstacles to a Rising Rate of Development
The weakness of agriculture is a continuing drag on development in Tibet. Grain
output grew by 65%, edible oil rape-seed by 330% and meat by 170% in 1978-
1997, while the population was up by a third, but Tibet still lacks food selfsufficiency.
In the late 1980s, Tibet imported 250 million kgs. of grain annually
and in the mid-1990s, 150 million kgs., selling it to urbanites, soldiers and
nomads at subsidized prices or giving it to the poor. By 1999 imports were down
to 15 million kgs., but TAR officials judge farming and animal husbandry as still
incapable of supporting secondary and tertiary sector growth.’09 Malnutrition and
stunted growth are widespread among Tibetan children, especially in rural areas.
These phenomena are also common in rural neidi, with the Chinese Academy of
Preventive Medicine determining that the proportion of rural children below five
years of age who are seriously underweight or developmentally delayed is 12.6%
and 22.6% respectively.’ 10
A second weakness is underdeveloped infrastructure. The TAR’s 25,000
kms. of roads is triple the 1959 total, but a small increase over the 21,551 kms.
of 1980. It is planned that by 2005, TAR highways will total 27,000 kms. Only
2,000 kms. are paved. All counties have highway access, but 20% of townships
do not. Cost is one reason; RMB 3.6 billion was spent on highways in 1995-
1 06 Yang, "Urban-Biased Policies," 307-308.
1 07 Johnson, Reducing the Urban-Rural Income Disparity.
1 08 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
1 09 "Sixty-Two Projects Benefit Tibetan People," BR, 27 July 1998; "Speech by Raidi at
Fourth Plenary Session," XZRB, 24 November 1998, 1-2, in FBIS-CHI-99-006, 6
January 1999; Schwartz, "The Reforms Revisited," 153-65; Henry Ostmaston, "Agriculture
in the Main Lhasa Valley," in Development, Society and Environment in Tibet, ed.
Clarke, 121-51; Xinhua, 24 November 1999, 7 January 2000.
1 10 Nancy Harris et al., "Nutritional and Health Status of Tibetan Children Living at High
Altitudes," New England Journal of Medicine 344, no. 5 (2001): 341-47; Shen Tiefu et
al., "Effect of Economic Reforms on Child Growth in Urban and Rural Areas of China,
" New England Journal of Medicine 335, no. 6 (1996): 400-406; Marilyn Beach,
"China’s Rural Health Care Gradually Worsens," Lancet 358 (18 August 2001), 567.
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39
2000 and the center has pledged RMB 10 billion for road construction in Tibet in
2001-2005. The overall transportation infrastructure in the TAR in 1995 has
been rated at 0.25 on a national average of 1.0.&dquo;’
Some RMB 4 billion (RMB 3 billion from the center) was spent in
1990-1998 on TAR power supply construction. A 350,000 kw capacity contrasts
with the almost total lack of electricity before 1951. It is twice the 1992 capacity
and has allowed for the electrification of all counties. Although the overall
electricity supply of the TAR has been rated at 2.31 on a national average of 1.0,
TAR leaders recognize that it is still inadequate. Indeed, most Tibetan peasants
still do not live in electrified villages,’ 12 although it is not the case, as claimed by
the TYC,&dquo;3 that the power supply is dedicated to large-scale industry, as none
exists in Tibet. Even if Tibetan peasants had access to electricity, its price would
be beyond the reach of many, because villagers throughout China are charged
prices that are 3-5 times those charged urban residents and average per capita
rural consumption of electricity is only one-ninth that of urban areas. I 14 There
were also only 4.7 telephones per 100 people in Tibet in 1999 (28 per 100 in
urban areas). While that is a twenty-fold increase over 20 years ago, China had a
10.6 tele-density in 1998.&dquo;5 In 2000, only 78% of Tibetans had access to radio
broadcasts and 76% to TV; it is planned that all villages will receive broadcasts
by 2003.&dquo;6
Old Tibet had no modem schools.&dquo;’ By 1959, there were 462 primary
and 3 high schools. A Cultural Revolution school-building boom resulted in
6,819 schools by 1978, but the number fell in the 1980s due to consolidation.
School-building began again in the 1990s. By 1997, there were 4,365 schools
with more than 400,000 students. Officially, the number of children in school
grew 42% in 1993-1997 and the grade-school entrance rate went from 59% in
I II Legqog, "A New Era in the History of Tibet," XZRB 6 April 1999, 1, in FBIS-CHI-
1999-OS 12; XZTJNJ 1999, 229; Xinhua, 15 May 1999, 14 January 2000, 4 July 2001;
Liu Weidong, "Assessing Total Regional Development in China," in China’s Regional
Disparities: Issues and Policies, ed. V. F. S. Sit and Lu Da-dao (Huntington: Nova
Science Publishers 2001), 39-84.
1 12 Xinhua, 7 March 1999, 15 March 2000; "Sixty-Two Projects Benefit Tibetan People,"
BR, 27 July 1998; Liu, "Assessing Development", 83; "Rail Link to Open up Tibet
Mooted," SCMP, 24 June 1999, 9.
1 13 TYC, Development for Whom?, 11.
1 14 Lin Yifu, The Current Deflation in China: Causes and Policy Options, Working
Paper E2000002, China Center for Economic Research, Beijing University, 2000, 18; Lu
Mai, "More Efforts for Development of the Rural Market," China Development Review 2,
no. 1 (2000): 39-45.
1 15 Xinhua, 22 January 1999, 23 October 1998, 16 January 2000.
1 16 Xinhua, 14 March 2000, 21 October 1999.
1 17 Iredale et al., Contemporary Minority Migration, 144.
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40
1993 to 86% in 2000. &dquo;8 By then 83% of all school-age children had some
schooling and 39 counties with 44% of the TAR population had six-year compulsory
education. By 2003, 90% of primary-school age children and 45% of
teenagers are to be in school and all counties are to require six years of education.
School enrolments are higher in the cities (over 90%) than in agricultural areas
(70-80%) and much higher than in nomadic areas (30%). In the late 1990s, only
42,000 students were at TAR secondary schools and colleges and 20,000
Tibetans were at high school or university in 26 other provinces, with 6,000
graduates returning annually.&dquo;9
TAR leaders recognize that Tibet is far behind in education and short of
trained professionals, &dquo;0 as comparative profiles in the tables below attest.
Table 3. Percentage of PRC and TAR employed persons by educational
level, 1997
Source: ZGTJNJ 1998, 171.
Table 4. PRC and TAR whole population educational levels, late 1990s (%)
Source: Yu Zhen and Guo Zhenlin, Zhongguo Zangqu xiandaihua: lilun, shijian, zhengce
(Modernization of China’s Tibetan areas: theory, practice, policy) (Beijing: Zhongyang
minzu daxue chubanshe, 1999), 248.
1 18 Ma Rong, "Xizang diqu jiaoyu shiye de fazhan" (The development of Tibet’s educational
undertaking), Zhongguo Zangxue, no. 2 (1998), 3-24; "Tibet Chairman on
Democratic Reform," XZRB, 6 April 1999, 1, in FBIS-CHI-1999-0512; Xinhua, 17
March 2001.
1 19 Zhongguo minzu tongji nianjian (China ethnic statistical yearbook; hereafter
ZGMZTJNJ) (Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 1998), 516; Xinhua, 16 June 1999, 4 March
1999,19 April 2000, 28 May 2000,16 March 2001; Henry Rempel, "The Place of Human
Rights in Defining Development Assistance for the Tibetan People in China," Canadian
Journal of Development Studies 21, no. 3 (2001): 851-68.
1 20 "Sixty-Two Projects Benefit Tibetan People," BR, 27 July 1998.
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41
Primary school retention rates are improving, but remain low. One-third
of children who enrolled in TAR primary schools in 1988 graduated six years
later; 45% of those who enrolled in 1991 graduated in 1997.121 Only 30% of
those who start lower middle school graduate, in part because four-fifths of
lower middle schools (and nine-tenths of higher middle schools) teach in
Chinese. 122 The rural illiteracy rate in 1990 was three times that of Lhasa 12’ and
there are also great regional disparities: in 2001 the TAR illiteracy rate was
pegged at 32.5%, but it was 55% in Lhoka (Shannan). 124 Even education in
Lhasa is problematic. Lhasa Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
delegates spoke in 1994 of inadequate funds for schools and too few qualified
teachers. 12’ Tibetan university students, moreover, tend to major in the humanities
because of inadequate preparation in other fields and a desire to preserve
Tibetan culture, leading to an absence of Tibetans in some fields. 121 Of 1,294
TAR university students in 1998, 181 (14%) majored in science or engineering,
while 597 students (46%) majored in literature, philosophy or history. In China
as a whole, 49% of university students majored in science and engineering,
while 17% majored in literature, philosophy or history. In 1998 there were 65
students enrolled in the four-year law major in Tibet. Only 48 of the 110,000
PRC lawyers worked in Tibet and only 20 were ethnic Tibetans.127
A fourth obstacle is the high Tibetan birth rate. Ethnic Tibetan cadres,
staff and workers are &dquo;encouraged&dquo; to have no more than two children; there are
no limits for rural Tibetans. 12’ A field study conducted in 1998 in three TAR
prefectures, as part of a joint project of Tibet University and one of the authors,
showed that in Shannan, urban Tibetan cadres are allowed three children, while
in Linzhi they are permitted two. Fines for Tibetan violators in Linzhi are RMB
500 (or RMB 300 if one spouse is unemployed); fines for Han are RMB 3,000.
Indeed, a 1998 TAR document describes fines for Tibetans as &dquo;symbolic
1 21 XZTJNJ 1996, 305; ZGMZTJNJ 1998, 507.
1 22 Ma Rong, "Xizang diqu jiaoyu shiye de fazhan"; Catriona Bass, Education in Tibet:
Policy and Practice since 1950 (London: Zed Book/Tibetan Information Network, 1998).
78-82; Melvyn Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai
Lama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 188.
123 ZGTJNJ 1998, 116; Ma Rong, "Xizang diqu jiaoyu shiye de fazhan", 13-15
1 24 "Despite Progress, Illiteracy Not Written Off," SCMP, 16 August 2001, 8.
1 25 John Grey, "Modernise or Else!: Building the New Lhasa," Himal 8, no. 1 (1995):
10-18.
1 26 Lobsang Sangay, "Education Rights for Tibetans in Tibet and India," in Human
Rights: Positive Policies in Asia and the Pacific Rim, ed. John D. Montgomery (Hollis:
Hollis Publishing Co., 1998), 285-308.
1 27 Xinhua, 15 October 1998; XZTJNJ 2000, 270; Zhongguo jiaoyu tongji nianjian
(Beijing: Jiaoyu bu fazhan guihua si, 1998), 26-27.
1 28 Isabelle Attane and Youssef Courbage, "Transitional Stages and Identity Boundaries:
The Case of Ethnic Minorities in China," Population and Environment 21, no. 3 (2000):
257-80.
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42
economic penalties,&dquo; as few cannot afford the penalty. 129 In 1995, 96.3% of Linzhi
Han households had one-child certificates, while only about 15.7% of
Tibetans had one. Ngachu officials stated that in 1990 the prefecture’s overall
rural and urban birth rates were 3.17 and 3.27; in 1995, the rates were 2.98 and
2.67 (the overall rate in the TAR was 2.49).130 The still high Ngachu rates are
again a function of low fines for Tibetans: Y500 for &dquo;double cadre&dquo; and Y300
for single-cadre couples.
Most urban Chinese, including Han cadres, staff and workers in Tibet,
are limited to one child and rural Chinese to two. Contrary to the TYC131, there
has been no relaxation of family planning strictures to induce Han to settle in
Tibet, nor has family planning reduced the Tibetan population. Social surveys
have shown that large families remain a feature of Tibetan society.’32 Among
PRC provinces, Tibet has the highest average number of live births per woman.
The TAR birth rate fell in the 1990S,133 but in 1998 more than 36% of married
women of childbearing age in Tibet had three or more children’ 34 and the birth
rate was 20.32 per 1,000. Natural growth was 14.82, while the PRC rate was
9.48 per 1,000.’~ TAR households in 1997 averaged 5.3 persons; the national
average was 3.7. Some 54% of TAR families had five or more members, while
only 24% of PRC families were as large. The TAR child dependency ratio
(based on persons aged 0-14) was 50% above the PRC ratio.’36 Without a decline
in the ratio, the gap in per capita income between Tibetans and other Chinese
cannot diminish. This is a pressing problem in rural areas, as land per capita
declines with population increases and more land must be given over to nonagricultural
purposes. The TAR family-planning document referred to above
states that average landholding per capita was 2.5 mu &dquo;in the early years after
liberation,&dquo; but had been reduced to 1.5 mu per capita due to population
growth.’3’ Growth in the population of herders and an increase in herds also contribute
to over-grazing.
1 29 Guanyu Xizang Zizhiqu renkou yu jihua shengyu (On the Tibet Autonomous Region’s
population and family planning (Lhasa: TAR Government, mimeographed, 1998). 1 30 Zhongguo renkou tongji nianjian 2000 (China population yearbook 2000; hereafter
ZGRKTJNJ) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2000), 458.
1 31TYC, Development for Whom?, 13, 41.
1 32 Yu and Guo, Zhongguo Zangqu xiandaihua, 42.
1 33 Gabe Wang, China’s Population: Problems, Thoughts and Policies (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 1999). 177.
1 34 Xinhua, 1 March 2000.
1 35 "Regional Forum on Family Planning," XZRB, 21 May 1999, 1, in FBIS-CHI-1999-
0608 ; "Population of China Set to Reach 1.26 billion," Asian Wall Street Journal, 25
June 1999, 1.
1 36 ZGMZTJNJ 1998, 375; ZGTJNJ 1998, 120-21, 113.
1 37 Guanyu Xizang Zizhiqu...
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43
Alongside obstacles, there are quality-of-life gains, notably in health.
Medical institutions grew by 20 times in 1959-1998, hospital beds by 3.5 times
and medical personnel 10 times, with 80% of TAR doctors and nurses being
ethnic Tibetans. In 1998, there were 2.3 beds and 3.6 doctors per 1,000 Tibetans,
figures above the national average. There are hospitals or clinics in 70% of
townships (but only 30% of villages). According to official claims, the early
1950s average life-span of 35 years increased to 67 years by 1998, three years
less than the PRC average, a difference attributable to the greater rurality of the
TAR (85%) as against the whole PRC (67%). Most of the life expectancy increase
occurred in the 1950s-1980s as diseases were eliminated and infant mortality
dropped from 430 to 36.8 per thousand. The latter rate (in 1998) is not
much higher than the rate for China as a whole (33.7), which contrasts with the
sharp differentials in infant mortality between ethnic minorities such as African-
Americans and Native Americans in the US (2.5 and 1.5 the national rates)&dquo;’
and Aborigines in Australia (3.5 times).&dquo;9 Infant mortality in Tibet is much
lower than in the two neighboring Himalayan states of Bhutan (71) and Nepal
(98). 140 TAR life spans continue to edge up according to official announcements:
from 63 years in 1988, 64 years in 1990, 65 years in 1995, 67 years in 1998 and
68 years in 2001. The small Tibetan/Han life expectancy difference contrasts
with the 20-year gap between Aborigines and whites in Australia. 141
Tibet’s neighbor, Bhutan, three-fourths of whose population is ethnic
Tibetan, can be compared with Tibet: its population is 80% that of Tibet in an
area 25 times as compact and at much lower elevations. Bhutan has more arable
land than Tibet and lower infrastructure and services costs. Its electricity capacity
is about the same as in Tibet and primary production is similarly 42% of
GDP. Bhutan’s GDP per capita (RMB 3450, vs. RMB 3200 in Tibet) and literacy
rate (54%) are about the same as Tibet’s (58%). India finances 60% of Bhutan’s
budget. Life expectancy in Bhutan is 52 years, however. 14’ Nepalese had an
1 38 Human Resources and Services Administration, Health Care: Access for All (Vienna,
Va.: National Clearinghouse for Primary Care Information, 1998).
1 39 International Save the Children Alliance, Children ’s Rights: Equal Rights? (London:
ISCA, 2000). 1 40 "Bhutan: Country Profile," Asia and Pacific Review World of Information, August
2001, 1.
1 41 "Tibet Chairman on Democratic Reform," XZRB, 6 April 1999, 1, in FBIS-CHI-1999-
0512 ; CSHRS 1999, 4; Knight and Song 1999, 326; Xinhua, 25 March 1988, 8 April
1994, 13 April 1995, 4 September 1995, 28 January 1999, 11 April 2001; "A Race that’s
Already Lost," SCMP, 20 November 1999, 1; "PM Booed at Aboriginal Ceremony,"
SCMP, 28 May 2000, 8.
1ZGM4ZTJ2NJ 1998, 335; United Nations Development Program, Human Development
Report (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 22, 185; Xinhua, 30 May 2000;
"Bhutan Tunes in," Gazette (Montreal), 6 June 1999, C6; Central Intelligence Agency,
World Factbook, Bhutan (Nepal), http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/bt.html
[np.html], 1999.
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44
average income on a par with Tibetans in 1999, but only a 58-year life expectancy.
143
The quality of Tibet’s environment is also important in assessing development.
A 1998 official report claimed overall satisfactory conditions and a
scholar has rated Tibet’s environment quality at 1.4 on a national average of
1.0.’~ The TAR government stated that there was only one day of light air
pollution in the region in 2000.’45 Even some Tibet independence advocates
recognize that the TAR is vastly more free than China proper of air and water
pollution and the scars of mining. Tibet’s environmental soundness stems in part
from a low level of industrialization, but also from actual law enforcement. 146
Timber cutting fell sharply in 1998 after Beijing recognized the role of deforestation
in neidi floods and it was reduced by a quarter in 1999. An afforestation
drive began in the eastern TAR in 2000.147 Urban Tibetans are now more
worried about &dquo;spiritual pollution&dquo; than material pollution, as Lhasa, like Kathmandu
and other cities in the region, is inundated by karaoke and video parlors,
dancehalls and brothels. 148
Ethnic Differences
Han in the Urban TAR: &dquo;Permanent&dquo; and &dquo;Temporary&dquo;
There were 2,000 (mostly poor) Han among a million Tibetans in the late 1940s,
when all Han were expelled. From the 1950s-1970s, more than 100,000 Han
were sent to Tibet as administrators, engineers, doctors and teachers. By the
1980s, net transfers to Tibet were negative and the number of Han with permanent
household registrations (hukou) in Tibet diminished.’a9 Han, whose pro-
1 43 "A Century Epic Written on Snow Plateau," RMRB, 28 March 2000, 1, in BBC/SWB,
17 April 2000; "Rebels with a Maoist Cause," SCMP, 27 June 2000, 22; CIA, World
Factbook, Bhutan (Nepal).
1 44 Xinhua, 16 June 1999; Liu, "Assessing Development," 81.
1 45 "Tibet Free from Acid Rain," Business Daily Update, 11 June 2001.
1 46 Department of Information & International Relations (hereafter DIIR), Tibet 2000:
Environment and Development Issues (Dharamsala: DIIR, 2000); Erickson, Tibet, Ch. 3;
"People in Tibet Fully Exercise Democratic Election Rights," ZGXWS, 4 June 2000, in
FBIS-CHI-2000-0604.
1 47 XZTJNJ 1999, 150; "China’s Timber Industry Will Not Be Affected by Logging Ban:
Official," China Business Information Network, 25 January 2000; Xinhua, 29 May 2000.
1 48 Grey, "Modernise or Else!,"; TIN, Social Evils: Prostitution and Pornography in
Lhasa (London: TIN Background Briefing Paper B31, 1998); "Dirty Dancing in Kathmandu,"
SCMP, 9 July 2000, 1.
1 W4an9g Lixiong, "Xizang: ershiyi shiji Zhongguo de ruanlei" (Tibet: China’s twentyfirst
century soft spot), Zhanlüe yu guanli, No. 1 (1999): 21-33; Ma Rong, "Xizang diqu
jiaoyu shiye de fazhan"; Huang Yasheng, "China’s Cadre Transfer Policy toward Tibet
in the 1990s," Modern China 21, no. 2 (1995): 184-204; Sun Shangzhi, Xizang zizhiqu
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45
portion of the TAR population peaked at 6.6% in 1980, were 3% and other non-
Tibetans 2% of the TAR’s 2.5 million &dquo;permanent&dquo; inhabitants in 1998.’So
Table 5. Number of &dquo;permanent&dquo; Han in Tibet, by year
Source: Wang Lixiong, &dquo;Xizang: ershiyi shiji Zhongguo de ruanlei&dquo; (Tibet: China’s
twenty-first century soft spot), Zhanliie yu guanli, no. 1 (1999): 28; XZTJNJ 1999, 35;
XZTJNJ 2000, 33.
There were some 17,000 Han cadres in Tibet in the mid-1990s, about
one-fourth of the &dquo;permanent&dquo; Han population. They generally do not consider
Tibet to be ideal for career or health and many long-serving Han have transferred
to neidi. Reportedly 1,953 cadres were sent to Tibet on three-year programs by
the central government and the provinces from 1994--2001 and were overwhelmingly
university-educated. ~’ Recent in-transferees know little of the
region and try to reduce the time they spend there. Many &dquo;aid Tibet&dquo; cadres are
actually in Tibet for only a year and a half of their stints. 152 They usually arrive
in Tibet in April or May and take vacations from September or October to avoid
the winter. Some of these cadres are &dquo;first in charge&dquo; (yi ba shou) and when they
leave it is difficult for their organizations to function well. 113 The problem of
retaining cadres from neidi in Tibet was highlighted by the announcement in
2001 that henceforth government personnel in the TAR (including Tibetans)
would be on a pay scale as much as 2.5 times that of the sum of the nation’s
jingji dili (Economic geography of the Tibet Autonomous Region) (Beijing: Xinhua
chubanshe, 1994), 36-37.
1M5a0 Rong, Xizang de renkou yu shehui (Tibet’s population and society) (Beijing:
Tongxin chubanshe, 1996), 65; Xinhua, 28 January 1999, 23 August 1997; "Regional
forum on family planning," XZRB, 21 May 1999, 1, in FBIS-CHI-1999-0608.
1 51 Xinhua, 2 July 2001, 16 July 2001.
1 52 Zhonggong Xizang dangshi da shiji (Great events in the history of the Chinese
Communist Party in Tibet) (Lhasa: Xizang renmin chubanshe, 1995), 212; Wang
Lixiong, "Xizang," 32.
1 53 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
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46
average wage, state-set allowances and subsidies. 114 The &dquo;permanent&dquo; Han are
distributed very unevenly in Tibet as shown in Table 6 below.
Table 6: Distribution of &dquo;permanent&dquo; TAR Han by prefecture
Sources: Wang Lixiong, 1999: 28; AZTJNJ 1997, 38.
Only 3.4% of TAR Han are reportedly &dquo;active in agriculture.&dquo;155 Most
Han live in Lhasa and Xigaze cities and six urbanized counties: Changdu
(Changdu), Naidong (Shannan), Duilongdeqing (Lhasa), Bomi (Linzhi), Naqu
(Naqu) and Geer (Ali). Thirty of the 75 TAR counties had less than 100 permanent
Han in 1990. Nyemo County, site of an uprising in 1969,156 had only seven;
Panam County, where a disputed EU-sponsored development project was to be
sited,157 had only 60 out of 38,000 people. An émigré geographer doing fieldwork
in the TAR writes that apart from temporary vegetable growers in suburban
Lhasa, he did &dquo;not come across a single Chinese settler or settlement in my
area of study with land or livestock.&dquo; A Western geographer observed during
fieldwork in Panam &dquo;no Han farmers, and even the sight of Han personnel away
from the county headquarters or main road was quite unusual&dquo;. 158 In Damxiong
we found only a few Han cadres and restauranteurs at the county seat. Han
1 54 "Tibet leader Legqog on assistance from Chinese regions," Ta kung pao, 10 August
2001, in BBC/SWB, 13 August 2001.
1 55 Washington Post, 16 July 1999, 1.
1 56 Shakya, Dragon in the Land of Snows, 343-47.
1 57 European Union, "Pan-Am County Integrated Rural Development Project in Tibet,"
Official Journal of the European Communities: Information & Notices 38, no. 81 (1995):
50 ff.
1 XZ5TJ8NJ 1999, 38-39; Zhongguo minzu renkou ziliao (1990 nian renkou pucha shuju)
(China’s minority population data (1990 population census tabulation)) (Beijing:
Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1994), 241-242; Catriona Bass, Education in Tibet, 265;
Graham Clarke, "The Movement of Population to the West of China: Tibet and Qinghai,"
in Migration: The Asian Experience, ed. Judith Brown and Rosemary Foot (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 221-57; Kunchok Tsundue, "Revisiting the Roots,"
Tibetan Bulletin 3, no. 1 (1999): 25-26.
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47
cadres are at the regional, prefecture or county level; few of Tibet’s 928 townships
has one. 159
Contrary to the stereotype, most &dquo;permanent&dquo; Han are blue-collar or
white-collar workers, not political overlords, although the employment profiles
of &dquo;permanent&dquo; Han and ethnic Tibetans do diverge as Table 7 shows.
Table 7. Distribution of Tibetans and Han by employment sector
Source: Ma Rong, Xizang de renkou yu shehui (Tibet’s population and society) (Beijing:
Tongxin chubanshe, 1996), 98, based on 1990 figures.
The contrasting profiles are related to differences in educational attainment.
While most students at every level in Tibet are Tibetans, 160 in-transfers of
educated Han for stints in Tibet mean that most senior high and university graduates
in Tibet are Han.’6’ In 1990, 34.8% of the permanent Han, but only 6.4% of
Tibetans, had a senior high or higher education. 62
Table 8. TAR population at various educational levels who are Han (%)
Source: XZZZQ 1992, 388-89.
1 W5an9g Lixiong, "Xizang," 28.
1 60 Bass, Education in Tibet, 164, 187.
1 61 Xizang zizhiqu 1990 nian renkou tongcha ziliao (Tabulation of the 1990 population
census of the Tibet Autonomous Region), Vol. 1 (Lhasa: Xizang renmin chubanshe,
1992), 388-89.
1 62 Ma Rong, Xizang de renkou yu shehui, 102.
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48
In the mid-1990s, one-tenth of Tibetans in CCP, state and enterprise
leadership positions were illiterate; 42% had only a primary education.’63
A &dquo;cultural division of labor&dquo; thus appears to mark Tibet’s economy, 164
but the appearance is deceptive. The 1990 census counted 67,407 Han with a
TAR hukou and 13,810 Han with hukou elsewhere who had lived in Tibet for a
year or more. 165 There were likely about 70,000 &dquo;permanent&dquo; Han in the TAR in
2000. Few of them now intend to stay beyond their required years of service
however and seldom take their families to Tibet. 166 There is a 2:1 1 male/female
ratio among the &dquo;permanent&dquo; Han and less than 10% are below 20 years of
age.’ 6’
The 2000 census showed 155,300 Han who had lived in the TAR for six
months or more, about 35% of the urban population of 420,000.16S Most of the
85,000 or so Han &dquo;temporaries&dquo; come to Tibet to engage in small business or
construction, services for which the Dalai Lama admits that there is a demand
among Tibetans. 169 The quota for new urban hukou in Tibet is small, however,
and theirs remain in their home areas. If they buy a temporary one (linshi hukou),
it omits resident rights such as low-cost social services. Far from being privileged
&dquo;settlers,&dquo; they are what Lipton calls a &dquo;pseudo-urbanization&dquo; of temporary,
informal sector workers and petits commerçants and are second-class citizens of
the region in which they live. 170 In contrast,
minority migrants to Lhasa are likely to stay and integrate into the
wider community without a great deal of difficulty. There are plenty of
opportunities open to them and it does not appear that they are
marginalized to the extent that migrants without hukou are marginalized
in other cities.
1 63 Xizang Zangzu renkou (Tibet’s ethnic Tibetan population; hereafter AZZZR-K) (Beij
ing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1997), 81.
1 64 Michael Hechter, "Group Formation and the Cultural Division of Labor," American
Journal of Sociology 84, no. 2 (1978): 293-318; Ugen Gombo, "Why China Should
Adopt a Truly Tibet-Friendly Tibet Policy," Tibetan Review 34, no. 7 (1999): 15-22.
1 65 Wang Lixiong, "Xizang," 28.
1 66 Clarke, "The Movement of Population," 221-57.
1 67 XZZZRK 1997, 57; Zhongguo guoqing congshu, Lasa quan (China’s condition collection,
Lhasa volume; hereafter ZGGQCS) (Beijing: Zhongguo da bai ke quan shu chubanshe,
1995), 67; XZTJNJ 1996, 43.
1 68 Xinhua, 13 October 2000, 30 March 2001, 14 May 2001.
1 69 Dalai Lama, "The Importance of Indian Initiative on Tibet," Tibetan Bulletin (July-
August 1993).
1 Li7pto0n, 1977, 277; TPBS, 10 May 1992, in BBC/SWB, 6 June 1992; Clarke, "The
Movement of Population", 221-57; Melvyn Goldstein et al., The Struggle for Modern
Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 94. 1 71 Iredale et al., Contemporary Minority Migration, 162.
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49
Many Han &dquo;temporaries&dquo; with restaurants, shops, taxis, etc. remain in Tibet for
longer than &dquo;permanent&dquo; Han, even though the latter enjoy salaries double that
for comparable work in neidi. 172 Some &dquo;temporaries&dquo; are de facto long-term
migrants and in Lhasa have families working in their businesses. In 1996, however,
only about eight percent of the &dquo;floating population&dquo; in Lhasa was under
the age of twenty.
173 Most &dquo;temporary&dquo; Han have only an average education. A
large-scale study of temporary migrants in Lhasa, about three-fourths of whom
were Han and 15 percent Tibetans, found that some 87% had less than a senior
high school education. 174 Most &dquo;temporaries&dquo; work in small businesses or crafts.
Their social profile more closely resembles that of urban Tibetans than that of
their &dquo;permanent&dquo; Han co-ethnics. Our observations confirm moreover those of
Hessler and Chu that the intention of migrants is invariably to return to the interior
within a few years.
175 Iredale and her associates concluded from their survey
of temporary migrants in Lhasa that &dquo;Most Han migrants stay for a period of
perhaps five or six years and then go back taking with them the money that they
have accumulated. ,176
In these respects the &dquo;temporary&dquo; Han in the TAR are no different from
most of China’s &dquo;floating population&dquo; and are hardly part of a plan of &dquo;ethnic
swamping.&dquo; 171 Indeed, the US Reagan Administration condemned Tibetan
6migr6 claims to that effect as &dquo;inaccurate, incomplete and misleading. ,171 Such
claims are no more persuasive now than then. The census population of Han in
Tibet did increase from 3.7% of the 1990 total TAR population to 5.9% of the
2000 total, but part of that increase is attributable to different criteria in the
counts: the 1990 census excluded those who had not lived in the region for a
year or more, while the 2000 census excluded only those who had not lived there
for six months or more. Taking this difference into account the Han proportion
of the population increased by no more than two percent and likely much less
than that. Far from a state-sponsored &dquo;swamping,&dquo; this change reflects such
factors as the removal of police barriers to migration from 1993 179 and the
1 72 Ma Rong, "Economic Patterns," 180.
1 73 Yang Xiushi, "Household Registration, Economic Reform and Migration," International
Migration Review 27, no. 4 (1994): 796-818; Wang Shuxin et al., "Xizang
Lhasa shi liudong renkou he shehui jingji fazhan (Lhasa City, Tibet’s floating population
and socio-economic development)," Renkou yu jingji, no. 6 (1998): 3-9.
1 74 Wang Shuxin, "Xizang Lhasa shi liudong renkou," 6.
1 75 Hessler, "Tibet through Chinese Eyes"; Henry Chu, "Migrants Diluting Tibet Cities,"
Los Angeles Times, 3 August 1999, A1.
1 76 Iredale et al., Contemporary Minority Migration, 157-58.
1 77 Yang, "Urban-Biased Policies," 306-10.
1 78 "Beijing Is Backed by Administration on Unrest in Tibet," New York Times (hereafter
NYT), 7 October 1987, A1.
1 79 "Warning over Tibet’s Removal of Checkpoints," SCMP, 6 January 1993, 10.
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50
increased accompaniment to Tibet of children of Han temporary, informal sector
workers.
The impression of &dquo;swamping&dquo; is in any case largely confined to Lhasa,
which had 30,000 people in 1958, 48,000 in 1965 and 130,000 permanent residents
in the city proper in 1998. There were 200,000 people in Greater Lhasa
then, almost double the 1986 population.lS0 The 44,939 permanent Han in Lhasa
prefecture in 1990 were 12.6% of the population; in 1999 permanent Han were
11% of the prefecture’s 398,000 residents.&dquo;’ The Han are highly concentrated in
the city proper; according to one official source 40,000 of them live in the
city.’82 The number of temporary migrants in Lhasa was put at 30,000-60,000
from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s’g3 and in the TAR at 60,000-
140,000.lS4 The 2000 census indicates that figures somewhat below the midpoints
of these estimates would not be far off the mark. Emigre sources claim
that six of seven prefecture capitals have &dquo;Chinese&dquo; majorities,&dquo;’ 20-30% of
whom are Hui (Muslim Chinese), rather than Han. 186 Apart from the Han and
Hui and rural-to-urban TAR Tibetan migrants (discussed below), there are also
many migrants from &dquo;ethnographic Tibet&dquo;: from 1965 to 1990, 122,800 Tibetans
migrated to the TAR, presumably moving their hukou there.187
There is, incidentally, a large country bordering Tibet in which the
ruling party has a policy amounting to &dquo;ethnic swamping&dquo; in order to quell a
rebellious people. That state is India, whose ruling BJP &dquo;stands for large-scale
settlement of Hindus in the Vale of Kashmir, to overcome the Muslim
1 80 Xinhua, 8 March 1999a; Ma Rong, "Residential Patterns and Their Impact on Han-
Tibetan Relations in Lhasa City, the Tibet Autonomous Region," in Urban Anthropology
in China, ed. Gregory Guldin and Aidan Southall (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 268-77;
ZGGQCS 1995, 39.
1 81 Wang Lixiong, "Xizang," 28; Washington Post, 16 July1999; XZTJNJ2000, 34.
1 82 Xinhua, 24 February 2001
1 83 TIN, "Tibet Policies Designed to Attract Chinese Traders," World Tibet Network
(WTN), 9 July 1994; "Warning over Tibet’s Removal of Checkpoints," SCMP, 6
January 1993, 10; "China May Expel Lhasa Pilgrims to Prevent Riots," Daily Telegraph,
22 March 1989, 13.
1 84 TSG 1995, 95, 106; Harold Saunders et al., Tibet: Issues for Americans (New York:
Council on Foreign Relations, 1992), 9-11.
1 85 International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), Tibet "Transformed" (Washington: ICT,
1994),8.
1 86 Grey, "Modernise or Else!," 11.
1 87 Ma Rong and Pan Naigu, "The Tibetan Population and Their Geographic Distribution
in China," in Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 6t hSeminar of the International Association
for Tibetan Studies, Vol. 1, ed. Per Kaverne (Oslo: Institute for Comparative
Research in Human Culture, 1994), 507-16.
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51
majority.&dquo; 188 The Tibetan 6migr6 authorities have unreservedly backed the
Indian government position on Kashmir. &dquo;9
Plebeian Urban Tibetans
Material improvements in plebeian urban Tibetan life are evident to observers
who visit the region over the years. A study in 1995 by the &dquo;100-Tibetan-Household
Survey Group&dquo; of 45 families in the Lhugu neighborhood of Lhasa found
substantial increases in the past twenty years in possession of articles of daily
use and consumer durables. Interestingly, the possession of religious articles had
also markedly increased and, apart from spending on such articles, about ten
percent of family expenditures in 1994 were devoted to religion, including
contributions to monasteries, spending for household religious activiies, almsgiving
and pilgrimage.’ 90
Surveys have shown that most Tibetans would prefer an urban life and
in the past 50 years, 112 towns have been set up in Tibet. Although some
340,000 people lived in towns and cities with 5,000-plus people in 1995, urbanites
accounted for only 13.3% of the population then, if all persons who have
lived a half-year or more in the TAR are considered. Urbanites were only 9.8%
of the population in 2000, if only those with TAR hukou are counted. PRC
scholars advocate urbanization in Tibet in order to foster development and the
state plans for 100 more small towns along highways.’9’
Tibetan rural-to-urban migrants are now so numerous that part of the
countryside is denuded of adult males, who work in urban transport and construction.
Thousands of Tibetan pilgrims and visitors are also found in TAR
towns. A study of &dquo;minority&dquo; migrants to Lhasa found that no one in the sample
was worse off as a result of the move, that all had earned below the Lhasa
average before migration and that about one-third earned more than that average
after moving, with most of the sample having incomes &dquo;considerably higher&dquo;
after their move than before it.’92 This phenomenon belies the assertion that the
drive to develop Tibet’s cities is aimed at destroying Tibetan culture and pushing
1 88 John Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism
(London: Pluto Press 2000), 235.
1 89 DIIR, "Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 7 August 2001," WTN, 8 August
2001.
1 L9i0u Hongji and Cering Yangzom, Urban Residents in Tibet: Report on the Survey of
Lhugu Residents in Lhasa (Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 1998).
1 Xi9nhu1a, 27 April 2000; Xizang Zizhiqu renkou chouyang diaocha bangongshi (Tibet
Autonomous Region Population Sampling Investigation Office), 1995 nian quan guo 1%
renkou chouyang diaocha ziliao (1995 All-China 1% population sampling investigation
data) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1995), 649; Yu and Guo, Zhongguo Zangqu
xiandaihua, 206.
1 92 "Tibetan Women Exploring New Role," China Daily, 17 June 1999, 3; Ma Rong,
"Residential Patterns", 268-77; Iredale et al., Contemporary Minority Migration, 160-61.
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52
Tibetans out.’93 The same study showed that some three-quarters of &dquo;minority&dquo;
migrants had been there for more than three years, compared with just over half
of the Han sampled and &dquo;it appears that most minority migrants coming from
other parts of Tibet want to stay permanently.&dquo;’94 It is estimated that development
in Tibet during the period 2001-2005 will add 200,000 positions to urban
employment. While some positions will go to urban Tibetans and some to non-
Tbetan migrants, about 60,000 people will be attracted from the TAR countryside.
195
Migration has had its greatest impact on urban commerce. Tibet had
over 40,000 individual businesses in 1997 (over half in Lhasa), employing more
than 57,000 people, with average capital of RMB 10,000. By 2000, there were
43,000 businesses in the TAR, with 69,000 employees and a gross value of sales
of almost RMB 2 billion. These businesses contributed about one-seventh of
total taxes in the region. 196
Tibetans are not the majority in business in Lhasa, however, as they
were in the 198OS:197 it is claimed that in the mid-1990s only 15% of Lhasa
shops and 20% of TAR businesses were owned by Tibetans, as opposed to Hanowned,
Hui-owned or state-owned.’9g PRC sources speak of hundreds of stores
in the Tibetan Barkhor area of Lhasa and 3,000 Tibetan businesswomen in
Lhasa.’99 They also describe, however, how many TAR industries, such as food
and beverage, garment and construction, are in the hands of migrants from Sichuan,
Zhejiang and other neidi provinces.*)00 A study of temporary migrants in
Lhasa found that three-quarters of Han (as against three-eighths of the &dquo;minority&
dquo; migrants) in the sample were in business.2ol
This influx has changed the character of Tibet’s cities and towns, giving
rise to local resentment, but the large number of &dquo;temporary&dquo; migrants ensures
that the &dquo;cultural division of labor&dquo; in Tibet is not completely based on an ethnic
dichotomy. The many plebeian Han and Hui migrants coexist with urban Ti-
1 93 "Dalai Lama Warns of ’Cultural Genocide’ in Tibet," Associated Press, 26 September
2000.
1 94 Iredale et al., Contemporary Minority Migration, 157.
1 95 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
1 Xi9nhu6a, 11 August 1997, 10 September 1997, 8 March 1999; "Private Sector Grows
Fast in Tibet," RMRB, 7 April 2001, WTN, 7 April 2001.
1 9M7a Rong, "Residential Patterns," 273.
1 98 ICT, Tibet "Transformed, " 28; "Most Lhasa Shops Owned by Chinese," Tibetan
Review 38, no. 3 (1993): 4-5; DIIR, Tibet: Proving Truth from Facts (Dharamsala: DIIR,
1994); Grey, "Modernise or Else!," 11.
1 99 Xinhua, 22 March 1997, 12 August 1994.
2 00 Wu Hao, "Community of Economic Interests: A New Panorama of Nationality Relations
in Tibet," Liaowang, No. 38, 24, in FBIS-CHI-95-210, 31 October 1995.
2 01 Iredale et al., Contemporary Minority Migration, 160.
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53

[AGATHA]

betans, albeit in a segregated manner?02 The latter, in turn, have produced their
own state and business elites that are pillars of the &dquo;new Tibet.&dquo;
The New Tibetan Middle Class
In the late 1990s, analysts began to speak of a &dquo;new middle class&dquo; in China
The concept remains ill-defined, with both occupation and income criteria used.
When described as those with a household income of more than RMB 50,000
per annum, China’s mid-1990s middle class surpassed 30 million/04 but because
most Tibetans are peasants, a nineteenth-century European meaning of middle
class is more apt: all those above the peasant, artisan and small merchant poor,
but below the lords spiritual and temporal in a hierarchy of wealth and personal
efficacy. This includes most cadres and businesspeople and some &dquo;clergy.&dquo;
The Officialdom as Middle Class
The Tibetan emigres and their supporters charge that Han run Tibet and Tibetans
&dquo;have been disempowered. They are not decision-makers in their own region. 19205
TAR cadre ranks, however, contain more than 51,000 minority people (98% of
them Tibetan), up from 200 in 1951, 11,200 in the early 1970s and 29,400 in
1981, with a steady rise in the percentage of minorities.
Table 9. Percentage of ethnic minorities among TAR cadres, by year
Source: Dangdai Zhongguo de Xizang (DDZGDX) (Contemporary China’s Tibet) (2
vols.) (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo chubanshe, 1991), 206; Wang Lixiong, Tian Zang,
369; Shakya, Dragon in the Land of Snows, 390; Xinhua, 11/2/99.
2 02 Cf. Ma Rong, "Han and Tibetan Residential Patterns in Lhasa," China Quarterly, no.
128 (1991): 814-35; Ma Rong, "Residential Patterns."
2 03 Qin Yan, Zhongguo zhongchan jieji: molai shehui jiegou de zhuliu (China’s middle
class: the mainstream of the future social structure) (Beijing: Zhongguo jihua chubanshe,
1999); Xinhua, 30 June 1998.
2 04 Ibid., 27-28.
z os SFRC, Hearing on "Recent Developments in Tibet."
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54
The percentage of Tibetan cadres varies according to the administrative
or technical level at which they work, with larger Tibetan components at the
high and low levels.
Table 10. Percentage of ethnic minorities among TAR cadres, by level
Source: Xinhua, 11/3/99; CSHRS 1999.
While there may be fewer high-ranking Tibetans than is officially
c1aimed,206 Tibetans who deal with the state likely encounter Tibetans rather than
Han. Even in Lhasa, 75% of the 7,624 cadres in 1992 were Tibetans. Some 38%
were CCP members and 19% Communist Youth League (CYL) members. 207
Most &dquo;members of the organs of state power&dquo; are Tibetans. TAR Chairman
Legqog is, as are eight of ten vice-chairmen. 201
The CCP controls these organs, but this does not necessarily mean Han
domination. Tibetan cadres insist that there is division of labor between state and
Party leaders, with for example county heads in charge of economic matters and
county Party secretaries in charge of ideology and &dquo;Party affairs .,,209 There were
90,000 CCP members in Tibet in 19962’o and 100,000 in 1998.211 Official figures
on the ethnicity of TAR CCP members date from 1989, when Tibetans were
2 06 Victoria Conner and Robert Barnett, Leaders in Tibet: A Directory (London: TIN,
1997), 40.
2 07 ZGGQCS 1995, 410.
2 08 "New Leaders in Tibet Taking over Government Positions," Tibet Television
(hereafter TTV), 19 May 1998, in BBC/SWB, 25 May 1998.
2 09 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
2 10 "Strict Implementation," XZRB,13 December 1996, 1, in BBC/SWB, 30 December
1996.
2 11 "On Acting Fully and over the Long Term in the Spirit of the Third Central Forum on
Tibet Work," XZRB, 29 July 1998. 1-2, in BBC/SWB, 26 October 1998.
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55
80% of the 70,000 members. According to a high Tibetan cadre interviewed in
2001, the percentage remains about the same today. 212 Z
Table 11. Ethnic minorities at various levels of TAR state organs (%)
Sources: Xinhua, 28/1/99; &dquo;Tibet Official Warns against ’Sabotage,’ Dalai Lama,&dquo; Tibet
Television, 26/5/00; China Society for Human Rights Studies, Forty Years of Progress in
Tibet, reprinted in China Daily, 17 July 1999, 4; John Grey, &dquo;Modernise or Else!:
Building the New Lhasa,&dquo; Himal 8, no. 1 ( 1995): 17.
Tibetan CCP members were 2.7% of TAR Tibetans in 1989; in China as
a whole, CCP members were 4.2% of Chinese. In 1998 CCP members were
5 .1 % of PRC citizens and 4% of the TAR population. 213 The difference relates to
education and occupation. In China as a whole, 46% of CCP members have
completed high school and 19% are university graduates. In Tibet in 1990 only
7.7% of persons aged 15-plus had a secondary education, 2.1 % were high school
graduates and only 0.5% were college-educated, while in 2000, 3.4% were high
school graduates and 1.3% had a university degree. Some 88% of Tibetans are
peasants, herders or workers, but only 48% of CCP members in China are in
these occupations. 214 The grassroots Tibetan CCP presence is in any case
substantial. A survey of one urban and two rural Tibetan areas found that CCP
2 12 Tsering Shakya, "Historical Introduction," in Leaders in Tibet, 1- 16; interviews
with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
2 13 XZTJNJ 1989,170; ZGRKTJNJ 1993, 352; Xinhua, 28 June 1999.
2 14 Xinhua, 28 June 1999, 29 June 2000, 4 July 2001; Attane and Courbage, "Transitional
Stages and Identity Boundaries," 257-80; ZGTJNJ 1998, 171.
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56
members were 5.5%, 2.5% and 5% and CYL members 12%, 10.1% and 5.3% of
the adult population. 211
Half the top TAR CCP leaders are Tibetans. A Han, Chen Kuiyuan, was
Party Secretary from 1992-2000, although he seldom was in Tibet and his executive
deputy party secretaries (EDPSs) likely ran Tibet on a daily basis. Guo
Jinlong, a Han who has been in Tibet since 1993 and served as an EDPS, became
CCP Secretary in 2000. His two EDPS are Tibetan: Raidi, a CCP Central Committee
member who heads the TAR People’s Congress, and Legqog, an alternate
CCP Central Committee member and governor of Tibet. DPSs are especially in
charge of culture and education. 216
Table 12. Secretary, Executive Deputy Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries and
Members of the Standing Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region
Party Committee, 2000
Sources: &dquo;Tibet Leadership Appearances,&dquo; Tibet People’s Broadcasting Station, 13/4/99;
BBC/SWB, 25/4/99; &dquo;Tibet’s Regional Leader Legqog Visits 11th Panchen,&dquo; Tibet
Television (TTV), 7/7/99; BBC/SWB, 12/7/99; &dquo;Chinese Frontier Official Visits Tibet,
Discusses Border Security,&dquo; TTV, 17/11/99; BBC/SWB, 18/11/99; &dquo;Party Gathering
Focuses on Agriculture Policy,&dquo; XZRB, 22/11/98; BBC/SWB, 17/12/98; &dquo;Tibet
Leadership Appearances,&dquo; XZRB, 29/5/1999; BBC/SWB, 22/6/99; &dquo;Tibet Leader Gives
Lecture on Socialism,&dquo; XZRB, 2/7/99; BBC/SWB, 6/8/99; &dquo;Security Meeting Denounces
Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, Taiwan President,&dquo; XZRB, 4/8/99; BBC/SWB, 26/8/99; &dquo;Tibet
Autonomous Region Holds Meeting for Party-Member Cadres,&dquo; AZRB, 30/10/00;
BBC/SWB, 8/11//00.
2 15 Yu and Guo, Zhongguo Zangqu xiandaihua, 47.
2 16 Conner and Barnett, Leaders in Tibet, 44-45; Xinhua, 30 August 1999; interviews
with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
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57
The two EDPSs and three DPSs are ubiquitous in Party and government
activities, while the Party Secretary is usually in the background. Tibetan cadres
whom we have interviewed are convinced that high Tibetan cadres play a central
role in governing the region. The Party secretaries of the prefectures with Tibet’s
two main cities, Lhasa and Xigaze, and the TAR’s largest prefecture, Ali, are
ethnic Tibetans. In 1990, 63 of the 75 counties had ethnic Tibetan party
secretaries.2&dquo;
Table 13. Prefecture CCP Secretaries
Source: Interview with a high Tibetan cadre, 9/12/99.
Most Tibetan cadres are not policymakers, but do implement policies
that they can bend to fit their agendas. They are also a key element of a new Tibetan
middle class that enjoys the fruits of subsidized development. Accounts of
the rise of ex-serfs to leading positions in politics and the economy are a staple
of the official discourse of development in Tibet. 21S In fieldwork for another
project, one of the authors found that ethnic Tibetan entrepreneurs are indeed
most often from humble backgrounds and as &dquo;workunit&dquo; leaders naturally play a
powerful role within their enterprises. Many are Party members. Most were
originally employed as ordinary workers in workshops that were later transformed
into the collective enterprises, owned overwhelmingly by ethnic Tibetans.
In some cases, these entrepreneurs were also helped by their good connections
with the regional or local government. Most such entrepreneurs are urban, but
some have become wealthy through suburban farming.2 19 These well-off Tibetans,
who seem to be at least as numerous as prosperous Han in Tibet, have
gone unacknowledged in 6migr6 accounts that depict all Tibetans as poor and
Han as rich.
2 17 "Data on Number of Minority Cadres in Tibet," TTV, 15 July 1990, in BBC/SWB, 20
July 1990.
2 18 "Reform Brings Opportunities," China Daily, 17 June 1999, 1; Xinhua, 29 January
1999, 25 August 1999; "It’ll Be Rosier Tomorrow: Story of Lhasa Mayor Lobsang
Gyaincain," China’s Tibet, No. 8 (1999): 31-33; "Pasang: From Serf to State Master,"
Women of China, No. 4 (2000): 14-15.
2 19 "Figures Hide Scale of Poverty in Tibet," SCMP, 16 August 2001, 8.
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58
Besides considerations of the ethnic balance within the cadre corps, the
notion of Han domination of Tibet can be assessed in terms of whether Tibetans
are more harshly punished than Han for crimes, as dominant peoples typically
subject subaltern peoples to greater criminal penalties. PRC minority leaders and
others have opined that penalties for corruption among cadres are kept lighter in
Tibet and other minority areas.220 Tibetans also do not experience obvious ethnic
bias at the base of the criminal justice system. The imprisonment rate in Tibet, at
0.9 per thousand, is low compared to China as a whole (1.66) and very low compared
to the US (6.14). Tibetans are reportedly 76% of all prisoners in the TAR,
an under-representation even if one uses low estimates of Tibetans in the TAR
population (about 85%) based on including temporary residents, soldiers and
travelers in the non-Tibetan population.221 The Tibetan share of the 2,300
prisoners in the TAR includes those imprisoned for separatism, about 300
according to the UK-based Tibet Information Network.222 If this number is not
taken into account (since non-Tibetans in the TAR do not engage in separatist
activities), then Tibetans are 63% of ordinary prisoners. In Qinghai, where there
are one million Tibetans, 1,200-1,500 Tibetans are prisoners in any form of
detention.223 This is an incarceration rate of only 0.12-0.15 per 1,000 or oneseventh
to one-eighth the China-wide rate.
The under-representation of Tibetans among prisoners is partly an artifact
of the greater rurality of Tibetans compared with Chinese as a whole, but
minorities in other states are more rural than the majority population and yet
their incarceration rate is higher. In the US, blacks are more rural than whites,
yet are incarcerated at 8.2 times the rate of whites and, unlike in the Tibet case,
there is evidence that discrimination is practiced within the US justice system.
For example, while blacks and whites use and sell drugs at the same rate and
blacks are 13% of the US population, they are 62% of imprisoned drug offenders,
while ethnic minorities as a whole (29% of the US population) constitute 79% of
those imprisoned for drug offenses. Black and Hispanic youths, moreover, are
treated much more severely than white teenagers charged with comparable
crimes at every step of the juvenile justice system. 224
2 20 Xinhua, 11 March 2000; "Beijing Still Vague on How to Open the West," SCMP, 10
May 2000, 14.
2 21 Xinhua, 17 April 2000; James Seymour, "Inflating Prisoner Statistics Counter-
Productive," SCMP, 30 March 1998, 18; Clarke, "The Movement of Population," 221.
2 22 "China Says 115 Political Prisoners in Tibet," Associated Press, 22 May 2001.
2 23 James Seymour and Richard Anderson, New Ghosts, Old Ghosts: Prisons and Labor
Reform Camps in China (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 168. 2 24 Human Rights Watch, Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on
Drugs, http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/drugs/war/ ... ations/htm (2000); "Justice Is
Not Color Blind, Studies Find," Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2000, B1; "Racial Disparities
Seen as Pervasive in Juvenile Justice," NYT, 6 April 2000, A1; "Number Held in
Prison Rises to a Record," NYT, 26 March 2001, A16.
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59
The under-representation of Tibetans in the PRC penal system contrasts
sharply with over-representation of non-white minorities in the English-speaking
countries. In all these countries, except the UK, the main visible minorities have
a more rural profile than the general population, yet are imprisoned at much
higher rates.
Table 14. Incarceration rates in English-speaking countries, 2000
Sources: &dquo;Civil Rights Leaders Highlight U.S. Racial Biases,&dquo; Inter Press Service, 24/10/00; &dquo;Racism Row
over Drug Arrest League Tables,&dquo; Observer, 24/12/00,1; &dquo;The Great Debate,&dquo; Daily Mail, 15/12/00, 7;
&dquo;Liberals Vow to Address Native Issues,&dquo; Ottawa Citizen, 31/1/O1, 4; Channel News Asia, &dquo;Australia’s
Aborigines 15 Times More Likely to Be Jailed,&dquo; 17/1/01; &dquo;Fears Rise of Violent Generation,&dquo; The Press
(Christchurch), 18/1/00, 7.
These differentials may be even larger when total incarcerated populations
(i.e. prisons plus jails) are considered. For example, indigenous people are
20 times more likely than other Australians to end up in jail. Once imprisoned,
Aborigines are 16 times more likely to die in custody than other inmates . 225
It seems also that Tibetans who land in court generally come before
Tibetan judges. Some 96% of chief judges at the regional, prefecture, city and
county TAR courts are ethnic Tibetans, as are &dquo;most staff members of the
judiciary.&dquo; z26 There may be judicial underrepresentation of ethnic Tibetans,
given their 92% share of the population, but the lack of trained personnel is
acknowledged by TAR officials and is assertedly being addressed through a
Tibet Law Evening University and a Court Correspondence Institute. 227 In any
case, the degree of underrepresentation of ethnic Tibetans in the judiciary is not
likely to be as high as it is with ethnic minorities in the main English-speaking
countries. In Canada in 2001, non-whites were 11% of the population, but only
4% of judges .221 In the U.S. in 1990, non-whites were about 20% of the
2 25 "Payback Time," SCMP, 3 July 2001, 4; "Aborigines See Jail as Badge of Honor,"
SCMP, 23 July 2001, 9.
2 26 Xinhua, 24 February 1998.
2 27 "Judiciary Officials Inspect Tibet’s Legal Administration," TTV, 9 September 2000;
"Tibet Party Leaders on ’Two Supremes’ Work Rports at NPC," XZRB, 14 March 2001,
in BBC/SWB, 19 March 2001.
2 28 "Study Links Racism, Wage Gap," Toronto Star, 4 May 2001.
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60
population, but 9.4% of all judges.229 In the UK in 1999, non-whites were 6% of
the population, but only 2% of all judges
The question of Han domination raises the concomitant issue of Tibetan
agency. Emigre narratives portray Tibetans only as victims, but in 1985, 70% of
all TAR police officers were Tibetan, including the heads of the public security
bureaus in all counties. In 2001, about the same percentage obtained and the
heads of the police at both the TAR and Lhasa levels were Tibetans?31 Those
who attack the forests of central Tibet are mainly Tibetans, as are those who
decimate herds of Tibetan antelopes and crowd out the pandas. 212 Prostitution in
Lhasa, which earlier involved Han women and Han customers, is now a more
local industry, with Tibetan customers and sex workers.233 Alongside the anti-
Tibetan prejudice of Han migrants, often readily expressed to foreigners and perceived
by Tibetans ’214 there is Tibetan anti-Han bias, encapsulated in use of the
term gyakuo, a Tibetan version of the Chinese term for &dquo;foreign devils&dquo; (yang
guizi) that Tibetans apply to Han. 235 Apart from direct racism, many elite
Tibetans look down upon the bulk of Han migrants as unskilled or low-skilled
and &dquo;low-quality people&dquo; (di suzhide; liedeng ren). They believe that many such
migrants are thieves, prostitutes and hooligans, but say that they welcome Han
migrants of &dquo;higher quality&dquo; who can help construct Tibet.236 While Han chauvinism
is now the more politically salient of the two sets of biases, examples
from around the world and from modem Tibetan history (two mass expulsions of
civilian Han populations) show that this could quickly change upon a reversal of
political fortunes. In any case, supporters of the Tibetan 6migr6 cause have urged
that both the PRC government and the Tibetan emigres should acknowledge and
address the racism perpetrated by Han against Tibetans and Tibetans against
H an. 237
There is, incidentally, a largely ethnic Tibetan area where it has been
charged that open government-sponsored discrimination is practiced: the Ladakh
area of Indian Kashmir, which is 87% Buddhist. It is asserted that the 3,600
2 29 Douglas Anderton, The Population of the United States. 3d ed. (New York: Free Press,
1997), 383, 602.
2 30 "Judging Judges," Financial Times, 5 January 2000, 20.
2 31 Xinhua, 28 July 1985, 18 January 2000; interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
2 32 Christian Science Monitor, 24 September 1999; Xinhua, 4 September 1999; "Human
Competition Edging out Those Lovable Icons of Wildlife," NYT, 6 April 2001, A6.
2 33 TIN, Social Evils: Prostitution and Pornography in Lhasa (London: TIN Background
Briefing Paper B31, 1998); "Carnal Pleasures on the Road to Nirvana," Independent, 4
August 1998, 11.
2 34 "Old Tibet Falls to Chinese Wreckers," Independent, 17 April 1994, 17; "Buddha vs.
Beijing," NYT, 11 November 1998, A1.
2 35 "Migrants Diluting Tibet Cities," Los Angeles Times, 3 August 1999, A1.
2 36 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
2 37 ICT, Jampa: The Story of Racism in Tibet (Washington: ICT, 2001), 90-91.
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61
cadres of the Jammu and Kashmir Civil Secretariat do not include a single Ladakhi,
that corporations employing 21,000 in Kashmir include just two Ladakhis,
and that the Kashmir Administrative Services inductions for the Indian Administrative
Service has never included a Buddhist despite many Buddhists
passing the relevant examinations. ’ The Tibetan 6migr6 authorities have no,
however, publicly raised the matter of anti-Tibetan Buddhist discrimination in
Kashmir.
The Tibetan Commercial Middle Class
Businesspeople are also part of the burgeoning Tibetan middle class. The locus
classicus of Tibetan business is the small shop that sells foodstuffs or dry goods
or the atelier of the tailor, cabinetmaker or jeweler. PRC media claimed in 1993
that most of the 14,000 businesspeople in Lhasa were Tibetans and in 1997 there
were 20,000 businesses in Lhasa.z39 The PRC media acknowledges that &dquo;businesspeople
from China’s hinterland have swarmed into Tibet,&dquo; but contend that
this has a demonstration effect on Tibetans. 240 Segregated residential patterns
mitigate ethnic business competition. Han buy largely from Han and Tibetans
from Tibetans. The latter may however purchase a chuba (a traditional dress), a
hada (ceremonial scarf) or even a thanka (a religious painting) from Han craftspeople.
Many urban Tibetans eat in Sichuan restaurants, ride with taxi drivers
from Zhejiang or rent houses to Han and Hui migrants. We have encountered
Tibetan entrepreneurs who, in hiring Han migrants, cite their faster pace of work
in construction. Even nationalistic Tibetans are known to hire Han carpenters. 241
Lhasa’s Tibetan merchants are conscious of their group interests and are
a sufficiently large and coherent stratum to engage in collective action. At least
through 1993, Tibetan vendors paid less in taxes and for business licenses than
holders of temporary hukou and after that date Tibetan producers or vendors of
Tibetan ethnic crafts still enjoy that privilege. Tax rises in 1994 sparked demonstrations
by 200-300 Lhasa Tibetan traders.242 A U.S. anthropologist doing fieldwork
in Tibet in the mid-1990s observed that &dquo;nearly all of the large demonstrations
held since martial law was lifted in 1990, and many smaller acts of
violence, are economically motivated. 1,243
2 38 "If Justice Is Not Done to Us, This Northern Frontier Will Go," The Statesman (India),
25 September 2001.
2 39 Xinhua, 10 November 1993, 11 August 1997.
2 40 Xinhua, 5 March 1999.
2 41 Xinhua, 7 June 1988, 28 January 1997; Grey, "Modernise or Else!," 12; Erickson,
Tibet, 210.
2 42 Erickson, Tibet, 212; Grey, "Modernise or Else!," 16; TIN, Cutting off the Serpent’s
Head: Tightening Control in Tibet, 1994-1995 (London: TIN 1996); interviews with Tibetan
cadres, 2001.
2 43 Quoted in Vincanne Adams, "Karaoke as Modem Lhasa, Tibet: Western Encounters
with Cultural Politics," Cultural Anthropology 11, no. 4 (1996): 510-46.
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62
While a handful of Tibetans have grown rich from manufacturing carpets
and hada, processing cashmere, etc., 244 the greatest private sector engines
for generating the new Tibetan middle class are tourism and inter-provincial and
cross-border trade. In 1980-1998, 532,000 foreigners visited Tibet; in 1999, over
108,000 came (77 times the 1,400 who came in 1986 and quadruple 1993’s
24,400) and spent $36 million. Domestic tourism has also blossomed. Some
500,000 tourists visited Tibet in 2000, 136,000 of them foreigners. The $75
million they spent accounted for 5.6% of the TAR GDP .241 In 1995, 62% of the
3,200 people working in tourism were Tibetans and by 1999 tourism employed
4,200?46 Foreigners often stay at Tibetan-run hotels and patronize Tibetan-run
tour companies and restaurants, many owned by repatriated Tibetans. Most Han
use state-owned hotels and agencies, but buy souvenirs from Tibetans?47
Tibetan traders have found prosperity through importing goods from
neidi and abroad, as the TAR trade volume reached $150 million in 1999. 24S
Traders cultivate Tibetan officials and &dquo;dine in the best restaurants, live in large
homes, travel out of Tibet regularly, and wear expensive, imported clothing. 1249
They likely agree with Lhasa entrepreneur-educationalist Tashi Tsering, who has
stated &dquo;I want a modem Tibet, even if it is part of China, but not at the cost of
our culture. I want both&dquo; .2’0 They may excoriate co-ethnics for not effectively
competing with Han in business. 211
PRC sources sing the praises of the new Tibetan middle class. Success
stories feature Tibetan peasants and herders who grew rich as transporters,
2 44 Xinhua, 8 June 1993.
2 45 Mary Cingcade, "Tourism and the Many Tibets: The Manufacture of Tibetan ’Tradition’,"
China Information 13, no. 1 (1998), 1-22; Julie Jie Wen and Clement A. Tisdell,
Tourism and China’s Development: Policies, Regional Economic Growth and Ecotourism
(Singapore: World Scientific Press, 2001), 137; "High Stakes," Far Eastern
Economic Review, 22 June 1995, 76-78; Xinhua, 11 June 1999, 20 January 2000, 25
April 2000, 31 July 2001; "Tibetan Tourism Faces Uphill Battle against Red Tape,"
SCMP 19 July 1999, 8; "Tourism to Grow into Number One Industry in Tibet," RMRB,
23 March 2041; WTN, 24 March 2001.
2 46 Xinhua, 12 April 1996, 2 March 1999.
2 47 Cingcade, "Tourism and the Many Tibets", 15-18; Eric Laws, "Issues in Developing
a Tourism Industry in Tibet," in Tourism and Minorities’ Heritage: Impacts and
Prospects, ed. Peter Bums (London: University of North London Press, 1995), 58-69;
Paul Christiaan Klieger, "Accomplishing Tibetan Identity: The Constitution of a
National Consciousness," Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawaii, 1989,
284; Adams, "Karaoke as modem Lhasa"; Iredale, et al., Contemporary Minority Migration,
160.
2 48 "Tibet Reports Rising GDP," AsianInfo Daily China News, 25 November 1999.
2 49 Adams, "Karaoke as modern Lhasa", 529.
2 50 "Working for Tibet from Within," Wall Street Journal, 4 September 1997, 7.
2 51"Tibet’s Dependence Persists," SCMP, 11 September 1997, 6; "Tibetans Turn to Net
in Search of Profit," SCMP, 5 July 1999, 8; Adams, "Karaoke as Modern Lhasa," 525.
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63
specialty foods producers, restauranteurs, store owners, building contractors,
millers, crafts people and machinery distributors. The PRC government views
the high TAR bank borrowing rate as indicating Tibetan peasants’ new found
interest in business.&dquo;’ There are accounts of Tibetan rural-to-urban migrants or
urban poor whose prosperity owes to pedicabs, taxis, craft shops and small
factories. 253 Many of the thousand or so people per day who venture to the Lhasa
stock exchange to trade shares are traditionally garbed Tibetans. 214 As Iredale, et
al. have observed, &dquo;The Tibetan business community is raising its status and increasing
its influence. ,21’ Han and Hui businesspeople however dominate the
very highest level of private business in Tibet, much as ethnic Chinese do
throughout Southeast Asia. Of the 33 Lhasa private businesspeople with capital
of RMB 10 million or more, only nine are Tibetans. 256
The Monkish Middle Class
Even the most traditional sector of Tibetan society is now in a developmentalist
mode and becoming quasi-middle class. In 1959, Tibet had about 115,000
monks in some 2,500 monasteries, who constituted 10-15% of the adult male
population. More than 20,000 monks lived in three great monastic seats around
Lhasa, Drepung, Sera and Ganden, exceeding limits on the number of monks
imposed by the Dalai Lama. Many monks did not study. Despite large incomes
from usury and grain lending, the large monasteries &dquo;were full of monks who
spent a large part of their time engaged in moneymaking activities,&dquo; including
cross-border trade. 257
Virtually all monasteries were closed and many destroyed during the
1960s. In the 1970s, less than 1000 monks remained at ten functioning monasteries.
From the 1980s to the mid-1990s, however, the number of monks climbed
steadily. In 1997, Tibetan scholars asserted that there were 1,781 lamaseries and
temples in the TAR, 300 more than the number of religious venues before 1951,
and that there were actually more monks and nuns than the government estimate
of 46,000.25S
252 Xinhua, 30 May 1996, 15 January 1997, 6 May 1998, 16 June 1998, 13 July 1998, 19
December 1998.
2 53 Xinhua, 14 July 1994, 14 April 1998, 20 April 1998, 12 October 1998.
2 54 "Beijing Looses a Reckless Bull," Washinton Post, 22 August 1999, H1.
2 55 Iredale et al., Contemporary Minority Migration, 163.
2 56 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
257 Melvyn Goldstein, "The Revival of Monastic Life in Drepung Monastery," in
Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Indentity, ed. Melvyn
Goldstein and Matthew Kapstein (Berkeley: University of California, 1998), 15-52;
Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1993), 578-
82 ; Van Spengen, Tibetan Border Worlds, 78.
2 58 Xinhua, 8 August 1997.
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64
Table 15. Number of monks and nuns in the TAR by year
Sources: Xinhua, 22/6/00, 26/2/99, 13/9/95, 26/4/90, 8/12/89, 18/7/87; &dquo;Tibet
Authorities Admit to Disturbances, Monastery Clash,&dquo; Asahi Shimbun, 21/8/96, 6;
BBC/SWB, 2/9/96; &dquo;Buddhism’s Influence Stays Strong in Tibet,&dquo; New York Times,
19/7/79, 1; Associated Press, 12/8/85 (untitled by Rick Gladstone); &dquo;China Restricts
Number of Monks and Monasteries in Tibet,&dquo; Inter Press Service, 4/1/95.
Monks today are 1.8% and males 15 years or older are 31 % of the TAR
population .2’9 Discounting nuns-9% of the &dquo;clergy&dquo;26°-monks are thus over
5% of TAR adult males. The proportion is higher than in 90% Buddhist Thailand.
There, 300,000 full-time monks among 60 million Thais are 1.5% of the adult
male Buddhist population ’26 ’ although many Thais do become monks for short
periods as well. In 90% Buddhist Laos, there are 20,000 monks among 4.5
million people and the same number in Vietnam, where about half the population
of 77 million is BuddhiSt.262 Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge takeover in
1975 had 80,000 monks in a population of 7 million?63 Bhutan, with 1.6 million
people in 1989, 75% of them Tibetan Buddhists, had 12,000 monks, or 2.5% of
adult male Buddhists,264 the same percentage as in Myanmar, with 300,000-
400,000 monks in a population of 48 million.265 In traditionally Tibetan Buddhist
Mongolia, there were only 140 monasteries and 2,500 monks in a population of
2.4 million in 1999.266
2 59 ZGRKTJNJ 1996, 88.
2 60 Xinhua, 19 December 1992.
2 61 "More Good than Bad in Country of 300,000 Monks," Straits Times, 5 March 1995, 4.
2 62 "Vietnam-Religion: New Converts Turn to ’Opiate of the Masses’," Inter Press
Service, 24 July 1997; "A Laid-Back Sleepy Shangri-la," Independent, 9 June 1996, 54.
2 63 Steven Katz, "Mass Death under Communist Rule and the Limits of ’Otherness’," in
Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism and Xenophobia, ed., Robert Wistrich
(Amsterdam: Harwood, 1999), 267-91.
2 64 Bhutan: A Country Study, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/bttoc.html, 1997.
2 65 "Hundreds of Monks to March on Capital," SCMP, 27 May 2000, 15.
2 66 "Mongolia Saddled with Unholy War," Scotland on Sunday, 5 December 1999, 21.
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65
Tibet’s &dquo;clerical density&dquo; also exceeds that in devoutly Catholic countries.
Ireland, with 4.5 million people, 93% of them Catholic, had 11,500 priests
and monks in the mid-1990s, about 0.8% of the adult male population.26’ Poland,
95% Catholic, had 24,000 priests and monks in 1989 in a population of 39
million or 0.1 S% of adult males .26’ The density of priests in Poland has not risen,
moreover, while the Irish clergy is in decline. The 61 million US Catholics are
served by only 27,000 active priests.269 In sum, Tibet’s monks and nuns are a
significant part of the total population, both in absolute terms and compared to
analogous religious orders elsewhere. Their numbers and political activities are
controlled by the state,270 as they were under both the Dalai Lamas and the Qing
DYnasty. 271 That is unremarkable given the monasteries’ leading role in
challenging state authorities both before and after 1951; indeed in the 1930s and
1940s, many monks eschewed Tibetan independence and looked to the Chinese
government for aid in advancing their interests, often through active protest
directed against the Dalai Lama’s officials. 212
A limitation on the number of monks and a ban on their participation in
separatist activity, incidentally, do not violate the Declaration on Religious
Intolerance and Discrimination Belief (1981), the principal UN expression on
religious freedom. The state does not in any case act everywhere in Tibet to
restrict the number of monks. The distribution of monks is very uneven and in
some places, such as Ali, in far western Tibet, the problem is that not enough
people want to become monks and nuns, so that precious artifacts in monasteries
go uncared for. Local governments sometimes actually try to recruit monks. The
restriction on the age at which one can join a monastery is also not a violation of
international law. Tibetan Buddhism allows that a seven-year-old can become a
monk or nun and some lamas think that young children are less &dquo;contaminated&dquo;
with secular concerns, but the authorities claim that in some cases children are
forced by their parents to become monks.
Tibetan monks have an image of poverty, but those in or near urban
areas are being drawn into commerce and some are middle class. TAR monasteries
are abjured to maintain themselves financially (yi si yang Si).273 PRC
media stated in 1993 that monks at Tashilhumpo, the monastery of the Panchen
Lama, earned &dquo;an average of about RMB 3000 a year, much more than the
2 67 "How the Mitres Have Fallen," Irish Times, 28 November 1994, 8; "Bishop Says
Fewer than 60 Priests Linked to Abuse," Irish Times, 12 October 1995, 9.
2 68 "Warsaw Journal," NYT, 15 January 1991, A4.
2 69 "Last Rites Loom for Dwindling Priesthood," SCMP, 17 July 2001, 12.
2 70 Eric Kolodner, "The Future of the Right to Self-Determination," Connecticut Journal
of International Law 10 (1994): 153-70.
2 71 C. K.Yang, Religion in Chinese Society (Prospect Hills, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1961),
183-87.
2 72 Schwartz, "Renewal and Resistance," 232.
2 73 "Bountiful Beijing Tugs Tibetan Leash," SCMP, 17 August 2001, 7.
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66
annual income of many local government employees&dquo; .214 In the mid-1990s, 90%
of monasteries lived off alms and 10% earned money through handicrafts,
eateries, clinics, hotels, tourism companies and transport services .275 Drepung
earned from commercial activity about half the relatively high income it
provided to its monks. 276
Monks and nuns were the bulk of separatist activists in Tibet in the
1990s. Misra, a Tibet independence advocate, places monks with Lhasa residents
and &dquo;the [former] elite&dquo; as independence stalwarts, as opposed to Tibetans in
outlying areas and &dquo;the erstwhile socially depressed class,&dquo; who are more
reconciled to being part of the PRC. 277 There were many demonstrations in
1987-1993 and sporadic oppositional activity in the mid-1990s. 27S In 1987-1996,
Drepung, Sera and Ganden had about 100 &dquo;disturbances.&dquo; 2’9 TAR officials
lamented that religion was being promoted administratively, and that there are
more monasteries in Tibet than towns and townships and more monks and nuns
than secondary school students. Several counties were singled out as having a
&dquo;clerical density&dquo; exceeding 5% of the total population; with Qamdo Prefecture
having 20,000 monks. In some places, monasteries played a role in choosing
local officials and even made decisions about CCP admissions. Buddhist practice
was widespread among Party members throughout the region. In the mid-late
1990s, &dquo;patriotic education&dquo; carried out by workteams seconded to the monasteries
was the principal tactic to diminish monastic activism. 280
Another official reaction to &dquo;clerical&dquo; activism, however, was to continue
to pour money into the religious sector. Since 1978, RMB 300 million in
central funds have been spent to repair and maintain monasteries, 281 with funds
allocated to aged and infirm monks and nuns. At Drepung, such monks state that
they live better now than in the old society and receive a stipend above the
average per capita TAR income. 282 The state seeks to prevent the unchecked
2 74 Xinhua, 13 May 1993.
2 75 Xinhua, 31 May 1994, 7 August 1994, 27 September 1994.
2 76 Goldstein, "The Revival of Monastic Life," 35-38.
2 77 Amalendu Misra, "Tibet: In Search of a Resolution," Central Asian Survey 19, no. 1
(2000): 79-93.
2 78 Ronald Schwartz, Circle of Protest: Political Ritual in the Tibetan Uprising (New
York: Columbia University, 1994).
2 79 Asahi Shimbun, 21 August 1996, 6.
2 80 "Clearly Understand the True Nature of the Dalai Clique, Oppose Splittism and
Safeguard Stability," XZRB, 10 March 1995, 1, in BBC/SWB, 28 March 1995; "Actively
Guide Religion to Accommodate Itself to Socialist Society," XZRB, 4 November 1996, 4,
in BBC/SWB, 16 November 1996; "Let the Banner of Patriotism Flutter High in the
Sky," XZRB, 28 November 1997, 4, in BBC/SWB, 29 December 1997, "Legqog Notes
Shortcomings in Party Discipline," XZRB, 12 February 1999, in BBC/SWB, 23 March
1999; Xinhua, 19 October 2000.
2 81 CSHRS 1999.
2 82 Goldstein, "The Revival of Monastic Life," 273.
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67
growth of monastic orders and to weaken the centrality of religion in Tibet generally.
While it represses separatist activity, the state also urges the &dquo;clergy&dquo; to
seek collective and individual self-enrichment. Because they have a reasonably
secure standard of living based on a combination of community donations,
institutional business activity and state support and devote most of their time to
religious activities, many monks and nuns now lead something of a middle-class
existence. This is unlikely to de-politicize them: indeed Buddhist monks in Sri
Lanka have been described as both active in business and nationalistic to the
point of chauvinism.&dquo;’ Accelerated development may however break down the
stereotypical dichotomy that holds that the Han care only about money and the
Tibetans care only about religion. 114
Conclusion
Who then are the beneficiaries of development in Tibet? At the most general
level, they are to a much greater extent urban than rural people. The dichotomy
in the TAR between urban and rural society is sharper than elsewhere in China
because of the paucity of rural industry in the region. Tibet, with rural income
only a fifth of urban income, presents a sui generis case of urban bias as an outcome.
As is typical of most non-core states, the bureaucracy in Tibet is extensive
and largely urban, with rural elites tied to urban elites through the Party and
cadre positions and the bulk of peasants and nomads lacking political influence
commensurate with their numbers. Rural-to-urban migration of both Tibetans
and non-Tibetans has largely remained in the informal sector, where benefits are
sharply lower than in the still-socialized formal sector. As elsewhere in the
developing world, inflation has affected rural Tibetans to a greater extent than
their urban counterparts, such that the nominal urban/rural income gap is greater
still in real terms. Compared to the cities, the Tibetan countryside, even more so
than the countryside in China generally, 285 is grossly under-allocated in terms of
transportation and communications, household water supplies, electricity, education,
health care, pensions, government offices, cultural centers, unemployment
benefits, and other amenities and transfer payments. Gabriel Lafitte has written:
[Tibet’s] urban and industrial enclaves monopolize available capital,
while the pastures, farmlands, and remaining forests lag further and
further behind. Development is concentrated along the highways,
while there are many areas where Tibetan farmers have no access to
market. Spending on health, education and basic services such as
electricity are concentrated in these enclaves, while Tibetans in rural
2 83 H. L. Seneviratne, "Buddhist Monks and Ethnic Politics," Anthopology Today 17, no.
2 (2001): 15-22.
2 84 Erickson, Tibet, 226-27.
2 85 Johnson, Reducing the Urban-Rural Income Disparity, 18.
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68
areas miss out ... [T]he mosaic of pockets of overdevelopment,
surrounded by huge areas of underdevelopment, is dangerous; it sets
up a dynamic of inequality which undermines the viability of Tibetan
life.
At the same time, Tibet lacks some features of urban bias found elsewhere in the
developing world, including in China. There are no compelling economic factors
that promote urban bias, apart from limitations that attach to the region generally,
e.g. the inability of rural Tibetans to export their products or migrate in large
numbers to neidi. Urban bias appears to be the result of political considerations-
separatist opposition has been centered in the cities and must be counteracted
there-and in the idea that Tibetans must rapidly modernize and catch up
with neidi through the creation of an urban middle class. Excessive taxation of
peasants and herders is not a problem in Tibet, as it is in China proper. Subsidies
enable rural Tibetans to enjoy a higher standard of living than would likely obtain
in the absence of a state that, in the TAR at least, retains more than vestigial
characteristics of socialism. Indeed, the subsidized education and health care
provided to rural TAR residents are for the most part no longer found in Tibetan
cities, even if these benefits remain substandard by urban lights.
The singular distinction of urban bias in the TAR is thus that it is not
based on exploiting rural people for the benefit of urban residents, so much as on
under-servicing them compared to their urban confr6res. Funds meant for the
countryside are often used in the cities. Government expenditures are huge and
in order to make the city payrolls, public authorities in the TAR sometimes appropriate
funds that are meant for &dquo;special projects&dquo; (zhuan kuan) in the countryside.
The overall policy focuses on the construction of the cities, but whether in
the cities or rural areas, the emphasis is on infrastructure. For example, much
money, but little research, has been invested into projects in central Tibet termed
&dquo;opening the three rivers agricultural area&dquo; (yi jiang, liang he nongye qu kaifa),
which includes reservoir building, tree planting and irrigation. Where &dquo;aid Tibet&dquo;
Han cadres are involved, because they stay in Tibet for two-three years and have
to show some achievement there, they tend to focus on projects that bring quick
returns and enhance their images. For example, Han cadres from Guangdong and
Fujian in Linzhi oversaw the construction of many houses without ascertaining
whether there was sufficient demand for them and now many new houses stand
unoccupied. The end result is that not enough investment is put into projects that
immediately increase productivity and not much attention is paid to investments
that directly improve the living standards of the common people. 287
The political choice underlying that outcome in Tibet notably contrasts
with the Cuban case. The huge government subsidies to Tibet are greater pro-
2 86 Gabriel Lafitte, "China’s New Mass Western Development Campaign," Tibetan
Review 35, no. 6 (2000): 20-34.
2 87 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
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69
portionately than the $2 billion per year that the Soviet Union provided Cuba in
1976-1986 and that constituted one-seventh of Cuba’s GDP. 288 The Cuban
government used its subsidies to ameliorate urban bias 2’9 but the opposite has
been true in Tibet: since the mid-1980s, there has been no apparent plan to use
subsidies to narrow the differences between city and countryside. That may be
changing with recently announced plans to create many new small towns in
Tibet, to build a railroad to the TAR by 2008 that will not just bring in non-
Tibetan migrants, as the emigres argue, 290 but also carry out whatever commodities
rural Tibetans can sell, and to increase nominal rural incomes by half during
the Tenth Five Year Plan period. It is still too early to determine whether these
plans will be realized and contribute to the amelioration of urban bias.
At a more specific level, the core of the permanent Han (the &dquo;aid Tibet&dquo;
personnel) benefit from development through higher wages than they receive at
home, but few (if any) have been made rich by their Tibet sojourns. Because
their service involves &dquo;leaving behind their home towns and relatives and giving
up better living conditions and working environments,&dquo; 29’ most might leave
Tibet for lesser rewards elsewhere, if given the chance. As education in Tibet
expands, the number of imported Han may fall, depending on the state’s perception
of the threat from Tibetan nationalism. The government would like to
reduce its burden through further Tibetanization of the TAR elite, but remains
suspicious that if left to their own devices, a wholly Tibetan TAR elite would be
pressured by popular nationalism.292
Most Han who float into the TAR are neither much richer nor more
&dquo;cultured&dquo; than urban Tibetans, despite a somewhat higher educational level,
fluent Chinese, contacts in neidi and greater commercial experience. In contrast
to urban Tibetans, their unemployment rate is low, since if they cannot find work,
they leave Tibet. It has not however been demonstrated that on balance the Han
presence has retarded the development of the Tibetan middle class: most Han
businesses sell mainly to other Han. As a general proposition moreover, migration
usually stimulates economic opportunities for host populations, especially
where migrants are not marginalized in an enclave economy.293 High-volume
2 88 Richard Turtis, "Trade, Debt, and the Cuban Economy," World Development 15, no.
1(1987): 163-80. 2 89 Forrest Colburn, "Exceptions to Urban Bias in Latin America: Cuba and Costa Rica,"
Journal of Development Studies 29, no. 4 (1993): 60-78.
2 90 "Railway across the Roof of the World," Daily Telegraph, 1 February 2001, 1.
2 91 "Speech by Raidi at Fourth Plenary Session," XZRB, 25 June 1996, 1; BBC/SWB, 5
August 1996.
2 92 Cf "The Skies and Land of Tibet Belong to the Communist Party," XZRB, 17 December
1997, 1, in BBC/SWB, 20 January 1998.
2 93 Demetrios Papademtriou, "International Migration: Dangerous Myths," Current, no.
402 (1 May 1998), 28-37; Don DeVoretz, "Immigration to Canada: Some Economic
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70
Han migration may however reduce opportunities for rural-to-urban Tibetan
migrants to secure work in construction, transport and restaurants. It may eventually
even stimulate Tibetan migration to Chengdu and other neidi cities, an incipient,
if as yet unstudied phenomenon. 194
If the &dquo;temporaries&dquo; are third-party beneficiaries of the effort to create a
modus vivendi between state and society in Tibet, the new Tibetan middle class
is the direct beneficiary of a de facto contract between the state and Tibetans.
The state guarantees that its subsidies allow Tibetans sufficient opportunities for
a prosperous &dquo;talented tenth.&dquo; Most new Tibetan middle-class members in turn
tacitly agree to refrain from seeking to separate Tibet from China, whatever their
personal political predilections.
At the political core of the new middle class stands the Tibetan component
of what Wang Lixiong terms the &dquo;stabilizing force&dquo; (wending jituan),
elites who enforce the de facto contract by demanding and generally receiving
what they need to develop Tibet, in exchange for doing what is required to
maintain stability.295 Their attitudes vary with rank and function, but stabilizers
are broadly nationalist in a dual sense. On the one hand, they support the central
aim of Chinese civic nationalism, a strong state and a rich people. They know
that the gap between Tibet and neidi has widened in the reform era. In 1980,
TAR GDP per capita was 2% above the national average, but by 1995 it was
only 50% of the national average. Stabilizers seek to narrow the gap.296 They
have a fierce enmity toward the 6migr6 leaders in India based on the view that
they stir up turmoil that prevents Tibet from reaching that goal .29’ Tibetan
stabilizers also subscribe to an ethnic nationalism that flows from an official
discourse of difference that maintains boundaries between ethnic groups by
naturalizing ethnic group loyalties,298 while requiring that each ethnie also accept
its place in a national super-ethnos, the Zhonghua minzu, or &dquo;Chinese ethnic
group.&dquo;
Impacts," in International Migration and Structural Change in the APEC Member Economies
(Chiba: Institute of Developing Economies, JETRO, 2001), 287-305.
2 94 Jin Dai, "Tibet Impression," Chinese Community Forum, no. 2001-30, 1 August 2001,
www.China-Net.org.
2 95 Wang Lixiong, Tian zang: Xizang de mingyun (Sky burial: the fate of Tibet)
(Brampton: Mirror Books, 1998).
2 96 Susumu Yabuki and Stephen Harner, China’s New Political Economy (Boulder:
Westview, 1999), 98; "Clearly Understand the Region’s Basic Situation", XZRB, 4
December 1997, 1, in BBC/SWB, 20 January 1998.
2 97 Xinhua, 1 April 1999.
2 98 Ismail Amat, "Multinationality State and Patriotism," Guangming ribao, 2 February
1995, 1, in FBIS-CHI-95-045, 35-37.
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[AGATHA]

71
Ethnic nationalism in China also involves differential placement on a
continuum of development from &dquo;backward&dquo; to advanced.&dquo;9 Tibetan stabilizers,
having abolished the badges and incidents of &dquo;feudalism,&dquo; are convinced that its
&dquo;dregs,&dquo; such as &dquo;patriarchal clans,&dquo; the amassed wealth of temples and &dquo;feudal
superstition&dquo; are continually resurgent and hampering development.3°° They seek
rapid modernization to remove the stigma of &dquo;backwardness&dquo; and see an expanded
middle class, not an invigorated peasantry, as placing Tibetans on a par
with Han. The stabilizers manage the state to this end, leaving a &dquo;trickle down&dquo;
to the peasants. Making a middle class requires opportunities especially for
urban Tibet to enjoy very rapid development.301
If Han &dquo;permanents,&dquo; Han and Hui &dquo;temporaries,&dquo; and a new Tibetan
middle class all benefit from development, what of the peasant majority? State
statistics, even if only an approximation of reality, show that rural Tibetans have
also &dquo;developed&dquo;: peasants and nomads are after all on average longer-lived by
three decades than their immediate forefathers. Even if this enlargement of
Tibetan lives were no greater than that done in other developing countries, it
would still be an achievement not to be gainsaid. Development for rural Tibetans
remains painfully slow, however, and the Tibetan countryside is still impoverished.
The gap between Tibet and the more prosperous parts of China widens;
for rural Tibetans, however, the main quotidian divide is with urban Tibet.
Ethnicity is politically salient in the cities, but rural inter-ethnic contact is scant.
Rural China is an arena of protest, with thousands of &dquo;unruly incidents&dquo; by
peasants each year.302 The TAR countryside, where almost everyone is Tibetan,
is terra incognita, however, in terms of our knowledge of resistance by peasants
to unlawful local taxes, government land seizures and other protest-inducing
phenomena common elsewhere in China. Tibetan cadres report that rural Tibetans
do not think that their living conditions are caused by others and take for
granted that their lives will be different from those of city folk. Rural Tibetans
are said to have a better impression of Han and of outsiders in general compared
to Tibetans in cities because the latter are more apt to have interest conflicts with
outsiders and feel aggrieved by them.303
2 99 Stevan Harrell, "Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to Them," in Cultural
Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1994), 3-36. 3 00 "Speech by Chen Kuiyuan," XZRB, 12 November 1996, 1, in BBC/SWB, 27 November
1996; "Speech by Raidi at Fourth Plenary Session," XZRB, 25 June 1996, 1, in
BBC/SWB, 5 August 1996.
3’0 "Unify Thinking and Understanding," XZRB, 10 December 1997, 1, in BBC/SWB, 20
January 1998.
3 02 "In China, Protests by Farmers Provoke a Violent Response," International Herald
Tribune, 2 February 1999, 1.
3 03 Interviews with Tibetan cadres, 2001.
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72
What then can we conclude about what development means for the Tibet
Question? Both the 6migr6 assertion that &dquo;development is for the Chinese&dquo; and
the implied PRC claim that there is an equitable sharing of benefits are inapt. As
elsewhere in China, urbanites benefit disproportionately. In Tibet, the Han are
urban, but so too is the &dquo;new Tibetan middle class.&dquo; While the latter’s benefits
derive from a &dquo;very Chinese&dquo; developmentalism and are not associated with
traditional &dquo;Tibetanness,&dquo; these well-off Tibetans do for the most part agree with
Han analysts that development is the key to prosperity and stability, a consensus
reflected in the campaign to develop the west of China. 104 The head of the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Western Development Study Center has
argued that development that raises income levels in the west will narrow disparities
between minorities and Han. When minorities lead a better life, their
support for the government will grow, as Beijing will be seen as paying attention
to their problems, and &dquo;this will ultimately deal a crushing blow to the cause of
regional separatist movements. ,305
PRC Vice-President Hu Jintao has stated that &dquo;rapid economic development
is the fundamental condition for realizing the interest of all ethnic groups in
Tibet and also the basic guarantee for greater ethnic unity and continued stability
there’,;306 yet, official confidence that &dquo;economic development can solve our problems&
dquo; in Tibet307 may be misplaced. Northern Ireland experienced substantial
state-led economic development after the beginning of the &dquo;Troubles&dquo; in the late
1960s. By the mid-1990s, subventions from Britain provided as much as 25-
30% of the N. Ireland population’s disposable income. 308 N. Ireland’s public
infrastructure is the best in the UK because of very large state expenditures in
the past two decades .309 Development however has not been the main factor in
resolving the province’s ethnic conflict; political compromise by both sides has
been the central element. N. Ireland, moreover, did not have to face the uncertainties
of systematic economic reform.
Economic reform is proving painful to many city dwellers in Tibet. Concern
about unemployment and corruption may displace sovereignty as vital
issues in urban Tibet, 3 ’o but many urban Tibetans will view these concerns
through an ethnic prism so long as the gap between Han and Tibetan incomes,
education levels and economic opportunities persists. An ethnic segregation
3 04 Xinhua, 3 October 1999
3 05 "Narrowing Wealth Gap to Stave off Separatism in China," Straits Times, 19 June
2000,47.
3 06 Xinhua, 19 July 2001.
3 07 "Tibetans Turn to Net in Search of Profit," SCMP, 5 July 1999, 8.
3 08 Peter Shirlow, "The Economics of the Peace Process" in Peace of War? Understanding
the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, ed. Chris Gilligan and Jonathan Tonge
(London: Avebury, Aldershot, 1997), 97-127.
3 09 John Lloyd, "Breeding for Victory in Ulster?" New Statesman, 29 May 1998, 8-9.
3 10 Cf. Grey, "Modernise or Else!"
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73
model holds that mobilization occurs when an ethnic group disproportionately
fills low status occupations and perceives its life chances as fewer than those of
other ethnic groups. Empirical studies have shown a link between ethnic segregation
and separatism in regions such as Spain’s Basque country.3&dquo; Development
itself, however, may also lead to ethnic conflict, as barriers to ethnic group
contact and competition fall when migration increases and occupational segmentation
declines.3’2 Where competition is viewed as unfair and competitive relations
occur in a context of low ethnic interdependence, conflict and separatism
often surge, as in Taiwan and Quebec.3’3 Development also provides resources to
peripheral ethnies, increasing their bargaining position and organizational capa-
Clty.3’4 In the Tibet case, moreover, the strong connection between nationalism
and devoutness guarantees that development per se will not fully ameliorate ethnic
confliCt.311
Ethnic competition may follow from desegregation and development
and may in turn lead to ethnic conflict. That is no reason for the state to reject
desegregation or development, however, as ethnic segregation may in any case
lead to conflict and interdependent ethnic groups are less often in conflict.
Minorities often see lack of development as unfair competition and rapid increases
in living standards and education among them is needed to obviate conflict.
Minority peoples who increase their efficacy through development may feel
more confident about risking ethnic conflict in efforts to enlarge their rights, but
this too should not deter the state from increasing development for minority
peoples. As Dion 316 points out in his examination of ethnic hostilities, buying
food reduces our savings potential, but we readily lower our savings to fill our
stomachs. Only if the state sees to an ethnically fair development and creates an
3 11 Juan Diez Medrano, "The Effects of Ethnic Segregation and Ethnic Competition on
Political Mobilization in the Basque Country, 1988," American Sociological Review 59,
no. 6 (1994): 873-89.
3 12 Susan Olzak, The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1992); Dudley Poston and Michael Micklin, "Spatial Segregation and
Social Differentiation of the Minority Nationalities from the Han majority in the PRC,"
Sociological Inquiry 62, no. 2 (1993): 158-65.
3 13 Sarah Berlanger and Maurice Pinard, "Ethnic Movements and the Competition Model:
Some Missing Links," American Sociological Review 56, no. 4 (1991): 446-57; James
McPherson, Is Blood Thicker than Water? Crises of Nationalism in the Modern World
(New York: Vintage Books, 1999); Li Wen Lang, "Ethnic Competition and Mobilization
in Taiwan’s Politics," Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 12, no. 1 (1993): 59-71.
3 14 Rita Jalali and Seymour Lipset, "Racial and Ethnic Conflicts: A Global Perspective,"
Political Science Quarterly 107, no. 4 (1992): 585-606.
3 15 Wang Lixiong, "Dalai Lama shi Xizang wenti de yaoshi" (The Dalai Lama is the key
to the Tibet Question), Unpublished ms., 2001.
3 16 Douglas Dion, "Competition and Ethnic Conflict: Artifactual?" Journal of Conflict
Resolution 41, no. 5 (1997): 638-48.
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74
ethnically interdependent economy and society, will the result be the amelioration
of ethnic conflict in Tibet.
Finally, development is intimately linked to cultural change in Tibet and
doubt has been raised about whether Tibetan culture will subsist. The pro-Tibet
independence US Tibetologist Elliot Sperling has observed that &dquo;within certain
limits the PRC does make efforts to accommodate Tibetan cultural expression&dquo;
and &dquo;the cultural activity taking place all over the Tibetan plateau cannot be ignored.&
dquo;3&dquo; Supporters of the emigre cause, such as Tibet scholar Robbie Barnett
and German Green Party leader Antje Vollmer, recognize the inaccuracy of &dquo;cultural
genocide in Tibet&dquo; charges.318 Culture in Tibet is subject to rigorous political
control, but French Tibetologist Gerard Joudet notes that the degree of control
in Tibetan areas is determined by how much the authorities have cause to
worry about separatist activities. 319
Cultural change associated with development in Tibet in the age of globalization
moreover is only mediated through &dquo;the Chinese&dquo;; much change seen as
malign by traditional Tibetans ultimately reflects Western or universal cultural
elements. Hessler quotes a Tibetan college student: &dquo;The more money we Tibetans
have, the higher our living standard is, the more we forget our own culture.
And with or without the Chinese, I think that would be happening.&dquo; 32° Diasporic
Tibetans also complain of &dquo;dilution&dquo; by Indian and Western culture of
every aspect of their traditions, although emigre leaders never speak of India or
the West committing cultural genocide or of diasporic Tibetan auto-cultural
genocide, but recognize that their use of non-Tibetan languages, foods, etc. does
not mean that they are any less Tibetans.321 The drive to commercialize Tibet’s
economy,322 just like commercialization among diasporic Tibetans, simultaneously
provides opportunities for cultural hybridity for &dquo;some mostly elite (i.e.
urban, educated and bilingual) Tibetans&dquo;,323 while impinging upon and constricting
Tibetan clerical and folk culture. Whether Tibetans derive benefits from development
that compensate for these losses to traditional culture is a question that
will continue to animate much debate in the context of the larger Tibet Question.
3 17 Elliot Sperling, "Exile and Dissent: The Historical and Cultural Context," in Tibet
since 1950: Silence, Prison or Exile, ed. Melissa Harris and Sydney Jones (New York:
Aperture, 2000), 31-36. 3E1d8 Douglas, "The Rape of Tibet," Guardian, 29 September 1997, T2; Georg Blume,
"Antje Vollmer’s Secret Diplomacy between Peking and the Dalai Lama," Die Zeit, 20
August 1998; WTN, 4 September 1998.
3 19 "Tibetans Celebrate New Year in Xiahe," Agence France Presse, 9 February 2001.
3 20 Hessler, "Tibet through Chinese Eyes." 3 21 "Exile No Refuge for Tibetan Culture," Agence France Presse, 26 July 2001.
3 22 Cf Xinhua, 11 November 2000.
3 23 Charlene Makley, "The Power of the Drunk: Humor and Resistance in China’s
Tibet," in Linguistic Form and Social Action, ed. Jennifer Dickinson et al. (Ann Arbor:
Michigan Discussions in Anthropology, Vol. 13, 1998), 39-79.
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